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Several prominent international organizations (IOs) maintain decision-making structures that under-represent developing countries. This paper argues that individuals in developing countries are more supportive of engaging with IOs that give a greater voice to fellow developing countries. We posit that the balance of decision-making power influences support for IOs by improving perceptions of both input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Empirically, we focus on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and draw on original survey experiments in four developing countries: Argentina, China, South Africa, and Turkey. Results reveal that increased representation of developing countries increases public support for IMF participation. We also find consistent evidence that this effect works through an input legitimacy mechanism, specifically by improving perceptions of procedural fairness. These findings suggest that public support for IOs is affected by the balance of decision-making power within these organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the defining features of the contemporary global economy are the digital disruption of economic sectors and the accompanying political and regulatory conflicts. Across the world, multinational technology firms have mobilized consumers as a key ally in these conflicts, a critical element of the platform power they wield. In this article, I examine how non-consumer identities can limit the exercise of platform power by such firms. By synthesizing the concept of platform power with research on political consumerism and national identity, I argue that activating national identity can generate opposition to policies favorable to multinational technology firms and, in turn, curtail their ability to appeal to public support. Empirically, this article uses an online, nationally representative survey fielded in Canada. I explore the determinants of support for global regulatory cooperation and the domestic policy status quo, as well as the causal effect of consumer and national identity framing using vignette experiments across three issue areas: banking, telecommunications, and taxation. The findings reveal that activating consumer identities consistently shifts support but the effect of national identity is more variable. This article thus contributes to scholarship on the digital economic transformation and the exercise of business power in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do rebel groups form in cities? What makes urban-based insurgent organizations effective? Urban armed conflicts have become an important subject of research due to the political, economic, and demographic significance of cities. Yet, we know little about the mechanisms of insurgent group formation and effectiveness in urban contexts. Building on the case of the formation and initial urban campaign of M-19 in Colombia (1973–1980), this article argues that rebel leaders originating from multiple organizations and confronted with intramovement competition have strong motives to employ organizational bricolage to form their organization. Organizational bricolage shapes insurgent effectiveness by producing structures that are fit for achieving certain objectives but not others. M-19's organizational bricolage combined the armed vanguard, intellectual collective, and populist party forms. This structure was effective to foster public support but ineffective to establish a robust social base and maintain urban operations under repression. The research employs the analysis of organizational repertoires and process tracing to retrace M-19's formation and initial urban campaign. Empirical material includes an original dataset comprising M-19 founders' biographical data, archival documents, and interviews with ex-combatants. Studying how rebel leaders employ organizational bricolage sheds light on how insurgent organizations form, behave, and transform after war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What effect does judicializing international commitments have on incentives to comply with international law? We study this question using experiments embedded in a survey of the American public. We find that non-compliance signals from an international court work precisely as theories of non-compliance anticipate, raising perceptions of legal obligation and support for returning to compliance relative to non-compliance signals from foreign state parties (i.e. the "victims" in a given dispute). At the same time, we find that signals from courts are no more (and no less) effective in generating public support for returning to compliance than identical non-compliance signals sent by international organizations or domestic political elites. These results suggest that courts are not uniquely positioned to shape the politics of compliance and that the often-rancorous debates over institutional design may be just as much about conflicts over institutional control as they are about conflicts over institutional forms or labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature suggests that alliance members can use their partners' abandonment fears to obtain favorable concessions for themselves. However, evidence on the effectiveness of threats of abandonment as motivation for defense burden-sharing remains limited. This article uses a survey experiment conducted in Poland and Germany to assess how American signals of support and threats of abandonment shape public support for increasing their countries' military spending. The