foreign policy worldviews and us standing in the world by
TRANSCRIPT
Foreign Policy Worldviews and US Standing in the World
By
Matthew A. Baum (contact author)
Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: 617-495-1291
and
Henry R. Nau George Washington University
Abstract: What do Americans think about the US role in world affairs and why do they think as they do? Existing scholarship identifies some general attitudes Americans hold toward world affairs, rejecting isolationism and favoring multilateralism, but few studies explore more specific attitudes such as assessments of US standing in the world (defined as foreign views of America’s capability, credibility and esteem abroad). American National Election Study data from 1958-2008 provide one such data point, which shows a strong correlation between party identification and attitudes toward US standing defined as weakness. When Democrats occupy the White House, Republicans generally see US standing falling. The reverse holds true when Republicans hold the White House. Past studies conclude that this correlation is primarily a matter of partisanship and domestic political ideology (conservative vs. liberal). In this article we investigate a deeper and more novel explanation rooted in the independent influence of individuals’ foreign policy worldviews. Respondents assess US standing based on nationalist, realist, conservative and liberal internationalist views of the world. Across multiple statistical investigations, we find that while party ID remains a powerful heuristic for defining attitudes toward standing, foreign policy worldviews also exert a distinct influence on such attitudes, especially for more politically sophisticated respondents. Prepared for the panel on “State Development, Representation, and Grand Strategy in the Great Powers,” at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, August 30, 2012.
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What do Americans think about the US role in world affairs and what causes them to think
that way? Americans typically do not think about foreign policy most of the time, and as a
consequence know relatively little about it (Almond 1950; Lippmann 1955; Erskine 1963;
Edwards 1983; Sobel 1993; Holsti 2004; Page and Bouton 2006, Berinsky 2007). While foreign
policy issues can become salient when major international events arise (like 9/11 and the Iraq War)
or when political candidates focus on foreign policy (Aldrich, et al. 1989), ceteris paribus,
Americans know and care more about domestic politics (Delli-Carpini and Keeter 1996; Holsti
1994 & 2004). Consequently, typical Americans are broadly aware of foreign policy, and have
some available attitudes about it (Page and Bouton 2006; Aldrich et al. 1989). However, except in
the face of political priming by elites or exogenous shocks, such attitudes may not be broadly
accessible when making political decisions, like voting.
Scholars have made substantial progress understanding the general attitudes the American
public holds toward foreign affairs. At least since World War II most Americans have consistently
rejected isolationism (Kull 2001; Holsti 2004) in favor of robust U.S. engagement with the world.
Moreover, Americans tend to prefer multilateral over unilateral approaches to foreign policy (Page
and Bouton 2006; Holsti 2004; Todorov and Mandisodza 2004). Although these attitudes appear
firm, they disguise substantive subtleties such as the fact that most Americans, while preferring to
act multilaterally, assume that their fellow citizens prefer to act unilaterally (Todorov and
Mandisodza 2004) and that multilateral policies generally produce results that conform to what the
U.S. would prefer if it acted unilaterally (Stewart and Bennett 1991).
Scholars know much less about American attitudes toward more specific aspects of world
affairs, such as US standing in the world. This was the subject of a 2008-09 APSA Presidential
Task Force (APSA 2009). The Task Force’s final report defines US standing as “an attribute
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assigned to the United States by other actors such as foreign leaders and peoples, international
organizations, transnational groups, and of course, assessed by American voters” (3). Standing in
this sense has many aspects but the report emphasizes two in particular: credibility and esteem.
Credibility refers to the U.S. government’s ability to do what it says it is going to
do. This dimension captures the reputation, or “standing up,” concerns that have
long dominated studies of deterrence as well as U.S. leadership more broadly.
Esteem refers to America’s stature, or “standing for,” for other countries and the
American image in international politics (APSA 2009).
In other words, the Task Force defines standing as the assessment of America’s role in the world
by other countries based on what America does (that is, credibility of its commitments) and what
America is (that is the esteem in which it is held). Notably, this definition omits the possibility of
defining standing primarily in terms of respect for American power (what America has), whether
America is weaker or stronger as in the ANES data.
How do Americans assess or think about this concept of US standing? Do they define it as
the Task Force did, or do they see it through multiple lenses – some defining it primarily in terms of
diplomacy/credibility, others in terms of values/esteem, and still others in terms of security/power?
And what factors shape these assessments? One of the most significant statistical finding over time
(going back well before the Iraq years), illustrated in Figure 1, is the strong link between party ID
and assessments of US standing, defined as relative weakness or power. Republican respondents
consistently see US position in the world as weaker than Democrats during Democratic
administrations, and Democratic respondents consistently see US position in the world as weaker
than Republicans during Republican administrations.
[Figure 1 here]
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This pattern raises the question of whether this association is a simple matter of party
reflexivity, or whether party ID serves as a heuristic for other factors influencing American
views of US standing. It also raises the question of whether Democrats and Republicans think
differently about America’s standing in the world because they belong to different parties,
because they hold different domestic political philosophies (liberal/conservative), or because
they espouse different foreign policy worldviews (e.g., nationalism, realism, conservative or
liberal internationalism). This study explores the independent and interactive influence of these
three variables – party ID, domestic political ideology and foreign policy worldviews – in
affecting assessments of US standing by US citizens. By drilling deeper than existing studies, it
finds that even after taking into account party ID and domestic ideology, foreign policy
worldviews directly and significantly influence attitudes toward the standing of the United States
abroad, especially for more politically sophisticated or knowledgeable respondents.
Party ID and Foreign Policy Attitudes
The evidence concerning the influence of party ID on foreign policy attitudes in general –
that is, not on specific attitudes such as US standing -- is weak. Page and Bouton (2006), for
instance, report that party identification significantly mediated general attitudes for only three of
twenty possible U.S. foreign policy goals they investigated. Party does tend to be highly correlated
with domestic political ideology (consistently in the neighborhood of about .40 across 10 Pew
Center surveys we sampled conducted between 2001 and 2006). However, as Page and Bouton
(2006) report, once ideology is accounted for, party typically drops out as an influential factor
mediating Americans’ attitudes regarding U.S. foreign policy goals. Domestic ideology thus
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appears to do the heavy lifting of causality.
Klinker (2005) reaches a similar conclusion (see also Rauch 2007), arguing that partisan
differences on foreign policy issues, while sometimes statistically significant, are in most cases
not particularly large. He finds similar patterns with respect to the “goals” of U.S. foreign policy,
the “means” of achieving those goals, and Americans’“values,” such as patriotism and national
pride. He reports that the exception to these patterns is ratings of President Bush’s foreign policy,
where a large partisan gap is apparent. This is consistent with Jacobson (2006, 2007), who finds
that the partisan gap associated with the Iraq War was far larger than for any prior U.S. military
conflict. This suggests that when a debate regarding American foreign policy becomes highly
polarized along partisan dimensions, party ID may become more consequential as a predictor of
individual attitudes on that (and related) foreign policy issue(s).
Busby and Monten (2008) offer some evidence in support of this latter conjecture, finding
that while Americans have remained predominantly internationalist throughout the post-WWII era:
“parties…have become more ideologically homogenous, more regionally concentrated, and more
extreme in their voting patterns on foreign policy” (465). In Congressional roll call studies,
Kupchan and Trubowitz (2010) confirm this conclusion, but Chaudoin, Milner and Tingley (2010)
dispute it. Our first hypothesis tests the evidence that partisanship may be a primary factor causing
attitudes toward specific foreign policy issues such as US standing:
H1: Typical individuals will view US standing as relatively higher when their own party
controls the White House than when the other party does so.
Domestic Political Ideology and Foreign Policy Attitudes
As already noted above, the literature offers stronger evidence that domestic political
ideology (liberal/conservative) influences individuals’ attitudes toward specific US foreign policy
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issues. The most widely employed model that disaggregates American attitudes toward foreign
policy in terms of domestic political ideology is the MI/CI index, where “MI” and “CI” represent
“militant” and “cooperative” internationalism, respectively (e.g., Maggiotto and Wittkopf 1981;
Holsti 2004; Holsti and Rosenau 1999). This work defines domestic political ideology, the
independent variable, along two independent dimensions: economic issues (economic regulation,
redistribution of wealth, etc) and social issues (promoting minority interests, opposition to death
penalty, etc.). This classification yields four types of respondents in terms of domestic political
ideology: liberals (liberal on both dimensions), conservatives (conservative on both dimensions),
populists (conservative on social issues, liberal on economic issues), and libertarians (liberal on
social issues and conservative on economic issues).
This literature then defines specific foreign policy attitudes, the dependent variable, in terms of
support for militant internationalist policies (use of force, defeating adversaries, believing in the
domino theory, etc.) versus cooperative internationalist policies (disarmament, support for United
Nations and foreign aid, etc.). Four types of respondents, in terms of foreign policy attitudes, emerge:
isolationists (opposed on both dimensions), internationalists (support both dimensions), hardliners
(oppose cooperative and support militant internationalism), and accommodationists (support
cooperative and oppose militant internationalism) (Wittkopf and Maggiotto 1981).
Correlating these measures of domestic political ideology and foreign policy attitudes across
four surveys conducted between 1984 and 1996, Holsti (2004) finds that an average of 78% of
liberals are accommodationists, who support CI and oppose MI, 34% of conservatives are hardliners
who support MI and oppose CI, and another 41% of conservatives are internationalists who support
both MI and CI. In other words, 75% of conservatives, but less than 25% of liberals, support MI.
The MI-CI index has proven impressively reliable at predicting support or opposition to
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U.S. approaches toward foreign policy in general. It may also apply to specific policy initiatives.
For instance, Holsti (2004, 143) reports that accommodationists were about half as likely as
hardliners to view the U.S. victory in the first Persian Gulf War as “a great victory for the United
States” (45 vs. 83 percent) and over five times as likely to believe that the U.S. “will be too ready
to use military force and go to war again” (56 vs. 10 percent).
This suggests that there is, in fact, a strong domestic ideological component to respondent
attitudes toward foreign policy issues, both general (use of force) and specific (Persian Gulf War).
