How Europeans See the USA
What Do Europeans Like and Dislike about the United States?New five-country survey of Western European adults shows few dislike Americans or the United States but most dislike President Bush and his foreign policies.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. and LONDON, March 24 /PRNewswire/ --
When people think about foreign countries their views are generally not all positive or all negative. They usually see both good things, which they like, and others, which they dislike. This is certainly true of European attitudes to the United States today.
When people in the five largest European countries think of the United States, they tend, on balance, to feel positively about the American people, American films and television programs, the quality of life in America, and how Americans do business. On the other hand, large majorities of Europeans have negative opinions of President Bush, U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and of recent American foreign policy. So the phrase "anti-American" is capable of many meanings and is potentially misleading.
This ability to differentiate is particularly strong when Europeans consider the people, as compared to leaders and government policies of the United States.
-- Only 13% of these Europeans, on average, have negative opinions of the American people, and only 33% have negative opinions of the United States.
-- Fully 70% have negative opinions of President Bush; 69% have negative opinions of U.S. policies in Iraq, and 62% have negative opinions of American foreign policy since 2000, when President Bush came to power.
Other aspects of the United States which are viewed positively, on average, by pluralities in the five countries are:
-- American films and television (48% positive, 22% negative);
-- The quality of life in America (45% positive, 21% negative); and
-- "How Americans do business" (37% positive, 24% negative).
On the other hand, majorities of Europeans in the five countries have negative opinions not only of U.S. foreign policy and President Bush but also of American food (56% negative, 17% positive). We suspect that this is strongly influenced by perceptions of American fast food chains that are, of course, pervasive across Europe.
These are some of the results of a poll conducted online by Harris Interactive and its European subsidiary HI Europe between February 27 and March 4, 2004 among 2,637 adults in Great Britain; 2,547 in France; 1,273 in Germany; 2,407 in Spain; and 1,301 in Italy. It should be noted that the survey was completed just before the bombing in Madrid that killed more than 200 people.
Most Americans are proud of traditional American values, American justice and the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore many Americans believe that other people share these favorable opinions and look up to the United States, its
freedoms and its system of government as a "shining city on a hill."
The reality is rather different in the five European countries surveyed. Only a quarter of these Europeans hold favorable views of American justice and governmental systems. Using the averages across the five countries,
pluralities hold negative views of American courts and systems of justice (by 41% to 26%) and of the American system of government (by 40% to 26%). Attitudes to American values are less negative but not strongly positive.
A modest 34% to 30% plurality rates American values positively. Here, as in other questions, there are big differences among opinions in the five countries. In general, the Italians have the most positive views of the American system of government (50% positive, 20% negative), of American values (44% positive, 23% negative), and American justice (44% positive, 23% negative). The Germans and French are the most negative on these two criteria.
The average results for the five countries are based on very different responses in each country. In general, the Italians and, to a somewhat lesser extent the British, have the most positive attitudes to the United States, while the French and the Germans are the most negative. Spanish attitudes toward the United States (as measured just before the recent Madrid bombings) mostly fall somewhere in the middle, closer to the five-country averages. Some exceptions to this pattern are that the Spanish people feel as positively as the British and Italians toward the American people, American multinational companies and American movies and television.
posted by Richard at
Monday, March 29, 2004
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