Friend or foe? When political elites evaluate foreign leaders

Abstract:

Leaders are themselves key actors in international relations; in recent years, Hugo Chávez and Pope Francis have had an expressive impact beyond their respective traditional influence areas. Why do such leaders display this kind of popularity? More importantly, how do political elites perceive them? This paper aims to identify, employing evidence from eighteen Latin American parliaments, what drives political elite evaluations of a variety of notorious leaders in the last decade. To determine which factors are behind their evaluations, we rely on a friend-foe approach of politics, as measured by the ideological distance between the legislator her/himself and the leader. The results point that this friend-foe logic is the main predictor when it comes to the evaluation of elites by elites in the international arena.

Keywords:
Elites; Leadership; Ideological distance; Presidents; Latin America

Resumo:

Os líderes são um ator chave nas relações internacionais; nos últimos anos, Hugo Chávez e o Papa Francisco tiveram um impacto notável além de suas respectivas áreas de influência tradicionais. Por que esses líderes têm esse tipo de popularidade? Mais importante, como as elites políticas os percebem? Este artigo tem como objetivo identificar, com evidências de dezoito parlamentos latino-americanos, o que determina as avaliações das elites políticas sobre uma variedade de líderes notórios na última década. Para determinar quais fatores estão por trás de suas avaliações, contamos com uma abordagem ‘amigo-inimigo’ da política, medida pela distância ideológica entre o próprio legislador e o líder. Os resultados apontam que essa lógica amigo-inimigo é o principal preditor na avaliação das elites pelas elites no cenário internacional.

Palavras-chave:
Elites; Liderança; Distância ideológica; Presidentes; América Latina

Introduction

Presidents in modern states are key players. Personal traits, rating approvals, discourse analysis and others constitute part of research on leaders and leadership (Alcántara et al., 2017). This paper aims to analyse the determinants of the evaluations of leaders by legislators, relying on elite surveys and not citizens. Accordingly, we focus on foreign, not national, leaders, as this allows us to control for possible distinctions with regard to political parties or government opposition.

Thus, compared with traditional studies that focus on the attitudes of the masses towards national leaders (Rico, 2002; Aarts et al., 2013), we focus herein on legislator attitudes towards foreign leaders to test literature statements and disentangle the main factors behind eight foreign leaders’ evaluations. Furthermore, compared to studies that consider legislative support for presidents’ foreign policies (Feliú and Onuki, 2014; Ribeiro and Pinheiro, 2016), this study addresses the international arena through a public attitude perspective, by analysing individual legislator perceptions of foreign leaders.

To this end, the friend-foe logic in politics was applied. Beyond theoretical and methodological deliberations, the data that employed herein, comprising the Latin American Elites Database (PELA) from the University of Salamanca, provide a unique opportunity to test whether this friend-foe logic is applicable when it comes to the evaluation of foreign leaders. We measured this by the difference between the ideology of the leader (as declared by the legislator) and the legislator’s own position, both on the traditional left-right scale. This allowed us to readily test this theory employing survey data, with what we term ideological distance, coined due to the closeness that the legislator feels to the leader, in similar terms to spatial models. Therefore, our main objective is to operationalize and test the friend-foe logic and explore its effects on the evaluation of foreign leaders by political elites.

To obtain a complete scenario of the predictors for leader evaluation, we include a total of eight actors from a comparative perspective. There is enough variety within this sample (sex, region and ideology) to investigate whether ideological distance predicts legislator evaluations concerning foreign leaders: Hugo Chávez, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Juan Manuel Santos, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Evo Morales, Dilma Rousseff and Pope Francis. Thus, the question we aim to answer is what drives political elite support for foreign leaders.

We applied one logistic regression model for each of the eight leaders, with country-years as fixed-effects. The results demonstrate that the perceived ideological distance between the legislator and the foreign leader is the key determinant when evaluating foreign leaders, even controlling for ideology, sociodemographics and opinions regarding the international arena (free trade agreements and regional alliances). Ideological distance emerges as a consistent predictor of evaluations for each of the eight leaders. The closer political elites feel to any foreign leader, the better the image will be, no matter the analysed leader.

This article thus indicates that the friend-foe theory can be operationalized in similar terms as spatial models through evidence from elite surveys, and that it is actually applicable in the international arena. How closer elites from a given country feel to a foreign leader will determine, to a larger extent, the image of that leader, and, most likely, the foreign policy (Preston and Hermann, 2004; Burges and Chagas-Bastos, 2017). The friend-foe logic was theorized for the national level and proximity spatial models for voting. However, by combining both approaches, we demonstrate that the friend-foe logic drives opinions on the international arena to a larger extent.

Theoretical framework

Perception of legislators in foreign policy

In electoral democracies, the recruitment of professional politicians is carried out by the political parties, and political leaders need them “to adopt decisions, set the agenda, study how to carry out political tasks, find resources, and seek support” (Sánchez-Herrera, 2004, p. 32). This group of professionals, recruited to occupy different public positions in the party and institutions (i.e., international organizations, Congress, subnational parliaments, councils, etc.), with strong ties among its members, which concentrates all the power in front of the rest of the population, is usually called the “political elite” (Parry, 2005). It is important to understand the perception and preferences of political elites because they participate in the strategic decisions that shape the standards of living within a society (Hoffmann-Langue, 2007). Among all types of political elites, legislators are the most relevant, as they represent the popular will, have control over the Executive, and make fundamental decisions (Aberbach et al., 1981; Alcántara and Llamazares 1997; García et al., 2013).

Despite the initial scarcity of empirical research on political elite attitudes (Barragán et al., 2020, p.5), relevant contributions are available focusing on distinct geographical areas (García et al., 2013), especially in Europe (Highley et al., 1998; Best and Cotta, 2000; 2007; Semenova et al., 2013) and the United States (Eztione-Harlevy, 1993; Bonica, 2016), and, of course, comparative studies beyond regional boundaries (Czudnowski, 1983; Eldersveld, 1989; Soroka and Wlezien, 2010; Best and Vogel, 2018). In Latin America, such contributions were limited before the PELA project (Barragán et al., 2020), with notable exceptions (Higley and Gunther, 1992). This project has led to numerous studies (Alcántara and Llamazares, 1997; García and Mateos, 2001; Alcántara and Rivas, 2007; Alcántara et al. 2020) and as Saiegh (2009, p. 124) has noted, “responses to elite surveys constitute ideal instruments to both estimate the location of key political actors and measure the ideological preferences of legislators around the world”.

Most of the survey-based assessments on political elites focus on ideological preferences (Inglehart and Kungemann, 1976; Freidenberg et al., 2006; Saiegh, 2009, 2015), democractic attitudes (Putnam, 1973; Higley and Gunther, 1992; Crowther and Matonyte, 2007; Bohigues, 2018, 2021), and, to a lesser extent, political careers, and trajectories (Alcántara, 2011; Cabezas, 2012; Cabezas and Barragán, 2014). Nevertheless, survey-based research on foreign policy preferences, particularly foreign leadership, is still scant (Bohigues and Rivas, 2019; Bohigues and Morgenstern, 2020). The latter usually analyse other types of data, such as public statements or personal communications (Foyle, 1997; O’Reilly, 2007), and studies that rely on surveys (e.g. Busby and Monten, 2012; Busby et al., 2020) do not focus on attitudes towards foreign leaders. Even though studies that examine the projection of political leaders through public opinion survey are available, their evaluation by political elites is still an unexplored field. However, a long tradition of studies addressing the intersection of legislative studies and foreign policy, as well as political parties, in Latin America (Onuki et al., 2009; Feliú and Onuki, 2014; Ribeiro and Pinheiro, 2016; Urdinez et al., 2018) is noted. Thus, the present article builds on these previous studies, to address individual legislator opinions on foreign policy, namely foreign leaders.

Leadership is currently one of the key aspects of political science because of the important role political leaders play in contemporary political processes. The prominence of political leaders is even greater in the field of foreign policy, since they have greater autonomy concerning their actions and their decisions are more visible to public opinion (McAllister, 2007). The studies that approach leader popularity as an explanatory variable of the electoral processes indicate that a favourable opinion of political leaders responds to the sociodemographic characteristics of these leaders and their voters - specifically their age, ethnicity, gender, place of residence, educational level, or religion (Kenski and Jamieson, 2010; Ono and Burden, 2019) - but also their ideology, party sympathy and political preferences (Huckfeldt et al., 2005).

These variables may explain the evaluation of national political leaders by electors and elites, but this paper argues that they are insufficient to understand their favourable or unfavourable opinion of foreign leaders, proposing a new explanation: the friend-foe logic. We propose this new approach based on the concept of the political as a distinction between friend and foe formulated by Carl Schmitt.

