The Impact of Political Apologies on Public Opinion

Abstract

Apology diplomacy promises to assuage historical grievances held by foreign publics, yet in practice appears to ignite domestic backlash, raising questions about its efficacy. This article develops a theory of how political apologies affect public approval of an apologizing government across domestic and foreign contexts. The authors test its implications using large-scale survey experiments in Japan and the United States. In the surveys, the authors present vignettes about World War II grievances and randomize the nature of a government apology. They find that apology-making, both as statements acknowledging wrongdoing and as expressions of remorse, boosts approval in the recipient state. But in the apologizing state, backlash is likely among individuals with strong hierarchical group dispositions—manifested as nationalism, social-dominance orientation, and conservatism—and among those who do not consider the recipient a strategically important partner. This microlevel evidence reveals how leaders face a crucial trade-off between improving support abroad and risking backlash at home, with implications for the study of diplomatic communication and transitional justice.

Crafting international apologies that work: A conjoint analysis approach

“…Referring to this trend, Gibney et al (2009) called the present era the “age of apology.” Accordingly, a growing number of scholars are paying attention to political apologies and examining their effect on victims’ perceptions of the perpetrator group. Some studies have been based on in-depth qualitative analysis of historical cases (Lind, 2009, 2011; Long and Brecke, 2003), but the majority of studies are quantitative (Blatz et al, 2009, 2014; Hornsey and Wohl, 2013; Kitagawa and Chu, 2021; Okimoto et al, 2015; Paez, 2010; Philpot and Hornsey, 2008, 2011; Wohl et al, 2012, 2013).…”

“…However, such an apology may not be optimal considering domestic politics and relations with countries other than the victimized one. Several studies, for example, have pointed out that certain apology elements are prone to spark a backlash from the perpetrator country's citizens, mainly from those who are high in social dominance orientation, which then reduces the apology's effectiveness (Kitagawa and Chu, 2021; Lind, 2011; Mifune et al, 2019; Ohtsubo et al, 2021). Therefore, in analyzing international apologies, it is also important to consider how significant each apology element is for the victimized country's citizens.…”

“…Some studies were carried out by international relations scholars (e.g. Kitagawa and Chu, 2021;Lind, 2011;Long and Brecke, 2003;Minow, 2002) and others by social psychologists (e.g. Blatz et al, 2009Blatz et al, , 2014Hornsey and Wohl, 2013;Okimoto et al, 2015;Paez, 2010;Hornsey, 2008, 2011;Wohl et al, 2012Wohl et al, , 2013.…”

Japan: the harbinger state

“…Japan has also been examined as a key case to address general, substantive questions in areas such as trade policy and the evolution of the international order (Davis, 2003;Naoi, 2015;Lipscy, 2017;Goddard, 2018;Funabashi and Ikenberry, 2020). Another common approach is to leverage some feature of Japan advantageous for causal inferencee.g., as-if random assignment of attributes such as the timing of municipal elections and candidate surnamesor to conduct survey experiments on Japanese subjects to examine questions of broader significance (Fukumoto and Horiuchi, 2011;Fukumoto and Miwa, 2018;Kitagawa and Chu, 2021).…”

Victim-focused political apology predicts political support via perceived sincerity, trust and positive emotional climate: The case of the 2018 bushfire in Attica

“…This social harmony is reflected on positive perceptions of emotional climate by victims when they are involved in reparato ry activities (Páez, Espinosa, & Bobowik, 2013), reporting positive social well-being (Rimé et al, 2011), positive perceived emotional climate and intentions to support the apologisers' policies (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008). Subsequent studies have, indeed, confirmed that victim-inclusive forms of apology gain more political support than victim-exclusive forms, because of better psychosocial healing and more highly perceived repair of the wrongdoing (Blatz & Philpot, 2010;Blatz et al, 2009;Kitagawa & Chu, 2021). Likewise, Berndsen et al (2015) suggested that victim-focused apologies yield more positive outcomes in terms of support, forgiveness and perceived sincerity of offenders than offender-focused apologies.…”