Does Authoritarian International Law Shape Public Preferences?

• In Event: Democracy vs. Autocracy

Abstract

Do international audiences view compliance with international law favorably, even if it was written by authoritarians? Existing research shows that international laws written by democracies indeed shape public preferences. I expand the scholarship by testing if that compliance pull exists even if international laws were written by dictators. If international audiences find messages coming from dictators as authoritative, as long as they are presented in the form of law, the implications of growing clout of international institutions designed by authoritarians are significant. In this project, I conduct two waves of online survey experiments with a 5x2 factorial design in Vietnam and the United States. This question speaks to the foundational topic of international law in that it tests whether it is the message or the messengers that give legitimacy to international law. This timely topic further deepens the understanding of a growing number of Authoritarian International Law, treaties that are written by groups of authoritarian state leaders.

Author

• Jihyeon Bae, University of Washington