ECFR/Gallup Global Poll: the world is increasingly hostile to military power

October 44, 2007

ECFR/Gallup Global Poll: the world is increasingly hostile to military power

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Mary Robinson called global public opinion the "second superpower". She may have been exaggerating its impact on the Gulf, but she was right to point to the legitimacy of power as an increasingly important factor in world politics.

Even in the many places where citizens cannot vote in free and fair elections, governments are constantly "polling' the public to understand their aspirations and pre-empt them. Who will gain and who will lose from the emergence of a global public opinion? Which of the current great powers will succeed in capturing publics' imagination?