The friend-foe distinction ¹

It is surprising that, in the face of condemnable political action of a foreign leader, the reaction of the elites is more or less decisive depending on who was responsible. For example, if the leader of an enemy country violates human rights, s/he is strongly condemned, while, if the violator of human rights is the leader of an allied country, s/he is justified, or at least not reproached. In foreign policy, the phrase pronounced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 to refer to the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is still valid: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.

Carl Schmitt (2007) argues that the political occupies a central place in social reality and that the basic political distinction of the political is the friend-foe distinction. According to this author, people are grouped as friends and enemies so that they exist politically. The friend-foe distinction is autonomous, but can be articulated by religious, economic, ethnic or any other antagonism.

Although politically antagonistic, Hans Morgenthau was inspired by the political concept of Schmitt to shape his realistic theory of international relations and the American foreign policy. The former agrees with Schmitt’s assertion that “the political is the core of society”, but not with his concept of the political based on the distinction between friend and foe (Behr and Rösch, 2012, p. 19). Morgenthau (2012, p. 112) recognizes the great influence of this distinction in international relations, but considers that it does not have the same logical structure as “other pairs of the same degree taken from the spheres of morality, economy, or politics”. In the other spheres, the categories of the pairs are distinguished by having or not having moral or economic value, while Schmitt’s concept of the political is that “the foe can equally be of political value as politically without value, and the same can be said for the friend” (Morgenthau, 2012, p. 112).

Interestingly, it is possible to identify an equivalent approach in the affective polarization theory (Banda and Cluverius, 2018, p. 91), see Rogowski and Sutherland (2016), who, analyse the determinants of the evaluation of candidates through survey experiments, reporting that the data confirm that respondents who feel closer to a certain candidate will evaluate him/her better. Likewise, affective polarization in the evaluations of political leaders is more common among respondents with more extreme ideological commitments and higher levels of political interest (Rogowski and Sutherland, 2016). These studies show that affective polarization is not only linked to partisan identity (Iyengar et al., 2019), but also closely connected with ideological polarization (Webster and Abramowitz, 2017), and can be reduced by mechanisms that stimulate national identity (Levendusky, 2018). Consequently, the ideologically centrist elector with cross-identities represents an increasingly smaller percentage of the electorate (Mason, 2016).

The affective polarization theory analyses the affective determinants of candidate evaluation, but it should be stressed that this polarization is many times the result of ideological polarization (Rogowski and Sutherland, 2016). Thus, another approach related to Schmitt's theory is the spatial voting theory, originally proposed by Downs (1957). This theory considers that votes are the result of the interaction between candidate strategies (political elite) and the distribution of voter support (Bølstad and Dinas, 2017).

Two main types of spatial voting models are noted, proximity and directional. The former means that the voter increases the utility of a candidate when he/she defends opinions closer to him/her in one or more dimensions (Downs, 1957; Calvert, 1985; Westholm, 1997). Directional models, on the other hand, consider not only spatial proximity, but also the direction the candidate takes regarding the status quo and its intensity (Weisberg, 1974; Rabinowitz and Macdonald, 1989; Merrill III and Grofman, 1999).

The spatial voting theory is intended to explain votes and legislative behaviour (Poole and Rosenthal, 1985; Poole, 2005; Voeten, 2005), not the evaluation of foreign leaders by legislators. Our approach is based on Schmitt's theory, but employing spatial voting models, specifically proximity models, to operationalize the friend-foe distinction with the available data.

Thus, building on the core ideas of affective polarization literature and spatial voting theory, especially the friend-foe logic, we defend the idea that the latter is deeply rooted in the minds of political elites, especially when they should value foreign policy aspects. We adapt the friend-foe logic to ideological positions, namely the ideological distance between political elites and foreign leaders and the impact that this distance might have on the evaluation. Beyond simple ideological self-identification, a purely descriptive variable, ideological distance measures the relationship concerning the enmity or “adversariality” between the evaluator and the evaluated parties. When the evaluator feels the evaluated to be ideologically closer, s/he would become a friend; when the former feels the evaluated to be ideologically more distant, s/he would become a foe. In fact, this reasoning resembles spatial voting models, and a similar variable has been employed in other studies as an independent variable to explain political trust polarization (Torcal and Bargsted, 2015 ). Our theoretical argument is not that the friend-foe distinction is simply ideological, but that ideological distance is an adequate instrument to operationalize such a theoretical concept with a design similar to spatial voting models.

The specialized literature indicates that legislator ideological positions, like voters, are not entirely static, and that these positions could be conditioned by the ideological positions of parties or prominent leaders (Sanders et al., 2008). Furthermore, where legislators place foreign leaders on the left-right scale could affect their own positions. To avoid these limitations, we considered the possibility to analyse legislator perception towards foreign leaders using the directional theory. However, we argue herein that the evaluation that legislators perform concerning these leaders does not depend on ideological or programmatic motivations, but rather responds to the Schmittian friend-foe logic. Unlike affective polarization literature, we maintain that it is affection that precedes ideology and not vice-versa, hence why proximity models fit better with our theoretical framework.

We consider that this proposal is the most appropriate for anonymised survey elite data. Thus, we are not able to include additional measurement or exogenous variables, as we are not able to identify individual legislators. The only option we have is to merge the legislator’s ideological self-placement of and the foreign leader’s placement by the legislator himself/herself, to build our distance proposal. The next section presents the elite surveys we work on, and how the data are gathered.

Data and method

To analyse the evaluation of our eight foreign leaders of interest by political elites, we rely on the Latin American Elites Database from the University of Salamanca (PELA-USAL), which gathers surveys conducted since 1994 on Latin American legislator opinions and attitudes on a variety of issues, including international relations.² These surveys are conducted after every legislative election and, in recent years, include questions on international relations, among which there are two concerning foreign leaders: the first on their ideological position on a left-right scale (1-10) and the second in which the legislator has to evaluate foreign leaders in global terms, also on a 10-point scale, with 1 indicating very bad and 10, very good. We specifically focus on eight foreign leaders whose influence has extended beyond their traditional area of influence: Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (commonly known as CFK), Dilma Rousseff, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Juan Manuel Santos and Pope Francis. In the next section, we present a brief biography on each one.

To obtain a complete picture of every leader, we have included all available PELA-USAL studies for each to ensure a truly comparative analysis of all eight leaders and their acceptance/rejection levels. This comprises a total of 2,391 legislators in thirty surveys for eighteen countries³ from 2009 to 2017. Crucially, given the differences in the foreign leader terms of office and the nature of the PELA-USAL interviews themselves (conducted after every legislative election and, thus, dependent on the duration of the legislative period), the total number of interviewees per leader changes. Furthermore, since the surveys are conducted through anonymous face-to-face interviews, it is not possible to identify if the same legislator appears in the merged dataset more than once. Thus, we cannot control the evolution of the opinion of individual legislators. That being so, and as indicated further ahead, we included country-year fixed-effects as controls in the models.

Thus, this paper analyses a total of eight heads of state or government, including different profiles. According to the legislators themselves with evidence from PELA-USAL, five are leftists and three are rightists.⁴ Five are Latin American leaders, one US American, another European and the final one, the Head of the Vatican City. Finally, there are five whose terms have already ended (CFK, Rousseff, Obama, Santos and Morales), one who died in office (Chávez) and two who were still in office at the time of writing this study⁵ (Merkel and the Pope). Consequently, this study exhibits considerable heterogeneity in its objects of interest to identify common patterns in the evaluation of such a diverse group of foreign leaders.⁶ As for the explanatory model, we run fixed-effects logistic regressions with the dependent variable comprising the evaluation of each foreign leader. Measured by a 10-point scale with 1 for very bad and 10 for very good, we decided to dichotomize values 1-5 as 0 and 6-10 as 1, in view of the irregular and diverging distribution of the frequencies (DeCoster et al., 2009) for each leader, as cases are concentrated in high values (Merkel, Pope Francis), medium-high values (Obama, Santos), or low values (Chávez), or else are fairly equally distributed along the scale (Morales). The only leader who shows an almost normal distribution is CFK, and to a lesser extent, Rousseff. For this reason, and to facilitate the interpretation of the coefficients and leader comparisons, we decided to indicate the logit regressions, instead of linear or ordered logits. The complete models (logit, linear, ologit), as well as the original 1-10 frequency distributions (Figure A1), with all Stata commands, are available in the ^Appendix.

Our main independent variable, ideological distance, operationalizes the friend-foe distinction. Accordingly, we combined two items: the placement that every legislator indicates for the foreign leader and the legislator’s self-placement, both on the left-right scale. We then calculated the absolute difference of these two questions and obtained the ideological distance that each legislator perceives from each leader, from 0 (minimum distance) to 9 (maximum distance). Thus, we expect that greater ideological distances (“foe”) will lead to worse evaluations and smaller distances (“friend”) lead to better evaluations. The aim is to test whether the evaluation is conditioned when the legislator feels that the leader s/he is asked about is a friend/foe, because they share similar/different ideological positions.

