Abstract
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an attack on democracy, human rights, and the international order. While European democracies have supported their war-torn partner, Russia has sought to undermine public support by stopping its gas supply and imposing economic costs on European citizens. In consequence, Europeans find themselves caught between economic self-interest and principles. We present a theoretical argument and test how corresponding arguments for and against continued backing of Ukraine affect citizens’ support using experimental and observational data collected while concerns with gas shortage and inflation mounted in Germany and Denmark. We find that support for Ukraine does not falter due to economic concerns. In contrast, citizens become more supportive when presented with arguments related to human rights, democracy, and respect for territorial boundaries. We discuss implications for understanding citizens’ responses to autocratic power strategies and how support likely depends on the type of partner and domestic elite rhetoric.
In the fall of 2022, Gazprom, the Russian state–controlled energy company, published a video warning the European public of a coming “ice age.” The video was released as Europe was struggling to contain an energy crisis, partly sparked by a halt in Russia’s gas exports. European officials described it as energy blackmail, aimed at pressuring and dividing European countries in their support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. In response, Western officials have issued appeals to values such as human rights, democracy, and respect for sovereign borders to rally public support for Ukraine, even in the face of substantial economic costs. Against this background, the European public finds itself confronted with a predicament: Should they continue to bear the economic costs of supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, or should they push for negotiations to reach a compromise, even if it comes at the expense of liberal values?
Russia’s economic pressure on foreign publics reflects a common pattern in how autocratic states aim to influence democratic countries without direct physical confrontation (e.g., Dukalskis 2021). While there is a large literature on how the public reacts to the use of military force abroad (see e.g., Gelpi et al., 2006; Herrmann et al., 1999; Tomz and Weeks 2020), less is known about public opinion on supporting international partners. Moreover, the scientific literature does not clearly state whether Russia’s strategies of pressure are effective or whether democratic governments can effectively mitigate such pressure through counterarguments. This is unfortunate, since public opinion matters for policy-making, especially on issues like defense and foreign policy (Tomz et al., 2020; Wlezien 2004), and because some research suggests that citizens are willing to trade off democratic principles for pragmatic concerns (e.g., Graham and Svolik 2020). This raises the question whether Europeans are willing to trade off principled concerns for potential economic relief.
In this article, we propose a theoretical argument on which types of real-world arguments, focusing on appeals to principled values versus economic self-interest, influence citizens’ support for Ukraine. To test this argument, we included a choice experiment in two nationally representative online surveys conducted in October and November 2022 with a total of 4186 respondents. We fielded our surveys in two European countries, Denmark and Germany, shortly after Russia cut its gas supply. The period under study was marked by inflation rates not seen in 40 years and severe public concern with future living conditions (Denmark’s Statistics, 2022; German Environment Agency 2022; Trygfonden 2022). We asked participants whether they (1) prefer their government to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion or (2) prefer that their government encourages Ukraine to negotiate and reach a compromise with Russia. We then analyzed how their choice varies according to different, randomly assigned, arguments.
We find that both Danes and Germans further increase their support for Ukraine when presented with principled arguments related to democracy, human rights, and non-acceptance of acts of war. In contrast, respondents do not become less inclined to support Ukraine (and instead support negotiations) when presented with economic, self-interested arguments about the prospects of economic relief. We replicate this null finding with an additional priming experiment in the German survey and show, using equivalence tests, that we can reject effect sizes above three percentage points. Finally, we increase confidence in this null finding with supplementary observational analyses, giving economic, self-interested concerns the best possible conditions to materialize. Arguments focused on economic relief and self-interest do not appear to have, at least short-term, effects in decreasing public support for Ukraine among German and Danish citizens.
Trading off economic and principled concerns
Autocracies increasingly try to influence public opinion abroad. Examples of such influence campaigns range from soft power projects, such as hosting international sports events, to hard power initiatives, including repression and assassination of critics (Dukalskis 2021: chap. 3). Yet another prominent strategy in between these extremes is to apply economic coercion on citizens in foreign states. 1 Is such a strategy effective? While we know from the broad literature on economic sanctions that they often remain ineffective (e.g., Weber and Schneider 2022), less is known about the effectiveness of applying economic pressure by authoritarian states. In addition, we do not know if the effect fares in cases like ours where competing concerns and counterarguments related to, for example, liberal, democratic principles exist. In this article, we suggest that blatant appeals to economic self-interest from foreign powers should not be very effective compared to appeals to liberal, democratic principles for three reasons.
