Essential Reading: “Rulers or Rules?”

Working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but while we all help stem the COVID-19 tide by staying away from others, here’s some essential reading.  Forthcoming very soon in the European Journal of International Law:  Anton Strezhnev; Beth Simmons; and Matthew Kim, “Rulers or Rules? International Law, Elite Cues and Public Opinion.”  Here’s the abstract:

“One of the mechanisms by which international law can shape domestic politics is through its effects on public opinion. However, a growing number of national leaders have begun to advocate policies that ignore or even deny international law constraints. This article investigates whether international law messages can still shift public opinion even in the face of countervailing elite cues. It reports results from survey experiments conducted in three countries, the United States, Australia and India, which examined attitudes on a highly salient domestic political issue: restrictions on refugee admissions. In each experimental vignette, respondents were asked about their opinion on a proposed or ongoing restrictive refugee policy that was endorsed by the government but also likely contravened international refugee law. Respondents were randomly exposed to messages highlighting the policy’s illegality and/or the elite endorsement. The results show that, on average, the international law messages had a small but significant persuasive effect in reducing support for the restrictive policy – at most 10 percentage points. Surprisingly, there was no evidence that the countervailing elite endorsement was a significant moderator of this effect. However, in the case of the United States and among Republican co-partisans of the President, the elite endorsement independently increased respondents’ beliefs that the restriction was legal under international law while having no effect on support for the policy. The results suggest that cues from domestic elites do not strictly trump those from international sources and that despite cues about national leaders’ policy advocacy, international law can affect the attitudes of some voters even on an issue as heavily politicized as refugee policy.”

The draft paper is available for download through the Social Science Research Network here.