Summarizing the most recent research on this topic, Nincic and Ramos (2010) conclude that
“where international affairs are concerned, conservatives are more likely to favor self-regarding
ends [nationalist] and punitive means [militant internationalism], with liberals more apt to endorse
other-regarding objectives [internationalist] and policy means based on positive incentives
[cooperative internationalism].” This suggests a second hypothesis:
H2: Typical individuals whose domestic political ideology is conservative will view US
standing as relatively higher when a Republican controls the White House than when
a Democrat is in power, while liberal individuals will view US standing as relatively
higher when a Democrat controls the White House than when a Republican does.
Foreign Policy Worldviews and US Standing
However, studies to date of the influence of domestic ideology on attitudes toward foreign
policy are based on incomplete definitions of both domestic political ideologies and foreign policy
attitudes. For example, Holsti’s two components of domestic ideology – economic and social views
– exclude a third potentially crucial political component – political views toward the relative
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importance of freedom vs. equality and limited vs. activist government. Conservatives generally
prioritize freedom and limited government, liberals equality and activist government. Similarly, the
foreign policy dimensions measured in the MI-CI index emphasize the means (military versus
diplomatic) but not the goals of foreign policy. As indicated in the quote above, Nincic and Ramos
(2010) find that foreign policy views also encompass foreign policy goals – self-regarding or
nationalist vs. other-regarding or internationalist – as well as attitudes towards the use of force –
militant internationalism vs. cooperative internationalism.
Could a more complete delineation of domestic ideology and foreign policy beliefs better
account for the full range of Americans’ opinions regarding foreign policy, and especially US
standing? Due to limitations in data availability, with one exception below, we leave for later
research a refinement of the domestic ideology variable (liberal vs. conservative) to include
attitudes toward government as well as economic and social issues. In this article, we elaborate
and refine the independent variable of foreign policy worldviews to capture more systematically
respondents’ different views about the goals and means of foreign policy.
The concept of foreign policy worldviews suggests that Americans assess foreign policy
outcomes such as US standing through different foreign policy perspectives or schools of
thought. Some Americans, drawing from realist perspectives, assess US standing largely in terms
of security threats and power (capabilities or what America has); others, drawing from
institutional perspectives, assess US standing primarily in terms of diplomacy and
multilateralism (credibility or what America does); still others, drawing from ideological
perspectives, assess it more in terms of US democratic values, support for human rights and the
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like (esteem or what American is).1 The worldview from which one assesses standing determines
in large measure whether one sees it rising or falling, and whether one considers that rise or
decline as important.
For example, American relative power increased in the early 1980s, the onset of the “new”
Cold War under Ronald Reagan. But American diplomacy was widely criticized around the
world. Domestic groups that defined US standing largely in terms of American power might
have been inclined to see US standing as rising. Those that defined it more in terms of
approbation of American diplomacy might have seen it as declining.
Similarly, under George W. Bush, observers widely reported that American diplomacy
was in ill repute. Yet American military power, as least as measured by the overthrow of the
Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes in 2001 and 2003, respectively, was arguably never greater.
It is therefore possible, as we observe in Figure 1, that Democrats, who assess standing more in
terms of diplomacy than power, were more troubled about America’s standing in the world than
Republicans because Democrats perceived a decline of American diplomacy, while Republicans,
who assess standing more in terms of power than diplomacy, were less troubled than Democrats
because Republicans perceived a rise in American power.
Thus the foreign policy worldviews of individuals may be a broad mediating factor
between domestic political ideology and US standing. When a Democrat is in the White House,
Republicans disapprove of that administration not just for domestic ideological reasons but also
because they distrust the administration’s judgment in foreign affairs, expecting it to depend too
much on diplomacy and too little on force, such that threats build up in the world and America’s
1 Here we include a definition of standing in terms of US power which the APSA Task Force
excluded or included only in relationship to US credibility (behavior) and esteem (values).
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reputation suffers. Similarly, when a Republican is in power, Democrats oppose the
administration for domestic ideological reasons but also because they distrust that
administration’s judgment in foreign affairs, expecting it to use too much force and too little
diplomacy, increasing terrorism, unilateralism and consequently causing America’s standing to
fall. A third hypothesis follows:
H3: Typical individuals’ worldviews (net of party and domestic ideology) will influence
their opinions concerning US standing.
Political Sophistication and Foreign Policy Worldviews
Thus far, we have argued that many Americans possess worldviews of the sort identified
above and at least sometimes bring them to bear in assessing the merits of U.S. foreign policy
actions. But exactly which Americans bring such worldviews to bear, when they are likely to do
so, and why? Worldview is a more cognitively demanding consideration than domestic ideology
or party ID. Hence, to answer these questions we might need to differentiate among respondents
in terms of which ones are more or less capable of employing it. One key factor that seems likely
to mediate individuals’ capacities to employ worldviews in assessing foreign policy is their
overall level of political sophistication.
A vast literature in cognitive and political psychology shows that typical individuals rely on
information shortcuts, or heuristic cues (Sniderman, Brody, and 1991; Popkin 1994), including the
opinions of trusted political elites (Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Zaller 1992; Rahn 1993) and party ID
(Rahn 1993; Popkin 1994; Nelson and Garst 2005). Individuals’ interpretations of heuristic cues
depend in significant measure on their preexisting belief systems (Hurwitz and Peffley 1987;
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Hermann et al. 1997), for which party ID is typically an important (Rahn 1993; Popkin 1994;
Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Nelson and Garst 2005) if incomplete (Hermann et al. 1999; Holsti
2004) element. The party affiliations of information sources (e.g., elites) and receivers (e.g.,
citizens) in interaction thus serve as a cognitive filter, mediating the selection and implications of
the information shortcuts typical individuals rely on in making political judgments.2
Party ID is an important heuristic because it is highly accessible. Nearly every adult citizen
possesses it, and nearly everyone understands its implications, at least in general terms. Party ID
and its implications are continually reinforced by political elites seeking to maintain the value of
the party “brand” as a signal representing a set of policies a given candidate will likely tend to
support or oppose.
A worldview can also be thought of as an information shortcut, allowing an individual to
assess the “likely” merits of a policy without necessarily delving into all of its details. However,
relative to party ID, worldviews are less universally recognized than party ID, less frequently
primed or reinforced by elites, and require a great deal more information to comprehend or apply
to particular circumstances. This makes them more costly to employ as a heuristic for assessing a
foreign policy activity. It further raises the questions of who is likely to employ such a demanding
heuristic cue, given the ready availability of cheaper ones, and under what circumstances are they
likely to do so?
Consistent with prior research (e.g., Holsti 2004), we argue that political sophisticates –
individuals who pay a lot of attention to and understand politics – are more likely than political
novices –who neither attend to nor understand politics – to employ worldview as a heuristic.
2 For an investigation into the effects of partisan cues on public opinion regarding U.S. foreign
policy, see Baum and Groeling (2010).
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Sophisticates are more likely to possess the means and motivation to employ the more complex
and hence demanding heuristic of foreign policy worldview. After all, if the goal is to assess the
relative merits of a foreign policy activity, then one is likely to do a better job by employing a
heuristic that carries with it a great deal of topically pertinent information. The more general,
catch-all “brand” of party ID is simply less apt for this purpose. A fourth hypothesis follows.
H4: Politically sophisticated individuals will rely more than political novices on
worldview in assessing U.S. standing.
However, if human beings are cognitive misers, expending the minimum necessary effort
to reach the appropriate decision (Zaller 1992), then it seems unlikely that even political
sophisticates would always elect to employ a cognitively demanding heuristic. Rather, they seem
likely to prefer to match the complexity and precision of the heuristic to the task at hand. If there
is significant doubt about the merits of a policy, it is more likely to be “worth” the effort to
employ a complex heuristic. Conversely, if there is relatively little doubt about a policy, then a
simpler heuristic, like party ID, may suffice.
How can we anticipate, ex ante, when individuals are likely to favor a more high
demand/high precision heuristic (worldview) over a more low demand/low precision one (party
ID)? One obvious answer concerns the ex ante probability that a given individual will be inclined
to support or oppose a given foreign policy activity. As noted previously, partisans are highly
likely ex ante to assume, absent information to the contrary, that their fellow partisan presidents
will pursue policies, including foreign policies, consistent with their own preferences.3 Hence,
party ID – that of the citizen respondent relative to that of the president -- is a sufficient heuristic
3 For instance, from the Eisenhower to the George W. Bush administrations, an average of over 80% of presidents’ fellow partisans have approved of their job performance, compared to only 49% of opposition partisans.
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when an individual shares the partisanship of the president. However, when the opposition party
holds the presidency, then a typical individual is unlikely to be willing to assume that the
president’s policies are consonant with his or her own interests.
In addition, partisanship is likely to offer a less clear signal, all else equal, in foreign relative
to domestic policy, as Americans tend to know and care less about the former (see previous
citations). Thus, on foreign policy, individuals may seek to ground their objections to the opposition
party incumbent president in the logic of foreign policy worldviews rather than pure partisanship.
They may feel obliged to present an opposing or alternative foreign policy view to that of the
incumbent administration. Or they may simply find that their party affiliation or domestic ideology
does not provide a clear roadmap for assessing the opposition party president’s foreign policy
activities. In this case, such individuals might conclude that it is worth the cost to employ the more
demanding cognitive heuristic of worldview in order to more accurately determine whether they
ought to support or oppose the president’s foreign policy initiatives. A final hypothesis follows:
H5: Members of the non-presidential party will base their assessment of U.S. standing
relatively more than members of the presidential party on their personal worldviews.