findings suggest that threats of abandonment increase public support for higher defense spending, whereas approaches like "naming and shaming" under-contributing partners do not. However, assurances of protection did not decrease support for defense spending, and combining threats with assurances if anything increased those threats' effects. Threats are thus most effective when they do not fundamentally undermine targets' confidence in US protection. The findings have implications for understanding alliance politics and the utility of public pressure, and for policy debates about encouraging defense burden-sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public views on international organizations (IOs) have become a matter of central concern. While actors in world politics increasingly try to legitimize or delegitimize IOs, scholars have begun investigating such phenomena systematically. This paper provides the most comprehensive IO (de)legitimation study to date. Building on cueing theory, and considering input as well as output legitimacy, I examine the isolated and combined effects of delegitimation and self-legitimation on public perceptions of IOs. I concentrate on government criticism and citizen protests as two salient practices of delegitimation. In investigating self-legitimation, I focus on IOs' public statements and institutional reforms. I study public opinion on the UN, World Bank, and WHO, as IOs of different functional scopes and levels of salience. In 2021, I conducted survey experiments on more than 32,000 citizens in ten countries worldwide (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Kenya, South Korea, and Turkey) – weighted by age, gender, region, and education. My main findings are: Delegitimation by governments and citizen protests has some limited effectiveness, depending on the IO in question. While IO self-legitimization statements and reforms in themselves do not boost public support for IOs, they are generally effective at neutralizing delegitimation attempts by governments and citizen protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A defining feature of public (and, often, scholarly) discussion of international affairs is the treatment of states as unitary actors, that is, akin to individual persons. Drawing upon social–psychological research, we theorize that such unitary actor (UA) framing increases the degree to which adversarial states are perceived as entitative—that is, as relatively united—and, thus, the perceived complicity of a country's people in their government's actions. We therefore hypothesize that UA framing increases citizens' support for indiscriminate, coercive policies against target states. In a content analysis of US elite statements spanning three decades, we first establish that UA framing is exceedingly common, occurring in nearly two-thirds of all references to adversarial states. We then conduct a series of survey experiments on US adults, finding that, compared to frames in which a state is described as more factious and disunited, UA framing is associated with significantly greater willingness to impose harmful, indiscriminate economic sanctions and military strikes against target states. Our results highlight the utility and applicability of entitativity to political science research, and have important implications for the role of elite discourse in bolstering public support for hawkish foreign policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diplomatic protests convey one government's displeasure with the policies of another government. Yet, public support for their own government's policies can be influenced by the actions of others, so diplomatic protests have the potential to increase domestic support for the policy within the target country. A rally-'round-the-flag effect has been found to be associated with wars, crises, and sanctions. Here, we assess the existence of such an effect in relation to diplomatic protests by foreign governments. Using a survey experiment, we assess the impact of foreign government protests—specifically protests by China—against US arms sales to Taiwan on public support for Taiwan's government and its policies. We find that who lodges the protest, whether it is an adversary or a supporter, is more important than the language of the protest itself. We argue that diplomatic protests create a dilemma—lodging complaints about the behavior of other governments can increase public support for those very policies in the target country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative impact of populist anti-aid rhetoric on public opinion has been based on anecdotal reports to date. Here, we take a systematic and empirical look at this inquiry. We hypothesize that even though populist rhetoric decreases support for foreign development aid in donor publics, this effect is conditioned by individuals' preexisting beliefs about populist leaders. Using data from original survey experiments conducted with representative samples of American and British adults, we find that exposure to different variants of populist frames decreases individuals' willingness to support their government providing development aid through an international organization. However, this effect is moderated by whether people think populist leaders stand up for the little guy or scapegoat out-groups. Connecting foreign aid and populism literatures, our results suggest that the future of global development might not be as bleak as previously feared in the age of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What shapes public