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As the American death toll in Iraq rises toward 1,000, some IR scholars may be perplexed. Only a few years ago foreign policymakers in Western democracies, including the United States, were described as being extremely sensitive to the political cost of military combat casualties. I argue that the number of casualties a democracy will experience is influenced by several factors, including its military manpower system. I contend that democracies with conscript armies will experience fewer combat casualties than democracies with volunteer or professional forces, because the societal actors most closely impacted by conscript casualties are more likely to have the political power and access with which to constrain policymakers. Using several selection models I find that democracies with conscripts suffer the fewest casualties and democracies with volunteers experience the most casualties with democracy alone being respon-sible for numbers that lie between the previous two types of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries students of international conflict have considered variables related to military power in their theories and hypotheses. While this is appropriate, no one in modern times has studied whether and how the social composition of militaries either constrains or frees political leaders to pursue their objectives on the international stage in a manner that is generalizable. In this paper, I begin my attempt to do just that. Specifically, I examine whether the social representativeness of armed forces affects democracies tolerance of fatalities in militarized disputes. Through the use of regression analysis, I find some support for a negative relationship between the social composition of militaries and the apparent willingness of democratic states to incur fatalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explain why IR scholars should devote more study to casualty tolerance. First, I discuss how the study of casualty tolerance is relevant to the study of foreign policy. I argue that a state's casualty tolerance influences whether states take military action in the presence of a threat, the ends they pursue, the military means they employ and the outcomes of those conflicts as well as domestic politics. Second, I illustrate how the casualty tolerance of great powers contributed to three events that transformed international relations during the last century. To make this point, I show how great power casualty tolerance influenced the nature of the Cold War, the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, and the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Finally, I discuss the benefits of more fully understanding the variables that affect a great power's casualty tolerance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]