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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Does information increase opinion quality? The differential effects of information on the quality of opinions towards defence issues 1

Cyrille Thiébaut
Friederike Richter

Résumé

The capacity of citizens to voice an opinion on military issues is a much-debated topic. In the literature, those issues are often presented as remote from people's daily preoccupations, for which they lack both interest and information. However, as military issues have gained visibility since the end of the Cold War, prompted by multiple debates about overseas operations, nuclear (dis)armament, professionalisation of the armed forces, budget cuts, etc., public opinion matters increasingly. In this survey experiment, we aim to determine if providing information during the surveys could improvein terms of stability and acceptance of consequences-people's opinions on strategic issues in France, Germany and the UK, three countries that vary in their military power and defence policies. We assume that the effect of providing information on opinions will depend on three main factors: (1) the level of knowledge of the respondents; (2) the salience of the issues on which they are questioned; (3) the national strategic culture of the country of the respondents. We test our hypotheses on three different issues that have been central to defence policies in Europe since the mid-nineties: European defence cooperation, military operations abroad, and nuclear deterrence. Assessing the extent to which the provision of information may influence survey responses is essential for the use of polls as a proper democratic tool for the collective decision-making process. 1 This paper is part of a larger project OPIDEF "Public opinion, democratic accountability and evaluation of defence: towards a new comparative research agenda", funded by Sciences Po-LIEPP.
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Dates et versions

hal-03860540 , version 1 (18-11-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03860540 , version 1

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Cyrille Thiébaut, Friederike Richter, Lou Safra. Does information increase opinion quality? The differential effects of information on the quality of opinions towards defence issues 1. American Political Science Association Conference, Sep 2021, Seattle (Online), United States. ⟨hal-03860540⟩
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