support for military missions? Existing scholarship points to, on the one hand, individuals' affiliations and predispositions (such as political partisanship and gender), and, on the other hand, factors that shape a rational cost–benefit analysis (notably, mission objectives, the prospects for victory, and the magnitude and distribution of costs). We argue that public opinion is also shaped by beliefs about why soldiers voluntarily enlist. Using novel survey data and an experiment, deployed to a nationally representative sample of Americans, we test how four conceptions of soldiering affect support for a prospective military operation. We find, in observational data, that believing that a soldier is a good citizen or patriot bolsters support for the mission, while believing that a soldier has enlisted because he wants the material benefits of service or has "no other options" undermines support. These results support our causal argument: Americans' attitudes toward military missions are shaped by their perception of whether the soldier has consented to deployment rather than by feelings of social obligation. This article has implications for debates on the determinants of public support for military missions and the relationship between military service and citizenship in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on public opinion and crisis behavior has focused largely on pressures felt by leaders who have initiated a crisis, not on leaders in target states responding to adversary provocation. Our survey experiment involving 1,823 respondents in Punjab, Pakistan, finds public support for escalating rather than de-escalating in response to such provocation. It shows how public pressures can encourage conflict even in instances where a leader has engaged in no prior effort to generate audience costs following crisis onset. Survey respondents were more likely to support escalatory decisions if they were made by a military, rather than civilian, leader, although we do not find that military leaders receive more support in de-escalatory decisions. Finally, while we demonstrate that leaders can mitigate the costs of de-escalating by highlighting the dangers of conflict, they still incur opportunity costs in foregone public support when they opt to de-escalate rather than escalate a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has fruitfully investigated the effect of international organization (IO) approval on public support for military intervention. Following Jentleson and Britton [Bruce W. Jentleson and Rebecca L. Britton, "Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force," Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 4 (1998): 395–417], scholars argue that IO approval does not increase already high public support for "foreign policy restraint" (FPR) operations intended to coerce "aggressively threatening" opponents, including terrorists. We challenge this argument, focusing on public support for contributing to military coalitions. The public may wonder whether leaders are sincere when they frame a coalition military operation as having FPR objectives; this may lead the public to put a premium on multilateral validation. We also question the common argument that UN Security Council approval necessarily has a greater positive effect on public support for intervention than approval from regional IOs. Approval from broad-based regional IOs, such as the African Union (AU), may be just as consequential. Data from survey experiments that we conducted in three countries confirm our principal hypotheses: (1) IO approval consistently increases public support for contributing to military coalitions even in counterterrorism cases and (2) the UN and AU approval effects are of comparable magnitude. These findings expand our theoretical understanding of the conditions under which IO approval can increase public support for military intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do military alliances affect public support for war to defend victims of aggression? We offer the first experimental evidence on this fundamental question. Our experiments revealed that alliance commitments greatly increased the American public's willingness to intervene abroad. Alliances shaped public opinion by increasing public fears about the reputational costs of nonintervention and by heightening the perceived moral obligation to intervene out of concerns for fairness and loyalty. Finally, although alliances swayed public opinion across a wide range of circumstances, they made the biggest difference when the costs of intervention were high, the stakes of intervention were low, and the country needing aid was not a democracy. Thus, alliances can create pressure for war even when honoring the commitment would be extremely inconvenient, which could help explain why democratic allies tend to be so reliable. These findings shed new light on the consequences of alliances and other international legal commitments, the role of morality in foreign policy, and ongoing debates about domestic audience costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives public support for retributive violence against insurgents, a desire for revenge or security? We consider the case of suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Mosul Iraq. Using survey experiments, we inquire about public support for judicial as well as extrajudicial violence against insurgent combatants. We sample among ordinary civilians in Mosul who lived under ISIS rule as well as ISIS-affiliated families in displacement camps outside Mosul. We find