Delineating Four Distinct Foreign Policy Worldviews
As noted above, the MI/CI matrix captures foreign policy attitudes toward the means of
foreign policy – whether respondents favor primarily militant internationalism (MI) or
cooperative internationalism (CI). It does not include attitudes toward the goals of foreign policy
– that is, whether respondents believe that foreign policy should aim primarily for balance of
power goals such as security or value goals such as the spread of democracy. If we include both
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goals and means, a two-by-two matrix emerges. Figure 2 distinguishes among four distinct
foreign policy worldviews: nationalist, realist, conservative internationalist, and liberal
internationalist. Nationalists tend to emphasize power or security goals and military means to
achieve those goals. Realists also emphasize power or security goals but now favor more activist
diplomatic means to achieve these goals. Conservative Internationalists favor more ambitious
goals of spreading democracy and more assertive military means to achieve them. And, liberal
internationalists pursue the goal of spreading democracy but prefer to reduce the role of military
means and strengthen diplomatic institutions to achieve this end. These distinctions are matters
of emphasis not exclusion. But relatively (as in the case of the distinction in domestic ideology
between liberal and conservative), worldviews differ across the two dimensions of foreign policy
goals and means.4
[Figure 2 here]
Each worldview assesses US standing differently. Nationalists assess US standing
primarily in terms of respect abroad for American power, realists primarily in terms of respect
abroad for American alliances (power) and diplomatic skills (credibility), conservative
internationalists primarily in terms of progress abroad toward promoting democracy and
defeating militants, and liberal internationalists primarily in terms of support abroad for
international institutions, economic development and the rule of law. Table 1 summarizes the
4 These traditions are variously labeled but well established in the history and study of American
foreign policy (Perkins 1952; Nordlinger 1995; Nau 2002; Jentleson 2007). The conservative
internationalist tradition includes neoconservatives, who are more hawkish than liberal
internationalists, but also more idealistic realists and nationalists who favor the promotion of
human rights and democracy.
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key features of each worldview.
[Table 1 here]
Statistical Analyses
We investigate three distinct datasets to explore the effects of the aforementioned
worldviews on U.S. standing, independently and in combination with one another. This allows us
to test our hypotheses against several, independently derived operationalizations of our
independent and dependent variables, and thereby, we hope, make it possible to support our
argument more strongly than would be possible through any single empirical test.
Unfortunately, available survey questions limit our ability to test consistently for all four sets
of worldviews. In our first two analyses, based on 1997 and 2004 surveys by the Pew Center for the
People and the Press, we investigate all four worldviews, but in the third, which focuses on the
1996 and 2004 American National Election Studies (ANES), out of necessity we collapse the four
views into a linear scale with nationalists at one end, conservative internationalists and realists in
the (relative) middle, and liberal internationalists at the other end.
In addition, the several data sets implicitly define standing, our dependent variable, differently.
The dependent variable in the ANES data assesses US standing in terms of whether America is
weaker or not, a seeming reference to American power; the Pew data assess US standing in terms of
whether America is more or less respected, more of a reference, arguably, to US diplomacy and
values than American power. We take these differences into account in our interpretations of the
statistical results.
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Pew Center 2004 Survey
In July 2004, the Pew Center conducted a broad survey on Americans’ attitudes toward
foreign policy, a time during which the war in Iraq dominated public opinion regarding foreign
policy. Our analysis of this study tests H1 through H3.
In this survey, respondents’ party ID and political ideology correlated significantly with
attitudes toward Iraq. Based on a six-question scale we constructed (see Appendix Table A3),
party and ideology correlated with attitudes toward the Iraq war at -.68 and -.40 respectively,
indicating, unsurprisingly, that liberals and Democrats are less supportive of the war than
conservatives or Republicans. In other words, if we assume that party ID and domestic ideology
precede attitudes toward Iraq (as seems likely for most individuals), then partisanship, and to a
somewhat lesser extent ideology, are extremely strong predictors of attitudes regarding Iraq.5 (We
measured worldviews based on scales explicated in Tables A1 and A2 in the Appendix.)
The correlation analysis reveals extremely strong relationship between party and support
for Iraq, and a fairly strong relationship between ideology and support for Iraq. The relationships
between these three variables on the one hand, and worldviews on the other, are more varied. For
5 We also considered the influence of party and ideology on worldviews, as well as that of
worldviews on attitudes toward Iraq. The Iraq support scale correlations are as follows: Ideology (-
.41); Party (-.68), Liberal Internationalists (.06), Nationalists (.18), Realists (.49), and Conservative
Internationalists (.57). The Ideology (from conservative to liberal) correlations are as follows: Party
(.45), Liberal Internationalists (.01), Nationalists (-.23), Realists (-.38), and Conservative
Internationalists (-.39). Finally, the Party (from Republican to Democrat) correlations are as follows:
Liberal Internationalists (-.01), Nationalists (-.13), Realists (-.36), and Conservative
Internationalists (-.41).
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the nationalist and liberal internationalist scales, the correlations are fairly weak (.18 and .06,
respectively). The correlation is stronger for realists and conservative internationalists. The
realist scale correlates with the Iraq support scale, ideology, and party at .49, -.36, and -.38,
respectively. The corresponding correlations for the conservative internationalist scale are .55, -
.42, and -.39, respectively. This indicates that conservative internationalists and realists are far
more likely than liberal internationalists and nationalists to support the Iraq War, as well as
substantially less likely to be ideologically liberal or affiliated with the Democratic Party. For
liberal internationalists and nationalists, however, party and political ideology account only
modestly for worldview (with party and ideology measured on standard right-to-left continua). In
short, worldview seems to be influenced by, but also vary independently from, party and
ideology.
To isolate the significance of worldviews from the partisan salience of Iraq, we next turn to
a regression analysis, controlling for Iraq attitudes (as well as other variables such as party ID,
domestic ideology, interest in politics and socio-economic characteristics). Our model thus
included a series of questions and coding results (shown in Tables A1 and A2) from which we
constructed indexes for each of the above-referenced worldviews6 as well as a two-part question
that we employed to measure attitudes toward U.S. standing.7
6 For our worldview scales, we normalized each item in Table A1 to a 0-1 interval and then
summed all items within each worldview category. This produced four scales, based on differing
numbers of elements. We standardized the four scales, by normalizing each to a 0-1 interval.
7 We constructed a 5 category scale, coded -3 if respondents believed U.S. respect in the world was
declining and that this was a major problem, -2 if respondents believed U.S. respect was declining
and it was a minor problem, -1 if they believed U.S. respect was declining and it was not a
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To validate our coding of the 19 questions included in our scales, we surveyed experts in
U.S. foreign policy. We contacted all 600 members of the APSA Foreign Policy Section listserve.
We received 81 completed responses8, which we summarize in Table A1. As Table A1 indicates,
the experts overwhelmingly validated our coding (with but one exception out of 19 questions –
non-proliferation, where conservative internationalists not liberal internationalists were most
aggressive). This increases our confidence in the validity of our scales.9
problem, 0 if they believed the U.S. was as respected as in the past or if they responded “don’t
know”, and 1 if they believed the U.S. was more respected than in the past. The two questions
were: (1) “Compared with the past, would you say the U.S. is MORE respected by other countries
these days, LESS respected by other countries, or AS respected as it has been in the past?” (Coded:
1=More respected, 2=Less respected, 3=As respected as in the past, and 9=Don’t know/Refused);
and (2) “ASK IF LESS RESPECTED. Do you think less respect for America is a major problem a
minor problem or not a problem at all?” (Coded: 1=Major problem, 2=Minor problem, 3=Not a
problem, and 9=Don’t know/Refused). Because testing revealed that the values on this scale are
not perfectly ordinal and evenly distributed, we employ a multinomial logit estimator.
8 We believe the relatively high dropout rate – which increased over the course of the survey --
was primarily due to its substantial length.
9 Alpha reliability scores and factor loadings for the four scales are as follows: liberal
internationalist scale = .64 (factor loadings range from .72 to .87), conservative internationalist
scale = .68 (factor loadings range from .37 to .53), realist scale = .58 (factor loadings range
from .30 to .53), and nationalist scale = .62 (factor loadings range from .24 to .57). Each of these
scales thus approaches or achieves the standard level of acceptable scale reliability, while the
elements of the various scales load moderately well, and in the case of liberal internationalists
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We expected, per H3, that in Summer 2004, liberal internationalists who assess US
standing more in terms of support for international institutions would be most likely to see
respect for America declining and that this constituted a major problem, while conservative
internationalists who assess US standing more in terms of alliances (coalitions of the willing) and
defeating militants would be least likely to hold this view. Realists and nationalists, we
anticipated, would fall somewhere in between, with realists perhaps being somewhat more
concerned than nationalists. Table 2 presents the results from an unordered multinomial logit
analysis testing H1 to H3.10 In the top half of Table 3, in turn, we employ Clarify (King et al
2000) to transform the coefficients from Table 2 into expected probabilities. The results
generally, albeit imperfectly, support our expectations, thereby suggesting that respondents’
worldviews do indeed matter when they are asked to assess U.S. standing.
[Tables 2 and 3 here]
As the top half of Table 3 shows, moving from one standard deviation below to one
standard deviation above the mean score on the liberal internationalist scale – with scores on all
other scales held constant at one standard deviation below the mean -- is associated with a 23
percentage point increase in the probability of believing that the U.S. is less respected (than
before 2004) and that this is a major problem (p<.01), a .12 point decline in the probability of
believing the U.S. is less respected and that this is a minor problem (p<.01), a 3 point decline in
quite strongly, on common underlying factors. Additionally, among our foreign policy experts,
the average standard deviations are equivalent to only about ¼ of the variability of the question
scales. This reflects the relatively high level of agreement among our experts regarding the
relationships between the four worldviews and responses to the 19 individual questions.
10 The models in Table 2 exclude several extreme residual outliers.
19
the probability of believing the U.S. is less respected, but this is not a problem (p<.10) and an 8
point decline in the probability of believing that U.S. respect in the world has not changed
(p<.05). This represents the strongest set of effects across the four worldview groups. Also as
anticipated, conservative internationalists represent almost the mirror opposite of liberal
internationalists. The corresponding increase on the conservative internationalist worldview scale
is associated with a 26 percentage point decline in the probability of believing that the U.S. is
less respected (than before 2004) and that this is a major problem (p<.01) and a 27 point
increase is believing the U.S. is less respected, but that this is only a minor problem (p<.10). For
both effects, the sign is reversed relative to liberal internationalists. In this instance, realists
resemble liberal internationalists. A two standard deviation increase on the realist scale is
associated with a 21 percentage point increase in the probability of believing that the U.S. is less
respected and that this is a major problem (p<.10) and an 18 point decline in the probability of
believing the U.S. is less respected and that this is a minor problem (p<.05). The effects are
weaker for nationalists. The only statistically significant effect among nationalists is a 4 point
decline in the probability of believing that the U.S. is more respected than in the past (p<.10).
These results support H3 and are largely consistent with our expectations concerning the likely
views associated with the four worldview groups on U.S. standing circa 2004.
