Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Voices from Egypt Reporting by the International Herald Tribune* “There is a combination of reasons for lack of prosperity in certain areas. You cannot exclude the external factor. The Arab-Israeli conflict played a role in hindering economic development, but you cannot blame only the outside factor. There are other domestic factors, like deterioration of education, […]
After a year marked by riots over cartoon portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Muslims and Westerners see relations between them as generally bad.
America’s global image has again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the U.S. presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran – and in many countries much more often – as a danger to world peace.
The January elections in Iraq did not cast the U.S. in a more favorable light in most of the countries surveyed. Only in the Netherlands and Germany do small majorities (55% and 50% respectively) say that the Iraq elections led them to have a more favorable opinion of the U.S. However, pluralities in Canada and […]
The Pew Global Attitudes Project is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys encompassing a broad array of subjects ranging from people’s assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. The Pew Global Attitudes Project is co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of […]
Large majorities of Muslims in most predominantly Muslim countries surveyed think that it is very important that Islam play a more important and influential role in the world than that religion now does. In Morocco, 84% of Muslims subscribe to this view, as do 73% in Jordan, 70% in Pakistan and 64% in Indonesia. Even […]
Anti-Americanism in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which surged as a result of the U.S. war in Iraq, shows modest signs of abating. But the United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed, and the opinion of the American people is not as positive as it once was.
Recent Commentary by Andrew Kohut
Results for the nine-nation survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide, representative sample of 1,032 adults, 18 years of age or older, in the United States, 962 in Britain, 485 in France, 524 in Germany, 500 in Italy, and 503 in Spain. In Russia, […]
Democratization has taken very different paths in the countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Most Eastern European countries began their transition to democracy with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But 14 years later, many people still do not completely embrace many aspects of democracy, in part because they associate the […]