The Certainty of Uncertainty: Taiwanese Public Opinion on U.S.–Taiwan Relations in the Early Trump Presidency

World Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 182 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-369
Author(s):  
Chung-li Wu ◽  
Alex Min-Wei Lin
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White House ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Chinese Ethnicity ◽  
Taiwan Independence

The election of Donald Trump has injected new uncertainties into the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs in Asia. For Taiwan, regional security is challenging because it must simultaneously deal with an increasingly belligerent China and an America led by the unconventional Trump. Based on public opinion data, this study analyzes how the Taiwanese public perceives the state of U.S.–Taiwan relations, and how certain they are about America’s overall commitment to Taiwan in this era. Results indicate that people in their 20s, pan-Green partisans, and those favoring Taiwan independence perceive U.S.–Taiwan relations to be better under President Trump. Moreover, supporters of the pan-Green coalition and of Taiwan independence, together with the more “ambivalent” respondents, likewise feel more certain about America’s commitment to Taiwan’s security. On the contrary, pan-Blue partisans and Taiwanese citizens with mainland Chinese ethnicity are generally more pessimistic and skeptical about U.S.–Taiwan ties and partnership with Trump in the White House.

US diplomatic service will be downsized and degraded

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Content Type ◽  
White House ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cutting Out ◽  
Foreign Policy Crises

Subject The State Department. Significance The US State Department’s third-ranking official and most senior career diplomat, Tom Shannon, announced his departure on February 1. While the 60-year old Shannon said he was stepping down for personal reasons, he is only the latest in a stream of senior career diplomats who have left since Donald Trump became president a year ago and appointed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state with a mandate to downsize the department. Impacts Minimising the benefits of diplomacy in favour of military action could exacerbate foreign policy crises and conflicts. White House heel-dragging on filling posts both 'streamlines' State and avoids congressional confirmation scrutiny of political nominees. Concerned that State wields little influence with the White House, Congress will be more assertive in the foreign policy process. Other powers -- particularly US allies -- will seek and have increased direct influence on the White House, cutting out State.

Trump will hamstring Tillerson at US State Department

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
State Department ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The State ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Content Type ◽  
White House

Significance Tillerson was initially viewed as one in a troika of stability-minded officials with more orthodox views on foreign policy than President Donald Trump, along with Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor HR McMaster. However, in recent months Tillerson has been sidelined on policy formation and contradicted on messaging by the White House, raising questions about the former oil executive’s role within the administration. Impacts UN Ambassador Nikki Haley will offer a more traditional Republican critique of authoritarian regimes, but her voice remains marginal. White House refusal to appoint former Trump critics to the State Department will leave Tillerson with few internal allies. Bipartisan support in Congress for foreign aid and instability concerns will scupper the proposal to merge USAID with the State Department. However, Congress is likely to pass budget cuts for State and USAID, albeit at a less extreme level than the White House proposes.

scholarly journals Opinião Pública e Política Externa: Do Consenso de Almond-Lippmann às Redes Sociais l Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: From The Almond-Lippmann Consensus to Social Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e58702
Author(s):  
Gustavo Jordan Ferreira Alves
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
Qualitative Methodologies

Neste artigo apresento uma linha cronológica que debate a relação entre opinião pública e temas de política externa ao longo das décadas. Demonstro as teorizações que trabalham com o consenso de Almond-Lippmann até as mais recentes teorias sobre opinião pública na era das redes sociais. Utilizando metodologias quantitativas e qualitativas, principalmente através de uma revisão da literatura já consolidada, apresento a conclusão de que em tal cronologia prevalece a perspectiva de que os eleitores de democracias como os Estados Unidos ou Brasil são majoritariamente desatentos a temas internacionais, mas não necessariamente irracionais em tais assuntos. Nesse sentido, no atual quadro de polarização política, em que mandatários como Donald Trump (2017-2021) e Jair Bolsonaro (2019-) utilizam massivamente redes sociais, surgem novos questionamentos nesse debate, desafiando o papel da mídia tradicional, especialmente depois da popularização dessas novas ferramentas de comunicação.Palavras-chave: Opinião Pública; Política Externa; Mídia.ABSTRACTIn this paper, it is presented a chronology that debates the relation between public opinion and foreign affairs subjects throughout the decades. I demonstrate theories starting from the Almond-Lippmann consensus until more recent ones discussing public opinion on the social media age. By using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, specially through reviewing the literature about public opinion and foreign policy that along the decades became reference in this realm, it is possible conclude that prevails the perspective that voters from democracies such as the United States and Brazil are mostly inattentive in international matters, however, they are not necessarily irrational. In this sense, the recent process of polarization in politics, where leaders such as Donald Trump (2017-2021) and Jair Bolsonaro (2019-) are constantly using social media, brings new questionings to this debate, challenging the role of the traditional media, especially after the popularization of those new communication tools.Keywords: Public Opinion; Foreign Policy; Media. Recebido em: 27/03/2021 | Aceito em: 17/08/2021. 

