McMeasuring Diplomacy: Modeling Determinants of International Public Opinion Toward the United States

This paper is concerned with modeling the extent to which external factors affect political attitudes toward the United States. The data is concerned with how economic, governance, and cultural factors impact attitudes regarding the favorability of the United States in the eyes of the world, and testing the empirical implications of Thomas Friedman’s Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. The results suggest a strong negative relationship between a country being a Muslim majority country and the favorability of the United States in that country, a positive relationship between the perceived “Voice and Accountability” of a country and the favorability of the United States in that country. Although the study finds no relationship between trade in general and the favorability of the United States—the study does find that trade with domestically producing firms of the United States increases the favorability of the United States abroad