The drivers of public support for international organizations (IOs) are multifaceted and contested. Focusing on the US, we argue that citizens weigh elite cues about the financial burden associated with funding IOs and the influence over IOs that such funding yields. Moreover, we identify political ideology as a powerful moderator – theorizing that conservatives should respond more positively to cues about US influence and more negatively to cues about financial costs than liberals. We find support for the core theory, but also counterintuitively find that the negative effect of the cost treatment manifests primarily amongst liberals as opposed to conservatives. A second, pre-registered experiment reveals that conservatives support increasing funding to IOs to secure US influence, and may even support increasing taxes to do so, especially when cued by a co-partisan. By contrast, liberals who learn that funding provides influence prefer to cut funding to IOs, even when cued by a co-partisan.

公众对国际组织 (IO) 的支持的驱动因素是多方面的和有争议的。以美国为中心，我们认为公民会权衡精英暗示与资助 IO 相关的财务负担以及此类资金对 IO 产生的影响。此外，我们认为政治意识形态是一个强大的调节者——理论上保守派应该比自由派更积极地回应有关美国影响力的线索，而更消极地回应有关金融成本的线索。我们找到了对核心理论的支持，但也违反直觉地发现成本处理的负面影响主要体现在自由派而不是保守派中。第二个预先注册的实验表明，保守派支持增加对 IO 的资助以确保美国的影响力，甚至可能支持为此增加税收，尤其是在有同党的暗示时。相比之下，得知资金提供影响力的自由主义者更愿意削减对 IO 的资金支持，即使是在同党人士的暗示下也是如此。