Determinants of Arab Public Opinion on Foreign Relations

Abstract

Using Zogby International polling data from seven different Arab nations (Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) this paper offers a societal-level quantitative analysis (N=91 dyads) of the determinants of Arab public opinion toward 13 different non-Arab countries (Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We first explore whether Arab public opinion toward these countries is predicted by general “realist,”“liberal,”“Marxist,” and/or “cultural” hypotheses suggested in the IR/foreign policy literature. After finding few statistically significant relationships among these variables, we present evidence that Arab publics evaluate non-Arab countries on the basis of those countries' specific foreign policy behaviors throughout the wider Middle East (e.g., especially those behaviors affecting Palestine and Iraq). Noting that these evaluations occur in the context of competing identity frames, we provisionally link Arab publics' concerns with “regional” matters to the high salience of “Arabist” identity among respondents to the Zogby survey.

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