How Fear of Domination Affects Public Support for International Organizations: A Conjoint Experiment Approach

We theorize the notion of “fear of domination” and argue that people rely on a series of realist heuristics to gauge their support for an IO. Based on realist thinking, we hypothesize that individuals are less likely to support IOs that are subject to domination or manipulation. We identify five different aspects that describe whether an IO could fall prey to the dominance of a single actor. We fielded a conjoint survey experiment through Amazon Mechanical Turk in December 2020. The analysis supports the theory of fear of domination, and it shows that Americans are far less likely to support IOs that are mainly funded by China in comparison to those funded mainly by the EU or equally by all member states. Americans also prefer IOs where decisions are made via majoritarian rule, IOs that are focused on specific issue areas, and IOs where the US has made financial contributions.

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