Personal Values or a Democratic Value? Revisiting Public Reactions to the Failure of Civilian Control in Japan

Do democratic voters prioritize civilian control over the arbitrary decisions of the military? Shinomoto (2025) examined this question in Japan through a survey experiment and concluded that average voters lose trust in the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) when the JSDF does not follow the orders of the Japanese Prime Minister. This study revisits this finding by conducting a survey experiment that examines Japanese voters’ trust in both the JSDF and the Japanese Prime Minister under plausible alternative scenarios of the JSDF’s dovish noncompliance with the Prime Minister’s hawkish orders. We find that (1) through its noncompliance, the JSDF loses trust from right-wing voters but gains trust from left-wing voters; and (2) the JSDF’s noncompliance reduces trust in the Prime Minister. The findings imply that Japanese voters’ reactions to failures in civilian control are largely based on personal values rather than a democratic value: they evaluate military noncompliance positively if it aligns with their ideology and lose confidence in their democratically-elected leader if his policies are vetoed by the military. These implications from a country with long-standing skepticism toward the military raise additional concerns about the civil-military relationship in democratic politics.