Consistent with H1, relative to Independents, Republicans – the incumbent party in 2004 --
are 7 percentage points less likely to believe the U.S. is less respected and this is a minor problem
(p<.05) and 7 points more likely to believe the U.S. is about as respected as in the past, though this
latter effect is statistically insignificant (p<.15). Conversely, and also relative to Independents,
Democrats – the opposition party in 2004 -- are 7.4 points more likely to believe the U.S. is less
respected in the past (p<.10) and 6.2 points less likely to believe the U.S. is about as respected as
20
in the past (p<.10)
Interestingly, and contrary to H2, net of worldviews and Iraq attitudes, domestic ideology
appears in these data to wield no significant effect on views regarding the trend in U.S. respect.
This appears consistent with our earlier conjecture that worldviews may underlie at least some of
the apparent effects of ideology on attitudes toward US standing. However, support for the Iraq
war in these models is, as we previously demonstrated, strongly collinear with ideology.
Consequently, attitudes toward Iraq and worldviews may be absorbing much of the independent
effect of ideology – and presumably to a lesser extent, party -- on attitudes toward US standing.
It is not difficult to imagine why liberal internationalists and realists, who were unhappy
with the Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraq conflict from the beginning and even more
so by 2004, would view U.S. standing – defined in terms of respect for and influence of U.S.
diplomacy and values abroad -- as on the decline. But why would nationalists be less likely to
believe that the United States was more respected in 2004 relative to the past? Recall that
nationalists base their concerns over U.S. standing on respect for American power and self-
defense, rather than approval of US diplomacy and values. By 2004, sophisticated nationalists
were unhappy with the perceived change of focus in the Iraq conflict from self-defense
(eliminating weapons of mass destruction) to democracy promotion. This factor, combined with
the apparent open-ended nature of the commitment, may have caused them to conclude that
American power, and hence standing, was declining. Regardless, these results are consistent with
the patterns identified in the initial analysis shown at the top of Table 3.
Taken together, these initial results generally support our expectations and appear to
justify including worldviews in our theoretical model as a distinct causal variable. For additional
tests of our model, we now turn to our second Pew survey analyses.
21
Pew Center 1997 Survey
Our second analysis focuses on the first year of the Clinton Administration’s second term in
office. For this analysis, the dependent variable is captured by the following question: “Do you
think the United States plays a more important and powerful role as a world leader today
compared to ten years ago, a less important role, or about as important a role as a world leader as
it did ten years ago?” Standing is defined in terms of some combination of power and importance
(credibility/esteem). With a Democrat in office, our first two hypotheses anticipate that
Democrats and liberals should be more positive regarding the importance of the U.S. role than
Republicans or conservatives. With respect to H3, which anticipates an independent effect for
worldviews, we expect nationalists to believe that the U.S. role was less important than before
because there was no longer a major threat to U.S. security. We further anticipate that realists
will believe that the U.S. role was less important or about the same because, while threats are
less, the United States is the only great power actor to secure global peace. Conservative
internationalists, in turn, should believe that the U.S. role was more important because the United
States had unprecedented power and opportunity to maintain American security and ideological
preeminence. Finally, we expect liberal internationalists to believe that the U.S. role was more
important because the United States was the leading supporter of international institutions and
the rule of law.
The response options to our dependent variable question form a scale, which we coded as
follows: -1=less important, 0=as important or “don’t know”, and 1=more important. Our four
worldview scales are based on a similar, albeit somewhat different, set of questions as those
employed in the 2004 worldviews scales. (In Table A4 in the Appendix we present the questions
22
and coding for the four scales employed in this analysis.)11
As with the 2004 survey, we employ an unordered multinomial logit estimator, which –
unlike an ordered logit -- does not assume that the various categories in the scale forming the
dependent variable are both ordinal and equally distributed. Table 4 presents the results from our
analysis testing H1 to H3.12 In the bottom half of Table 3, in turn, we employ Clarify (King et al
2000) to transform the coefficients from Table 4 into expected probabilities.
The results once again largely support our expectations, further indicating that
respondents’ worldviews influence assessments of U.S. standing independently from party and
domestic ideology. As the bottom half of Table 3 shows, moving on the liberal internationalist
scale from one standard deviation below to one standard deviation above the mean score – with
scores on all other scales once again held constant at one standard deviation below the mean – is
associated with an 11 percentage point increase in the probability of believing that the U.S. is
playing a more important role than 10 years before 1997 (p<.10), and a 14 point decline in the
probability of believing the U.S. is playing about as important a role as in the past (p<.10). In this
11 Alpha reliability scores and factor loadings for the four scales are as follows: liberal
internationalist scale = .71 (factor loadings range from .62 to .80), conservative internationalist
scale = .69 (factor loadings range from .28 to .57), realist scale = .68 (factor loadings range
from .34 to .59), and nationalist scale = .64 (factor loadings range from .27 to .55). Each of these
scales thus approaches or achieves the standard level of acceptable scale reliability. The factor
loadings, in turn, indicate that for the most part the elements of the various scales load
moderately well, and once again in the case of liberal internationalists quite strongly, on common
underlying factors.
12 The models in Table 2 exclude several extreme residual outliers.
23
instance, realists occupy the opposite extreme. The corresponding increase on the realist scale is
associated with a 41 percentage point increase in the probability of believing the U.S. is playing
a less important role than in the past (p<.05) and a 16 point decrease in the probability of
believing the U.S. is playing a more important role (though the latter effect is not statistically
significant, at p<.15). Conservative internationalists are 9 points less likely to believe the U.S. is
playing a less important role than in the past (p<.05), while nationalists are 11 points more likely
to believe the U.S. is playing a less important role (p<.01) and 13 points less likely to believe the
U.S. role is about as important as in the past (p<.05).
These results generally accord with H3. Compared to ten years before, nationalists and
realists are much more likely to believe that the United States is playing a lesser role in the world,
while liberal and conservative internationalists are more likely to believe it is playing a more
important role. Realists seem even more likely than nationalists to favor a lesser role but that
may be due to the prominence in 1997 of the debate over NATO expansion, which many realists
opposed given the absence of a Russian threat to Europe. The strongest proponents of NATO and
a more important U.S. role in the world were in fact the conservative and liberal internationalists,
as anticipated by our hypotheses.
Unfortunately, the lack of a question on domestic ideology in this survey prevents us
from testing H2. However, we can test H1, which focuses on the effects of partisanship. In this
instance, the results offer clear support for the hypothesis. Republicans – the opposition party in
1997 -- are 8 percentage points more likely than Independents to believe that the U.S. is playing
a less important role than in the past (p<.01) – that is, 10 years prior to 1997 -- and 5 points less
likely to believe the U.S. is playing a more important role (p<.05). Conversely, Democrats – the
incumbent party in 1997 -- are six points less likely to believe the U.S. is playing a less important
24
role than in the past (p<.01) and five points more likely to believe that the U.S. is playing a more
important role (p<.05). We turn next to our analysis of the 1996 and 2004 American National
Election Studies.
1996 vs. 2004 American National Election Studies (ANES) Analysis
While ANES includes consistent questions about party ID and U.S. standing from 1958 on, it
includes relatively few other questions that could be coded to worldviews over this same period of
time. Of eleven questions we identified that could be coded in terms of worldviews, only five were
asked across Democratic and Republican administrations, allowing us to investigate the effects of
variations in partisan control of the presidency (Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996 and Republican
George W. Bush in 2004). Unfortunately, these few questions (listed in Table A-4 in the Appendix)
were insufficient to delineate four distinct worldviews. We thus created a scale by adding together
the five questions – each normalized to a 0-1 interval, with liberal internationalist at the low end,
realists and conservative internationalists in the (relative) middle and nationalists at the high end.
On this collapsed scale, nationalists define the goals of US foreign policy in the most limited
way – national or at best hemispheric defense – and favor the strongest reliance on military force to
fend off attacks but not to establish world order or spread democracy. Conservative internationalists
also favor an assertive use of military force but now seek more expansive goals to spread democracy
by regime change. Realists are more cautious in the use of force and restrict US goals to pursuing
world order, rather than regime change. And liberal internationalists favor spreading American
democracy but primarily through multilateral institutions and mutual disarmament rather than
through the assertive use of force (particularly unilaterally). Thus, as we move along this scale,
25
foreign policy preferences shift from global to national scope, from multilateral institutional to
military means, and from democracy to security goals, with the exception that on the latter
dimension conservative internationalists fall closer to the liberal internationalist end of the spectrum
than realists.
To measure U.S. standing, the best available question in the ANES surveys was the
following “During the past year, would you say that the United States' position in the world
has grown weaker, stayed about the same, or has it grown stronger?” (VCF9045). As we
noted above, the reference here appears to relate more directly to America’s power than to its
diplomacy (credibility) or values (esteem).
As with our Pew data, we validated our coding of the five questions employed in our
ANES worldviews scale through a survey of members of the APSA Foreign Policy Section
listserve. We received 228 responses to this much briefer survey, which we summarize in Table
A5. As before, the expert results largely substantiated the implicit coding of worldviews
underlying our scale (see Table A5), thereby increasing our confidence in its validity.13
13 Alpha reliability testing indicates that, perhaps unsurprisingly given the limited range and
diversity of available questions, the scale is not particularly reliable among low-sophistication
respondents (excluding college educated respondents, α=.28), becomes somewhat more reliable
among college educated respondents (α=.41) and even more so among college educated
respondents rated by the interviewer as relatively high (a 4 or 5 out of 5) on the political
information scale (α=.56). The scale reaches standard levels of reliability (α=.70) for college
educated ideologues (that is, strong conservatives or strong liberals). (Highly educated
ideologically oriented individuals are presumably the individuals best suited to employ relatively
cognitively complex concepts like worldviews in assessing foreign policy.)