At this point, key aspects are noted in the questionnaire, which comprises nearly one hundred items, and in the interview in the following sequence: At the very beginning of the interview, the legislator is asked about the ideological position of foreign leaders on the left-right axis. Later on, in the section on international relations, s/he is asked about the evaluation of such foreign leaders. Finally, nearly at the end, the legislator must self-position on the left-right axis. Given the concern regarding endogeneity between evaluation and ideological assessments (Rogowski and Sutherland 2016: 490), it is important to maintain this sequence in mind, since there is no clear answer interaction or contamination as the time span between questions is considerable.

Additionally, some kind of endogeneity between ideological distance and ideology may take place. For example, Chávez is clearly positioned on the left, and leftist legislators will presumably evaluate him better, and, in this case, the ideological distance will presumably be low. Nevertheless, there is an important theoretical difference that the paper intends to discuss, measure and test.

Although it might seem to be an ideology corollary (or redundancy), the ideological distance variable is indeed a better and more accurate indicator, as the idea that leftist legislators evaluate Hugo Chávez (clearly positioned on the left) better and Barack Obama (clearly positioned on the right) worse actually means that leftist legislators feel closer to Hugo Chávez than to Barack Obama and, as a consequence, will presumably evaluate the Venezuelan president better. Accordingly, it is not simply that leftists evaluate leftists better and rightists evaluate rightists better. It is more precise to state that one will evaluate better those to who they feel closer to, namely friends.

In this context, legislators in this study are not voting on an agreement signed by these foreign leaders, or any other diplomatic action. We thus opt for an ‘attitude’ approach. We are not arguing how the friend/foe logic might impact foreign policy decisions, as the main focus of the study is how ideological distance impacts the evaluation of foreign leaders, not how it might shape foreign policies, or how these conditions are perceived. Additionally, this paper builds on previous assessments that have indicated a good measure of theatricality in foreign policy legislative appraisals; because Latin American legislators are rather inconsequential for diplomacy, they employ the topic mostly to showcase their ideological credentials (Onuki et al., 2009; Feliú and Onuki, 2014; Ribeiro and Pinheiro, 2016), which we interpret herein through the friend/foe motivation as measured by ideological distance. Accordingly, and in terms of ideological distance, what we label here as a “friend” will be the leader to which the legislator feels ideologically closer to, while a “foe” will be the leader to which the legislator feels ideologically further from.

We also considered the possibility that legislators on the same ideological side of the foreign leader (as perceived by themselves) may better evaluate this leader.⁷ However, we choose to maintain the absolute difference first and foremost because both ideologies and evaluation are expressed in terms of a 10-point scale. Thus, the ideological distance is measured on an ordinal rather than a dichotomous scale, despite the dual nature of the friend-foe distinction. We replicated the eight regressions with a variable comprising two categories (friend: 0-5, and foe: 6-9) and the results did not change.

Second, we are interested in demonstrating distance across the whole ideological spectrum, not between sides, as this would oversimplify original distances. Hence, our variable is termed “ideological distance” instead of “friend-foe”. Third, even when maintaining the absolute difference as an explanatory variable, it is possible to infer important ideological differences (e.g., a 5-point distance).

Finally, because we are aware of these issues, we acknowledge that, with the same distance, leftist legislators might prefer leaders such as CFK, Evo Morales or Hugo Chávez, and rightist legislators might prefer Barack Obama or Juan Manuel Santos. Consequently, we included legislator positions on the Left-Right and State-Market axes as independent variables in the models, both on a 10-point scale (1 for Left/State and 10 for Right/Market). We expect these two to move in the same direction, in which, the more leftist and statist the legislator is, the better the evaluations of CFK, Rousseff, Morales and Chávez and the worse those of Obama, Santos and Merkel.

It is worth highlighting once again that the availability of empirical evidence from PELA-USAL provides a nearly unique opportunity to identify what drives political foreign elite evaluations, not citizen evaluations of national leaders (in the US) as in previous works. More importantly, we obtained empirical evidence to measure ideological distance and, in fact, operationalized the friend-foe logic to test whether it works at the elite level.

Given that our dependent variable is associated to the international arena, we also include questions linked to international relations, such as ALBA and Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US evaluations. Our expectations are similar to those for ideological positions, where the ALBA evaluation, considered as representative of the anti-systemic axis in the region (Briceño, 2013), will positively influence CFK, Rousseff, Morales and Chávez, given that they represent, among others, the local left (Levitsky and Roberts, 2011; Cusak, 2018). On the contrary, we expect opposed effects from the FTA with the US, given that this would represent an open integration axis in Latin American regional integration (Bohigues and Rivas, 2019). We expect the opposite effect for Obama, Santos and Merkel, negative for ALBA and positive for the FTA with the US.

With regard to the Pope, since he is not a political but a religious leader, we do not hold clear theoretical expectations regarding ideological positions and international relations. Consequently, we included a 6-point religion-related question, frequency of mass attendance, with 0 for a non-believer and 5 for a believer who attends more than once a week. This model allows us to test whether the Pope’s charisma is not only above politics but also above religiosity in a case where both ideology and religiosity exhibit no statistical significance. Still, we may expect that the higher the religiosity, the better the evaluation.

Additionally, we included a series of control variables, namely gender (dummy; 1 for female), age, education (1 to 6, 1 for no studies and 6 for a postgraduate level), income and whether the legislator has studied abroad (dummy; 1 for abroad). Similarly, to capture political party effects, we include a dichotomous control variable to differentiate whether the legislator belongs to the opposition or to the government (1 for opposition). We do not hold theoretical expectations for control variables accounting for gender, age, education and political party effects. Because our main research interest is the friend-foe logic, we mainly focus on individual-level determinants. Nevertheless, we also accounted for geographical and temporal factors by including country-year dummies⁸ as fixed effects. Table 1 displays the descriptive statistics of all variables included in the applied models.

Table 1
Descriptive statistics

Variable	Obs	Mean	Std. Dev.	Min	Max
Merkel evaluation	1,108	0.80	0.40	0	1
Chávez evaluation	1,092	0.24	0.43	0	1
Santos evaluation	1,151	0.62	0.49	0	1
Rousseff evaluation	1,036	0.61	0.49	0	1
Obama evaluation	2,087	0.66	0.47	0	1
Pope Francis evaluation	1,191	0.88	0.32	0	1
Morales evaluation	1,936	0.43	0.50	0	1
CFK evaluation	1,012	0.50	0.50	0	1
Merkel distance	1,066	2.89	2.42	0	9
Chávez distance	1,062	3.22	2.14	0	9
Santos distance	1,142	3.05	2.54	0	9
Rousseff distance	1,017	2.12	1.92	0	9
Obama distance	2,076	2.69	2.48	0	9
Pope Francis distance	1,134	1.93	1.85	0	9
Morales distance	1,922	2.78	2.24	0	9
CFK distance	999	2.19	1.84	0	9
Ideology	2,316	4.73	2.31	1	10
State-Market	2,357	5.42	2.58	1	10
FTA US	2,301	5.87	2.84	1	10
ALBA	2,238	4.82	2.89	1	10
Woman	2,358	0.26	0.44	0	1
Age	2,292	48.07	10.80	21	86
Studies	2,336	5.07	0.95	1	6
Study abroad	2,307	0.23	0.42	0	1
Income	2,253	2.25	1.11	1	4
Opposition	2,208	0.49	0.50	0	1
Religiosity	2,229	2.67	1.49	0	5

• Source: Elaborated by the authors employing PELA-USAL data.

The image of foreign leaders in Latin America

Before assessing the survey data and Latin American legislator evaluations, we briefly present the biographies of our eight leaders of interest, and their average local evaluations to better contextualize our dependent variable.

Angela Merkel (1954, Hamburg) has been the Chancellor of Germany since 2005. During these thirteen years in command of the German Government, in coalition with the SPD and the liberals, she has faced various critical situations, such as the financial crack in 2008, the euro crisis of 2010-2011, the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the financial bailouts of Southern European countries and the refugee crisis (CIDOB, 2018).⁹

Barack Obama (1961, Honolulu) was President of the United States between 2009 and 2017. During his presidency, he promoted an economic recovery plan to face the financial crisis and carried out a promised health reform. Concerning foreign policy, he ordered the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, led the military intervention in Libya and the Islamic State, ordered the operation that killed Bin Laden, reached a nuclear agreement with Iran, and thawed diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Evo Morales (1959, Isallavi) as President of Bolivia between 2006 and 2019, and the first indigenous mandatary of that country. During his thirteen years in government, he convened a constituent national assembly that drafted a new constitution approved in 2009, nationalized hydrocarbon companies and promoted an agrarian reform. Concerning foreign policy, he rejected free trade agreements and maintained an anti-imperialist policy, becoming one of the main allies of Cuba and Venezuela in the region. Amidst street protests and statements by the military, he was forced to resign in 2019.

