International opinion about the world’s great powers is increasingly framed as a central arena of soft-power competition. But we know relatively little about the global distribution and microfoundations of people’s attitudes towards great powers. In this paper, Professor Ben Goldsmith develops and applies a simple cognitive theory of foreign citizens’ attitudes towards great powers, assessing his expectations for attitudes towards China, Russia, and the United States. 

Using global data across two survey projects from over 100 countries and 1.1 million respondents over two decades, Ben finds qualified support for his conjectures regarding the role of perceived self-interest, normative values, and identity. Contrary to expectations from the perspective of great-power rivalry and soft-power competition, it is found that most people around the world tend to lump great powers together and hold either positive or negative attitudes towards them all, driven by their perceived economic self-interest as well as a gender gap. For the minority of people who make distinctions, evidence suggests these differentiations are correlated with education and religious identity, but less so with liberal values. In this seminar, Professor Goldsmith will draw out implications for the study of soft power, public diplomacy, public opinion and foreign policy. 

Benjamin E. Goldsmith is a Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. His research in international relations, global public opinion, and atrocity forecasting has appeared in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, PNAS Nexus, and World Politics. It has been featured in popular media, including The Economist, The New York Times, Scientific American, and The Washington Post. He has received several major research grants, including an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. He was the inaugural President of the Australian Society for Quantitative Political Science and serves on the editorial boards of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific and the Journal of East Asian Studies. 

Zoom meeting ID: 528 504 2235 

Password: 8675309