First, for the average citizen, economic self-interest often plays a limited role in the formation of political opinions (Chong 2013; Sears and Funk 1991), and communication studies generally find that even elites from citizens’ own country cannot easily garner or “buy” votes and policy support by proposing policies that offer direct financial benefits to constituents (Boggild, 2016). Rather, such economic appeals are often considered undemocratic pandering and can decrease approval ratings and vote intentions (Boggild, 2016; McGraw et al., 2002). These findings match results from the symbolic politics literature, showing that political opinions are entrenched with group symbols and values such as democratic principles or human rights, which can hamper or outcompete the effect of individual economic interests (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002); Sears and Funk (1991); Tyler (1990)). As such, we should expect that appeals to mainstream political principles should weigh more heavily in political opinion formation than appeals to economic self-interest.
Second, appeals to economic self-interest should be even less effective when propagated by elites of a foreign country that citizens do not identify with. To most European citizens, Russia is a clearly defined outgroup (Pew Research Center, 2022). In comparison, contemporary Ukraine resembles Western Europe in terms of regime type, economic system, etc. Decades of research shows that citizens tend to side with their ingroup (e.g., country, party, and occupational group) over outgroups when forming political opinions, and that they even move in the opposite direction when presented with appeals from clearly defined outgroups (Slothuus and de Vreese, 2010). Moreover, citizens are particularly inclined to punish outgroups for democratic norm violations and disruptive or violent behavior and even more so when the outgroup’s motives are clear (Kalmoe and Mason 2022; Rhee et al., 2023). Finally, research on the rally-’round-the-flag effect shows that external threats such as war or other existential threats make citizens even more inclined to support government policy and the values, principles, and institutions of their country (Bøggild and Jensen 2024; Hetherington and Nelson 2003).
Third, citizens are more likely to support military intervention abroad when it advances principled causes such as protecting human rights, supporting peer democracies, or restraining aggressor states (Tomz and Weeks 2013, 2020). We may expect that some of the same mechanisms are at play when deciding whether to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia. On the other hand, this literature also suggests that voters tend to oppose military intervention when the war results in high costs (in the form of military casualties) for the intervening state (Gelpi et al., 2006). However, in the case of Ukraine, support does not imply putting boots on the ground in any of the two countries, and, as such, we expect that the lives of compatriots play little role in public opinion on support for Ukraine.
In sum, we expect that Western European citizens will be more responsive to principled arguments for continued support for Ukraine relative to the economic self-interested argument for pressuring Ukraine to end the war and reach a compromise with Russia.
Data and case selection
We rely on two original surveys. The first was an online survey conducted in Denmark in the first half of October 2022 by Epinion. The target respondent pool is a sample of adults between 18 and 74, representative of the population using quotas for age, sex, education, and geography (n = 2089). The German survey was conducted from November 18, 2022, to December 5, 2022. The survey was administered by Forsa, using quotas for age, sex, education, and federal state representative of the adult population (n = 2097). We pre-registered the experimental study in the German survey that replicates the initial findings from the Danish survey (not pre-registered) and includes an additional priming experiment to bolster and extend the Danish results. 2 Germany’s stronger dependency on Russian gas and oil offers a more challenging scenario for testing our expectation that arguments centered around economic self-interest are less effective in influencing public opinion regarding Ukraine.
We fielded the surveys shortly after Russia targeted European economies. This timing is important for two reasons. First, citizens were highly concerned with how Russia’s actions would affect their economic well-being. Russia had just stopped gas supply to Europe, citizens experienced unprecedented energy prices and the highest inflation rates in 40 years, and governments were raising energy supply emergency levels and providing guidelines for rationing (Denmark’s Energy Agency, 2022; Denmark’s Statistics, 2022; German Environment Agency 2022). In Denmark, for example, over 70% of the population feared that Russia’s actions would worsen their household economy and living conditions (Trygfonden 2022). Second, fielding the study early on implies that citizens were only exposed to a limited amount of pre-treatment and, in turn, that their opinions were not fully crystalized and still amendable. This is important for our experimental design to be able to gauge effects of real-world arguments found in media outlets in both countries. Indeed, our results demonstrate that public opinion was not settled but still amendable when the surveys were fielded. 3 On the other hand, this also implies that we do not measure potential medium- or long-term effects of the economic measures imposed by Russia.
Research design
The main part of our survey consists of a choice experiment designed to elicit what arguments can sway citizens’ support for Ukraine.
4
Respondents are shown a brief text (translated from Danish/German), which reads: “It is currently being discussed how [Denmark/Germany] and the other Western countries should respond to the war in Ukraine. Please indicate which of the two statements shown below you agree most with.”