Juan Manuel Santos (1951, Bogotá) was president of Colombia between 2010 and 2018. During his presidency, he led a peace process to end the long Colombian armed conflict and signed the Final Peace Agreement with the FARC in 2016. In the international field, he restored the relations with Chavez’s Venezuela, promoted the Pacific Alliance and initiated a request to integrate Colombia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

CFK (1953, Tolosa) was President of Argentina between 2007 and 2015. During her two mandates, she continued the economic, social and human rights policies of the previous government, and nationalized Argentinian Airlines and YPF (Fiscal Oilfields). Concerning foreign policy, she maintained a close relationship with Mercosur countries and participated in the creation of the Union of South American Nations (USAN) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Dilma Rousseff (1947, Belo Horizonte) was President of Brazil between 2011 and 2016. During her government, she continued the social policies of the previous President, but her economic performance was irregular. In the international field, she focused on promoting Mercosur and USAN, strengthening relations with the BRICS countries and pressing for Brazil to be included as a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations. She was dismissed from office through a Congress impeachment in 2016.

Hugo Chávez (1954, Sabaneta) was President of Venezuela between 1999 and 2013. During his fourteen years as president, he recast the political regime through the convening of a National Constituent Assembly, and a new Constitution in 1999. In 2002, an attempted coup against his Government took place. From his second re-election in 2006, he embraced a more socialist than nationalist policy, increased company nationalization and tried to change the Constitution to convert Venezuela into a socialist state. Concerning foreign policy, Chávez had a very active role in Latin America, promoting alliances with governments form the anti-systemic axis and weaving alliances with countries that challenged US hegemony. Venezuela’s entry into Mercosur prompted the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA). He died of cancer in 2013, five months after his fourth presidential re-election.

Pope Francis, whose real name is Jorge Bergoglio (1936, Buenos Aires), has been the Pope of the Catholic Church and the Head of State of the Vatican City since 2013. He has promoted reforms and strongly condemned paedophilia cases. At the international level, his diplomatic efforts have focused on the search for peace and social justice and the fight against climate change.

Among these eight leaders, the latter ranks first in Latin American parliaments (Figure 1). Pope Francis is by far the best evaluated. At the end, we find Hugo Chávez, scoring less than 25%. Interestingly, political elites in his own region, Latin America, clearly reject his leadership. In addition, returning to ideological differences within this sample, Juan Manuel Santos is the rightist leader with the lowest score, and Dilma Rousseff, the leftist leader with the highest score, both over 60%.

Figure 1
Chávez, Morales, CFK, Santos, Rousseff, Obama, Merkel and Pope Francis evaluation in Latin American parliaments (%). Source: Elaborated by the authors employing PELA-USAL data.

Another interesting observation taken from Figure 1 is that the three highest scores are not genuine Latin American leaders. Latin American elites, as a whole, evaluate non-Latin American leaders better than their own leaders. Pope Francis is Argentine, but herein we consider him as a non-Latin American leader, since he is the Head of the Vatican City, a sovereign state in Europe. Although being undoubtedly Latin American, two particularities should be considered regarding this matter: he is not an elected president, but the religious leader of the Catholic Church and the headquarters of this church are located in Europe.

Results

Table 2 displays the eight logit regressions,¹⁰ one for each of the evaluated foreign leaders. All standard errors have been adjusted for government/opposition and country-year, and the number of clusters is the result of the combination of country-years with the individual government/opposition dummy.

Table 2
Determinants for Latin American legislator evaluation of international leaders.

	Merkel		Chávez		Santos		Rousseff		Obama		Pope		Morales		CFK
Distance	-0.24	(0.05)***	-0.24	(0.08)***	-0.22	(0.03)***	-0.23	(0.06)***	-0.27	(0.04)***	-0.27	(0.07)***	-0.22	(0.07)***	-0.25	(0.07)***
Ideology	-0.07	(0.07)	-0.16	(0.11)	0.01	(0.04)	-0.03	(0.07)	0.01	(0.05)	-0.02	(0.11)	-0.08	(0.06)	-0.04	(0.07)
State/Market	0.09	(0.06)	-0.07	(0.10)	0.00	(0.04)	-0.08	(0.04)**	0.05	(0.03)	0.10	(0.06)*	-0.09	(0.03)***	-0.05	(0.04)
FTA US	0.10	(0.05)**	-0.17	(0.06)***	0.11	(0.04)***	-0.05	(0.06)	0.12	(0.03)***	0.09	(0.08)	-0.15	(0.04)***	-0.06	(0.05)
ALBA	0.03	(0.05)	0.49	(0.07)***	0.11	(0.04)***	0.29	(0.06)***	0.03	(0.03)	-0.01	(0.05)	0.30	(0.06)***	0.26	(0.04)***
Woman	-0.36	(0.22)	0.03	(0.23)	-0.20	(0.18)	-0.41	(0.15)***	0.20	(0.15)	0.21	(0.29)	0.31	(0.21)	0.23	(0.23)
Age	-0.02	(0.01)*	-0.01	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)*	-0.01	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.01	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)*
Studies	-0.24	(0.09)***	-0.19	(0.15)	0.00	(0.09)	0.07	(0.11)	0.02	(0.07)	0.00	(0.14)	-0.13	(0.11)	-0.27	(0.14)**
Study abroad	0.26	(0.28)	-0.14	(0.31)	-0.22	(0.17)	-0.12	(0.23)	-0.06	(0.18)	0.41	(0.34)	0.09	(0.17)	0.42	(0.18)**
Income	0.21	(0.16)	-0.36	(0.14)	0.03	(0.10)	-0.08	(0.14)	-0.02	(0.09)	-0.01	(0.13)	-0.19	(0.10)**	-0.20	(0.11)*
Opposition	0.11	(0.18)	-0.70	(0.31)	-0.07	(0.18)	-0.26	(0.36)	0.22	(0.12)*	-0.33	(0.26)	-0.52	(0.17)***	-0.73	(0.18)***
Religiosity	0.12	(0.07)*	-0.05	(0.11)	0.06	(0.06)	0.01	(0.07)	-0.04	(0.05)	0.23	(0.07)***	-0.05	(0.06)	0.04	(0.05)
Constant	4.34	(1.30)***	1.36	(1.31)	0.73	(0.76)	3.76	(1.17)***	1.09	(0.66)*	1.26	(1.18)	2.17	(0.81)***	3.96	(0.89)***
Adjusted clusters	34		26		34		30		54		34		52		28
Pseudo R2	0.22		0.54		0.14		0.33		0.18		0.18		0.43		0.27
N	822		825		897		772		1595		891		1508		745

• ^***
  p ≤ 0.01; ** p ≤ 0.05; * p ≤ 0.1.
• Robust standard errors adjusted for government/opposition and country-year are in parentheses. Country-years are included as fixed-effects but are not shown in the table.
• Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Regarding the control variables, some findings were detected even though we had no previous theoretical expectations. Age is barely significant in three models (Merkel, Santos, CFK), and gender is significant only for Dilma Rousseff. Study level, on the other hand, covariate with the evaluation of only two leaders: legislators with higher levels of education tend to evaluate both Angela Merkel and CFK worse, and legislators who have studied abroad, usually in the US or Europe, are inclined to evaluate the former Argentine president worse. It is interesting that the level of income of legislators is significant only for Evo Morales, and CFK, where a higher income implies in worse evaluations.

The government-opposition variable exhibited high coefficients and significance in three of the regressions. Opposition legislators tend to evaluate Obama better and Evo Morales and CFK worse. Although, as expected, the control religiosity covariates with the evaluation of Pope Francis: the more religious the legislators are, the better they evaluate Pope Francis. This variable is also significant for Merkel.

Our expectations are partially met with the effects of FTA with the US and ALBA evaluations, where legislators who value the FTA with the US positively evaluate foreign leaders who, like the FTAs, represent the open integration axis in Latin America (Obama and Santos) or are not Latin American heads of state (Merkel), although no significances were detected for Rousseff, CFK and Pope Francis.

On the other hand, legislators with a favourable opinion of ALBA positively evaluate the left-wing leaders (Chávez, Morales, Rousseff and CFK). However, in the last case, the ALBA evaluation also led to a positive covariance on a right-wing leader such as Santos, although the coefficient is much lower. No significances were detected for Merkel, Obama and Pope Francis.

The results are not conclusive with regard to the variables that measure legislator ideological positions. Pro-market legislators evaluate left-wing leaders (Rousseff and Morales, but not Chávez and CFK) worse, and Pope Francis better. No other covariations were observed for the rest of the leaders. On the other side, the left-right scale is not significant in any of the regressions. This, however, does not mean that ideology does not play any role in the analysis, since covariances for other ideological-programmatic variables (FTA US, ALBA, State/Market) were observed.

