Do international rankings affect public opinion?

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.