that many Mosul civilians are highly tolerant of retributive violence against insurgents, but this tolerance is driven primarily by security concerns rather than revenge. In contrast, others, especially in displacement camps, oppose the punitive killing of insurgents because they regard such actions as counterproductive to long-term security goals. This tension speaks to potential security dilemmas surrounding retaliatory responses to insurgency. Instead, public security interests may be better served through nonviolent strategies, to include negotiations with insurgent forces and more restorative approaches to justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a substantial body of literature on the consequences of terror attacks on public attitudes toward state institutions in Western democracies, little is known about the impact that such events have in the context of armed conflict. We address this gap by exploring the attitudinal effects of a 2012 Taliban attack on civilians in Kabul City, Afghanistan. We test two competing hypotheses: the "rally-effect" hypothesis according to which individuals increase their trust in incumbent institutions in the aftermath of violent attacks and the "accountability" hypothesis according to which individuals punish state institutions for their inability to provide security by withdrawing trust. Leveraging a quasi-experiment that compares individuals interviewed before the attack to individuals interviewed thereafter, we find that the attack—in line with the rally-effect hypothesis—increased trust in several state institutions among residents of Kabul City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When their country is at war, individuals express support for their government and hostility toward the foreign adversary, leading to the "rally ′round the flag" effect. What is less understood is how, during a rally, ethnic identity and proximity to conflict relate to attitudes toward the home state and the adversary. Moreover, individuals may feel pressure to answer patriotically when asked about the conflict, particularly individuals who share an ethnic identity with the majority population of the foreign adversary, leading to biased measures of opinion. We study these dynamics in the context of Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia, comparing responses from self-identified ethnic Ukrainians and Russians in four cities in Ukraine. Using a lab-based implicit association test (IAT) and survey with 600 respondents, we examine whether respondents' implicit biases, reflexive preferences that are hard to manipulate, match their explicitly stated preferences for either Ukraine or Russia. We find that, on average, ethnic Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine are explicitly and implicitly pro-Ukraine, although we observe slightly lower levels of pro-Ukraine bias among ethnic Russians. We also find that 70 percent of those who are implicitly pro-Russia are explicitly neutral or pro-Ukraine, highlighting the need to study implicit associations in sensitive settings. Cuando un país está en guerra, la población expresa su apoyo al gobierno y hostilidad hacia el adversario extranjero, lo cual produce el efecto de "agruparse alrededor de la la bandera" ["rally 'round the flag"]. Lo que no se comprende bien es la manera en que, durante una agrupación alrededor de la bandera, la identidad étnica y la proximidad al conflicto se relacionan con ciertas actitudes hacia el estado local y el adversario. Además, las personas pueden sentirse presionadas para responder de forma patriótica cuando se les pregunta acerca del conflicto, en particular aquellas que comparten una identidad étnica con la mayoría de la población del adversario extranjero, algo que da lugar a medidas de opinión sesgadas. Estudiamos estas dinámicas en el contexto de la guerra actual entre Ucrania y Rusia, comparando respuestas de ucranianos y rusos autoidentificados étnicamente en cuatro ciudades de Ucrania. Utilizando una prueba de asociación implícita (implicit association test, IAT) de laboratorio y una encuesta con 600 participantes, examinamos si los sesgos implícitos (preferencias reflexivas que son difíciles de manipular) de los encuestados coinciden con sus preferencias expresadas, ya sea a favor de Ucrania o de Rusia. Descubrimos que, en promedio, las personas de origen étnico ucraniano y ruso en Ucrania están explícita e implícitamente a favor de Ucrania, aunque observamos niveles levemente más bajos de sesgo a favor de Ucrania en personas de origen étnico ruso. Además, observamos que el 70 percent de aquellas personas que están implícitamente a favor de Rusia están explícitamente a favor de Ucrania o tienen una postura neutral, lo cual resalta la necesidad de estudiar asociaciones implícitas en entornos sensibles. Lorsque leur pays est en guerre, les individus expriment leur soutien pour leur gouvernement et leur hostilité envers l'opposant étranger, ce qui mène à un effet de « ralliement autour du drapeau ». Cependant, ce qui est moins compris, c'est la mesure dans laquelle l'identité ethnique et la proximité du conflit ont un lien avec les attitudes envers l'État de résidence et l'opposant durant ce ralliement. De plus, les individus peuvent ressentir une pression les poussant à répondre patriotiquement lorsqu'ils sont interrogés sur le conflit, particulièrement les individus qui partagent l'identité ethnique de la majorité de la population de l'opposant étranger, ce qui mène à des mesures d'opinion biaisées. Nous étudions ces dynamiques dans le contexte du conflit continu entre