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• How strong is public support for Ukraine in Europe? Given reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be 'playing for time' in the hopes that weary publics will demand an end to supporting Ukraine, this is an important question. • In February 2023, we conducted a survey of public attitudes in ten major European countries: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Italy and Spain. • Our findings suggest that Europeans are (almost) unanimous in blaming Russia for the war and strongly in favour of standing by Ukraine in its war effort. • Only minorities of respondents are of the opinion that Ukraine should be urged to accept territorial losses that could help end the war, or that economic sanctions against Russia should be lifted. Even in countries where support for Ukraine is lower (Hungary and Italy), or among more sceptical groups, we typically find a majority or plurality on Ukraine's side (or, at worst, we find only a small majority are pro-Russia). • Regarding NATO, there is no widespread appetite for increasing its presence in eastern Europe (except in Poland and Estonia), and even less support for Ukraine joining the alliance. At least in the eyes of the public, fighting a war in Ukraine is perceived as a goal in itself that does not necessarily elicit broader changes to existing security alliances like NATO. • Looking ahead, if the gap between the expectations audiences had for the Ukrainian counter-offensive and what it actually delivers is too great, we would expect public support for Ukraine in the conflict to weaken overall. • If governments wish to keep support levels high, we recommend targeting communications to reach groups we have found to be less supportive. This could include utilizing non-traditional media platforms to reach younger audiences, or members of populist right-wing groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest groups increasingly communicate with the public, yet we know little about how effective they are in shaping opinions. Since interest groups differ from other public communicators, we propose a theory of interest group persuasion. Interest groups typically have a low public profile, and so most people are unlikely to have strong attitudes regarding them. Source-related predispositions, such as credibility assessments, are therefore less relevant in moderating effects of persuasive appeals by interest groups than those of high-profile communicators. We test this argument in multiple large-scale studies. A parallel survey and field experiment (N = 4,659) establishes the persuasive potential of low-profile interest groups in both controlled and realistic settings. An observational study (N = 700) shows that substantial portions of the public are unable to assess interest group credibility. A survey experiment (N = 8,245) demonstrates that credibility assessments moderate the impact of party but not interest group communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the last review of public opinion on European defense policy and NATO concluded that Europeans wanted both European defense integration and a continuing commitment to NATO, the EU has almost doubled in size and new initiatives have been launched to develop a Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). We reexamine these issues and trace public opinion trends in all 28 EU member states from 2000 to 2019. With little variation across countries, general support for CSDP and NATO remains substantial. While Europeans, especially in continental Western Europe, believe that the EU should take a more independent approach from the United States in security and diplomatic affairs, large segments of the publics show no clear opinion on whether European defense should mean a transfer of decision-making power from the state to the EU level and the end of NATO. Cross-country differences are more pronounced when it comes to the creation of an EU army and its deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the nexus of public attitudes toward military missions abroad, specific beliefs about the respective missions, and political predispositions. While some studies have argued that specific beliefs such as success expectations are the most important explanatory factors of attitudes, others have stressed the role of party-related predispositions in shaping both beliefs and attitudes. Using the case of German citizens' attitudes toward the German participation in the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, we argue that scope conditions determine the relative merit of these perspectives. With data from a representative survey conducted in 2010 we show that in this late stage of the military mission, success expectations had a substantial effect on German citizens' mission support that was not merely mediating the influence of predispositions. At the same time, foreign policy predispositions also had a substantial impact on mission support, while party identifications had only minor effects. We discuss the more general implications of these results for statements on the relative importance of predispositions and specific beliefs as explanatory factors in public opinion formation on the use of military force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]