Muslim Attitudes toward IOs: Do Elites Matter? Evidence from two Survey Experiments in Pakistan and Egypt

Does elite framing significantly shape Muslim attitudes on international organizations? Previous literature on citizen attitudes toward international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) provides two notable findings: First, international organizations are viewed quite favorably by publics across the developing world with the exception of citizens in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East. Second, trust in domestic elites strongly influences citizen attitudes towards international actors across the globe. Building on these findings, our project seeks to identify which elite cues have the greatest effect on public opinion of international organizations within predominantly Muslim countries inside and outside the Arab region. Given the low knowledge of international organizations among ordinary citizens, we expect that elite framing will be significant in how Muslim populations form perceptions and beliefs about international organizations but that there will be differences of these framing effects between Arab and non-Arab countries. To test this expectation, we conduct a survey experiment in Pakistan (n~1500) and Egypt (n~1000) to see whether and which elites matter in their respective contexts. Preliminary analysis suggests that framing by both religious and political elites can invoke a significant change in public opinion on international organizations but that the direction of change is different for Pakistani and Egyptian citizens. Given these results, we see the conference as an opportunity to discuss our findings, their substantial interpretation, and possible mediating and moderating factors, as well as priming effects that may have occurred prior to the experimental conditions. This will lend more confidence to our experimental design and findings and, hence, improve our understanding of the sources of legitimacy of international organizations in the Muslim world.