Abstract
To date there has been no systematic study of the relationship between individuals’ opinions of different institutions and their perceptions of world affairs. This article tries to fill this gap by using a large cross-country data set comprising nine EU members and seven Asian nations and instrumental variable bivariate probit regression analysis. Controlling for a host of factors, the article shows that individuals’ confidence in multilateral institutions affects their perceptions of whether or not their country is being treated fairly in international affairs. This finding expands upon both theoretical work on multilateral institutions that has focused on state actors’ rationale for engaging in multilateral cooperation and empirical work that has treated confidence in multilateral institutions as a dependent variable. The article also shows that individuals’ confidence in different international organizations has undifferentiated effects on their perceptions of whether or not their country is being treated fairly in international affairs, though individuals more knowledgeable about international affairs exhibit slightly different attitudes. Finally, the article demonstrates significant differences in opinion across Europe and Asia.
Abstract
Aucune étude systématique n’a, à ce jour, été menée sur le lien entre les opinions des individus concernant les différentes institutions et leurs perceptions des affaires mondiales. Cet article tente de combler cette lacune en utilisant un vaste ensemble de données transnationales concernant neuf pays membres de l’UE et sept nations d’Asie, et en estimant un modèle probit bivarié à variables instrumentales. Tout en contrôlant un ensemble de facteurs, cette étude montre que la confiance des individus dans les institutions multilatérales joue sur leurs perceptions du traitement plus ou moins équitable accordé à leur pays, dans le cadre des affaires internationales. Ce constat s’appuie sur des travaux théoriques sur les institutions multilatérales rendant compte de la logique sous jacente à l’engagement des acteurs d’État dans la coopération multilatérale, ainsi que des études empiriques qui traitent la confiance dans les institutions multilatérales comme une variable dépendante. L’article montre également que la confiance des individus dans différentes organisations internationales joue de manière indifférenciée sur leurs perceptions du traitement plus ou moins équitable accordé à leur pays dans le cadre des affaires internationales, et ceci bien que l’on constate des positions légèrement différentes parmi les individus ayant une meilleure connaissance des affaires internationales. Enfin, l’article montre des différences significatives d’opinion dans les pays d'Europe et d’Asie.
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Notes
The countries in our sample are France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
Differently from this article, Drezner examines whether different foreign policy opinions of publics correspond to core expectations of international relations, such as realism and liberalism.
See, for instance, Walt (1997) for a discussion of the diversity within the approach; see Guzzini (2004) for a critical analysis of the ‘diversity’ of realism.
Obviously, some non-realist perspectives, particularly neoliberal institutionalists, also accept the primacy of states (Keohane, 1984).
It is possible that an individual who fully subscribes to the realist perspective finds the survey question meaningless in the first place, rejecting the idea that there is no such thing as fair treatment in international affairs. Yet, most respondents likely interpret ‘fair’ not strictly but broadly, to suggest acceptable treatment.
The reliance on this theory here is based on Robert Keohane’s various works, including predominantly After Hegemony (1984) and his debate with the neorealists (Baldwin, 1993). Regardless of whether one agrees with his neorealist criticism of neoliberal institutionalist theory, Grieco (1988) provides a lucid account of the primary pillars of neoliberal institutionalist theory.
For an extensive discussion of the theory, see Pollack (2001).
The data was made available through the ICPSR Data Archive.
For instance, Edwards’ (2009) study of confidence in international economic organizations utilizes a survey question from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey that asks about ‘international economic organizations’ without differentiating these organizations.
Sovey and Green (2011) argue that many of the theoretical/conceptual justifications for the use of IVs involve judgment.
We alter the combination of instruments and find our results to be highly robust.
O’Rourke and Sinnott (2006) take a similar approach when examining the relationship between protectionism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
See Greene (2003, pp. 715–719) for a succinct discussion of the bivariate probit estimation.
Bivariate correlations between the institutional variables range between 0.16 and 0.64, which, given the degree of precision in the estimates, indicates that multicollinearity is not a concern.
For instance, there is a literature on whether or not there is an American empire (see Cox, 2005).
As the descriptive statistics illustrate, the response rates for questions relating to each institution are quite high, and therefore it is not surprising that when we re-estimated the models using the complete set of responses for any given institutional variable, the findings were unaltered.
All of the European nations included in the sample are members of the EU, while five of the nine Asian countries are ASEAN members – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Note that we included other non-ASEAN countries in the sample when comparing perceptions regarding governments, and thus ASEAN and ASIA government results are not strictly comparable. We also estimated the model using the sub-sample of ASEAN members, and our general finding, that confidence in the government is more important than confidence in ASEAN, held for this sub-sample.
Hix also discusses in detail the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU in conjunction with declining public support for it.
See, for instance, Stiglitz (2002) and Woods (2006). For a discussion of the crisis, see, for instance, Radelet and Sachs (1998).
The PATRIOT and NATIONALIST variables capture quite different concepts as is indicated by the low pairwise correlation coefficient (−0.03).
About half of the total number of respondents in the sample could name three or more permanent members of the UN Security Council (see Table A2 for further descriptive statistics).
The findings here also have general relevance for discussions surrounding whether public opinion about world affairs is ‘irrational’ or ‘reasonable’ (Gabel, 1998, p. 950; Holsti, 1992; Brewer et al, 2004, p. 94 for reviews), as this article shows that individuals think reasonably about the significance of multilateral institutions for their country’s treatment in international affairs.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Mark Casson, Francisco Requena, Daniela La Penna, Asli Leblebicioglu, Lynne S. Schofield and the two referees for their comments, which have enhanced the article. Any errors are our own.
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Kaya, A., Walker, J. How do Multilateral Institutions Influence Individual Perceptions of International Affairs? Evidence from Europe and Asia. Eur J Dev Res 26, 832–852 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.2