FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Democracy versus Autocracy in Foreign Policy: Public Attitudes toward China in the Asia-Pacific Region
This is part of Global Research Workshop series: Developing an Interdisciplinary Research Platform Toward ‘Next Asia’ co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies.
While the U.S. frames the growing geopolitical tensions with China as a strategic competition between democracy and autocracy, such a value diplomacy may have not been as effective in promoting liberal values as expected, especially in non-western regions. This is because citizens in these countries, due to a relatively short democratic history, tend to understand democracy in terms of electoral institutions rather than liberal values, thereby limiting the effectiveness of U.S. value diplomacy. To test this proposition, this study analyzes public attitudes toward China in the Asia-Pacific region, where the U.S.-China competition is most acute. Using a country-level cross-national analysis and an original survey experiment in South Korea, this study finds that China’s perceived threats to electoral institutions are more likely to generate unfavorable views toward the country than its perceived threats to liberal values. The findings not only advance our understanding of the role of democracy in forming public opinion on foreign policy but also offer important policy implications for the U.S. value diplomacy.
Presenter:
Gidong Kim is 2023-2025 Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Missouri, an M.A. and a B.A. in Political Science from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He studies comparative and international politics in East Asia, with particular focus on nationalism and identity politics, public opinion on foreign policy, migration, and inequality and redistribution in South Korea and East Asia. His work has been published in scholarly journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Asian Perspective, and Korea Observer among others. |
Discussants:
Sheena Chestnut Greitens is Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs UT's Asia Policy Program and serves as editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review. Her research focuses on security, authoritarian politics and foreign policy, and East Asia. Her first book, Dictators and Their Secret Police (Cambridge, 2016), examined variations in internal security and repression in Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines during the Cold War, and won multiple academic awards. Her second book, Politics of the North Korean Diaspora (Cambridge, 2023), focused on authoritarianism, security, and diaspora politics. She is currently finishing her third book manuscript, which addresses how internal security shapes Chinese grand strategy. Her research has also been published widely in academic and media outlets. Chestnut Greitens received her PhD from Harvard University; an MPhil from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar; and a B.A. with honors from Stanford University. |
Kenneth Schultz is William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science and director of the Program in International Relations at Stanford University. His research focuses on international conflict and conflict resolution, with a focus on domestic political institutions, territory and borders, and bargaining. He is the author of Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy and co-author of World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions, a leading introductory textbook, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
|
Okimoto Conference Room (E307)
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