Finally, the ideological distance between political elites and foreign leaders emerges as the main predictor in all the regressions, comprising the variable with the best results in terms of the coefficient of determination and statistical significance.¹¹ As expected, for all eight foreign leaders analysed herein, greater ideological distances covariate with worse evaluations (foe), while shorter distances covariate with better evaluations (friend). This friend-foe logic even affects Rousseff and Pope Francis evaluations, for whom only two factors appear to be significant.

The operationalization of the friend-foe distinction mentioned in the theoretical framework emerges as a key element in understanding legislator evaluations of foreign leaders. In fact, it is the only common significant coefficient for the evaluations of all eight leaders.

To obtain a clearer perspective of the strength of the friend-foe logic as the main variable when evaluating foreign leaders, we go one step further and explore the marginal effects of this variable mediated by the remaining predictors for each leader. Figure 2 displays the ideological distance coefficients over State/Market, support for an FTA with the US, and ALBA evaluation. Notably, we now address only the significant coefficients displayed in Table 2.

Figure 2
Conditional marginal effects of ideological distance. 95% CIs. Source: own elaboration.

In the figure, the horizontal grey lines represent 0, an absence of significance. Thus, ideological distance maintains a negative significant coefficient for all combinations, as the coefficients represented by the black dots and confidence intervals are below 0. This indicates that among statist and pro-market legislators with very positive or negative views on the FTA with the US or the ALBA, the friend foe logic is still applicable to in the evaluation of foreign leaders. Even among legislators with firm positions regarding the international (FTA and ALBA) or national (State vs Market) arena - positions that already covariate with their foreign leaders’ evaluations - the friend-foe logic is not overtaken and still follows the same pattern.

Only four exceptions are noted: when attitudes toward the FTA with the US are very positive, in the case of Chávez (p-value:=0.198), when attitudes toward ALBA are very negative, in the case of Chávez (p-value:=0.213) and very positive, in the case of Rousseff (p-value:=0.124), and when legislators are strong supporters of the State (vs Market), in the case of Pope Francis¹² (p-value=0.129). In these four cases the firm positions on FTA with the US, ALBA and State/Market overtake the friend-foe logic. Thus, in view of the conditional effects identified in Figure 2, and the coefficients from Table 2, regardless of ideological distance, strong supporters of the FTA and strong detractors of ALBA will tend to evaluate Chávez worse, while strong ALBA supporters will evaluate Rousseff better, and firm Statists will evaluate Pope Francis worse.

Conclusions

This study comprised two complementary objectives, namely to identify the determinants of foreign leader evaluations and test the friend-foe logic. The identification of the friend-foe logic as the main determinant of foreign leader evaluations by national legislators in Latin America is a key finding that aids in understanding how the attitudes of political elites in international politics may be driven.

This is the first time that the dynamics of the friend-foe logic have been operationalized and appear to be significant. To this end, we relied on previous studies spatial voting models, especially proximity, and elite and leadership theory would gain a theoretical understanding of day-to-day politics if this friend-foe logic was to be applied. As for the data, the PELA-USAL database provided an almost unique opportunity to operationalize this core theoretical concept in a relevant field such as leadership in foreign relationships. These surveys include two different questions on foreign leaders that allowed for the determination of the distance between the legislator and every leader, as the former feels it to be.

In addition, this study is a contribution to the central literature argument on affective polarization in the US, as it provides evidence from different actors (legislators instead of citizens) to under-studied actors (foreign leaders instead of political candidates). However, unlike affective polarization studies, we argue that the absolute perceived ideological distance between legislators and foreign leaders, by the legislators themselves, is the main predictor. Furthermore, an additional theoretical contribution is noted from the operationalization, closely linked to proximity spatial models, and tested with survey data of the friend-foe logic as posed by Schmitt. This cross-national comparative study demonstrated that the main predictor of the evaluation of foreign leaders among elites, no matter their country of origin, whether they are Latin American, US American, European or even the Pope, is our ideological distance proposal.

In parallel with this friend-foe effect, and with the exception of Dilma Rousseff, Pope Francis and CFK, what legislators think about trading with the US still covariates with how Latin American political elites view not only their northern neighbour but also the rest of the world, even European leaders. The same goes for ALBA, except for Merkel, Obama and Pope Francis.

Certainly, other variables are significant for some leaders, such as studying abroad for CFK, religiosity for the Pope or income for Morales, to mention a few. Nevertheless, the most significant and highest coefficient for all eight leaders is ideological distance, beyond attitudes toward free trade with the US, ALBA or the role of the State in the economy, with very few exceptions.

The findings evidenced herein raise new questions. Is the friend-foe logic constant throughout the years? Is there a similar effect among voters? And what about national leaders? Future research should consider the evolution of evaluations, political party positions, and structural and cultural variables (soft power, geographical distance, and development indicators of the foreign leader’s country, among others). In due time, new evidence (on new leaders) will become available, and the friend-foe logic should be tested on leaders such as Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.

Even highlighting the possible shortcomings of the applied analysis and comparison between the eight leaders, which we are aware of and have mentioned and discussed in the paper, the explanatory power of the friend-foe logic as measured by ideological distance, is beyond any doubt. More than religiosity and the opinion on ALBA or free trade with the US, the constant and relevant predictor regarding the evaluation of foreign leaders by elites is, first and foremost, the distinction between friends and foes.

APPENDIX Regression models

Standard errors have been adjusted for government/opposition and country-year in all models.

We have highlighted in grey, in the Linear (2) and Ordered Logistic (3) models, the coefficients that do not match the coefficients from the Logistic model (1) in terms of significance.

Table A1
Logistic models: determinants of Latin American legislators’ evaluation of international leaders

