Anti-Americanism Update

It appears that once you get outside of Hollywood, some faculty lounges, and certain parts of New York City, anti-Americanism is not as widespread as reported. An excerpt from The Boston Globe article:

Too often commentators who have written on anti-Americanism make do with anecdotal evidence: The burning of an American flag, or a chilly electoral climate for politicians who are seen as kowtowing to United States interests, are taken as signs that anti-Americanism is on the rise. By contrast, most contributors to the Katzenstein and Keohane volume rely on quantitative evidence from large-scale social surveys. Two especially noteworthy findings emerge.

First, fewer people around the globe hate the United States than might be imagined. As political scientist Giacomo Chiozza notes in a chapter analyzing data from a survey carried out in 44 countries in 2002, 43 percent of respondents worldwide said they had a "somewhat favorable" view of the United States, and 21 percent said they had a "very favorable" view. To be sure, anti-American sentiment is strong in some countries and regions. In the Middle East, for example, three quarters of respondents had negative views of the United States overall. But in France and Germany, more than 60 percent of respondents had positive views of the United States.

What's more, even where anti-American sentiment is high, people often express appreciation for aspects of American society. While 70 percent of respondents in the Middle East held negative views of the United States war on terror, only about one-quarter said they did not admire the advances made by the United States in science and technology. Similarly, while 57 percent of Egyptians said they disliked American popular culture, a third said they appreciated American ways of doing business. Radical anti-Americanism, encompassing dislike of the United States on all fronts, is rare, and in general there is more dislike for American policies than for the American people.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]