scholarly journals American and Chinese Public Opinion in an Era of Great Power Competition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Irwin ◽  
David R. Mandel ◽  
Brooke Macleod

As US-China great power competition intensifies, public opinion polling may help gauge internal drivers of foreign policy decision-making. Using Pew Research Center data, we analyzed how Americans and Chinese perceived their own and each other’s countries between 2008-2016. We also compared these samples’ perceptions of current economic and future superpower leadership. While Chinese evaluated China more favorably than Americans evaluated the US, they also evaluated the US more favorably than Americans evaluated China. Among Americans, on average, Republicans viewed China less favorably and the US more favorably than Independents or Democrats. Although Chinese consistently viewed the US as the current economic leader, Chinese became increasingly optimistic about China’s prospects for future superpower preeminence over time. Conversely, American perceptions of America’s future status as a leading superpower became increasingly pessimistic over time, especially for Republicans and Independents. Republicans and Independents were also more optimistic about US economic leadership under Republican presidents, while Democrat perceptions were more consistent over time. We discuss our findings’ implications for US-China great power competition and in view of psychological theory.

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 678-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Saguy ◽  
Hanna Szekeres

Even though social change efforts are largely aimed at impacting upon public opinion, there is an overwhelming scarcity of research on the potential consequences of collective action. We aimed to fill this gap by capitalizing on the widespread 2017 Women’s March that developed across the US and worldwide in response to Donald Trump’s inauguration. We assessed changes in gender system justification of men and women over time—before and right after the Women’s March ( N = 344). We further considered participants’ level of gender identification and reported levels of exposure to the march as predictors of change. Results showed that gender system justification decreased over time, but only among low-identified men with relatively high exposure to the protests. For men highly identified with their gender, gender system justification actually increased with greater exposure to the protests. For women, we did not observe changes in gender system justification. Implications for collective action and for gender relations are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 757-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Prosser ◽  
Jonathan Mellon

Polls have had a number of high-profile misses in recent elections. We review the current polling environment, the performance of polls in a historical context, the mechanisms of polling error, and the causes of several recent misses in Britain and the US. Contrary to conventional wisdom, polling errors have been constant over time, although the level of error has always been substantially beyond that implied by stated margins of error. Generally, there is little evidence that voters lying about their vote intention (so-called ‘shy’ voters) is a substantial cause of polling error. Instead, polling errors have most commonly resulted from problems with representative samples and weighting, undecided voters breaking in one direction, and to a lesser extent late swings and turnout models. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for polling both in terms of fixing the problems identified and new approaches to understanding public opinion.


Author(s):  
Jessica D. Blankshain

The study of foreign policy decision-making seeks to understand how states formulate and enact foreign policy. It views foreign policy as a series of decisions made by particular actors using specific decision-making processes. The origins of this focus on decision-making are generally traced to the 1950s and 1960s, with the literature increasing in complexity and diversity of approaches in more recent decades. Foreign policy decision-making is situated within foreign policy analysis (a subfield of international relations subfield), which applies theories and methods from an array of disciplines—political science, public administration, economics, psychology, sociology—to understand how states make foreign policy, and how these policies translate into geopolitical outcomes. The literature on foreign policy decision-making is often subdivided based on assumptions about the process by which actors make foreign policy decisions—primarily falling into rational and nonrational decision-making; about who is assumed to make the decision—states, individuals, groups, or organizations; and about the influences believed to be most important in affecting those decisions—international factors, domestic political factors, interpersonal dynamics, etc. While much of the literature focuses on foreign policy decision-making in the United States, there have been attempts to apply models developed in the US context to other states, as well as to generate generalizable theories about foreign policy decision-making that apply to certain types of states.


Author(s):  
Grace Hampson ◽  
Chris Henshall ◽  
Adrian Towse ◽  
Bill Dreitlein ◽  
Steven Pearson

Introduction:Real world evidence (RWE) is changing the overall data landscape and it has potential to advance the evaluation of real world performance (comparative effectiveness) of healthcare technologies by providing a greater quantity and quality of evidence. However, many are concerned that non-randomized RWE may be substituted for RCT data and thus increase uncertainty about effectiveness. This presentation sets out the opportunities and challenges for use of RWE by payers and HTA bodies to evaluate health care technologies.Methods:Current uses, opportunities and challenges were identified via a literature review and interviews with nine experts. Interim results were discussed at the 2017 ICER Policy Summit, which brought together leaders from payer and life sciences organizations, to develop specific and actionable recommendations for the use of RWE in drug coverage and policy decision-making.Results:RWE is utilized for multiple purposes in the US and globally, including: aiding design of drug development pathways; supporting regulatory approval decisions; monitoring safety; and informing HTA assessments and payer coverage decisions. Some stakeholders see great value in RWE and want to make greater use of these data sources, including for: drug effectiveness evaluations (including supplementing network meta-analyses); innovative study designs (including pragmatic trials); real time patient monitoring; and adaptive pathways or coverage with evidence development. However, others see numerous challenges, many of which are related to the quality and reliability of RWE sources. Acceptance of an expanded future role for RWE is not universal, and payers and developers must work together to find mutually beneficial strategies for progressing the development and use of RWE.Conclusions:Specific and actionable recommendations will be presented which highlight the role that each stakeholder group can play in overcoming the challenges and realizing the potential for RWE.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016327872110182
Author(s):  
Paul Cristian Gugiu

Kaplan and Baron-Epel advanced the notion that findings from public surveys should inform health policy decision making with respect to funding allocation. This approach to governing can draw large support from the populace, legislators, and the academic community alike. Yet, it has the potential to undermine evidence-based health policy decision making. In this paper, I delineate six drawbacks and several related corollaries drawn from historical events that have occurred during the recent coronavirus pandemic. These examples illustrate the dire downstream consequences (e.g., disregard for the needs of minority groups; diminution of critical services not broadly supported by the public; promotion of fringe group or foreign actor agendas; advancement of poorly informed opinions; shift from a forward-thinking, proactive perspective to a retroactive one; and reliance on potentially biased estimates) that may follow if public surveys become embedded in healthcare policy decision making. Without solutions to the drawbacks delineated in this paper, health policy driven by public opinion is likely to cause more harm than good.


Author(s):  
Douglas C. Foyle ◽  
Douglas Van Belle

Societal factors such as public opinion, interest groups, and the media can influence foreign policy choices and behavior. To date, the public opinion and foreign policy literature has focused largely on data derived from the US, although this trend has begun to change in recent years. However, while much of the scholarly work suggests that public attitudes on foreign policy are both reasonable and structured, significant controversies exist over the public’s general influence on policy as well as the influence of elections on foreign policy. Meanwhile, the study of interest groups as a domestic source of foreign policy is dominated by two points of emphasis: ethnic groups acting as interest groups and the US case. These are most often considered together. This ethnic interest group literature stands largely apart from the literature on trade interest groups, which takes its inspiration from the economics literature. Finally, two aspects of media are specifically relevant to media and domestic sources of foreign policy. The first is the way the media serve as an arena of domestic political competition within democracies, and the second is the communicative role that media play in the formation of public opinions that are specific to and critical to foreign policy decision making.


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