26
For our first analysis, we simply test whether worldview influences attitudes toward
standing (H3), even after accounting for party ID and domestic ideology (H2) and for whether
partisans hold more optimistic opinions about U.S. standing when their fellow partisan occupies
the White House than when the opposition party is in power (H1).14 In models 1-3 of Table 4 we
14 There is a weak correlation (α=-.06) between the ideologue and worldviews scales (with the
former coded on a 0-3 scale, where 0=moderate/centrist, 1=lean liberal or conservative, 2=liberal
or conservative, and 3=strong liberal or strong conservative). There is also only a moderate
correlation between domestic ideology and worldviews (α=.30) and an even weaker correlation
between worldview and party (α=.19). As an additional test, we constructed a scale based on
seven domestic political variables with clear ideological implications. The questions asked
respondents about their attitudes concerning the proper role of government insurance,
government provision of jobs, government spending levels, welfare, traditional values, abortion,
and the centrality of religion. The alpha reliability for the scale based on these seven variables
was .70. This scale correlates at .56 with respondents’ self-reported ideology. More important for
our purposes, it correlates at .32 with our worldviews scale, indicating that even when we
measure ideology via attitudes on issues, rather than self-reports, our worldviews scale is clearly
distinct from domestic ideology. Indeed, these various correlations suggest that despite the
obvious limitations of our worldviews scale, it is clearly tapping into a dimension that is not fully,
or even largely, accounted for by party or domestic ideology. (Also worth noting, substituting
our domestic ideology issue scale in place of ideology self-reports in our models has no material
effect on the reported results.)
27
present the results of three ordered logit analyses testing these basic predictions.15 In Table 5, in
turn, we again employ Clarify (King et al. 2000) to transform the coefficients on party ID,
domestic ideology, and worldviews into probabilities of believing the U.S. is weaker than in the
past. For consistency with the prior analysis, we focus the discussion in this section on the
probability of believing the U.S. has grown weaker. However, the results (not shown) represent
nearly a mirror image if we instead focus on the probability the U.S. has grown stronger.
[Tables 4 and 5 here]
Model 1 in Table 5 pools the 1996 and 2004 data. The results show no significant effect
for worldviews. We suspected that the explanation might be that respondents’ worldviews might
lead them to opposing conclusions, depending on which party was in power. If so, the results
might cancel each other out across administrations. Hence, Models 2 and 3 replicate model one,
limited, respectively, to the Clinton (1996) and Bush (2004) periods. The results in the top section
of Table 5, which present the results of these latter two models, strongly support our conjecture,
and hence H1 through H3. Beginning with the first, we see that Republicans are about 30
percentage points more likely to believe U.S. standing is weaker than in the past during the
Democratic Clinton administration (.43 vs. .13, p<.01). Conversely, during the Republican Bush
administration, Republicans are 40 percentage points less likely than Democrats to believe the
U.S. is weaker than in the past (.21 vs. .61, p<.01). These results are precisely what H1 anticipates.
Turning to the effects of domestic ideology (H2), the results are mixed. During the
Clinton administration we observe no statistically significant difference between liberal and
15 We employ ordered logit estimators for this analysis because statistical testing indicated that,
unlike the Pew surveys, here the conditions for ordered logit are better satisfied. (Note that the
models in Table 5 exclude several extreme residual outliers.)
28
conservative attitudes toward US standing (net of party and worldview). However, during the
Bush administration, liberals are twice as likely (.54 vs. .27) as conservatives to believe the US is
weaker than in the past (a 27 percentage point difference, p<.01). These results thus support H2
for the Bush administration (2004), but not during the Clinton administration (1996).
Turning to H3, Table 6 -- which again employs Clarify to transform the logit coefficients
into expected probabilities -- indicates that when Clinton was in office in 1996, liberal
internationalists were about 23 percentage points less likely than nationalists to believe the U.S.
was weaker than in the past (.14 vs. .37, p<.01). Conversely, when Bush was in power in 2004,
nationalists were 23 points less likely than liberal internationalists to believe U.S. standing had
grown weaker (.28 vs. .51, p<.05). Given that we explicitly control for party ID and domestic
ideology, these results clearly support H3. While both party ID (in both administrations) and
domestic ideology (in the Bush administration) clearly influence attitudes toward U.S. standing,
so too does worldview, across both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
We next turn to our more nuanced hypotheses (H4 and H5). To test these predictions, we
interacted the liberal internationalist-to-nationalist scale with a variable intended to capture
political sophistication. To construct this variable, we combined the most common measure of
political awareness in the literature, political knowledge (based on the interviewer’s assessment
in the post-election wave) with education (Sniderman et al. 1991). We collapsed both variables
to a 0-1 interval and then summed them to create our political sophistication indicator.16 We then
16 Here, unlike the Pew analysis, we add the two normalized variables together rather than
interacting them. The reasoning is that, in our view, political knowledge implies a greater degree
of understanding than self-declared attention to political issues, which was the only available
proxy for political knowledge in the Pew analysis. Hence, we considered it unnecessary to limit
29
interacted this, as well as our worldview indicator, with self reported party ID and/or a dummy
for the George W. Bush (versus Bill Clinton) presidency. We tested a variety of control variables,
ultimately including only those that proved significant in at least one model. These included
domestic political ideology, age (plus its quadratic), education, and trust in government.17
The dependent variable for this analysis is a 3-category scale, where 0=US position has
grown weaker, .5=stayed about the same, and 1=grown stronger. Models 4 and 5 of Table 5 present
the results from two ordered logit analyses of the effects of party, ideology, political sophistication,
the president in office, and worldviews on attitudes regarding the U.S. position in the world. In the
middle and bottom sections of Table 6 we transforms the key coefficients into probabilities of
believing the United States has grown weaker than in the past.
The results suggest some influence of each of these factors, including worldview, on
assessment of U.S. standing. However, the influence of worldview is heavily mediated by
partisanship, ideology, and political sophistication. To begin with, consistent with H1, across
both worldviews and without exception, Democrats feel substantially better than Republicans
about U.S. standing during the Clinton era (1996), while Republicans feel better than Democrats
during the Bush era (2004).
Consistent with H4, in turn, variations in worldview matter far more among politically
the attentiveness “boost” to relatively more educated respondents by, in effect, zeroing out
through an interaction attentive respondents at the lowest education level. Consistent with our
expectations, the additive scale outperformed the alternative, interaction term in the ANES
analysis. The opposite pattern prevailed in the Pew analysis, also as anticipated.
17 We also tested models with additional controls such as external efficacy, ethnicity, income,
marital status, religiosity, geographic location. None were significant or affected the results.
30
sophisticated respondents than among less sophisticated ones. Looking at the middle section of
Table 5 we see that when we interact political sophistication with partisanship, we find that
among both Democrats and Republicans the gap in attitudes on U.S. standing between liberal
internationalists and nationalists is far more stark among high sophistication respondents than
among less politically sophisticated ones. For instance, among less sophisticated Republicans,
liberal internationalists were, on average, a statistically insignificant 22 percentage points less
likely than nationalists to believe that the U.S. is weaker than in the past. The corresponding gap
is over twice as large (47 points) among high sophistication Republican respondents (from .23
to .70, respectively, p<.10). The relationships among Democrats are comparable. That is, no
significant relationship emerges among low-sophistication Democrats, while highly sophisticated
liberal internationalists are 51 percentage points more likely than sophisticated nationalists to
view the U.S. position in the world as having grown weaker (.70 vs. .19, respectively, p<.05).
These patterns support H4, while the overall importance of worldview, even after accounting for
domestic ideology and party is consistent with H3.
This begs the question of “why” liberal internationalists should necessarily be less (more)
likely than nationalists to view the U.S. as weaker (stronger) than in the past. The answer
emerges when we take the partisanship of the president into account. The bottom section of
Table 5 replaces the political sophistication interaction term with a dummy variable for the Bush
administration (coded 0 in 1996, when President Clinton was in office and 1 in 2004, during
President Bush’s term in office). We interact the presidency dummy with worldview and
partisanship (Republicans and Democrats, respectively).
The results indicate that in 1996, with a Democrat in the White House, variations in worldview
heavily mediated attitudes regarding U.S. standing among Republicans, but not among Democrats.
31
Among Republicans in 1996, moving from liberal internationalist to nationalist worldviews is
associated with a 35 percentage point increase in the probability of believing the U.S. is weaker than in
the past (from .31 to .66, p<.01). Among Democrats during the Clinton administration (in 1996), the
corresponding effect of moving from liberal internationalist to nationalist on the probability of
believing the U.S. is weaker than in the past, though statistically significant (p<.01), is smaller than
among Republicans (from .11 to .34, an increase of 23 percentage points).
In stark contrast, in 2004, during the Bush administration, the opposite pattern emerges.
In this case, worldviews strongly influence perceptions of U.S. standing among Democrats, but
not among Republicans. Among Democrats in 2004, moving from liberal internationalist to
realist worldviews is associated with a 62 percentage point decline in the probability of believing
the U.S. is weaker than in the past (from .89 to .27, p<.01). Conversely, the corresponding effect
of varying worldviews among Republicans during the Bush administration is nearly six-fold
smaller (from .26 to .21, or -.05) and statistically insignificant.
These findings clearly support H4, and place the initial results of earlier models
employing the political knowledge interaction into a quite different context. It appears, consistent
with H5, that worldviews influence Republicans solely during the Clinton era, while they
influence Democrats more strongly during the Bush era.
Though the ultimate cause of these distinctions is uncertain, one plausible explanation is
that, for respondents, a respondent’s partisanship switches on and off the application of
worldviews to evaluations of U.S. standing. In other words, as H5 anticipates, when the president
and the respondent share partisanship, the respondent switches off the application of worldview
and is inclined to trust the president’s judgment ex ante. He or she is willing to rely upon the
simple heuristic of party ID in assessing the implications of that president’s foreign policy for
32
U.S. standing. In short, if “my party” is in power, my default position is likely to be to assume
that U.S. standing is improving. In these situations, respondents will likely discount (that is, at
least partially switch off) the more cognitively demanding heuristic of worldview.
However, when the president is from the opposing party, respondents will tend to be
suspicious of the president’s handling of foreign policy and its implications for U.S. standing.
Table 5 suggests that non-presidential party partisans will be relatively more likely than
presidential party partisans to employ the more cognitively demanding heuristic of worldview in
order either to validate their ex ante distrust of the president, or perhaps to assess his performance
more carefully and critically than they would if the president shared their political leanings (in
which case they would be more inclined to simply give the president “the benefit of the doubt”).
One limitation inherent in the preceding analysis is the difficulty of establishing causality
in a cross-sectional survey. In this case, it is difficult to determine whether domestic ideology
precedes, follows, or is entirely distinct from foreign policy worldviews. While we control for
domestic ideology in our models and find distinct worldview effects, it would be preferable to
find a way to more clearly distinguish the distinct effects of domestic ideology and worldviews.
