U.S. Public Opinion Toward Withdrawal from International Organizations

• In Event: Citizen Opinion on International Cooperation

Abstract

States have withdrawn from international organizations (IO) over 225 times since World War II but until recently, these exits have mostly occurred without much public fanfare. Why, then, has the US Trump Administration raised IO withdrawals to front-page headlines, especially since the US public does not know much about IOs and does not tend to vote on foreign policy issues? We argue that the President gains public support by linking IO withdrawals to broad foreign policy preferences, because citizens have fairly stable preferences on globalization, national security, and costly multilateralism. The clear-cut and binary nature of IO withdrawal tied to broad foreign policy frames makes it easier for leaders to sell IO withdrawal as a policy success and prime voters that they have “done something lately” which can help them at election time. We conduct survey experiments (conjoint and vignette experiments) in the US, which support this argument. We find that public support for IO withdrawal strongly depends on framing related to the US’s role in the world. However, we do not find that leaders face broad audience costs for exiting IOs, perhaps explaining why this action has been heightened by recent leaders.

Authors

• Felicity Vabulas, Pepperdine University

• Inken von Borzyskowski, University College London (UCL)