Skip to content

War from the Ground Up

341 Eggers Hall

Add to: Outlook, ICal, Google Calendar

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs present:

Hein Goemans, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Rochester

War from the Ground Up

Why are citizens willing to sacrifice for their homeland? An essential fact of warfare in the modern era is that individual citizens are called upon to contribute to the war effort. The willingness of citizens to sacrifice and fight for the homeland presents an especially important problem since territorial conflict is the deadliest form of international conflict. Why then are citizens willing to sacrifice, fight and die for their homeland? In the vast literature on war, this question is completely ignored. To answer it, I first ask and answer a series of additional critical questions: Why are individuals willing to fight for homeland territory, but not for other territory? How do individuals know what constitutes their homeland? Why does it matter? To what extent are leaders constrained by their citizens’ conceptions of the homeland? The answers to these questions hopefully fit together to not only explain why citizens are willing to sacrifice for their homeland, but together form the basis for an individual-level theory of international conflict.

Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and Sovereignty, Order and Conflict

For more information, contact Ryan Griffiths: rgriff01@syr.edu


Open to

Public

Contact

Accessibility

Contact to request accommodations

Exterior of Maxwell in black and white when there was no Eggers building

We’re Turning 100!


To mark our centennial in the fall of 2024, the Maxwell School will hold special events and engagement opportunities to celebrate the many ways—across disciplines and borders—our community ever strives to, as the Oath says, “transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

Throughout the year leading up to the centennial, engagement opportunities will be held for our diverse, highly accomplished community that now boasts more than 38,500 alumni across the globe.