	MERKEL		CHÁVEZ		SANTOS		DILMA		OBAMA		POPE		EVO		CFK
Distance	-0.24	(0.05)***	-0.24	(0.08)***	-0.22	(0.03)***	-0.23	(0.06)***	-0.27	(0.04)***	-0.27	(0.07)***	-0.22	(0.07)***	-0.25	(0.07)***
Ideology	-0.07	(0.07)	-0.16	(0.11)	0.01	(0.04)	-0.03	(0.07)	0.01	(0.05)	-0.02	(0.11)	-0.08	(0.06)	-0.04	(0.07)
State/Market	0.09	(0.06)	-0.07	(0.10)	0.00	(0.04)	-0.08	(0.04)**	0.05	(0.03)	0.10	(0.06)*	-0.09	(0.03)***	-0.05	(0.04)
FTA US	0.10	(0.05)**	-0.17	(0.06)***	0.11	(0.04)***	-0.05	(0.06)	0.12	(0.03)***	0.09	(0.08)	-0.15	(0.04)***	-0.06	(0.05)
ALBA	0.03	(0.05)	0.49	(0.07)***	0.11	(0.04)***	0.29	(0.06)***	0.03	(0.03)	-0.01	(0.05)	0.30	(0.06)***	0.26	(0.04)***
Woman	-0.36	(0.22)	0.03	(0.23)	-0.20	(0.18)	-0.41	(0.15)***	0.20	(0.15)	0.21	(0.29)	0.31	(0.21)	0.23	(0.23)
Age	-0.02	(0.01)*	-0.01	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)*	-0.01	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.01	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)*
Studies	-0.24	(0.09)***	-0.19	(0.15)	0.00	(0.09)	0.07	(0.11)	0.02	(0.07)	0.00	(0.14)	-0.13	(0.11)	-0.27	(0.14)**
Study abroad	0.26	(0.28)	-0.14	(0.31)	-0.22	(0.17)	-0.12	(0.23)	-0.06	(0.18)	0.41	(0.34)	0.09	(0.17)	0.42	(0.18)**
Income	0.21	(0.16)	-0.36	(0.14)	0.03	(0.10)	-0.08	(0.14)	-0.02	(0.09)	-0.01	(0.13)	-0.19	(0.10)**	-0.20	(0.11)*
Opposition	0.11	(0.18)	-0.70	(0.31)	-0.07	(0.18)	-0.26	(0.36)	0.22	(0.12)*	-0.33	(0.26)	-0.52	(0.17)***	-0.73	(0.18)***
Religiosity	0.12	(0.07)*	-0.05	(0.11)	0.06	(0.06)	0.01	(0.07)	-0.04	(0.05)	0.23	(0.07)***	-0.05	(0.06)	0.04	(0.05)
Country-year
Ecuador 09			0.63	(0.81)					0.32	(0.24)			-0.60	(0.68)
Argentina 07			0.07	(0.64)					-0.58	(0.25)**			-0.23	(0.49)
Honduras 10			-3.06	(0.85)***					0.08	(0.31)			-3.23	(0.43)***
Brazil 14			-0.30	(0.49)					0.09	(0.18)			-1.66	(0.38)***
Uruguay 10			-0.73	(0.70)					-1.67	(0.22)***			-1.64	(0.49)***
Chile 10			-1.31	(0.48)***					-1.71	(0.23)***			-1.50	(0.38)***
Costa Rica 10			-0.85	(0.69)					1.22	(0.51)**			-1.08	(0.46)**	-0.78	(0.28)***
Mexico 09			ref	ref					-0.81	(0.21)***			-0.58	(0.35)*	-0.63	(0.15)***
Peru 10			-0.66	(0.48)					-0.79	(0.16)***			-1.27	(0.53)**
Bolivia 10			0.05	(0.95)					-0.76	(0.21)***					-2.19	(0.34)***
DR 10			1.08	(0.52)**					0.31	(0.22)			-0.48	(0.40)	-0.44	(0.47)
Colombia 10			-0.15	(0.60)					-2.07	(0.20)***			-2.21	(0.66)***	-2.29	(0.30)***
Peru 11			0.15	(0.54)	0.11	(0.57)	-1.10	(0.53)**	-0.60	(0.63)			-0.81	(0.41)**	-0.05	(0.24)
Mexico 12	ref	ref			ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref
Ecuador 13	-2.00	(0.39)***			-0.02	(0.28)	-2.72	(0.85)***	-0.26	(0.18)	0.23	(0.51)	-0.38	(0.57)	-0.94	(0.54)*
Paraguay 13	-2.92	(0.49)***			-0.88	(0.33)***	-2.98	(0.64)***	-0.35	(0.14)**	-0.77	(0.55)	-0.63	(0.54)	-1.64	(0.59)***
Honduras 14	-0.80	(0.36)**			0.23	(0.38)	-1.32	(0.31)***	-0.38	(0.31)	-0.54	(0.46)	0.93	(0.51)*	-1.23	(0.23)***
Costa Rica 14	-1.25	(0.59)**			-0.15	(0.22)	-1.40	(0.43)***	-0.60	(0.11)***	0.18	(0.45)	-0.31	(0.36)	-0.81	(0.43)*
Panama 14	0.03	(0.43)			0.79	(0.26)***	-0.69	(1.08)	-1.43	(0.14)***	0.16	(0.50)	1.71	(0.63)***	-1.80	(0.20)***
Colombia 14	-1.42	(0.36)***					-2.63	(0.46)***	-0.50	(0.26)*	0.19	(0.45)	0.04	(0.51)	-2.28	(0.20)***
Chile 14	-0.71	(0.58)			0.02	(0.23)	-2.88	(0.53)***	-1.02	(0.14)***	-0.87	(0.56)	-1.01	(0.44)**	-1.13	(0.19)***
Uruguay 15	-2.20	(0.53)***			0.02	(0.46)	-5.04	(0.79)***	-2.41	(0.20)***	-1.45	(0.49)***	0.83	(0.45)*
Bolivia 15	-1.99	(0.65)***			-1.15	(0.29)***	-4.16	(0.77)***	-1.14	(0.61)*	0.65	(0.58)
Mexico 16	-1.51	(0.43)***			-0.39	(0.40)	-3.99	(0.75)***	-0.38	(0.45)	0.05	(0.48)
Guatemala 16	-1.74	(0.38)***			-0.24	(0.18)	-3.24	(0.35)***	-0.36	(0.26)	0.08	(0.74)
Venezuela 16	-2.71	(0.47)***			-1.35	(0.25)***	-4.91	(1.02)***	-0.59	(0.65)	0.24	(0.64)	-1.60	(0.66)**
Dominican R. 17	-2.29	(0.35)***			0.30	(0.37)					1.98	(0.66)***	0.72	(0.40)*
Ecuador 17	-1.10	(0.43)**			0.38	(0.37)					0.41	(1.24)	1.08	(0.37)***
Nicaragua 17	-2.13	(0.59)***			-1.16	(0.28)***					-0.15	(1.00)	0.21	(0.69)
El Salvador 15	-1.07	(1.17)			1.12	(0.66)*	-0.50	(0.38)	-0.87	(0.21)***	0.52	(0.83)	3.01	(0.45)***
Constant	4.34	(1.30)***	1.36	(1.31)	0.73	(0.76)	3.76	(1.17)***	1.09	(0.66)*	1.26	(1.18)	2.17	(0.81)***	3.96	(0.89)***
Adjusted clusters	34		26		34		30		54		34		52		28
Pseudo R2	0.22		0.54		0.14		0.33		0.18		0.18		0.43		0.27
N	822		825		897		772		1595		891		1508		745

• ^***
  p ≤ 0.01; ** p ≤ 0.05; * p ≤ 0.1.
• Dependent variable: 0-1. Robust standard errors adjusted for government/opposition and country-year in parentheses.
• Source: own elaboration.

Stata commands

