Voters and Foreign Policy: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Pakistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Clary ◽  
Niloufer Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Candidate Preference ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Conjoint Experiment

Abstract How much weight do voters place on foreign policy when deciding between electoral candidates? In traditional surveys in Pakistan, the vast majority of respondents identify India as an enemy and threat to Pakistan. What these studies do not assess is whether these beliefs affect voter preferences. Using a conjoint survey experiment conducted among 1,990 respondents in Pakistan, we find that respondents punish hypothetical politicians who advocate a friendly policy toward India, but only modestly. Candidate attitudes toward India were the least meaningful characteristic for voter choice among five characteristics tested, suggesting that attitudinal measurements of salience poorly predict candidate preference. Subgroup results are also instructive: younger and more educated respondents and those from Pakistan's largest province of Punjab were less likely to punish dovish politicians. We discuss implications of these findings and outline avenues for future research.

scholarly journals Disentangling the relationship between sociotropic and egotropic trade attitudes: A survey experiment in Japan

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie Hearn
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Observational Studies ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractPublic support for protection is typically attributed to economic self-interest. Beyond pocketbook anxieties, a competing approach, however, contends that sociotropic attitudes dictate foreign policy preferences. Researchers, however, have faced difficulty in disentangling sociotropic attitudes from pocketbook concerns in observational studies. This article addresses this problem by utilizing a priming experiment to examine the relationship between socio and egotropic attitudes. In line with the predictions of the sociotropic framework, individuals are less certain about the egotropic effects of trade and sociotropic attitudes are found to influence egotropic perceptions by reducing uncertainty about the pocketbook effects of trade. In contrast, the study fails to find support for the hypothesis that individuals project egotropic concerns onto societal evaluations. The results of the study suggest that future research should pay careful consideration to the relationship between socio and egotropic attitudes when modeling and analyzing trade-policy preferences.

Identifying voter preferences for politicians’ personal attributes: a conjoint experiment in Japan

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusaku Horiuchi ◽  
Daniel M. Smith ◽  
Teppei Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Personal Attributes ◽  
Recruitment Strategies ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Conjoint Experiment

AbstractAlthough politicians’ personal attributes are an important component of elections and representation, few studies have rigorously investigated which attributes are most relevant in shaping voters’ preferences for politicians, or whether these preferences vary across different electoral system contexts. We investigate these questions with a conjoint survey experiment using the case of Japan’s mixed-member bicameral system. We find that the attributes preferred by voters are not entirely consistent with the observed attributes of actual politicians. Moreover, voters’ preferences do not vary when asked to consider representation under different electoral system contexts, whereas the observed attributes of politicians do vary across these contexts. These findings point to the role of factors beyond voters’ sincere preferences, such as parties’ recruitment strategies, the effect of electoral rules on the salience of the personal vote, and the availability of different types of politicians, in determining the nature of representation.

scholarly journals Spatial Voting Meets Spatial Policy Positions: An Experimental Appraisal

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-290
Author(s):  
TANJA ARTIGA GONZÁLEZ ◽  
GEORG D. GRANIC
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Issue Framing ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Coding Schemes ◽  
Spatial Voting ◽  
Policy Statements ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
The Relationship

We develop and validate a novel experimental design that builds a bridge between experimental research on the theory of spatial voting and the literature on measuring policy positions from text. Our design utilizes established text-scaling techniques and their corresponding coding schemes to communicate candidates’ numerical policy positions via verbal policy statements. This design allows researchers to investigate the relationship between candidates’ policy stances and voter choice in a purely text-based context. We validate our approach with an online survey experiment. Our results generalize previous findings in the literature and show that proximity considerations are empirically prevalent in purely text-based issue framing scenarios. The design we develop is broad and portable, and we discuss how it adds to current experimental designs, as well as suggest several implications and possible routes for future research.

scholarly journals Conflict and Candidate Selection: Game Framing Voter Choice

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Cox Han ◽  
Brian Robert Calfano
Keyword(s):  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
Preliminary Finding ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Candidate Support

Political campaigns are often likened to a game typified by conflict. We consider whether using a conflict frame visually emphasizing the contested aspect of partisanship affects candidate support in the 2016 presidential election. Using a nationwide survey experiment ( N = 975) that randomly assigns participants to different visual frames depicting politics as conflictual or process-based, we find that participants exposed to the conflict frame show significantly higher odds of supporting Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, while rejecting Hillary Clinton. The conflicting frame also increases self-reported participant anger, which decomposition analysis shows increases support for Trump and Sanders while decreasing it for Clinton (and that we offer as a preliminary finding). Avenues for future research are then considered.

President Obama and the Emergence of Islamophobia in Mass Partisan Preferences

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110072
Author(s):  
Michael Tesler
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Independent Predictor ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Significant Independent Predictor ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Relationship

This article argues that the unusually large and persistent association between Islamophobia and opposition to President Obama helped make attitudes about Muslims a significant, independent predictor of Americans’ broader partisan preferences. After detailing the theoretical basis for this argument, the article marshals repeated cross-sectional data, two panel surveys, and a nationally representative survey experiment, to test its hypotheses. The results from those analyses show the following: (1) attitudes about Muslims were a significantly stronger independent predictor of voter preferences for congress in 2010–2014 elections than they were in 2004–2008; (2) attitudes about Muslims were a significantly stronger independent predictor of mass partisanship during Obama’s presidency than they were beforehand; and (3) experimentally connecting Obama to Democratic congressional candidates significantly increased the relationship between anti-Muslim sentiments and Americans’ preferences for Republican congressional candidates. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for American politics in the Trump era.