Battlefield Casualties and Ballot-Box Defeat: Did the Bush–Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-252
Author(s):  
Douglas L. Kriner ◽  
Francis X. Shen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White House ◽  
Campaign Rhetoric ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
The Military

ABSTRACTIn the 2016 election, foreign policy may have played a critically important role in swinging an important constituency to Donald Trump: voters in high-casualty communities that had abandoned Republican candidates in the mid-2000s. Trump’s iconoclastic campaign rhetoric promised a foreign policy that would simultaneously be more muscular and restrained. He promised to rebuild and refocus the military while avoiding the “stupid wars” and costly entanglements of his predecessors. At both the state and county levels, we find significant and substantively meaningful relationships between local casualty rates and support for Trump. Trump made significant electoral gains among constituencies that were exhausted and politically alienated by 18 years of fighting. Trump’s foreign policy shows a president beset by competing militaristic and isolationist impulses. Our results suggest that giving into the former may come at a significant electoral cost.

Documents and Source Material

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The West ◽  
White House ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Annotated List ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Government ◽  
Source Materials

This section comprises international, Arab, Israeli, and U.S. documents and source materials, as well as an annotated list of recommended reports. Significant developments this quarter: In the international diplomatic arena, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 2334, reaffirming the illegality of Israeli settlements and calling for a return to peace negotiations. Additionally, former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry delivered a final address on the Israel-Palestine conflict, outlining a groundwork for negotiations. Two weeks later, international diplomats met in Paris to establish incentives for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table. Despite international discussions of peace talks and the impediment settlements pose to a two-state solution, the Israeli Knesset passed the controversial Regulation Law, enabling the government to retroactively legalize settlements and confiscate Palestinian land throughout the West Bank. Meanwhile, U.S. president Donald Trump took office on 20 January 2017, and he wasted no time before inviting Netanyahu to the White House for their first meeting, in February.

Party Standstill in an Era of Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
External Environment ◽  
The State ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Significant Modification ◽  
Interest Management ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Run

Chapter 5 discusses the premises of the emergence of the cartel party with the parties’ resilience to any significant modification in the face of the cultural, societal, and political changes of the 1970s–1980s. Parties kept and even increased their hold on institutions and society. They adopted an entropic strategy to counteract challenges coming from a changing external environment. A new gulf with public opinion opened up, since parties demonstrated greater ease with state-centred activities for interest-management through collusive practices in the para-governmental sector, rather than with new social and political options. The emergence of two sets of alternatives, the greens and the populist extreme right, did not produce, in the short run, any impact on intra-party life. The chapter argues that the roots of cartelization reside mainly in the necessitated interpenetration with the state, rather than on inter-party collusion. This move has caught parties in a legitimacy trap.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Horder
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Adequate Coverage

The criminal law has the resources to address corruption in politics, if prosecutors are willing to use it, and if courts are willing to interpret it so that it provides adequate coverage of wrongdoing, particularly wrongdoing in the form of personal corruption engaged in by Members of Parliament. There needs to be a greater willingness to expose the worst corrupt wrongdoers in high office to the risk of judgment at the bar of public opinion, in the form of jury trial. The offence of misconduct in office provides the most appropriate means of doing this. This is not just because it is likely to provide the most appropriate label, but because the offence highlights the constitutionally fundamental bond of trust between the citizen and the state that is broken when officials indulge in corruption.

Public Opinion in Israel: The Sociodemographic Nexus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Hermann
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
Deep Disagreements ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The Impact

In Israel, as in many other countries, the impact of public opinion on national policymaking has increased dramatically over the last few decades. In fact, public opinion has practically developed into one of the prime political inputs in Israel. This chapter argues that this increased impact, which could have contributed to improving the Israeli democracy, is in fact often undermined by the increasing overlapping of the main cleavages within Israel: between the political Right and Left, between Jews and Arabs, and between religious and secular Israelis. This extreme overlapping has severely eroded the national consensus and accelerated the emergence of deep disagreements in public opinion over strategic issues, such as the nature of the state (Jewish? Democratic?), the main challenges facing the nation (including the best way of dealing with the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict), and the desired collective future.

scholarly journals Europe Abhors Donald Trump: The Opinion on the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections and Their Candidates in the European Newspapers

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110055
Author(s):  
Marçal Sintes-Olivella ◽  
Pere Franch ◽  
Elena Yeste-Piquer ◽  
Klaus Zilles
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
White House ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Common ◽  
The U.S

What is the opinion held by the European press on the U.S. election campaign and the candidates running for president? What are the predominant issues that attract the attention of European print media? Does Europe detest Donald Trump? The objective of the present study is to analyze the perception European commentators had of the 2020 race for the White House. The media, the audience, and European governments were captivated more than ever before by how the U.S. election campaign unfolded, fixing their gaze on the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Through a combined quantitative and qualitative methodology, a combination of content analysis and the application of framing theory (hitherto scarcely applied to opinion pieces), our research centers on exploring the views, opinions, and analyses published in eight leading newspapers from four European countries (France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) as expressed in their editorials and opinion articles. This study observes how the televised presidential debates were commented on, interpreted, and assessed by commentators from the eight newspapers we selected. The goal was to identify the common issues and frames that affected European public opinion on the U.S. presidential campaign and the aspirants to the White House.

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