Spinning the Globe? U.S. Public Diplomacy and Foreign Public Opinion

Global public opinion has emerged as an important factor affecting international relations. But have U.S. public diplomacy efforts during the post-9/11 period successfully improved foreign publics’ images of the U.S. and its foreign policy? We examine this question by estimating the effects of U.S. high-level visits to foreign countries on public opinion in those countries. Our compositional data analysis shows that the effects of such visits were initially significantly large and positive, became weaker once the war in Iraq began and international media started reporting negative aspects of the war on terror, and eventually disappeared. When foreign publics were asked questions highlighting the relevance of U.S. foreign policy to their own country’s interests, the effects of high-level visits were particularly weak and eventually came to be negative. Theoretically, our findings point to the continuing importance of agenda setting and legitimacy in a world of “complex interdependence” and limited utility of military power. They also suggest the relevance of the “rational public” and “pretty prudent public” frameworks for global public opinion. Of relevance to policy makers, our evidence suggests that high-level public diplomacy can cause damage to a state’s image under conditions of lost legitimacy. * Prepared for presentation at the Conference on Comparative Public Diplomacy: Japan and the Asia Pacific at the Old Parliament House (Canberra, Australia) on March 6, 2007. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) on January 19, 2007. We thank Victor Quirk and Kanika Meshram for research assistance and Sarah Ellen Graham and Matt Linley for useful comments. We also acknowledge financial support from the Toshiba International Foundation and from the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle, Australia. ** Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University. Email: [email protected]. *** Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University. Email: [email protected]. Please send all correspondence to Yusaku Horiuchi.