Anti-Americanism and the Financial Crisis

Abstract:     
The global image of the United States severely deteriorated under the Bush administration and anti-Americanism, an individual attitude of fundamental distrust towards what America is and does, rose accordingly during the same period. Favorable views of the US started to improve in the world in 2008, but then the financial crisis hit in September 2008. Did the crisis reignite anti-American sentiments worldwide? The crisis had the potential for increasing negative sentiments towards the US because it feeds into several of the underlying classical sources of anti-Americanism and because foreign leaders may be tempted to blame the US and stoke anti-Americanism domestically in order to absolve themselves from the failings of their own policies. Yet we do not observe such a spike in anti-American sentiments worldwide, at least at the level of public opinion. Why? The paper argues that this potential anti-Americanism has been mitigated by several factors, including the election of Obama, the new face of globalization, and the perception of US decline. The paper also examines whether anti-Americanism can affect the policy responses to the crisis.

Working Paper Series