Do international rankings affect public opinion?

In: The British journal of politics & international relations: BJPIR

Abstract

International rankings push governments to adopt better policies by providing comparative information on states' performance. How do citizens respond to this information? We answer this question through a preregistered survey experiment in Israel, testing the effect of rankings in the fields of human rights and the environment. We find that citizens respond to international rankings selectively. Informed about a high ranking given to their country, citizens tend to express a more positive assessment of the country's performance. By contrast, they seem to dismiss poor rankings of their country. We further find that poor rankings on a polarising issue, such as human rights, might face a particularly strong resistance from citizens. Overall, our results engage with and support recent scholarship sceptical of the impact of international shaming on public opinion. Even gentle shaming – expressed through a low numerical grade – might not be well received by the public.