l'Ukraine et la Russie en comparant les réponses d'individus qui s'identifient d'eux-mêmes ethniquement en tant que Russes ou qu'Ukrainiens dans quatre villes d'Ukraine. Nous utilisons un test d'association implicite mené en laboratoire et une enquête sur 600 participants pour examiner si les préjugés implicites des participants, des préférences réflexives difficiles à manipuler, correspondent à leurs préférences explicitement déclarées envers l'Ukraine ou la Russie. Nous avons constaté qu'en moyenne, les Ukrainiens et Russes ethniques vivant en Ukraine étaient explicitement et implicitement pro-Ukraine, bien que nous ayons observé des niveaux de préférences pro-Ukraine légèrement inférieurs chez les Russes ethniques. Nous avons également découvert que 70 percent des personnes qui étaient implicitement pro-Russie étaient explicitement neutres ou pro-Ukraine, ce qui met en évidence le besoin d'étudier les associations implicites dans les environnements sensibles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do citizens support violations of their own rights? We know a good deal about why governments sometimes restrict access to information and political participation through censorship, repression, or forced disappearances. But we know little about why citizens sometimes support these government encroachments on their own freedoms. We test one conventional explanation for this phenomenon—that individuals trade freedom for security—by conducting a survey experiment that examines public support for limits on freedom of speech. Our results suggest that external threats do, in fact, increase the willingness of citizens to accept curtailments of their right to free speech. They provide strong evidence that citizens respond to risk with an increased desire for security, even when that security comes at the expense of their individual freedoms. This finding suggests a research agenda examining the interactions between governance and threat perception, including how states manipulate demand for human rights in practice, how citizens evaluate threats to security in the context of conflicting information, and how fluctuating demand for rights influences the dissent-repression nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few decades have seen a dramatic increase in the public communication efforts of international organizations (IOs). They target an expanding audience, including journalists, experts, activists, and citizens. Their communication departments have grown to more effectively produce and disseminate messages, evaluate their impact, and develop long-term communication strategies. I examine this trend for forty-eight IOs between 1950 and 2015. Based on an event history analysis of structural reforms, I argue that two causal mechanisms most consistently explain why IOs go public: First, normative change toward greater institutional transparency encourages the democratic membership of IOs to push for reforms in order to improve the provision of public information on IO decisions and policy programs. Second, public protest and scandals substantially increase organizational demands for self-legitimation. As a result, IOs reformed communication in order to more effectively generate public support. However, I find limited evidence that IO mandates to promote social change—by teaching norms and knowledge—can account for observed reforms to their communication structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries use economic sanctions as a way to force their opponents to make policy concessions. Such external pressure may, as the designers of sanctions often intend, affect the degree of domestic support for the target's political leaders. It may even threaten the leaders’ survival in office. We investigate how these dual pressures—preference for policy concessions and concern about target leaders’ political future—shape the use of sanctions in the context of political relations between the sanctioning and sanctioned countries. The political relations between the two countries matter because a decline in the likelihood of the target leader's political survival results in a cost for the sanctioner when the target is a friendly regime and generates a benefit when the targeted regime is an adversary. Therefore, we argue, and show statistically, that economic coercion is more likely for friendly governments when they are politically stable and unfriendly governments when they are politically vulnerable. We illustrate our causal mechanism using declassified primary sources for two case studies of US sanctions against Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do leaders’ statements about conflict duration affect public support for their handling of war? We build on two disparate strands of prior research to theorize how approval depends on perceptions of both war's expected value and of the leader themself. The information available for making these evaluations changes over time. The public relies on elite cues in early stages of war. Cues predicting a short conflict mobilize support. As conflict unfolds, the actual conditions provide information about the accuracy of earlier statements, while subsequent messages provide information about the consistency of these statements. Both allow the public to learn about the leader. Inaccuracy and inconsistency negatively affect evaluations of the leader and reduce support for war. Using a panel survey experiment to test these predictions, we find that public approval is highest when (1) the leader initially predicts a short conflict and (2) when initial predictions