Replication data for: Who Cares About Human Rights? Public Opinion about Human Rights Foreign Policy

Existing literature on foreign aid and human rights often presupposes that constituents favor using foreign policy to promote human rights abroad and, in turn, lead elected policymakers to pursue such policies to retain electoral support. This assumption, although frequently asserted, has not been empirically evaluated. And there are reasons to be skeptical about how much public opinion supports human rights foreign policy in comparison to other policy objectives. This paper explores US public opinion about human rights, by asking two questions: does the public think human rights should be a factor in foreign aid decisions and does the context – for instance, the strategic or economic relationship between the donor country and potential recipient – affect this? This paper uses results from a nationwide experimental survey to parse out these questions: do respondents favor a punitive response to human rights abuses? Does it matter if U.S. economic or strategic interests are at stake? I find that the majority of respondents support cutting foreign aid to punish human rights violators and that this preference depends only minimally on the importance of the recipient. This paper contributes to existing scholarship by testing a key micro-foundation of the literature on human rights and foreign policy.