One possible means of doing so is to create an instrument for domestic ideology, based on
respondents’ attitudes toward a variety of domestic political issues, and then employ the
instrument in place of self-reported ideology in our model predicting attitudes on U.S. standing,
alongside worldviews. As a final test of our hypothesis, we undertake such a test.
Unfortunately, because our domestic ideology and U.S. standing variables are both
categorical scales, they are not appropriate for standard two-stage least squares. However, by
dichotomizing both variables, we are able to employ instrumental variable probit (or “ivprobit” in
Stata) to estimate a simultaneous equation model. For domestic ideology, we created a dummy
33
coded one if the respondent identified themselves as leaning conservative, conservative, or very
conservative, and zero otherwise. For the U.S. position in the world, we created a dummy coded
one if the respondent believed the U.S. position in the world had grown stronger over the past
year, and zero otherwise.
For this analysis, we predict domestic ideology on the basis of attitudes regarding the
proper role of government insurance, government provision of jobs, government spending levels,
welfare, traditional values, abortion, and the centrality of religion, as well as political awareness,
age and political trust. Improving on previous research based on self-reported domestic ideology,
this measure includes political (role of government) as well economic and social indicators. We
then employ the instrument for domestic ideology in the final model for U.S. standing. We
include an interaction with the Bush Administration dummy to account for the aforementioned
likelihood that the implications for a given worldview are different depending on whether a
Democrat or Republican occupies the White House. Table 7 presents the results of this test.
[Table 7 here]
The first thing to note in Table 7 is that all of the domestic political issue attitudes appear
to significantly influence the likelihood of being conservative. So too does being more
Republican on the party ID scale. However, in this model, worldviews do not significantly
influence domestic ideology. Nevertheless, according to the exogenous probit model, worldviews
do exert an independent effect on U.S. standing, measured as attitudes regarding the U.S. role in
the world. This is true even after accounting for domestic ideology on the basis of broad issue
attitudes rather than self-identification (as in our prior analyses) or measures that exclude political
issues (as in many other studies). Moreover, the effects reverse from the Clinton to the Bush
administration. During the Bush Administration, greater movement toward the nationalist end of
34
the worldview scale is associated with an increased likelihood of believing that the U.S. position
in the world had grown stronger over the prior year. The average effect of a one point movement
from the liberal internationalist end of the scale toward the nationalist end, net of the other
variables in the model, is about a 5 percentage point increase in the probability of believing the
U.S. position has grown stronger (p<.001). In contrast, the corresponding effect of a one unit
movement toward the nationalist end of the worldviews scale during the Clinton administration is
about a 6 percentage point decline in the probability of believing the U.S. position had grown
stronger over the past year (p<.01). These results offer additional support for our contention that
foreign policy worldviews exert a distinct effect from domestic ideology on attitudes regarding
U.S. standing.
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that foreign policy worldviews may be a more powerful predictor of
how Americans think about the U.S. role in the world and particularly U.S. standing in the world
than previous research suggests. Previous studies using ANES data suggest that party ID is a
powerful predictor of attitudes toward U.S. standing. But further breakdown of this data suggest
that worldviews may be a lurking causal variable at work behind this correlation, especially
when worldviews take into account the goals (security and democracy) as well as the means
(military and diplomatic) of foreign policy and the differences among individual Americans in
terms of political sophistication.
We predicted that by treating worldview as an information shortcut, or heuristic cue,
similar in some ways to party identification, we might gain insight into who would likely rely on
35
worldviews in assessing U.S. standing and when they were most likely to do so. Our results largely
conform to our predictions. Because worldview is a more complex and less widely accessible
heuristic cue than party ID, it is more readily available to political sophisticates who are most
likely to possess the knowledge and context necessary for applying it. However, given that all
human beings are cognitive misers, even sophisticates are likely to prefer “cheaper” heuristics
when they believe they can safely do so. Hence, we anticipated that the most likely users of
worldview would be partisans from the non-presidential party. After all, when the president shares
one’s party affiliation, it is likely that he or she will pursue policies consistent with one’s interests.
Under such circumstances, one need not resort to the relatively “costly” heuristic of worldview.
Our results largely bore out these expectations. We found that all respondents use party
ID as a convenient heuristic to determine attitudes toward U.S. standing. Other studies (see
above citations) show that domestic political ideology is a factor affecting some attitudes toward
foreign policy. Our results offer at best partial support for this view. Yet these studies rely on
limited definitions of domestic ideology and foreign policy attitudes. A broader definition of
foreign policy views to include goals (security/democracy) as well as means (military/diplomatic)
captures more of the variance in explaining attitudes toward U.S. standing in the world.
We argued that nationalists, conservative internationalists and some realists who are
Republican tend to think about U.S. standing in the world more in terms of security/power, while
liberal internationalists and some realists who are Democrats assess it more in terms of
diplomacy/ multilateralism. When a respondent’s own party is in power, that individual is likely
to assess U.S. standing under that president primarily based on shared partisanship. When a
respondent’s party is in opposition, however, that individual is more likely to assess U.S.
standing in significant measure in terms of worldviews, distrusting the incumbent president not
36
just because s/he is from the opposite party but because s/he holds a different worldview that, in
the respondent’s view, potentially damages U.S. standing in the world. Our data largely confirm
these assessments.
The implications for the study of foreign policy attitudes are potentially profound, although
much more work is needed to validate this expectation. By reconceptualizing worldview as a
heuristic cue, we are able to advance the study of foreign policy attitudes, pioneered by scholars
such as Holsti, Rosenau, Wittkopf and Maggiotto by predicting not only which worldviews are
likely to influence foreign policy attitudes, but also who is likely to employ worldviews in
rendering such assessments, and when they are likely to do so. These conclusions, although
preliminary, constitute a novel and we believe fruitful trajectory for future research.
In further research we hope to continue to refine our measures of domestic ideology and
worldviews. To this end, we need better data. We seek to identify other polls that ask consistent
questions across time about party, ideology, worldviews and U.S. standing. More questions will
permit further disaggregation of worldviews. Responses from more politically sophisticated
respondents are also needed. Currently, Pew does not release the responses of their polls of
political influentials, as opposed to the general public. In addition, it would be intriguing to apply
our worldview variable to non-American respondents’ attitudes toward the standing of the
United States. For instance, foreign assessments of US standing are not as negative in Asia as
elsewhere (See APSA Taskforce study on US Standing). Is that because respondents in Asia
assess US standing more in realist terms – US security and prosperity – than in liberal
internationalist terms – multilateralism and esteem? We have barely started to mine what we
believe is a fertile strata of individual opinions on foreign policy.
37
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TABLE 1. Four Worldviews Worldview Foreign Policy Preferences
Nationalists Independence, unilateralism, strong (including missile) defense, self-reliance, upholding American power and non-intervention overseas
Realists Active alliances, peace through strength, world order/stability, prudence (co-existence with tyranny), moral relativism, preserve equilibrium
Conservative Internationalists Reduce tyranny (not just coexist or cooperate with it), spread freedom (regime change), use force assertively, preempt threats militarily
Liberal Internationalists strengthen legitimacy of universal institutions (multilateralism), human rights, disarmament, fight poverty and disease to preempt threats
42
Table 2. Unordered Multinomial Logit Analysis of Effects of Worldviews on Attitudes toward U.S. Importance in the World Relative to Pasta (Pew 2004)
U.S. Less Important
U.S. More Important
Liberal Internationalist Scale 0.080 0.108^ (0.080) (0.065) Nationalist Scale 0.212* 0.072 (0.084) (0.070) Realist Scale 0.529* -0.099 (0.235) (0.221) Conservative Internationalist Scale -0.423^ 0.104 (0.245) (0.227) Democrats-to-Republicans Scale 0.196** -0.053 (0.067) (0.059) Male 0.180 0.656*** (0.214) (0.188) Age 0.001 -0.017** (0.006) (0.006) Black 0.788* 0.589^ (0.368) (0.332) Born Again Christian 0.144 0.251 (0.211) (0.186) Follow Political Issues 0.534 0.351 (0.465) (0.418) Education 0.113 0.0203 (0.071) (0.063) Foreign Policy Knowledge Scale -0.064 -0.088 (0.107) (0.092) Satisfied with Direction of Country -0.325 -0.018 (0.243) (0.213) Approve President Clinton -0.021 -0.138 (0.322) (0.270) Approve President Clinton Issues Scale -0.336** 0.165^ (0.104) (0.091) Constant -3.158** -1.760* (0.991) (0.856) Observations 867 867 Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, ^ p<0.10 a omitted category is U.S. similarly important as 10 years prior
43
TABLE 3. Probability of thinking U.S. more, less, or similarly respected (2004) or important (1997) as in the past, by worldview
2004 Survey Do You Have Worldview?a Liberal Internationalists No Yes Difference US less important-major problem 0.366 0.600 0.234 ** US less important-minor problem 0.286 0.163 -0.123 ** US less important-not a problem 0.049 0.023 -0.026 ^ US same importance 0.215 0.133 -0.082 * US more important 0.084 0.081 -0.003 insig Realists US less important-major problem 0.366 0.580 0.214 ^ US less important-minor problem 0.286 0.111 -0.175 * US less important-not a problem 0.049 0.050 0.001 insig US same importance 0.215 0.177 -0.038 insig US more important 0.084 0.082 -0.002 insig Nationalists US less important-major problem 0.366 0.418 0.052 insig US less important-minor problem 0.286 0.265 -0.021 insig US less important-not a problem 0.049 0.043 -0.006 insig US same importance 0.215 0.225 0.01 insig US more important 0.084 0.049 -0.035 ^ Conservative Internationalists US less important-major problem 0.366 0.104 -0.262 ** US less important-minor problem 0.286 0.557 0.271 ^ US less important-not a problem 0.049 0.058 0.009 insig US same importance 0.215 0.211 -0.004 insig US more important 0.084 0.069 -0.015 insig
1997 Survey Liberal Internationalists US less important 0.114 0.143 0.029 US same importance 0.600 0.461 -0.139 ^ US more important 0.285 0.396 0.111 ^ Realists US less important 0.114 0.522 0.408 * US same importance 0.600 0.350 -0.250 insig US more important 0.285 0.127 -0.158 ^^ Nationalists US less important 0.114 0.222 0.108 ** US same importance 0.600 0.474 -0.126 * US more important 0.285 0.305 0.020 insig Conservative Internationalists
44
US less important 0.114 0.023 -0.091 * US same importance 0.6 0.55 -0.05 insig US more important 0.285 0.428 0.143 insig **p<.01; *p<.05; ^p<.10; ^^p<.15 ano=one standard deviation below mean; yes=one standard deviation above mean. In each case, all other worldviews are held constant at one standard deviation below mean.