prove accurate. The results reveal an intertemporal tradeoff for leaders. Predicting a short conflict is optimal for mobilizing support but potentially suboptimal for retaining that support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research disputes the conventional wisdom that "sanctions do not work." It demonstrates that states may impose sanctions for purposes beyond seeking an immediate change in the behavior of targeted regimes. For example, democratic leaders often impose sanctions to satisfy their own domestic constituencies. However, we know little about how the consequences of sanctions shape whether or not citizens favor them. Building on insights from prior studies on the use and consequences of sanctions, we develop theoretical expectations regarding the aspects of sanctions that citizens might favor or disfavor. We use these to design and conduct a survey experiment to explore degrees of support for proposed sanctions. We find that on average, citizens support proposed sanctions that they expect will have a long-run impact on the behavior of the targeted state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study argues that a central factor in the determinants of citizen attitudes toward trade is the social psychology of the individual in question. Namely, we contend that the level of social trust an individual has will condition the degree to which an individual wants to open her country to imports from other countries. Those individuals with lower relative levels of social trust are less likely to support the notion of freer trade. We base this contention on the logic that those people who are distrustful of people in general are more likely to distrust that which comes from people who are unknown to them, such as goods coming into their country from abroad. This argument is a departure from previous studies of public attitudes toward trade, which have focused on various economic utilitarian considerations and xenophobia that shape citizen attitudes toward trade liberalization. To test our argument, we employ data from the 1995-1997 wave of the World Values Survey. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, as predicted, that the more social trust an individual has, the more likely that person is to support the idea of liberalized trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionalized images of wartime loss picture scripted, ceremonial events, such as flag-draped coffins off-loaded from planes or soldiers handing a triangular folded flag to grieving relatives saying, 'on behalf of a grateful nation.' In comparison, unconventionalized war photographs, such as battlefield pictures, present more chaotic, less standardized images. I develop a theory of wartime media that examines how qualities of both the signal (whether photographs deal with military loss or militarism, and whether images employ conventionalized or unconventionalized imagery) and the receiver (the partisanship of the individual) influence individual opinion. I anticipate that viewing conventionalized images of loss will affect the likelihood that individuals shift from supporting to opposing a conflict and that partisanship can mitigate this effect. Results from analyses of seven experimental studies with 1,769 subjects and varied research designs strongly support the theory, finding that qualities of the signal and individual (and their interaction) influence the likelihood of wartime opinion change. These findings help to explain previous weak results linking wartime photography and public opinion, improve our understanding of wartime public opinion dynamics, and speak directly to current policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on international institutions has begun to explore potentially powerful indirect pathways by which international institutions may influence states' domestic politics and thereby influence the foreign policy preferences and strategies of state leaders. In this paper, we provide evidence documenting the indirect impact of institutional cues on public support for the use of force through an analysis of individual-level survey data and a survey-based experiment that examines support for a hypothetical American intervention in East Timor. We find that institutional endorsements increase support for the use of force among members of the American public who value the institution making the endorsement and among those who do not have confidence in the president. These individual-level analyses show that international institutions can affect domestic support for military action by serving providing a valuable 'second opinion' on the proposed use of force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recognition of a theoretical link between the foreign policies of different states provides the basis for this study. A framework suitable for analyzing comparative foreign policy formulation is used to examine the years immediately following NATO's dual-track missile decision of 1979. It is hypothesized that the Soviet Union is capable of penetrating and influencing the foreign policy-making process in West Germany and Great Britain by affecting public attitudes in both countries. Soviet actions directed toward West Germany and Great Britain between 1979 and 1983 are added to models that explain public support for incumbent leaders. By demonstrating a causal link between public support and external variables, this study presents evidence that the policy process in the West can be affected by Soviet actions directed toward it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]