Losing by Winning Hearts and Minds Abroad:
Essays on Impacts of Foreign Policies on Foreign Public Opinion
Committee: Benjamin O. Fordham (chair), David H. Clark, Seden Akcinaroglu, Ekrem Karakoc
Synopsis
Foreign public opinion is important for states’ interactions with their counterparts. Public support abroad does not only help democratic target states comply with the policies of the sender states, but also non-democracies as they are not completely free from public pressure either, e.g. mass protests in Arab Spring. Moreover, the increasing influence of non-state actors in global politics (e.g. transnational terror groups) necessitates states not to neglect public opinion abroad for their security. Therefore, a wide range of countries from the U.S. to China, Turkey, and Brazil invests in soft power and reputation building strategies via providing foreign aid, opening up the borders, promoting inter-societal interactions, and using public diplomacy effectively to win hearts and minds abroad. However, even such policies specifically aiming to increase foreign public support do not succeed oftentimes.
My dissertation examines micro-level impacts of foreign policies on public opinion abroad, and thus addresses the causes of such failures, by probing the attitude formation processes of individuals. How do foreign publics perceive, interpret, and react to the sender states in response to their foreign policy offerings? What could explain the variance in foreign public attitudes towards different sender states? Can states influence foreign public opinion by offering appropriate policies at all? By addressing these questions, I argue that we cannot understand whether states could influence the public opinion in target states without a comprehensive examination of individuals’ political and social predispositions within the domestic politics.
More specifically, in my dissertation project, I investigate how domestic political configuration within the target state (e.g. cleavage structure, ethnic/religious tensions, regime characteristics etc.) conditions the effect of policies offered by the sender state at the individual level. I aim to offer a theory of attitude formation by showing that foreign public opinion is not free from domestic political dynamics in its evaluation of foreign states and their policies, unlike the previous studies that focused on either what foreign state is/represent or what foreign state does.
Essays on Impacts of Foreign Policies on Foreign Public Opinion
Committee: Benjamin O. Fordham (chair), David H. Clark, Seden Akcinaroglu, Ekrem Karakoc
Synopsis
Foreign public opinion is important for states’ interactions with their counterparts. Public support abroad does not only help democratic target states comply with the policies of the sender states, but also non-democracies as they are not completely free from public pressure either, e.g. mass protests in Arab Spring. Moreover, the increasing influence of non-state actors in global politics (e.g. transnational terror groups) necessitates states not to neglect public opinion abroad for their security. Therefore, a wide range of countries from the U.S. to China, Turkey, and Brazil invests in soft power and reputation building strategies via providing foreign aid, opening up the borders, promoting inter-societal interactions, and using public diplomacy effectively to win hearts and minds abroad. However, even such policies specifically aiming to increase foreign public support do not succeed oftentimes.
My dissertation examines micro-level impacts of foreign policies on public opinion abroad, and thus addresses the causes of such failures, by probing the attitude formation processes of individuals. How do foreign publics perceive, interpret, and react to the sender states in response to their foreign policy offerings? What could explain the variance in foreign public attitudes towards different sender states? Can states influence foreign public opinion by offering appropriate policies at all? By addressing these questions, I argue that we cannot understand whether states could influence the public opinion in target states without a comprehensive examination of individuals’ political and social predispositions within the domestic politics.
More specifically, in my dissertation project, I investigate how domestic political configuration within the target state (e.g. cleavage structure, ethnic/religious tensions, regime characteristics etc.) conditions the effect of policies offered by the sender state at the individual level. I aim to offer a theory of attitude formation by showing that foreign public opinion is not free from domestic political dynamics in its evaluation of foreign states and their policies, unlike the previous studies that focused on either what foreign state is/represent or what foreign state does.
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