🔎 What This Paper Tests

This study assesses whether publics outside the US and UK show the same "democratic bias"—reluctance to endorse force against democracies—that Tomz and Weeks (2013) documented for British and American respondents. The focus is on two emerging powers: Brazil (a democracy) and China (a non-democracy).

🧪 How Opinions Were Measured

• Online survey experiments administered to panels in Brazil and China.
• Respondents saw hypothetical international crises in which the target country was randomly assigned a regime type (democracy vs. non-democracy) and whether military action had United Nations authorization.

📌 Key Findings

• Brazilian respondents are significantly less likely to support the use of force against a democracy than against a non-democracy.
• Chinese respondents, once UN approval is accounted for, do not distinguish between democracies and non-democracies when judging whether force is justified.
• In both countries, UN authorization has a larger effect on public support for using force than the target country’s regime type.

💡 Why This Matters

• These results qualify the generality of the democratic peace at the level of public opinion: democratic bias appears in Brazil but not in China under the conditions studied.
• The stronger role of UN approval suggests international institutions can shape mass support for coercion across regime contexts, and that democratic identity of targets may be a conditional rather than universal driver of public restraint.