Does Public Diplomacy Sway Foreign Public Opinion? Identifying the Effect of High-Level Visits

Abstract

Although many governments invest significant resources in public-diplomacy campaigns, there is little well-identified evidence of these efforts’ effectiveness. We examine the effects of a major type of public diplomacy: high-level visits by national leaders to other countries. We combine a dataset of the international travels of 15 leaders from 9 countries over 11 years, with worldwide surveys administered in 38 host countries. By comparing 32,456 respondents interviewed just before or just after the first day of each visit, we show that visiting leaders can increase public approval among foreign citizens. The effects do not fade away immediately and are particularly large when public-diplomacy activities are reported by the news media. In most cases, military capability differentials between visiting and host countries do not appear to confer an advantage in the influence of public diplomacy. These findings suggest that public diplomacy has the potential to shape global affairs through soft power.

Travel to and from the United States and Foreign Leader Approval

“…One possible benefit is higher approval. Thus, it is somewhat curious that Goldsmith et al (2021) do not detect any approval effects for the host leader when such effects are found for the visiting leader. Perhaps Goldsmith and colleagues' (2021) combining visits across all leaders may mute variation in effects across leaders.…”

“…For reasons detailed below, there are reasons to expect stronger effects from U.S. presidents visiting and hosting than for other leaders. 2 Third, data limitations plague past research, despite the efforts of Goldsmith and his colleagues Horiuchi 2009, 2012;Goldsmith et al 2021) to collect cross-national data across a large number of nations and visits. This article addresses these limitations by combining data on presidential and secretary of state visits to foreign nations and foreign leader visits to the United States, with monthly data on approval of foreign leaders across 32 nations from the Executives Approval Project database (http://www.executiveapproval.org/).…”

“…Toward that end, the visiting and host leaders orchestrate public events aimed at attracting copious and positive media attention and news coverage. Goldsmith et al (2021) find a significant effect of trips on approval of visiting leaders when there is media coverage, but no significant effect in the absense of media coverage. The trips of Barack Obama also appear to have focused foreign public attention on the U.S. president, as evidenced with online search volume (Cohen 2016).…”

“…As with the U.S. president, popularity may enhance foreign leader reelection prospects, promote continuation in office, fend off challenges to their leadership, and improve their bargaining situation with domestic and foreign leaders. In the only relevant study of which I am aware, Goldsmith et al (2021, 12) find “no evidence suggesting that high‐level foreign visits translate into a boost in approval for the host leader.”…”

“…Much of the literature makes it appear or implies that U.S. presidents fully determine whom to visit/host and the timing of such visits (Cavari and Ables 2019; Cohen 2016; Ostrander and Rider 2019). But foreign travel is better conceptualized as a coordination problem between the two leaders (Goldsmith et al 2021; Malis and Smith 2021). The meeting will occur only if both leaders calculate that it will benefit them.…”