BIFD Osman Kıratlı

Do the People Consider Democracies as More Reliable International Allies?

by Osman Sabri Kıratlı

This project investigates whether citizens prefer democracies as allies and whether they regard democratic institutions as a signal of alliance reliability. To test these expectations, I field preregistered conjoint experiments on over 8,000 respondents in the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey, and additional surveys are planned for three more countries. In the experiments, respondents choose between hypothetical allies that vary in electoral competition, executive constraints, press freedom, membership in international organizations, military power, economic size, and religion. The results show that publics in all five countries prefer allies that have democratic attributes. Among the various democratic regime components, citizens are most sensitive to electoral competition, as fully competitive democracies receive substantially stronger support than partners with limited competition. Independent media, constraints on the executive, and extensive membership in international organizations also make an ally considerably more attractive. Democratic attributes raise reliability expectations and, to a lesser extent, perceptions of the ally’s international standing, both of which partly account for this democratic premium. Further analyses reveal that the democratic ally preference is particularly pronounced among citizens who value democracy and weaker among isolationists. The results also reveal, however, that religious affiliation remains a core, and in some contexts the primary, factor in alliance preferences.

Bio

Osman Sabri Kiratli is an associate professor of International Relations at the Waseda Institute of Advanced Study, Waseda University, Tokyo. Previously, he worked as an associate professor at Bogazici University, Istanbul. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, and also served as a Humboldt Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
His academic expertise includes political behavior, international political economy, international organizations, foreign aid, and European Union and Turkish politics. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Standing Group on International Relations and has published extensively in leading political science journals, including Perspectives on Politics, The Review of International Organizations, Political Behavior, European Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, and Political Studies.