Who Is an Ally Anyway? A Conjoint Analysis of Alliance Perceptions

• In Event: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Although we know what an alliance is, who an ally is seems much less clear. Indeed, in the US political lexicon many actors are described as American allies, ranging from NATO members to Israel and Ukraine, to Saudi Arabia and stateless groups such as the Syrian Kurds. Meanwhile, countries like Turkey experience historic levels of public and elite-level skepticism, diminishing their perceptions as longstanding treaty allies. To the extent that public support for war is shaped by alliance relationships as the existing research suggests, how the public thinks about who is and is not an ally becomes critically important for US foreign policy. This project builds on the alliance literature to investigate how the public forms its perceptions of allies. It leverages a conjoint survey experiment to identify the dimensions that the US public prioritizes to decide whether a foreign actor is a US ally. The findings contribute to the alliance literature by testing how the existing explanations of alliance formation shape public perceptions. They also shed light on the more recent debates concerning the factors that help alliances endure.

Author

• Sibel Oktay, Chicago Council on Global Affairs