5
One statement entailed continued support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. The other entailed encouraging Ukraine to negotiate and find a compromise with Russia. We ask on a general level since we are interested in how real-world arguments and concerns may change citizens’ general support for their government’s engagement in Ukraine rather than focusing on specific, case-to-case decisions (e.g., training soldiers and supplying weapons). Figure 1 illustrates the main logic behind our design. Illustration of the randomized choice task.
Versions of each statement in survey choice experiment.
To conduct a thorough test of our expectations, we rely on two additional approaches that circumvent different concerns related to testing and confirming null hypotheses (here, the null effect of economic self-interest).
First, we added a priming experiment immediately before presenting respondents with the choice task in the German survey. This served two purposes. First, being exposed to the general economic argument in Table 1 might not in itself sway opinions without the individual being reminded of the costs at stake. Indeed, economic self-interest is most effective in shaping opinions when respondents are explicitly asked to think about the economic costs at hand (Chong et al., 2001). Second, some respondents might not admit to following the argument containing an appeal to their economic interests (although social desirability bias is generally a limited phenomenon in survey experiments, see Blair et al., 2020). To accommodate these concerns, we follow best practice and introduce a question prime (Chong et al., 2001), asking respondents in the treatment group: “The current economic situation is very worrisome for many citizens. How much do you guess you have to pay in your annual electricity bill?” 8 Respondents in the control group received no prime. If economic self-interest matters, the treatment group should express less support for Ukraine (and stronger preferences for Ukraine compromising with Russia). In addition, we can test whether being assigned to both the economic argument and the prime, in conjunction, moves respondents away from supporting Ukraine.
Second, the surveys included observational measures of respondents’ vulnerability to the economic costs imposed by Russia’s actions proxied by (i) personal concerns with inflation and future finances, (ii) reliance on gas as their primary heat source, and (iii) low income. These measures serve two purposes. First, we report simple cross-sectional relationships between these measures and support for Ukraine. While invariably offering lower internal validity, such analyses do allow for a set of tests of the null hypothesis with another type of data. Second, and more importantly, the measures allow us to test whether the above experimental treatments invoking self-interested concerns at least elicit discernible effects among respondents who should be most vulnerable and susceptible to such concerns (i.e., interaction effects). Absent such most-likely effects, we can conclude that appeals to self-interest yield little to no average or economic sub-group effects on supporting Ukraine. We report equivalence tests in Appendix E for all analyses testing the null hypothesis related to economic self-interest and consider effect sizes down to 4 percentage points of substantial interest (Lakens, 2017).
Citizens do not trade off principles for economic relief
Before turning to the experimental results, it is worth noting that 69.27% of Danes and 61.03% of Germans supported Ukraine’s fight against Russia when no arguments are present (i.e., respondents in our baseline conditions). This implies that a majority remains supportive even in the surveyed context of economic hardship. It also stresses the importance of analyzing whether appeals to economic self-interest can jeopardize this majority and whether it is possible to present principled arguments to further bolster support.
Turning to the results from the choice task experiment in Figure 2, we see that respondents are indeed susceptible to principled arguments. As compared to no additional argument, support for Ukraine increases by eight percentage points among Danes (p = .007) and 10 percentage points among Germans (p = .004) when human rights violations are highlighted. Furthermore, highlighting democracy and Western values increases support by eight percentage points among Danes (p = .008) and six percentage points among Germans, although this latter difference is just above conventional levels of statistical significance (p = .069). Highlighting non-tolerance for acts of war also raises support by seven (p = .018) and 13 percentage points (p < .001) in the Danish and German samples, respectively. Finally, respondents who read that Russia may not respect international peace agreements are six and four percentage points more supportive of Ukraine, but these differences do not reach conventional statistical significance (p = .068 and .177), except when the country samples are pooled (p = .029). As a post hoc reflection, this seemingly weaker effect could reflect that this argument is less tied to principles and has more of a strategic, rational-realistic logic concerning practical problems with negotiations. Changes in support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia for Denmark and Germany depending on pro and con arguments relative to our baseline comparison without additional arguments. The baseline support level is 61% in Germany and 69% in Denmark. Based on 1773 (Denmark) and 1939 respondents (Germany), 95% confidence intervals are displayed. The figure also includes the results of the priming experiment for the German sample. Figure based on Table E1 and Table E2 in Online Appendix E.
