scholarly journals Public Opinion toward Foreign Policy in a Developing World Democracy: Evidence from Indian Views of China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Milliff ◽  
Paul Staniland
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
International System ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
International Issues ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Research And Policy

India is the world’s largest democracy and is growing steadily more important in the international system, yet we know very little about how India’s public thinks about international issues. This has become even more important as India-China relations have declined dramatically in recent years. This paper explores public opinion toward China by leveraging both historical survey data since the 1960s, and modern, scientific surveys from the 2000s onward. This is a unique compilation of survey evidence that allows for the study of both trends and rigorous individual-level analyses. We put it into dialogue with general disciplinary questions about the dynamics of public opinion toward foreign policy, focusing on China. Two main findings emerge. First, aggregate trends in views of China broadly track the general political situation between the two countries. We do not see clear evidence one way or another of whether the public is simply following leaders: in the 1960s, there is circumstantial evidence of elite-led opinion, but in the last decade, elite efforts to maintain a cordial relationship with China coexisted with increasingly hostile public sentiment. Second, we delve within these aggregate trends find systematic sub-national variation in attitudes. Foreign policy attitudes have fairly stable regional differences, and poorer and less educated respondents are systematically more likely to not respond when asked about foreign policy and world affairs. While there are aggregate trends that track broader geopolitical tides, there remains important heterogeneity within Indian opinion that requires further analysis. We conclude with implications for research and policy.

Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Kertzer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
And Gender

How does the public think about foreign affairs, and how do these public preferences shape foreign policymaking? Over the past several decades, scholarship on public opinion and foreign policy has proliferated, partially due to a growing interest in the “first image” and the ways in which individuals matter in international relations, partially due to an experimental revolution that gave political scientists new methods they could use to study public opinion, and partially due to a range of searing debates—on topics ranging from the Iraq War to globalization—whose fault lines political scientists attempted to map. Scholarship in this area is thus so vast that it is impossible to comprehensively capture in an annotated bibliography of this length. Instead, the discussion that follows focuses on a curated sampling of the field, focusing, in particular, on six sets of substantive questions, drawing on a mix of classic and contemporary scholarship. It begins by reviewing what we know about how foreign policy attitudes are structured, before focusing on public opinion about two different areas of foreign policy: the use of force, and foreign economic issues like trade and investment. It then turns to the effects of sex and gender, along with the role of cue givers in shaping foreign policy preferences—whether partisan elites, international organizations, or social peers. It concludes by reviewing the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, whether in democracies (as in theories of democratic constraint and accountability), transnational public opinion (as in theories of soft power and anti-Americanism), or in nondemocratic regimes, a relatively new area of research.

How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jennifer Pan ◽  
Zijie Shao ◽  
Yiqing Xu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Composite Measures ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Tv News

Abstract Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.

Has Anyone Seen It?

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagmar Radin ◽  
Aleksandar Džakula
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
Health Care Performance ◽  
Policy Arena ◽  
Care Performance

Over the past decade, public opinion surveys have shown that Croats are deeply dissatisfied with their health care system and asses it to be one of the most important issues. However, health care hardly makes it into any political discourse in Croatia. This study analyzes the results of a public opinion survey conducted before the 2007 parliamentary elections to find out what the public sentiment on health care performance in Croatia is and to analyze the reasons why health care is not addressed by political actors. Evidence suggests that while health care is the most salient issue today, the public often understands it poorly. Thus, in a political environment of competing issues, and given the complexity of tacking health care in the policy arena, politicians strategically avoid discussing the issue.

scholarly journals The world public opinion towards the American foreign policy of presidents of the United States of North America in the years 2001–2016

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-184
Author(s):  
Przemysław Potocki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa

The article is based on an analysis of certain aspects of how the public opinion of selected nations in years 2001–2016 perceived the American foreign policy and the images of two Presidents of the United States (George W. Bush, Barack Obama). In order to achieve these research goals some polling indicators were constructed. They are linked with empirical assessments related to the foreign policy of the U.S. and the political activity of two Presidents of the United States of America which are constructed by nations in three segments of the world system. Results of the analysis confirmed the research hypotheses. The position of a given nation in the structure of the world system influenced the dynamics of perception and the directions of empirical assessments (positive/negative) of that nation’s public opinion about the USA.

Revealing public opinion towards COVID-19 vaccines with Twitter data in the United States: a spatiotemporal perspective (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Hu ◽  
Siqin Wang ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Mengxi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Spatiotemporal Trends ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Events

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the US and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines by investigating the spatiotemporal trends of their sentiment and emotion towards vaccines, as well as how such trends relate to popular topics on Twitter in the US METHODS We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the US from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified three phases along the pandemic timeline with the significant changes of public sentiment and emotion, further linking to eleven key events and major topics as the potential drivers to induce such changes via cloud mapping of keywords and topic modelling RESULTS An increasing trend of positive sentiment in parallel with the decrease of negative sentiment are generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the eight types of emotion implies the trustiness and anticipation of the public to vaccination, accompanied by the mixture of fear, sadness and anger. Critical social/international events and/or the announcements of political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on the public opinion on vaccines. These factors, along with important topics and manual reading of popular posts on eleven key events, help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis CONCLUSIONS The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics and promote the confidence of individuals within a certain region or community, towards vaccines

