Differentiation and diffusion: shifting public opinion attitudes toward foreign policy in North Africa

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Arab Barometer data, this article provides the backdrop for understanding continuity and change since the Arab Spring in national-level public opinion attitudes toward economic and political foreign policy issues in North Africa, inclusive of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The article leverages the concepts of differentiation and diffusion to understand how international affairs shape public opinion in North Africa since the Arab Spring. Three findings emerge. First, public opinion about domestic and international issues are linked in the minds of North African citizens and foreign policy issues are more important factors underlying pre- and post-Arab Spring politics than are often recognised. Especially in the post-Arab Spring era, Arab citizens widely see external interference as a problem and this perception increased in every North African country between 2013 and 2016. Moreover, there is considerable variation across and within North African states in attitudes toward economic and political foreign policy issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and attitudes about economic and security relationships with Israel. Anti-Israeli sentiment increased substantially in the years leading up to and following the Arab Spring. Finally, since the Arab Spring, anti-Americanism, as measured by negative perceptions of U.S. culture, has declined in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, but risen slightly in Egypt, even as North Africans demonstrate increased support for a U.S. role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict during this same time period. These trends suggest that anti-Americanism is highly dependent on specific domestic and international developments and is highly complex in the Arab world.

KEYWORDS:

• Public opinion
• Arab spring
• foreign policy
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• anti-Americanism
• Algeria
• Egypt
• Libya
• Morocco
• Tunisia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Lindsay J. Benstead http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2459-5857

Notes

1 Libya too held a free and fair election in 2012, but the security vacuum and intensification of civil war has undercut representative government.

2 In classic international relations theory, Waltz (1957, 1975) explained war through three images of analysis: the individual, the state, and the international system (i.e. anarchy). Gourevitch (1978) expanded on this work by arguing that domestic political structures and outcomes are shaped by the international system, in contrast to the second image, which explores the ways that international politics are shaped by characteristics of the state, such as capitalism. (Bush 2017; see also Corstange and Marinov 2012; Solingen 2012; Lynch 2013; Marinov 2013; Bamert, Gilardi, and Wasserfallen 2015; Bush and Jamal 2015; Benstead, Kao, and Lust 2017; Bush and Prather 2017).

3 Due to authoritarianism, none of the major cross-national surveys were conducted before 2011 in Tunisia and Libya. In Egypt, the World Values Survey was conducted in 2001 and 2008, but the Arab Barometer (2017), with its direct relevance to the study of public attitudes toward foreign policy, was not conducted in Egypt until after the Arab Spring.

4 Ellen Lust, Lindsay Benstead, and collaborators launched the TGP (2016) to study the transitional politics of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.

5 The Local Governance Performance Index was developed by Benstead, Landry, Lust, and Malouche to explain variation in education, health, and municipal service quality and transparency. The survey draws large samples of 300 more in each locality, allowing comparisons to be made across municipalities (GLD 2017).

6 Data weighted for all analyses of Waves 2 and 3 of the Arab Barometer (2017).