In addition, two other patterns deviate from our pre-registration of the German study: The disrespect for peace agreements and democracy and Western values arguments were only marginally significant (p = .068 and .069), and the non-tolerance of war argument is, tentatively, the most effective of the principled arguments (unlike in the Danish study). One plausible explanation for the latter finding is that a large share of the German society (still) sees Germany’s geo-political role as continuation of its pacifist tradition after World War II (Forsberg, 2005).
In contrast, the argument about countering inflation and obtaining potential economic relief does not reduce support for Ukraine (or, vice versa, increase support for reaching a compromise) as compared to mentioning no additional argument for negotiations. As depicted in the bottom of Figure 2, the effect is very close to zero and, if anything, suggests a 1–2 percentage point increase in the support for Ukraine. Equivalence tests show that we can reject effect sizes down to three percentage points in each sample and 1.5 percentage points in the pooled analyses (see Online Appendix F).
To further substantiate this null-finding, the bottom panel of Figure 2 shows that German respondents primed to think about their future electricity bills are equally—or, if anything, slightly more—likely to support Ukraine compared to those who did not receive the prime. Equivalence tests show we can reject an effect size above 3 percentage points (see Online Appendix F). Likewise, we find no indication of an interaction between the economic argument and the economic prime, meaning that respondents exposed to both treatments are no less likely to express support for Ukraine (see Online Appendix D).
As a final set of robustness tests, we turn to the observational measures. First, we regress support for Ukraine on the indicators tapping citizens’ susceptibility to economic pressure and controlling for age, gender, education, region, and party preference. Whether we look at respondents’ subjective concerns with inflation and future finances or more objective measures, namely, their reliance on gas as a heating source or their income levels, we find that susceptibility to economic pressure does not significantly correlate with preferences for supporting Ukraine (see Online Appendix D). In fact, most coefficients suggest the opposite relationship expected from the economic self-interest argument and only two, insignificant coefficients point in the expected direction. Across nine equivalence tests, we can reject effect sizes above four percentage points in seven instances (see Online Appendix F). Second, we find that none of these proxies interacts with the economic argument or the economic prime, implying that economically vulnerable citizens are no more likely to be swayed by appeals to economic self-interest (see Online Appendix D).
Conclusions
In a speech on the Ukrainian war, Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, raised the following rhetorical questions: “[W]e pay a price because we provide support…[but] that’s not the question anyway, the question is: what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory?…How much freedom? How much democracy are you willing to sacrifice for peace?” (NATO, 2022).
Our results demonstrate that, at least Danish and German, citizens are prepared to incur economic costs to defend Western principles and democracy abroad. They even become more supportive when they are reminded of what is at stake. This is an important finding from a policy perspective and for the ongoing debate on democratic resilience within political science (e.g., Graham and Svolik, 2020). Moreover, our study adds to the growing body of research that studies how autocracies obtain influence abroad (e.g., Dukalskis, 2021). Our results imply that—at least in the salient case of the Ukrainian war—Western principles are not for sale, and citizens are not moved by blatant threats of economic sanctions from autocratic regimes. Finally, our study contributes to the extensive literature on public opinion and support for war (Gelpi et al., 2006; Herrmann et al., 1999; Tomz et al., 2020) by highlighting that (real-world) arguments based on principled values can be effective in justifying why an international partner should receive support.
In closing, our case is unique in several respects, and we expect that our conclusions are subject to three important scope conditions. First, appeals to economic self-interest from foreign governments would likely be more effective if reinforced by salient domestic elites such as major national political parties (as implied by our theory focusing on in- and outgroup communication effects). Second, citizens’ support for war-torn partners may depend on the cultural similarity of the partner (again, following from our group-focused theory) or the geographical proximity of the crisis, suggesting that survival-related (as opposed to economic) self-interested concerns with keeping war at bay may drive support up. Third, in the long term, it is possible that economic costs and crisis fatigue may tear on public support and induce compromise. We hope future research will extend our analyses to further our understanding of such domestic, cross-country, and time dynamics of international support and solidarity.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material - Standing with Ukraine? How citizens trade off self-interest and principles in supporting war-torn international partners
Supplemental Material for Standing with Ukraine? How citizens trade off self-interest and principles in supporting war-torn international partners by Troels Bøggild, Sascha Göbel, Philipp Lutscher and Jacob Nyrup in Research & Politics.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Carl Henrik Knutsen, Jonas W. Schmid, participants in the Comparative Institutions and Regimes Workshop at University of Oslo, and participants at the Political Behavior and Institutions section at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Research & Politics who provided constructive feedback to improve our manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant ID 10.46540/3099-00181B), the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 863486), and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—Project No. 440473521.
Notes
References
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