Features of foreign policy birds: Israeli prime ministers as hawks and doves

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baris Kesgin
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Leadership Approaches

Scholars and policymakers have long used the shorthand of hawks and doves to characterize leader personalities that correspond to a particular political inclination, whereby hawks are considered right-wing and more aggressive in foreign policy, and doves are left-wing and more peaceful. This article posits that a sound discussion of who hawks and doves in foreign policy are requires an engagement with research on political leadership. It promises a less superficial understanding of the dichotomy of hawks and doves, and uses leadership trait analysis to explore hawkish and dovish leaders’ qualities. The article profiles Israel’s prime ministers since the end of the Cold War, where in a high security environment, these words are most often used to describe its domestic and foreign matters and its cooperative and conflictual actions. This article’s findings encourage an unpacking of these commonly used shorthand labels with political leadership approaches. They are also useful to highlight, most notably, the significance of complexity and distrust in understanding hawkish and dovish leaders. Hawks think simpler and are more doubtful of others than doves, this article finds. Future research, the article suggests, will benefit from looking deeper than simple, dichotomous use of this analogy, and exploring ways to operationalize individual-level measurements of hawks and doves in foreign policy.

scholarly journals Reputations for Resolve and Higher-Order Beliefs in Crisis Bargaining

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272199554
Author(s):  
Allan Dafoe ◽  
Remco Zwetsloot ◽  
Matthew Cebul
Keyword(s):  
Belief Change ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Crisis Bargaining ◽  
First Order ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Higher Order Effects

Reputations for resolve are said to be one of the few things worth fighting for, yet they remain inadequately understood. Discussions of reputation focus almost exclusively on first-order belief change— A stands firm, B updates its beliefs about A’s resolve. Such first-order reputational effects are important, but they are not the whole story. Higher-order beliefs—what A believes about B’s beliefs, and so on—matter a great deal as well. When A comes to believe that B is more resolved, this may decrease A’s resolve, and this in turn may increase B’s resolve, and so on. In other words, resolve is interdependent. We offer a framework for estimating higher-order effects, and find evidence of such reasoning in a survey experiment on quasi-elites. Our findings indicate both that states and leaders can develop potent reputations for resolve, and that higher-order beliefs are often responsible for a large proportion of these effects (40 percent to 70 percent in our experimental setting). We conclude by complementing the survey with qualitative evidence and laying the groundwork for future research.

scholarly journals Being a Small State: Discussion on the Role of Size

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Justinas Lingevičius
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small States ◽  
Small State

This paper discusses theoretical debates regarding small states and their foreign policy and also argues that research should include more analysis of small states’ identities and the dominant meanings related to being a small state. Using poststructuralistic theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, two empirical cases – Lithuania and New Zealand – are analysed with attention paid to the meanings of smallness and the ways these meanings are constructed. Empirical analysis follows with suggestions for how future research of small states could be improved.

scholarly journals Support of Workplace Diversity Policies: The Role of Race, Gender, and Beliefs about Inequality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Scarborough ◽  
Danny Lambouths ◽  
Allyson Holbrook
Keyword(s):  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Workplace Diversity ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Workplace Policies ◽  
Levels Of Support ◽  
Analyze Data

Workplace diversity policies are more effective when they are supported by managers and workers, but there is little direct evidence on how people feel about these policies or why they hold certain opinions. In this study, we analyze data from a survey experiment designed to assess public opinion about a range of workplace diversity policies. We examine how support for these policies among employed respondents varies by race, gender, and by the targeted population (i.e. whether the policies aim to improve the workplace representation of women or racial minorities). Using OLS regression models to analyze a diverse sample of employed persons participating in the survey, we find that women, blacks, and Latina/os are more supportive of diversity policies than men and whites, and a substantial portion of these gender/race differences can be explained by group-differences in the belief that discrimination causes inequality. In addition, we find that respondents report lower levels of support for workplace policies when these policies are framed as a mechanism to increase diversity than when they are framed as being needed to address discrimination or if no justification is given for the policy. Our findings highlight the role of inequality beliefs in shaping worker support for diversity policies, suggesting directions for future research on how such beliefs are developed.

Rejecting Ethnic Pandering in Urban Africa: A Survey Experiment on Voter Preferences in Nairobi, Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110405
Author(s):  
Hye-Sung Kim ◽  
Jeremy Horowitz
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Vignette Experiment

Ethnic pandering, in which candidates promise to cater to the interests of coethnic voters, is presumed to be an effective strategy for increasing electoral support in Africa’s emerging multiethnic democracies. However, ethnic political mobilization may be disdained by citizens for its divisive and polarizing effects, particularly in urban areas. As a result, pandering may fall on deaf ears among Africa’s urban voters. This study examines how voters in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, respond to ethnic pandering using data from a vignette experiment conducted in 2015 and a replication study implemented in 2016. Results show that respondents are more supportive of candidates who make ethnically inclusive rather than targeted appeals, regardless of whether the candidate is identified as a coethnic. We propose that the results are driven by a broad distaste among urban voters for parochial politics, rather than by strategic calculations related to candidate viability.

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