Summary/Abstract:

During international rivalry, people often call for broadly punitive policies against the foreign rival’s citizens, or what we term “collective punishment.” For example, some American lawmakers and people have demanded a broad range of immigration, economic, and investigative policies that would target all Chinese nationals. Such calls for collective punishment against foreigners can be especially pernicious for cosmopolitan countries, like the United States, that host citizens from all around the world. In this context, our project investigates why some people support policies that indiscriminately impact an entire group. Building upon the basic ingroup-outgroup distinction laid out in social identity theory, we conceptualize people’s perception of a social outgroup as containing two properties of “groupness”—entitativity/cohesion and essence/quality. We then argue that stronger perceptions of groupness cause greater willingness to indiscriminately punish an outgroup. We test this theory using a novel survey design that can measure the effect of groupness perceptions both with observational and experimental data. We find initial evidence in the context of American public opinion on Chinese and Russian nationals. We explore these patterns in the Australian mass public and American local government policymaker contexts as well. The results will uncover new insight into how international competition bleeds into domestic politics.

Bio:

Jonathan Chu is a Presidential Young Professor in International Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is also the chair of the Master in International Affairs (MIA) program.

Professor Chu research how global norms and opinion impact the politics of war, democracy, and great power rivalry. His work appears in peer-reviewed publications such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and World Politics. In addition to his research, Professor Chu teaches, consults, and gives talks on issues of international affairs, democracy, public opinion, and survey methodology.

Professor Chu received a B.A. in political science from UC San Diego, and a Ph.D. also in political science from Stanford University, where he was a U.S. National Science Foundation Fellow. He completed postdoctoral work at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. You can follow him on Twitter at @whoisjonchu and read more about his research at https://www.jonathanchu.org/.