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America In The World
R. Alex Whitlock
By way of
The Corner I ran across this
interesting Pew survey on world attitude towards America. Here are some of the more interesting findings:
- The nation with the most positive attitudes towards America is... India, at 71%. Poland is second at 64%. Oddly, Canadians like us more (59%) than Brits do (55%). Russians actually have a more positive view than not of us, 52% to 40%.
- France and Germany give one another higher favorability than they give themselves. Germany is the most popular of the five leading nations (US, France, China, Japan, and Germany) but doesn't rate itself as being particularly popular (as opposed to Canada and France.
- The two nations with views in America that have declined the most are Indonesia (75% favorable in 2000, 38% in 2005) and Morocco (77% in 2000 to 27% in 2004).
- The French have a higher view of the American work ethic than Americans do, 89% to 84%. More Americans think Americans are greedy than Canadians think Americans are, 70% to 64%.
- More Canadians think Americans "aren't religious enough" than think American's are "too religious", 38% to 35%. Very strangely, Russians feel the same way with a greater disparity at 38% to 27%. I'm not surprised that some countries feel that we are not sufficiently religious, but I am quite surprised at those two!
- Canadians have the most positive assessment of how the world sees them. 94% of Canadians believe they are "liked" abroad. Americans have the most negative assessment at 26%.
- India is the only country that sees the United States as the foremost "land of opportunity." (or, at least, the land to live "a good life") The US has been supplanted by Australia, Canada, and Britain for the most part. The US generally continues to rate highly, though, coming in second place frequently.
- The world (outside the Middle East) has a higher opinion of Americans than of the United States. Even 64% of Frenchmen have a positive view of Americans. A lot of the anger towards the US is aimed at Bush. Only in Jordan and China are dominantly negative opinions driven more by Americans in general than "mostly" by Bush specifically.
- With a couple of exceptions, the more successful, industrialized, or developing a nation is economically, the less satisfied it seems to be. The US rates pretty poorly on satisfaction (39%), but the rest of the Anglosphere rates below 50% (Canada at 45%, Britain at 44%) and Europe even lower (France at 28%, Germany at 25%). India scores poorly, too, at 41%. No data available on Australia, which probably scores better. The two big exceptions are China (72%) and Spain (51%).
- Bush has been making an enduring effort to solidify relations with India. That India is one of the relatively few that holds America in high regard, it is either working or Bush chose a good nation to focus efforts on (as opposed to, say, France). He's been making a similar effort on Japan, so it's frustrating to see Japan excluded from most of the charts in the survey. I also would have appreciated more data on Australia, which probably has more in common with the US than any other nation.
Observations
I love the modesty- or pessimism-stats. Especially that even the French dislike the French!
Another note on India: for them, America truly *is* the land of opportunity, often without even leaving their own country. With small exception, nearly all of the standard of living increase in recent years has been due to economic involvement by American companies (the Ford factory, the infamous call centers, and other highly competitive jobs that pay far above national averages, along with things like gated communities in Bangalore populated largely by people who telecommute with America -- long-distance radiologists and so forth). More people there were rooting for Bush than for Kerry, but not because of any political overtures -- they simply feared Kerry because he and his followers talked about getting rid of outsourcing!
(And, our date*s* are Nov. 23rd, Thanksgiving Day, at 6:45 am, and Dec. 30.)
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