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ARTICLE • Bras. Political Sci. Rev. 14 (1) • 2020 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-3821202000010002   copy

How 'Democratic' is the Democratic Peace? A Survey Experiment of Foreign Policy Preferences in Brazil and China * * The authors thank Michael Tessler, Mike Thies, Dustin Tingley, and participants at the Research Seminar at the University College London, the PDEL conference in Park City, Utah, the Experiments in International Relations Conference at Princeton University, the Annual California Graduate Student Conference at UC Irvine, the European Consortium for Political Research's Research Session on Survey Experiments in International Relations at the University of Essex, and the Operant Research Group meeting at UC San Diego's Department of Psychology, and the SCPI conference at UC Santa Barbara for helpful comments. We are indebted to many sources of inspiration and assistance. In particular, funding was provided by the UCSD Committee on Research, the Center for Emerging and Pacific Economies, the UCSD Academic Senate Committee on Research Grants, and the Minerva Initiative, Office of Secretary of Defense & the Army Research Office, Grant Nº W911NF-12-1-0355. We thank Bruno Hoepers, Jason Kuo, and Jack Zhang for excellent research assistance. The study was approved by the UCSD Human Research Protections Program, #121619S. The views and conclusions of this paper are those of the author only and should not be interpreted as representing sponsor or federal government policies or endorsements. Clara H. Suong was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (award number 1637108).

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Recent research has shown that British and American respondents are less willing to advocate the use of force against fellow democracies than against non-democracies (TOMZ and WEEKS, 2013). These findings may contribute to understandings of the 'democratic bias'—unwillingness to attack democracies. A critical next step is assessing whether publics beyond the US and the UK have similar attitudes. To address the scope of popular preferences for peace with democracies, we conduct survey experiments using online panels in two emerging powers, one a democracy (Brazil) and one a non-democracy (China). Our survey randomly varies the hypothetical target's regime type and authorization by the United Nations for military action. We find that Brazilian respondents are significantly less likely to support the use of force against a democracy than a non-democracy. However, after controlling for UN approval, Chinese respondents do not appear to distinguish between democracies and non-democracies when considering whether force is justified. In addition, for both countries, UN approval has a larger effect than democracy on public support for the use of force.

Public opinion; Brazil; China; foreign policy; survey experiment

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