Public Opinion and the Syrian Crisis in Three Democracies

The aim of this project is to enhance understanding of the nature and consequences of the reaction of citizens in three mature democracies (UK, US, and France) to the dynamic and volatile military and humanitarian situation in Syria. As this is written, the leaders of the three countries have 'climbed down' from initial threats to use military force in response to the al-Assad regime's purported use of chemical weapons, but the situation could change at any moment. The foreign aid commitment the UK has made to the Syrian relief effort is the largest in UK history and the US and France are making sizable contributions to the effort. Given mounting public scepticism concerning levels of overall aid commitments made by their countries during the recent economic downturn, stakes are high and success or failure of the aid effort could shape public attitudes on the topic for years to come.

The applicants propose simultaneously fielded two-wave panel surveys of the publics of these three countries. Data from these surveys will be linked to those from previous surveys that measured attitudes on foreign policy generally, and Syria, specifically. The first wave of the proposed surveys-to be fielded before what relief workers and diplomats suspect will be a difficult and pivotal winter (in both the war and the refugee crisis)-will utilize a stratified sampling design, aimed at measuring whether attitudes to the crisis vary across constituencies/electoral districts and whether such variation correlates with elite (legislator) attitudes towards options leaders have on the table.

Key questions to be addressed: 1) whether people are capable of forming coherent and durable foreign policy judgments; 2) how people weigh costs and benefits of alternative courses of action leaders propose to respond to the Syrian crisis; 3) to what extent are public reactions to the Syrian crisis affected by attitudes about political elite(s) proposing various responses; 4) to ascertain effects of beliefs about the morality of war and the necessity of humanitarian relief on reactions to the Syrian crisis; 5) levels of people's engagement with their country's responses to the crisis; 6) how core values and personality characteristics shape attitudes toward the Syrian crisis; 7) levels of aggregate- and individual-level stability and change in attitudes towards the crisis in reaction to evolving events and conditions; 8) national and socio-demographic variation in responses to the crisis.

The applicants have extensive experience conducting large national multi-wave panel surveys in various countries (UK, USA, Canada, Germany) and they have the methodological skills needed to analyse data gathered by such surveys.

Dissemination of findings and engagement with academics and practitioners will occur via several channels. Reports will be presented at major national and international conferences and a dissemination conference will be held in London before the end of 2013. Papers will be presented at scholarly conferences and peer-reviewed articles will be published in academic journals. Accessible reports highlighting major findings will distributed to journalists, government officials, think tanks, NGOs and other user communities. A webpage will be built to host reports and graphic data displays, and interim data releases will be available for free download. Social media (Facebook, Twitter) will be used to enhance outreach. The applicants are liaising with government agencies (e.g., DFID) who are keenly interested in project outputs. Data sets, questionnaires and technical documentation will be deposited with the UK Data Archive.

A key output from this research programme will be three two-wave panel studies that will be linked to earlier surveys of the foreign policy attitudes of citizens in these three countries. The full dataset will be deposited at the UK Data Archive where it will be publicly available for secondary analyses.

This proposal is written as Britain appears to have ruled out the use of military force against Syria, but France and the US have reserved the right to use the military. Although the UK has ruled out using military force, the Government is mounting the nation's largest humanitarian relief effort in its history. To date, over £500 million has been committed to the cause of assisting Syrian civilians. The success or failure of this effort may shape the public's perceptions of the utility of aid commitments in the future.

The applicants are in contact with officials from the Department for International Development (DFID), who are interested in the public's perceptions of the British aid effort and how these perceptions are different from those in France and the United States. DFID is also concerned about the public's engagement with the UK aid campaign, and the possibilities that the large UK aid commitment will not be enough as winter conditions come to the conflict ridden region. DFID currently does not have a budget to undertake survey research, and the applicants have agreed to ask questions concerning the utility and efficacy of foreign aid DFID last fielded in 2010 (the questions also are of direct relevance to academic researchers). DFID will have input into questions concerning citizen perceptions of the efficacy and fairness of the UK's (and that of the US and France) aid commitment vis-à-vis the pledges made by other G8 nations.

Aside from civil servants at DFID, officials from the Home and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices have been engaged with findings from PI Scotto and co-PI Reifler's previous work on public opinion and foreign policy and engagement will continue with this project. If military options are placed back on the table by one or more of the three countries or should the monitoring of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles fail, public opinion about the conflict may shift suddenly. The surveys designed will be designed to capture public mood following a change in the situation on the ground and results will be analysed and passed along to government bodies on short notice. Throughout the life of the project, practitioners will be presented with a series of accessible reports or "policy papers" that delineate the distribution of foreign policy attitudes both within and across the three nations.
Professor Paul Whiteley has contacts with many UK government and parliamentary officials, and they will be engaged. The applicants are willing to present results before Select Committees and All Party Groups in the Houses of Commons and Lords. Co-Investigators Reifler and Clarke will seek out partners in the US, both those who may be interested in the results of the surveys (e.g.;the Brookings Institution) and those who may wish to partner with the applicants to fund additional waves (e.g., the Gates Foundation).

The applicants are interested and open to receiving inputs from other practitioners on the content of the planned surveys and experiments. Data from the applicants' surveys will be made publicly available via the UK Data Archive.

This project will have a dedicated webpage that will feature drafts of the planned surveys, initial releases of the data, and interactive features such as a project related blog where press releases will be issued and open for public comment.

Findings from the research will be discussed at a conference to be held at a dissemination event co-sponsored by the Foreign Policy Centre in Westminster after the first waves of survey data are collected and analysed. Video footage from this conference will be available in the form of a "vodcast" on the project related web-page.

In engaging practitioners and interested members of the public, the applicant will have support from a Web Support Officer, and Departmental and University of Essex and Exeter staffs. The need for this support has been included in the proposed budget.