45
Table 4. Unordered Multinomial Logit Analysis of Effects of Worldviews on Attitudes toward U.S. Respect in the World Relative to Past (Pew 1997)
U.S. Less Respected –
Minor Problem
U.S. Less Respected –
Not a Problem
U.S. Similarly Respected as in Past
U.S. More Respected
Liberal Internationalist Scale -3.584*** -4.472* -3.358** -1.900 (0.911) (1.865) (1.088) (1.377) Realist Scale -5.499* -3.613 -2.569 -2.225 (2.138) (4.662) (2.212) (2.993) Nationalist Scale -10.74 -20.11 -4.478 -34.55^ (16.36) (33.10) (16.57) (20.40) Conservative Internationalist Scale 6.894** 2.338 4.179^ 3.040 (2.130) (5.504) (2.295) (3.078) Follow Political Issues -0.0486 -0.0498 -0.0167 0.0293 (0.0331) (0.0714) (0.0338) (0.0428) Education -0.0695 -0.403* -0.114 -0.255* (0.0849) (0.168) (0.0902) (0.111) Approve President Bush 0.954* -0.360 0.536 0.996^ (0.429) (0.923) (0.423) (0.563) Support Iraq Scale 0.146 0.475^ 0.371*** 0.639*** (0.103) (0.251) (0.103) (0.170) Conservative to Liberal Scale 0.127 0.514 -0.102 -0.0883 (0.151) (0.381) (0.164) (0.212) Republican to Democrat Scale 0.0917 -0.300 -0.115 0.0174 (0.0823) (0.195) (0.0895) (0.113) White 0.279 -0.918 1.375^ 1.132 (0.506) (0.893) (0.727) (0.904) Hispanic 0.793 0.575 1.427** 2.040*** (0.509) (0.860) (0.496) (0.566) Male -0.198 0.437 -0.293 0.0158 (0.246) (0.638) (0.249) (0.358) Black 0.183 0.617 1.610* 2.087^ (0.614) (1.028) (0.821) (1.121) Age -0.000390 0.00442 -0.0128 -0.0243* (0.00818) (0.0176) (0.00859) (0.0109) Constant 0.962 3.885^ 0.287 -0.737 (1.339) (2.194) (1.436) (2.434) Observations 667 667 667 667 Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, ^ p<0.10 aomitted category is U.S. less respected – major problem.
46
TABLE 5. Ordered Logit Analyses of Likelihood that Respondent Believes the U.S. is Weaker than in Past, as Worldview, Party ID, Ideology, Political Sophistication and Administration Vary (1996 vs. 2004 ANES)
-------------Basic Models------------- -------Interaction Models------- Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Independent Variables Overall Clinton (1996)
Bush (2004)
Sophistication Interaction
Admin. Interaction
Worldview scale -0.053 -0.254*** 0.193* -0.214 -0.288*** (0.052) (0.074) (0.084) (0.18) (0.066) Domestic ideology 0.082* -0.037 0.195** 0.068^ 0.061 (0.040) (0.055) (0.064) (0.039) (0.040) Party ID -0.034 -0.271*** 0.303*** ------- ------- (0.023) (0.031) (0.041) ------- ------- Political sophistication -0.356** -0.283^ -0.365 -0.722 -0.327* (0.130) (0.170) (0.230) (0.490) (0.130) Age 0.0181 0.005 0.012 0.018 0.007 (0.012) (0.017) (0.021) (0.012) (0.013) Agex2 (x1000) -0.275* -0.151 -0.229 -0.274* -0.173 (0. 12) (0.16) (0.21) (0.12) (0.12) Trust index 0.020*** 0.015*** 0.013*** 0.020*** 0.015*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) Bush Administration -0.547*** ------- ------- -0.549*** -1.797*** (0.083) ------- ------- (0.084) (0.380) Democrat ------- ------- ------- 0.207 0.635*** ------- ------- ------- (0.330) (0.110) Republican ------- ------- ------- 0.0132 -0.639*** ------- ------- ------- (0.360) (0.130) Sophistication x Democrat ------- ------- ------- -0.493 ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.380) ------- Sophistication x Republican ------- ------- ------- 0.705 ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.440) ------- Sophistication x Worldview ------- ------- ------- 0.133 ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.170) ------- Sophistication x Dem x Worldview ------- ------- ------- 0.218* ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.100) ------- Sophistication x Rep x Worldview ------- ------- ------- -0.246* ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.130) ------- Bush Admin x Democrat ------- ------- ------- ------- -2.471*** ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.500) Bush Admin x Republican ------- ------- ------- ------- 2.073** ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.630) Bush Admin x Worldview ------- ------- ------- ------- 0.465** ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.140) Bush Admin x Dem x Worldview ------- ------- ------- ------- 0.470* ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.190) Bush Admin x Rep x Worldview ------- ------- ------- ------- -0.111 ------- ------- ------- ------- (0.240) Constant 1 -0.163 -2.677*** 2.497*** -0.464 -1.124** (0.380) (0.550) (0.600) (0.620) (0.430) Constant 2 1.606*** -0.380 3.961*** 1.316* 0.810^ (0.390) (0.540) (0.610) (0.620) (0.430) Observations 2479 1462 1017 2479 2479 R-squared .04 .08 .11 .04 .09 *** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05, ^ p<.10; Robust standard errors in parentheses
47
TABLE 6. Probability Respondent Believes U.S. Has Grown Weaker Than in Past (ANES) A. Basic Models Liberal Conservative Difference Clinton (1996) .22 .26 .04 Bush (2004) .54 .27 -.27 ** Democrat Republican Clinton (1996) .13 .44 .31 ** Bush (2004) .61 .21 -.40 ** Lib int'list Nationalist Clinton (1996) .14 .37 .23 ** Bush (2004) .51 .28 -.23 * B. Interaction Models Lib int'list Nationalist By Political Sophistication Republicans Low Sophistication .22 .43 .21 High Sophistication .23 .70 .47 ^ Democrats Low Sophistication .19 .39 .20 High Sophistication .70 .19 -.51 * By Administration Republicans Clinton (1996) .31 .65 .34 ** Bush (2004) .26 .211 -.05 Democrats Clinton (1996) .11 .35 .24 ** Bush (2004) .89 .27 -.62 ** ^p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01
48
Table 7. Instrumental Variable Probit Analysis of Effects of Domestic Ideology and Worldviews on Attitudes Toward U.S. Position in the World First Stage
(DV=Domestic Ideology) Second Stage
(DV=US Position Stronger) Coefficient Std. Err. Coefficient Std. Err. Domestic Ideologyinst ------- ------- -0.294 0.344 Worldview Scale 0.019 0.015 -0.154 0.053** Party ID 0.082 0.005*** 0.029 0.040 Bush Administration 0.010 0.051 -0.892 0.183*** Worldview Scale x Bush Administration -0.001 0.020 0.352 0.070***
Political sophistication -0.037 0.029 -0.308 0.101** Age 0.006 0.002** 0.011 0.010 Age x Age -0.0001 0.00002* -0.0002 0.0001^ Trust Index 0.0002 0.0004 0.0091 0.0013*** Government Insurance 0.129 0.033*** ------- ------- Government Provide Jobs 0.091 0.036** ------- ------- Government Spending 0.231 0.043*** ------- ------- Welfare 0.088 0.025*** ------- ------- Traditional Values 0.074 0.035* ------- ------- Abortion 0.061 0.027* ------- ------- Religion as Life Guide 0.072 0.023*** ------- ------- Constant -0.553 0.080*** -0.485 0.315 /athrho ------- ------- 0.121 0.141 /lnsigma ------- ------- -0.939 0.013*** rho ------- ------- 0.121 0.139 sigma ------- ------- 0.391 0.005
*p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001 (Standard errors are “robust”)
49
Appendix: Data Coding
TABLE A1: Four Worldviews (Pew Center 2004) Q
Question Text and Response Categories
Response Categories & Our Implicit Coding (IC)
Expert Mean (St.Dev.)*
32 What kind of leadership role should the United States play in the world? Should it be the single world leader, or should it play a shared leadership role, or shouldn't it play any leadership role? (1=Single leader, 2=Shared leadership, 3=No leadership, and 9=Don't know/Refused)
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.98 (.99) 1.16 (.54) 1.70 (.73) 2.06 (.36)
33 IF "SHARED LEADERSHIP ROLE" (2 IN Q.32), ASK: Should the United States be the most active of the leading nations, or should it be about as active as other leading nations? (1=Most active, 2=About as active, and 9=Don't know/Refused)
N/A N/A
34 Should the United States base its foreign policy mostly on the interests of the U.S., or should it strongly take into account the interests of its allies? (1=own estimates of national interests, 2=interests and views of allies, 3=both)
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.04 (.25) 1.33 (.73) 1.93 (.93) 2.65 (.59)
37 Do you think that using military force against countries that may seriously threaten our country, but have not attacked us, can often, sometimes, rarely or never be justified? (1=often, 2=sometimes, 3=rarely, 4=never)
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.15 (1.02) 1.39 (.59) 2.18 (.68) 3.07 (.79)
1. Taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.34 (.51) 1.24 (.43) 1.70 (.57) 1.89 (.51)
2. Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.78 (.68) 1.41 (.50) 1.64 (.58) 1.70 (.52)