logit VAL_dic_Merkel DistMerkel ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Chavez DistChavez ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b79.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Santos DistSantos ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Dilma DistDilma ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Obama DistObama ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Pope DistPope ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_Evo DistEvo ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

logit VAL_dic_CFK DistCFK ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

Table A2
Linear models: determinants of Latin American legislators’ evaluation of international leaders

	MERKEL		CHÁVEZ		SANTOS		DILMA		OBAMA		POPE		EVO		CFK
Distance	-0.24	(0.04)***	-0.15	(0.04)***	-0.20	(0.03)***	-0.12	(0.04)***	-0.29	(0.04)***	-0.21	(0.05)***	-0.21	(0.05)***	-0.24	(0.05)***
Ideology	-0.02	(0.05)	-0.09	(0.06)	-0.01	(0.04)	-0.02	(0.04)	-0.01	(0.04)	-0.01	(0.06)	-0.07	(0.05)	0.00	(0.04)
State/Market	0.05	(0.04)	-0.09	(0.04)***	-0.03	(0.03)	-0.07	(0.02)***	0.05	(0.02)**	0.06	(0.03)**	-0.08	(0.02)***	-0.09	(0.03)***
FTA US	0.13	(0.04)***	-0.15	(0.03)***	0.11	(0.03)***	-0.07	(0.04)	0.14	(0.03)***	0.11	(0.04)***	-0.15	(0.03)***	-0.07	(0.04)*
ALBA	-0.01	(0.03)	0.39	(0.03)***	0.07	(0.03)**	0.22	(0.05)***	0.00	(0.03)	0.00	(0.03)	0.33	(0.04)***	0.26	(0.03)***
Woman	-0.06	(0.18)	-0.19	(0.12)	-0.17	(0.13)	-0.14	(0.12)	0.26	(0.12)**	0.12	(0.14)	0.10	(0.11)	0.06	(0.17)
Age	0.00	(0.00)	0.00	(0.00)	-0.01	(0.00)*	0.00	(0.00)	0.00	(0.00)	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.00)	-0.01	(0.01)
Studies	-0.09	(0.08)	-0.16	(0.07)**	0.01	(0.06)	-0.07	(0.06)	0.04	(0.05)	0.03	(0.08)	-0.11	(0.06)*	-0.13	(0.08)
Study abroad	0.12	(0.15)	0.01	(0.13)	-0.26	(0.13)**	0.05	(0.14)	-0.07	(0.09)	0.23	(0.19)	-0.15	(0.12)	0.09	(0.15)
Income	0.10	(0.09)	-0.21	(0.07)***	0.02	(0.07)	-0.01	(0.10)	-0.04	(0.06)	-0.11	(0.09)	-0.16	(0.06)***	-0.16	(0.09)*
Opposition	-0.09	(0.09)	-0.69	(0.17)***	-0.13	(0.14)	-0.48	(0.24)*	0.15	(0.13)	-0.39	(0.14)***	-0.46	(0.13)***	-0.68	(0.13)***
Religiosity	0.06	(0.04)	-0.06	(0.05)	0.09	(0.04)**	-0.01	(0.04)	-0.01	(0.03)	0.22	(0.05)***	-0.05	(0.03)	0.04	(0.03)
Country-year
Ecuador 09			0.41	(0.50)					0.32	(0.46)			-0.89	(0.48)*
Argentina 07			-0.59	(0.40)					-0.30	(0.29)			-0.24	(0.43)
Honduras 10			-1.48	(0.26)***					-0.02	(0.23)			-2.58	(0.36)***
Brazil 14			-0.72	(0.26)***					0.09	(0.32)			-1.77	(0.34)***
Uruguay 10			-0.84	(0.30)***					-1.09	(0.36)***			-1.59	(0.37)***
Chile 10			-0.42	(0.25)					-1.15	(0.31)***			-1.14	(0.40)***
Costa Rica 10			-0.65	(0.40)					0.30	(0.24)			-1.33	(0.50)***	-0.40	(0.32)
Mexico 09			ref	Ref					-0.66	(0.21)***			-0.69	(0.34)**	-0.23	(0.07)***
Peru 10			-0.15	(0.29)					-0.60	(0.21)***			-1.09	(0.51)**
Bolivia 10			0.22	(0.78)					-0.45	(0.25)*					-0.92	(0.30)***
DR 10			0.05	(0.20)					-0.12	(0.25)			-0.68	(0.36)*	0.11	(0.43)
Colombia 10			-0.45	(0.35)					-1.46	(0.25)***			-1.58	(0.43)***	-1.01	(0.13)***
Peru 11			-0.18	(0.23)	0.31	(0.51)	0.06	(0.38)	-0.37	(0.58)			-1.18	(0.40)***	0.28	(0.10)***
Mexico 12	ref	ref			ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref
Ecuador 13	-0.97	(0.14)***			0.01	(0.28)	-1.31	(0.50)**	-0.10	(0.27)	0.01	(0.47)	-0.43	(0.40)	-0.40	(0.22)*
Paraguay 13	-1.80	(0.13)***			-0.53	(0.33)	-1.69	(0.50)***	0.05	(0.23)	-0.73	(0.45)	-0.85	(0.48)*	-0.71	(0.40)*
Honduras 14	-0.34	(0.10)***			0.16	(0.38)	-0.12	(0.15)	-0.02	(0.34)	-0.09	(0.45)	0.77	(0.41)*	-0.17	(0.11)
Costa Rica 14	-0.71	(0.28)**			-0.32	(0.39)	-0.75	(0.10)***	-0.54	(0.23)**	0.41	(0.44)	0.24	(0.37)	-0.06	(0.18)
Panama 14	-0.75	(0.16)***			0.16	(0.25)	-0.50	(0.34)	-0.82	(0.22)***	0.49	(0.46)	1.13	(0.48)**	-0.79	(0.14)***
Colombia 14	-0.72	(0.12)***					-1.35	(0.25)***	-0.35	(0.33)	-0.15	(0.44)	-0.32	(0.48)	-1.34	(0.23)***
Chile 14	-1.15	(0.14)***			0.12	(0.33)	-1.47	(0.22)***	-0.84	(0.23)***	-1.09	(0.49)**	-0.75	(0.34)**	-0.68	(0.14)***
Uruguay 15	-1.36	(0.22)***			-0.21	(0.36)	-3.05	(0.44)***	-1.48	(0.30)***	-1.16	(0.57)**	0.27	(0.48)
Bolivia 15	-0.73	(0.28)**			-1.02	(0.29)***	-2.32	(0.34)***	-1.15	(0.90)	0.49	(0.52)
Mexico 16	-0.60	(0.14)***			-0.32	(0.32)	-2.40	(0.49)***	-0.12	(0.38)	-0.49	(0.44)
Guatemala 16	-0.57	(0.10)***			-0.19	(0.30)	-1.78	(0.17)***	0.00	(0.23)	-0.05	(0.45)
Venezuela 16	-1.80	(0.47)***			-1.23	(0.38)***	-2.78	(1.04)**	-0.65	(0.95)	0.47	(0.56)	-1.40	(0.79)*
Dominican R. 17	-1.10	(0.13)***			0.30	(0.30)					0.44	(0.48)	0.42	(0.45)
Ecuador 17	-0.33	(0.22)			0.57	(0.35)					0.44	(0.66)	0.86	(0.36)**
Nicaragua 17	-1.03	(0.43)**			-0.94	(0.30)***					0.22	(0.75)	0.45	(0.69)
El Salvador 15	-0.61	(0.20)***			0.95	(0.28)***	-0.21	(0.41)	-0.51	(0.28)*	0.64	(0.55)	2.45	(0.55)***
Constant	7.84	(0.74)***	6.21	(0.78)***	6.18	(0.58)***	8.21	(0.72)***	6.15	(0.56)***	7.36	(0.77)***	7.60	(0.60)***	7.62	(0.66)***
Adjusted clusters	34		26		34		30		54		34		52		28
Pseudo R2	0.29		0.67		0.26		0.45		0.34		0.24		0.65		0.43
N	822		825		897		772		1595		891		1508		745

