When do nationalist voters support policies helping the world? Sociotropic politics reconsidered

Author: Alex Kustov (PhD Candidate in Comparative Politics)

Resistance to immigration and other globally beneficial policies is often thought to be driven by ethnic prejudice or selfish interests. I argue to the contrary that voters may also be motivated to restrict immigration by genuine altruism which is, however, often limited to their compatriots. Specifically, people oppose (support) immigration when they perceive it as hurting (helping) their compatriots. I thus hypothesize that most voters—and especially “nationalists”—can become pro-immigration when a policy is perceived to help their compatriots. Based on the original analysis of observational data, I propose a conjoint survey experiment to test this hypothesis against existing theories by estimating the effect of perceived national interest—as opposed to the effects of competing concerns—on policy choice with regard to immigration and other issues. Preliminary results suggest that voters' immigration preferences are highly elastic to their interests but are not responsive to the number of immigrants or their sending region. Accordingly, most voters are anti-immigration only when they believe it is bad for their compatriots and they can even support increased immigration from non-European countries when their perceived national interests are considered. The proposed extension of the study tests whether the relationship between interests and preferences generalizes to other issues and voting behavior.

Domestic Dissatisfaction and Demands for Aggressive Foreign Policy

Author: Meir Alkon (PhD Candidate in International Relations)

Does increasing dissatisfaction with domestic problems increase public demands for aggressive foreign policy, or make the public more likely to hold the government responsible for perceived weakness in response to a crisis? Can aggressive foreign policy responses attenuate public dissatisfaction with domestic conditions and overall government performance? Both popular conceptions and a large literature on the role of public opinion in foreign policy assume that these links hold true, but no research has explicitly tested the validity of these mechanisms. This project will investigate these questions using a survey experiment fielded in China, centering on conflict in the politically sensitive context of the East China Sea. The domestic dynamics underlying assertive foreign policy are of theoretical interest to international relations scholars, and of practical interest to analysts of China’s foreign policy and its determinants. The findings will explain the theoretical links between domestic public opinion and foreign policy, and also clarify the importance of domestic conditions in understanding the determinants of China’s behavior in its territorial disputes.