3. Insuring adequate energy supplies for the U.S.
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.29 (.54) 1.51 (.50) 1.52 (.53) 1.92 (.54)
4. Strengthening the United Nations
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.81 (.52) 2.68 (.52) 2.31 (.57) 1.31 (.47)
5. Reducing the spread of AIDS and other infectious diseases
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.67 (.53) 2.55 (.60) 2.48 (.58) 1.62 (.54)
39 From this list of long range U.S. foreign policy goals, which do you think should have top priority, some priority, or no priority at all? (1=top priority, 2=some priority, 3=no priority, 9=don’t know)
6. Protecting groups or nations That are threatened with genocide
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.75 (.55) 2.08 (.67) 2.58 (.64) 1.35 (.48)
50
7. Promoting democracy in other nations
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.57 (.65) 1.28 (.51) 2.57 (.58) 1.61 (.68)
8. Promoting U.S. business and economic interests abroad
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.78 (.79) 1.61 (.64) 1.80 (.60) 1.85 (.63)
9. Finding a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.81 (.62) 2.01 (.68) 2.24 (.62) 1.69 (.68)
1. compassionate Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.86 (.48) 2.37 (.59) 2.84 (.41) 1.63 (.73)
2. practical Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.69 (.74) 1.90 (.66) 1.15 (.39) 1.95 (.57)
3. decisive Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.53 (.75) 1.14 (.35) 1.49 (.58) 2.01 (.71)
4. cautious Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.94 (.77) 2.48 (.65) 1.63 (.67) 1.97 (70)
42 Do you think this should be a top priority, some priority, or no priority at all in the way we conduct our foreign policy. (1=top priority, 2=some priority, 3=no priority, 9=don’t know)
5. following moral principles Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.42 (.65) 1.57 (.65) 2.65 (.56) 1.45 (.60)
45 Do you think that we should increase our spending on national defense, keep it about the same, or cut it back? (1=increase, 2=same, 3=cut back)
Nationalist Con. Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
1.73 (.81) 1.11 (.36) 1.84 (.68) 2.82 (.42)
*For purposes of calculating expert means and standard deviations, “Don’t Know” is coded as missing.
51
TABLE A2: Elements and Coding of Worldview Scales (Pew Center 2004)
Worldview Scale Coding, by Question Nationalists Q32 & Q33: No Leadership (Q32)
Q34: Own estimates of national interests Q37: never Q39: protect against terrorist attacks, Prevent spread of WMD, Insure adequate energy supplies Q42: Cautious Q45: Increase defense spending
Realists Q32 & Q33: Shared Leadership (Q32) & Most Active (Q33) Q34: Both Interest and Views of Allies and Own Estimates of National Interests Q37: sometimes Q39: protect against terrorist attacks, Prevent spread of WMD, Insure adequate energy supplies, Promoting U.S. business and economic interests abroad Q42: Practical, Cautious Q45: About the same defense spending
Conservative Internationalists
Q32 & Q33: Single Leader (Q32) & Most Active (Q33) Q34: Own estimates of national interests Q37: Often Q39: protect against terrorist attacks, Prevent spread of WMD, Insure adequate energy supplies, Promoting democracy, Promoting U.S. business and economic interests abroad Q42: Decisive, Follow moral principles Q45: Increase defense spending
Liberal Internationalists
Q32 & Q33: Shared leadership (Q32) & About as active (Q33) Q34: Interests and views of allies Q37: Rarely Q39: Strengthen United Nations, Reduce spread of AIDS, Protect against genocide, Promoting democracy, Find solution to Israel-Palestinian conflict Q42: Compassionate, Practical, Follow moral principles Q45: Cut back defense spending
52
TABLE A3. Iraq Support Scale Questions (Pew Center 2004) Question Number
Question Text
Coding
Q30 Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?
1=approve, 0=disapprove, .5=don’t know
Q60 Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq?
1=right decision, 0=wrong decision, .5=don’t know/refused
Q61 How well is the U.S. military effort in Iraq going? 1=not at all well, 2= not too well, 3=fairly well, 4= very well, 2.5=don’t know/refused (recoded to 0-1 interval)
Q62 Do you think the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, or do you think the U.S. should bring its troops home as soon as possible?
1=keep troops in Iraq, 0=bring troops home, .5=don’t know/refused
Q63 Do you think George W. Bush has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion, or don’t you think so?
1=has a clear plan, 0=doesn’t have a clear plan, .5=don’t know/refused
Q64 Do you think the war in Iraq has helped the war on terrorism, or has it hurt the war on terrorism?
1=helped, 0=hurt, .5=don’t know/refused
53
Table A4. Questions and Coding for 1997 Pew Center Surveya
Question Coding Q.24 What kind of leadership role should the United States play in the world? Should it be the single world leader, or should it play a shared leadership role, or shouldn't it play any leadership role? IF ANSWERED 2 "SHARED LEADERSHIP ROLE", IN Q.24 ASK: Q.25 Should the United States be the most active of the leading nations, or should it be about as active as other leading nations?
Nationalists: No leadership
Q.26 As I read a list of possible LONG-RANGE foreign policy goals which the United States might have, tell me how much priority you think each should be given. First, (READ AND ROTATE), do you think this should have top priority, some priority, or no priority at all:
h. Promoting and defending human rights in other countries Liberal Internationalists: No priority = minimum; Top Priority = Maximum
i. Protecting weaker nations against foreign aggression even if U.S. vital interests are not at stake
Liberal Internationalists: No priority = minimum; Top Priority = maximum
m. Helping improve the living standards in developing nations
Liberal Internationalists: No priority = minimum; Top Priority = maximum
Q.32 Generally, do you approve or disapprove of expanding NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary?
Liberal Internationalists: Approve Conservative Internationalists: Approve Realists: Disapprove Nationalists: Disapprove
Q.34 Would you approve or disapprove of the use of U.S. forces in the following situations:
a. If Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia. Conservative Internationalists: Approve Realists: Approve Nationalists: Disapprove
b. If North Korea invaded South Korea Liberal Internationalists: Disapprove Conservative Internationalists: Approve Realists: Approve Nationalists: Disapprove
c. If Arab forces invaded Israel Liberal Internationalists: Approve Conservative Internationalists: Approve Realists: Approve Nationalists: Disapprove
Q.36 Do you believe that sending U.S. and other NATO forces to Bosnia has improved the chances of finding a way to permanently end the fighting there, or not? Yes, improved chances of ending fighting, No, has not, Don’t know/Refused
Liberal Internationalists: No Conservative Internationalists: Yes Realists: Yes Nationalists: No
Q. 37 If peace in Bosnia depended on the continued presence of U.S. troops, would you support an extension of the American military mission there, or would you oppose it?
Liberal Internationalists: Yes Conservative Internationalists: Yes Realists: Yes Nationalists: No
Q.46F2 As I read some things the U.S. can do to help other countries, tell me whether you favor or oppose them:
a. Food and medical assistance to people in needy Liberal Internationalists: Favor
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countries. Conservative Internationalists: Favor Realists: Favor Nationalists: Oppose
b. Aid that helps needy countries develop their economies Liberal Internationalists: Favor Favor Conservative Internationalists: Yes Realists: Oppose Nationalists: Oppose
c. Aid to support family planning and birth control in developing nations
Liberal Internationalists: Favor Conservative Internationalists: Oppose Nationalists: Oppose
aNote: Though we coded all questions for all worldviews, not all questions are included in the scales for all worldviews. Decisions to include or exclude a question in the scale corresponding to a particular worldview were based on alpha reliability testing and factor analyses. All questions and scales are normalized to 0-1 intervals.
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*For purposes of calculating expert means and standard deviations, responses of “Don’t Know” are coded as missing.
TABLE A5: 1996 & 2004 ANES Worldview Scale Questions Question Number
Question
Response Categories & Our Implicit Coding (IC)
Expert Rating Mean (Std. Dev.)*
VCF0823 'This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other parts of the world.'
1=agree 0=disagree .5=DK (IC: agree=Nationalist, Realist/Con. Internat’list in between, disagree=Liberal Internationalist)
Nationalist Con Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
.89 (.30)
.03 (.18)
.15 (.36)
.02 (.22)
VCF0843 Some people believe that we should spend much less money for defense. (1996,2004: Suppose these people are at one end of a scale, at point 1.) Others feel that defense spending should be greatly increased. (1996,2004: Suppose these people are at the other end, at point 7.) (2004: And, of course, some other people have opinions somewhere in between, at points 2,3,4,5, or 6). Where would you place yourself on this scale or haven't you thought much about this?
1. Greatly decrease defense spending 2. 3. 4. Keep about the same or DK 5. 6. 7. Greatly increase defense spending. ( IC: decrease=Nationalist & Con. Internat’list, same or slight increase=Realist, increase=Liberal Internationalist)
Nationalist Con Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
4.70 (1.67) 5.90 (1.31) 4.86 (1.39) 2.76 (1.18)
VCF0854 'We should be more tolerant of people who choose to live according to their own moral standards, even if they are very different from our own.' Do you agree strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree somewhat, or disagree strongly with this statement?
1. Agree strongly 2. Agree somewhat 3. Neither agree nor disagree or DK 4. Disagree somewhat 5. Disagree strongly ( IC: disagree=Nationalist & Con. Internat’list, neither=Realist, disagree=Liberal Internationalist)
Nationalist Con Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
3.24 (1.29) 4.55 (.84) 2.38 (1.09) 2.45 (1.41)
VCF0879 Do you think the number of immigrants from foreign countries who are permitted to come to the United States to live should be (1992,1994: increased a little, increased a lot, decreased a little, decreased a lot, or left the same as it is now?) (1996,1998: increased a lot, increased a little, decreased a little, decreased a lot, or left the same as it is now?) (2004: increased a lot, increased a little, left the same as it is now, decreased a little, or decreased a lot?)
1. Increased a lot 2. Increased a little 3. Same as now or DK 4. Decreased a little 5. Decreased a lot (IC: decreased=Nationalist, same=Realist, same or decrease a little=Con. Internat’list, increase=Liberal Internationalist)
Nationalist Con Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
4.82 (.60) 3.86 (.94) 3.16 (.78) 1.95 (.75)
VCF0892 If you had a say in making up the federal budget this year, for which (of the following) programs would you like to see spending increased and for which would you like to see spending decreased: Should federal spending on Foreign Aid be increased, decreased or kept about the same?
1. Increased 2. Same or DK 3. Decreased or cut out entirely (IC: decrease/cut out=Nationalist, same= Realist & Con. Internat’list, increase=Liberal Internationalist)
Nationalist Con Internat’list Realist Lib. Internat’list
2.90 (.35) 1.79 (.79) 2.05 (.66) 1.04 (.25)