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International rankings and public opinion: Compliance, dismissal, or backlash?

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Abstract

Despite growing scholarly interest in international rankings, we know little on how the public perceives them. Do rankings bring citizens to favor compliance with international standards? Or do citizens simply dismiss the rankings? We examine these questions through the Israeli public’s response to the U.S. tier ranking of efforts against human trafficking. A survey experiment finds that Israel’s demotion from Tier 1 to Tier 2 leaves Israelis unfazed; a demotion to Tier 3 produces a surprising backlash effect, reducing Israelis’ support for anti-trafficking efforts. While this should have been a likely case for demonstrating the intended impact of rankings, we show that rankings might, in fact, meet a dismissive or defiant public response. This finding suggests caution in the assessment of international rankings’ domestic impact, and it carries implications for the design of rankings to reduce the risk of a backlash.

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The replication data, code, and appendix for this article are available in the electronic supplementary materials on the Review of International Organizations’ webpage.

Notes

  1. Respondents were also offered a sixth, “don’t know” option. Those who chose it (5.7%) were excluded from the analysis. Including these respondents in the analysis has little effect on the results (see the robustness checks reported in Online Appendix D).

  2. Two-tailed tests are reported throughout. The difference between the No tier ranking and Tier 2 conditions is p = .886; the difference between the No tier ranking and Tier 3 conditions is p = .214.

  3. The difference between the No tier ranking and Tier 2 conditions is p = .896.

  4. The Peers coefficient captures the combined effects of being exposed to peer countries in both Tier 2 and Tier 3, compared to not being exposed to peer countries in both tiers. Notably, the effect of exposure to peer countries is rather similar across Tier 2 and Tier 3, as the coefficient of an interaction between the Tier 2 and Tier 3 conditions and the Peers information is rather small and statistically insignificant (b = -0.02; p = 0.589).

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Funding

This study received funding from the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at Reichman University.

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  1. Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel

    Asif Efrat & Omer Yair

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  1. Asif Efrat
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Correspondence to Asif Efrat.

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Author contributions to research design and conceptualization: Efrat (70%), Yair (30%); statistical analysis: Efrat (30%), Yair (70%); writing: Efrat (70%), Yair (30%).

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Efrat, A., Yair, O. International rankings and public opinion: Compliance, dismissal, or backlash?. Rev Int Organ 18, 607–629 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-022-09484-y

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