IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/qzrj2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Affect Elite Preferences? Evidence from the 2022 US Sanctions against Russia

Author

Listed:
  • Peez, Anton

    (Goethe University Frankfurt)

  • Bethke, Felix S.

Abstract

Does US public opinion on international affairs affect political elites’ policy preferences? Most research assumes that political elites do indeed consider public opinion in their decision-making process. However, this key assumption is difficult to test empirically given limited research access to political elites. We examine elite responsiveness to public opinion on sanctioning Russia during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We fielded a pre-registered experiment within the 2022/23 TRIP survey of US foreign policy practitioners, offering a rare opportunity for a fairly large elite survey experiment (n = 253) with important policy actors who have not been studied in this context. We used current public polling highly supportive of increasing sanctions as an information treatment. Our research design, involving a highly salient real-world issue and treatment, substantially expands on previous work. Exposure to the treatment raises elite support for increasing sanctions from 68.0% to 76.3% (+8.3 percentage points). While sizable, this effect is smaller than those identified elsewhere. We argue that this difference is driven by pre-treatment dynamics, ceiling effects, and issue salience, and is therefore all the more notable. While our results support previous research, they also highlight issues of external validity and the context dependence of elite responsiveness.

Suggested Citation

  • Peez, Anton & Bethke, Felix S., 2023. "Does Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Affect Elite Preferences? Evidence from the 2022 US Sanctions against Russia," SocArXiv qzrj2, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:qzrj2
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/qzrj2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/6560f8e679d4280d323e840d/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/qzrj2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dursun Peksen, 2019. "When Do Imposed Economic Sanctions Work? A Critical Review of the Sanctions Effectiveness Literature," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 635-647, September.
    2. Tomz, Michael & Weeks, Jessica L.P. & Yarhi-Milo, Keren, 2020. "Public Opinion and Decisions About Military Force in Democracies," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 119-143, January.
    3. Franco, Annie & Malhotra, Neil & Simonovits, Gabor & Zigerell, L. J., 2017. "Developing Standards for Post-Hoc Weighting in Population-Based Survey Experiments," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 161-172, July.
    4. James N. Druckman & Thomas J. Leeper, 2012. "Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 875-896, October.
    5. Imai, Kosuke & Lo, James, 2021. "Robustness of Empirical Evidence for the Democratic Peace: A Nonparametric Sensitivity Analysis," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(3), pages 901-919, March.
    6. Butler, Daniel M. & Nickerson, David W., 2011. "Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote? Results from a Field Experiment," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 6(1), pages 55-83, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deniz Dutz & Ingrid Huitfeldt & Santiago Lacouture & Magne Mogstad & Alexander Torgovitsky & Winnie van Dijk, 2021. "Selection in Surveys," NBER Working Papers 29549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Deniz Dutz & Ingrid Huitfeldt & Santiago Lacouture & Magne Mogstad & Alexander Torgovitsky & Winnie van Dijk, 2021. "Selection in Surveys," Discussion Papers 971, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    2. Sandro Ambuehl & Sebastian Blesse & Philipp Doerrenberg & Christoph Feldhaus & Axel Ockenfels, 2023. "Politicians' Social Welfare Criteria: An Experiment with German Legislators," CESifo Working Paper Series 10329, CESifo.
    3. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Kirilakha, Aleksandra & Syropoulos, Constantinos & Yalcin, Erdal & Yotov, Yoto V., 2020. "The global sanctions data base," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Moteng, Ghislain & Raghutla, Chandrashekar & Njangang, Henri & Nembot, Luc Ndeffo, 2023. "International sanctions and energy poverty in target developing countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    5. Christopher W. Blair & Jonathan A. Chu & Joshua A. Schwartz, 2022. "The Two Faces of Opposition to Chemical Weapons: Sincere Versus Insincere Norm-Holders," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 66(4-5), pages 677-703, May.
    6. Joshua Alley, 2023. "Elite Cues and Public Attitudes Towards Military Alliances," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(7-8), pages 1537-1563, August.
    7. Adelaide Baronchelli & Raul Caruso & Roberto Ricciuti, 2022. "Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons: Are embargoes effective?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(5), pages 1336-1361, May.
    8. David A. Steinberg & Yeling Tan, 2023. "Public responses to foreign protectionism: Evidence from the US-China trade war," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 145-167, January.
    9. Raul Caruso, 2021. "Economic Statecraft: from Negative Sanctions to Positive Sanctions," Working Papers 1010, European Centre of Peace Science, Integration and Cooperation (CESPIC), Catholic University 'Our Lady of Good Counsel'.
    10. Janina Dill & Scott D. Sagan & Benjamin Valentino, 2023. "Inconstant Care: Public Attitudes Towards Force Protection and Civilian Casualties in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(4), pages 587-616, April.
    11. Nikolas Schöll & Aina Gallego & Gaël Le Mens, 2021. "Politician-Citizen Interactions and Dynamic Representation: Evidence from Twitter," Working Papers 1238, Barcelona School of Economics.
    12. Inna V. Lazanyuk & David Mambu Diu, 2022. "Angola's economy under sanctions: problems and solutions," R-Economy, Ural Federal University, Graduate School of Economics and Management, vol. 8(3), pages 208-218.
    13. Axel Michaelowa, 2021. "Solar Radiation Modification ‐ A “Silver Bullet” Climate Policy for Populist and Authoritarian Regimes?," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(S1), pages 119-128, April.
    14. Peter A. G. van Bergeijk, 2020. "Can the Sanction Debate Be Resolved?," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 20(04), pages 3-8, January.
    15. Headley, Andrea M. & Blount-Hill, Kwan-Lamar & St. John, Victor J., 2021. "The psychology of justice buildings: A survey experiment on police architecture, public sentiment, and race," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    16. Roman Chytilek & Miroslav Mareš & Jakub Drmola & Lenka Hrbková & Petra Mlejnková & Zuzana Špačková & Michal Tóth, 2022. "An experimental study of countermeasures against threats: real-world effects meet treatment effects," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 4825-4840, December.
    17. Robert Dur & Arjan Non & Paul Prottung & Benedetta Ricci, 2023. "Who’s Afraid of Policy Experiments?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-027/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Stefanie Walter, 2021. "EU‐27 Public Opinion on Brexit," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 569-588, May.
    19. George Saridakis & Constantinos Alexiou & Roger Hoseinc & Nirvana Satnarine-Singhc, 2022. "Hegemonic Sanctions and Global Economic Ramifications in the Context of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict: A Commentary," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 72(1-2), pages 34-55, January-J.
    20. Bechtel, Michael & Hainmueller, Jens & Hangartner, Dominik & Helbling, Marc, 2015. "Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 3(3), pages 683-695.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:qzrj2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.