• ^***
  p ≤ 0.01; ** p ≤ 0.05; * p ≤ 0.1.
• Dependent variable: 1-10. Robust standard errors adjusted for government/opposition and country-year in parentheses.
• Source: own elaboration.

Stata commands

regres VAL_Merkel DistMerkel ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Chavez DistChavez ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b79.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Santos DistSantos ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Dilma DistDilma ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Obama DistObama ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Pope DistPope ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_Evo DistEvo ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

regres VAL_CFK DistCFK ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

Table A3
Ologit models: determinants of Latin American legislators’ evaluation of international leaders

	MERKEL		CHÁVEZ		SANTOS		DILMA		OBAMA		POPE		EVO		CFK
Distance	-0.22	(0.05)***	-0.27	(0.07)***	-0.25	(0.04)***	-0.15	(0.05)***	-0.32	(0.04)***	-0.19	(0.05)***	-0.25	(0.06)***	-0.28	(0.05)***
Ideology	0.01	(0.06)	-0.05	(0.07)	-0.01	(0.05)	-0.02	(0.06)	-0.01	(0.05)	-0.04	(0.06)	-0.07	(0.06)	-0.01	(0.05)
State/Market	0.05	(0.04)	-0.10	(0.05)**	-0.03	(0.04)	-0.08	(0.03)**	0.05	(0.02)**	0.09	(0.04)**	-0.09	(0.02)***	-0.11	(0.03)***
FTA US	0.14	(0.04)***	-0.18	(0.03)***	0.13	(0.04)***	-0.06	(0.05)	0.16	(0.03)***	0.14	(0.04)***	-0.16	(0.03)***	-0.06	(0.04)*
ALBA	0.00	(0.03)	0.46	(0.04)***	0.09	(0.04)***	0.27	(0.06)***	0.01	(0.03)	0.01	(0.03)	0.37	(0.04)***	0.28	(0.04)***
Woman	-0.01	(0.18)	-0.48	(0.16)***	-0.20	(0.15)	-0.09	(0.13)	0.24	(0.13)*	0.19	(0.18)	0.09	(0.12)	0.07	(0.19)
Age	0.00	(0.01)	0.01	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)*	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	0.00	(0.01)	-0.01	(0.01)
Studies	-0.07	(0.09)	-0.12	(0.07)*	0.01	(0.07)	-0.08	(0.07)	0.05	(0.06)	-0.03	(0.09)	-0.09	(0.06)	-0.12	(0.07)
Study abroad	0.13	(0.17)	0.01	(0.16)	-0.26	(0.13)*	0.04	(0.16)	-0.05	(0.11)	0.27	(0.21)	-0.22	(0.13)*	0.04	(0.16)
Income	0.11	(0.09)	-0.28	(0.11)***	0.02	(0.09)	-0.03	(0.12)	-0.08	(0.08)	-0.13	(0.12)	-0.16	(0.06)**	-0.16	(0.09)*
Opposition	-0.10	(0.10)	-0.80	(0.19)***	-0.15	(0.16)	-0.50	(0.27)*	0.13	(0.14)	-0.28	(0.14)**	-0.50	(0.15)***	-0.76	(0.15)***
Religiosity	0.02	(0.05)	-0.04	(0.06)	0.09	(0.04)**	-0.03	(0.05)	-0.01	(0.04)	0.22	(0.05)***	-0.05	(0.04)	0.03	(0.04)
Country-year
Ecuador 09			-0.14	(0.55)					0.25	(0.57)			-1.09	(0.48)**
Argentina 07			-1.00	(0.35)***					-0.46	(0.34)			-0.45	(0.38)
Honduras 10			-2.72	(0.23)***					-0.07	(0.30)			-3.20	(0.35)***
Brazil 14			-1.10	(0.26)***					0.07	(0.38)			-1.87	(0.33)***
Uruguay 10			-1.44	(0.34)***					-1.36	(0.42)***			-1.81	(0.37)***
Chile 10			-0.61	(0.27)**					-1.36	(0.39)***			-1.22	(0.35)***
Costa Rica 10			-1.06	(0.40)***					0.31	(0.30)			-1.43	(0.53)***	-0.32	(0.30)
Mexico 09			ref	Ref					-0.72	(0.29)**			-0.78	(0.31)**	-0.17	(0.10)*
Peru 10			-0.56	(0.22)***					-0.75	(0.29)***			-1.19	(0.49)**
Bolivia 10			-0.36	(0.96)					-0.51	(0.34)					-1.00	(0.33)***
DR 10			-0.28	(0.15)*					-0.11	(0.30)			-0.80	(0.36)**	0.09	(0.49)
Colombia 10			-0.83	(0.32)**					-1.89	(0.33)***			-1.67	(0.42)***	-0.99	(0.19)***
Peru 11			-0.71	(0.22)***	0.19	(0.66)	-0.02	(0.33)	-0.30	(0.68)			-1.37	(0.40)***	0.28	(0.15)*
Mexico 12	ref	ref			ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref	ref
Ecuador 13	-1.21	(0.14)***			-0.13	(0.38)	-1.47	(0.59)**	-0.10	(0.34)	0.22	(0.53)	-0.63	(0.39)	-0.46	(0.24)*
Paraguay 13	-2.11	(0.20)***			-0.82	(0.42)**	-1.77	(0.57)***	0.05	(0.29)	-0.66	(0.47)	-1.01	(0.42)**	-0.78	(0.44)*
Honduras 14	-0.52	(0.15)***			0.15	(0.49)	-0.10	(0.17)	-0.01	(0.42)	0.17	(0.49)	0.76	(0.41)*	-0.01	(0.15)
Costa Rica 14	-0.98	(0.28)***			-0.54	(0.47)	-1.00	(0.14)***	-0.69	(0.32)**	0.40	(0.51)	0.11	(0.33)	-0.07	(0.17)
Panama 14	-1.17	(0.21)***			-0.03	(0.35)	-0.61	(0.33)*	-1.23	(0.31)***	0.71	(0.52)	1.11	(0.46)**	-0.72	(0.16)***
Colombia 14	-1.01	(0.17)***					-1.62	(0.25)***	-0.42	(0.38)	0.01	(0.46)	-0.53	(0.42)	-1.46	(0.27)***
Chile 14	-1.52	(0.11)***			0.16	(0.48)	-1.58	(0.28)***	-0.97	(0.30)***	-1.04	(0.49)**	-0.92	(0.32)***	-0.84	(0.20)***
Uruguay 15	-1.55	(0.22)***			-0.38	(0.48)	-3.57	(0.50)***	-1.80	(0.39)***	-1.10	(0.60)*	0.24	(0.57)
Bolivia 15	-0.72	(0.32)**			-1.31	(0.42)***	-2.63	(0.38)***	-1.28	(1.08)	0.96	(0.61)
Mexico 16	-0.82	(0.16)***			-0.58	(0.39)	-2.78	(0.57)***	-0.13	(0.47)	-0.50	(0.50)
Guatemala 16	-0.85	(0.11)***			-0.42	(0.39)	-2.02	(0.27)***	-0.06	(0.31)	-0.04	(0.49)
Venezuela 16	-1.99	(0.45)***			-1.52	(0.48)***	-3.26	(1.43)**	-0.68	(1.13)	0.79	(0.70)	-1.38	(1.00)
Dominican R. 17	-1.34	(0.13)***			0.32	(0.39)					0.45	(0.54)	0.14	(0.52)
Ecuador 17	-0.46	(0.17)***			0.61	(0.42)					0.78	(0.70)	0.78	(0.34)**
Nicaragua 17	-1.15	(0.54)**			-1.27	(0.39)***					0.60	(0.91)	0.51	(0.78)
El Salvador 15	-0.97	(0.25)***			1.04	(0.38)***	-0.21	(0.38)	-0.65	(0.33)**	0.93	(0.57)	2.66	(0.60)***
/cut1	-5.13	(0.87)	-4.86	(0.80)	-4.89	(0.79)	-7.36	(0.90)	-4.05	(0.74)	-4.18	(1.12)	-6.27	(0.69)	-6.51	(0.73)
/cut2	-4.18	(0.81)	-3.59	(0.84)	-3.83	(0.77)	-6.22	(0.88)	-3.61	(0.71)	-3.75	(1.10)	-4.89	(0.67)	-5.23	(0.69)
/cut3	-3.67	(0.83)	-2.59	(0.84)	-3.09	(0.78)	-4.97	(0.84)	-3.02	(0.71)	-3.45	(1.06)	-3.94	(0.67)	-4.25	(0.70)
/cut4	-3.12	(0.83)	-1.70	(0.84)	-2.27	(0.77)	-3.99	(0.87)	-2.28	(0.68)	-2.75	(1.00)	-3.07	(0.65)	-3.22	(0.68)
/cut5	-2.24	(0.82)	-0.81	(0.84)	-0.89	(0.77)	-2.97	(0.81)	-0.72	(0.65)	-1.24	(0.95)	-2.18	(0.66)	-2.29	(0.66)
/cut6	-1.41	(0.82)	-0.07	(0.84)	0.20	(0.79)	-1.99	(0.81)	0.23	(0.63)	-0.74	(0.96)	-1.46	(0.67)	-1.31	(0.67)
/cut7	-0.42	(0.81)	1.15	(0.87)	1.43	(0.78)	-0.72	(0.82)	1.40	(0.62)	0.03	(0.94)	-0.51	(0.68)	-0.43	(0.72)
/cut8	1.19	(0.84)	2.31	(0.89)	2.99	(0.79)	0.70	(0.83)	2.66	(0.62)	0.95	(0.95)	0.83	(0.66)	0.98	(0.73)
/cut9	2.40	(0.87)	3.29	(1.02)	4.42	(0.76)	1.66	(0.82)	3.74	(0.63)	1.80	(0.96)	2.04	(0.66)	2.02	(0.75)
Adjusted clusters	34		26		34		30		54		34		52		28
Pseudo R2	0.07		0.25		0.07		0.14		0.09		0.08		0.23		0.13
N	822		825		897		772		1595		891		1508		745

• ^***
  p ≤ 0.01; ** p ≤ 0.05; * p ≤ 0.1.
• Dependent variable: 1-10. Robust standard errors adjusted for government/opposition and country-year in parentheses.
• Source: own elaboration.

Stata commands

ologit VAL_Merkel DistMerkel ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Chavez DistChavez ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b79.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Santos DistSantos ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Dilma DistDilma ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Obama DistObama ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Pope DistPope ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_Evo DistEvo ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

ologit VAL_CFK DistCFK ID1 EM1 RRII201 REC301 SOCD4 SOCD5 SOCD7 SOCD7a ING3 POL1 RE1b b89.nestu [pweight=peso], cluster (nestu_POL1)

Figure A1
Histograms of the evaluations (1-10) of foreign leaders with frequencies. Source: own elaboration.

Stata commands

hist VAL_Merkel, freq normal

hist VAL_Chavez, freq normal

hist VAL_Santos, freq normal

hist VAL_Dilma, freq normal

hist VAL_Obama, freq normal

hist VAL_Pope, freq normal

hist VAL_Evo, freq normal

hist VAL_CFK, freq normal

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to Manuel Alcántara, María del Mar Martínez Rosón, and Nicolás Liendo for their comments, which helped in improving this paper.

• 1
  In this section, we use a variety of theoretical approaches to the Schmittian logic of politics to justify our variable “ideological distance”. We are aware of our theoretical eclecticism and have justified this based on the interdisciplinary nature of the friend–foe distinction and the novelty of our variable.
• 2
  The entire dataset, and information about the PELA-USAL project, including response rates and samples, can be found at: https://oir.org.es/pela/en/.
• 3
  Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela and Uruguay.
• 4
  Ideological means in the 1 (left) to 10 (right) scale: Chávez: 2.47, Morales: 2.45, Rousseff: 3.83, CFK: 4.19, Pope Francis: 5.14, Merkel: 6.55, Obama: 6.65 and Santos: 6.78.
• 5
  February 2021.
• 6
  The reason for selecting these eight leaders is methodological. Since the main purpose of the paper is to operationalize and test for the friend–foe logic in the international arena, we chose the eight leaders with the highest N in the PELA-USAL database. At the same time, as the paragraph states, we attempted to envisage as much heterogeneity as possible among such leaders.
• 7
  As an example, a rightist legislator in the position 6 might prefer Leader A on the position 9 (3 points), rather than Leader B on the position 4 (2 points), because Leader A is rightist, and Leader B is leftist
• 8
  The PELA-USAL surveys are carried out once per legislature. As an example, the face-to-face interviews were conducted in 2015for the legislative period 2015–2020 in Bolivia. Thus, every survey corresponds to a specific country in a specific year; in this case, Bolivia in 2015 (country-year), although it actually represents the 2015–2020 Bolivian legislature. This is this because some leaders are asked in the same country in different years
• 9
  The biographical dates of the foreign leaders are taken from the CIDOB political leader biography database (2018).
• 10
  Alternatively, we ran linear and ordered logistic regressions. Results did not significantly differ from those displayed in Table 2. The full models and Stata commands are available in the ^Appendix.
• 11
  To check possible endogeneity problems, we ran separate models that excluded either ideology or ideological distance. All the models that include ideological distance displayed a higher R². When comparing the effects of every variable in each model, ideological distance displayed higher coefficients and significance than ideology. Furthermore, ideology in models excluding ideological distance displayed no statistical significance for the Merkel, Santos and Pope evaluations. This, along with the sequence of questions, confirms that the models displayed in Table 2 are adequate and no endogeneity problem is noted.
• 12
  We ran additional margins for religiosity, and found significance among non-believers, but not among very religious. In the latter extreme, the friend-foe logic does not work among very religious elites (p-value=0.110). On the other hand, among non-believers, considering Pope Francis ideologically closer or not results in a difference.
• DOI: 10.1590/3710904/2022
  Para replicação dos dados, ver: DOI: https://doi.org/10.48331/scielodata.9C78NZ

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Nov 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  14 May 2021
• Accepted
  12 Nov 2021