A 47-nation survey finds that as economic growth has surged in much of Latin America, East Europe and Asia over the past five years, people are expressing greater satisfaction with their personal lives, family incomes and national conditions. The picture is different in most advanced nations, where growth has been less robust and citizen satisfaction has changed little since 2002.
Iran’s image remains negative throughout much of the world, and has eroded significantly over the past year in several countries, including Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to inspire little confidence internationally. However, the poll finds Shia Muslims in Lebanon holding overwhelmingly positive opinions of the Iranian president, reflecting a broad divide […]
Pew Research Center Ten years ago, the U.S. Congress launched a debate on U.S. international religious freedom policy that ultimately resulted in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Foreign policy actors continue to debate how religious freedom – and religion itself – should be factored into U.S. foreign policy. Has the State Department interpreted […]
Washington, D.C. Europeans and Americans approach the relationship between church and state differently. European churches, for instance, often receive official sanction and substantial financial support from the government. In the United States, on the other hand, the government recognizes no church, and whatever aid it provides is usually indirect and substantially more limited. Even ideas […]
Summary of Findings The public is ambivalent about the immigration bill being debated by the Senate. Most Americans favor one of its key objectives, but the bill itself draws a mostly negative reaction from those who have heard about it. Just a third of those who have heard something about the bill favor it, while […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2007 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, shed light on the complex and diffuse […]
by Robert Ruby and Timothy Samuel Shah, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life March 21, 2007 If Nigeria’s presidential election takes place as scheduled on April 21, it will mark the first transfer of power from one elected civilian president to another in the country considered the key to stability for all of West […]
Even in a week with North Korea, Iran, Anna Nicole, and Hillary on the front burner, it’s U.S. strategy in the Iraq war that commands the talk airwaves. And the dominance of that debate reveals something about the nature of the talk show culture.