From Public to Publics

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amnon Cavari ◽  
Guy Freedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Research Design ◽  
General Public ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
Socio Demographic Factors

A rich body of work examines the public agenda in democratic countries. These studies rely on aggregate responses to survey questions that ask respondents to report their issue priorities—commonly using topline data of the most important problem survey series (MIP). This research design, however, is not sensitive to differences in issue priorities between individuals and groups and, therefore, fails to account for the possible variation within the general public. To overcome this neglect in existing literature, we examine individual-level responses to the most important problem question in two countries—the United States and Israel—focusing specifically on economic and foreign policy priorities. We reveal that beyond aggregate trends in the public agenda, socio-demographic factors in both countries explain some of the variation in issue dynamics.

10. The role of media and public opinion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Persuasive Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Media

This chapter examines the relevance of media and public opinion to our understanding of foreign policy and international politics. It first considers whether public opinion influences foreign policy formulation, as argued by the pluralist model, or whether the public are politically impotent, as argued by the elite model. It then explores whether the media can influence foreign policy formulation, as argued by the pluralist model, or whether the media are fundamentally subservient to the foreign policy process, as argued by the elite model. It also integrates these competing arguments with theoretical frames used in the study of international relations: namely, realism, liberalism, and critical approaches (including constructivism and post-structuralism). The chapter concludes by discussing contemporary debates concerning organized persuasive communication and the ‘war on terror’.

Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Foyle
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Media ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Research ◽  
Traditional Approaches

Dramatic changes in the way the public acquires information and formulates its attitudes have potentially altered the opinion and foreign policy relationship. While traditional approaches have treated public opinion on domestic and foreign matters as largely distinct, the culmination of a series of changes may eliminate the effective distinction between foreign and domestic policy, at least in terms of how the American political system operates. All the factors central to the opinion and foreign policy process, such as information acquisition, attitude formation, media effects, the effect of opinion on policy, and presidential leadership now appear to mirror the processes observed at the domestic level. This analysis reviews historical trends in the literature on public opinion and foreign policy that has focused on the rationality of the public’s opinions, the structure of its attitudes, and its influence on foreign policymaking. The traditional Almond-Lippmann consensus portrayed an emotional public with unstructured attitudes and little influence on foreign policy; however, revisionist views have described a reasonable public with largely structured views on foreign policy that can, at times, constrain and even drive those policies. More recently, the rise of “intermestic” issues, contain both domestic and international elements, such as globalization, inequality, terrorism, immigration, and climate change, have interacted to transform the domestic and international context. The bulk of this analysis highlights emerging new research directions that should be pursued in light of the changes. First, scholars should continue to evaluate the “who thinks what and why” questions with particular attention to differences between high- and low-information individuals, the effect of misinformation, and information sources. In doing so, research should build on research from non-American contexts that points to the important influences of societal and institutional factors. In addition to continued examination of traditional demographic factors such as partisanship and ideology, additional attention should turn to consider potential genetic and biological foundations of attitudes. Finally, researchers should continue to evaluate how the new media environment, including social media, affects how the public accesses information, how the media provides information, and how political elites attempt to shape both. Given these changes, scholars should consider whether it continues to make sense to treat public opinion dynamics regarding foreign policy as distinct from domestic policy and its implications.

Evidence of Partisan Agenda Fragmentation in the American Public, 1959–2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-781
Author(s):  
Mike Gruszczynski
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
The State ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Long Time ◽  
And Shifts

Abstract  This research examines the extent to which partisan agenda fragmentation is occurring within the American public. Though numerous scholars of public opinion and political communication have warned of the deleterious effects of agenda fragmentation, to this point such fragmentation has been demonstrated only across a small number of issues over short periods of time. This research is the first to utilize both a large set of issues and a long time frame to assess the state of partisan agendas from 1959 to 2015 through the use of individual-level Gallup’s “Most Important Problem” polls. Findings show that the public agenda has fragmented on a large number of issues, in terms of both the level of and shifts in attention that partisans accord to issues of the day. Additionally, this research highlights the importance of recent increases in agenda diversity and carrying capacity to fragmentation, demonstrating that while the presence of large, obtrusive issues tends to be associated with correspondence in partisan agendas, the ordering of partisan issue agendas has decoupled substantially in recent decades.

Public Opinion on Unites States-Canadian Relations

1974 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Sigler ◽  
Dennis Goresky
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Relative Degree ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Unites States

Primary attention has been paid in much of the writing on public attitudes on foreign affairs to opinions about official interstate relations and foreign policy. One of the merits of the transnational politics paradigm is that it calls attention to the possibility that intersocietal relations may condition or influence the climate as well as the agenda of interstate relations. For the public opinion analyst, the paradigm invites attention to the relative degree of importance assigned by publics to intersocietal as contrasted to interstate relations and how changes in attitudes toward one sector may influence the climate in which relations in the other sector are conducted.

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