Giacomo Chiozza's study of anti-American attitudes among foreign publics is a first-rate work of social science scholarship. It respects the protean complexity of political reality while investigating that reality patiently, if not tediously, with multiple hypotheses and methodological techniques. The flip side, however, is that even at its best, modern social science suffers from severe limitations. As Chiozza's study exemplifies, it typically works with selective and often untested data, finds that the causes of social phenomena are multiple and virtually impossible to disentangle, and reaches modest, if not obvious, conclusions that are then often overstated to skewer competing schools of thought.

Chiozza examines the multiple dimensions, interrelationships, and causes of anti-American attitudes among foreign publics, using data from the year 2002 (and in one chapter 2004) in some 42 countries spread across seven regions. He hypothesizes generally that anti-Americanism is a multidimensional attitude that does not cluster around hard ideological positions or what he calls a “syndrome” acceptance or rejection of America. The multiple dimensions include attitudes toward U.S. democracy, customs, popular culture, science, business, foreign policies, and relative power.

In Chapter 3, the author shows that only 1,374 individuals out of 38,000 disliked America on all these dimensions (p. 59). For example, among those who had an overall favorable view of America, roughly a quarter disliked either American democracy or customs or both (p. 62). Among those who had an overall unfavorable view of America, roughly one-third liked both American popular culture and scientific achievements (p. 64). A negative assessment of the United States associated most closely with American policies, particularly the war on terror. In the Middle East, however, dislike of American democracy and customs also mattered, approaching in that region a “syndrome” rejection of both American policy and polity (p. 75).

In Chapter 4, Chiozza explores further the interrelationships between American policy and polity in eight predominantly Islamic countries and six European countries. He finds that in Islamic societies, the policy and polity aspects of anti-Americanism are related (p. 98) but cumulate in a syndrome effect only at high levels of sociocultural anti-Americanism, which characterizes Iran, followed by Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia (pp. 95 and 99). In Europe, the policy and polity dimensions are unrelated. From this evidence, he concludes that “ordinary people's views of U.S. policies are only marginally affected by their views of U.S. culture and society” (p. 103), suggesting a limit to U.S. soft power (polity) as a means of gaining acceptance of U.S. policies.

In Chapters 5 and 6, Chiozza explores a series of hypotheses about the causes of anti-Americanism. Among demographic factors, he finds that in all regions, but especially in the Middle East, religion contributes consistently to anti-American attitudes (p. 125). With respect to four other hypotheses, he concludes that a “scapegoat” hypothesis (dissatisfaction with world equals dissatisfaction with the United States) fits the data best, while the degree of information and contacts with America, antimarket views, and resistance to American modernity play lesser roles in causing anti-Americanism.

Chapter 6 contains some of the most unexpected findings. Once again, religion plays a strong role in explaining anti-Americanism. “This result,” Chiozza concedes, “apparently corroborates the claims derived from Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations [1996] thesis” (p. 143). More interesting is the finding that domestic political ideology conditions attitudes toward the United States. Conservative respondents in Europe were much less likely to hold anti-American views than liberal respondents. “This finding,” Chiozza observes, “gives credence to the conjecture of those who have emphasized that European anti-Americanism might be rooted in ideological worldviews rather than in fleeting reactions to the current international role of the United States” (p. 149).

Chapters 7 and 8 explore the persistence of anti-Americanism, using in this one case 2004 data. Persistence, Chiozza hypothesizes, is least likely if anti-Americanism is largely an anti-Bush affair and most likely if anti-Americanism is rooted in the suspicion that America is a flawed country and has ulterior motives. In between fall anti-American feelings based on dislike for the American people as a whole (not just George W. Bush), loss of faith in America as the land of opportunity, and resentment toward America's unipolar power. The most substantial effects come from anti-Bush and anti-American people feelings, suggesting that anti-Americanism would be greatly alleviated once Bush was gone. Indeed, most recent polls in 2009 confirm this projection, suggesting that anti-Americanism may be fleeting (Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Confidence in Obama Lifts U.S. Image around the World,” July 23, 2009, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=264). The most revealing finding, however, is that despite considerable anti-Americanism, there is no support whatsoever for counterbalancing America's power. Indeed, “large sections of publics and elites in Europe, the Americas, and Japan were much more concerned about the use of American power at the time of détente than they are now at a time of unipolar power distribution” (p. 165).

In many ways, Anti-Americanism and the American World Order is a masterpiece, carefully reasoned and methodologically sophisticated. It is a shame, therefore, that so much outstanding intellectual effort has been expended on so little hard data. The data from Pew, Zogby, and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations cover one year predominantly; use polling questions that are not consistent across time (p. 178) or countries (for example, Jordan is in the Pew but not the Zogby polls), and rely on questions, interview techniques, and country selection by polling institutions that have no specific conceptual justification or apparent intent of replication. How do we know whether any of these findings hold in previous years or decades, or among different countries in each region, or under different international circumstances than those that prevailed in 2002–4 during the highly politically charged Iraq affair? It is probably incorrect to compare research based on these primitive international data with research based on more refined domestic public opinion polls (p. 36).

Even if the data were better, the findings would remain mixed because reality seldom entertains single-cause explanations. Take one example. Foreign publics who are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the world tend to blame America and view it negatively, while foreign publics who are satisfied with the way things are going in their own countries do not blame America yet still view it negatively. There is a scapegoat effect at the international level but something else going on at the domestic level (p. 132). Indeed, in the Middle East, as Chiozza finds, “a powerful syndrome frames … a sense of deep dissatisfaction with world affairs coupled with a sense that nothing is wrong with one's own country” (p. 133).

Here as elsewhere (pp. 75, 77, 83, 84, 95, 99, 125, 143, 149), Chiozza finds considerable support for the hypothesis he does not like—the thesis of Huntington, Fouad Ajami, Robert Kagan, and others that anti-Americanism is not as much about America as it is about Islam and its ideological struggle with modernity. Conservative publics in Europe and America, as Chiozza discovers, embrace America as an ideological model, while Muslim radicals reject America as an ideological adversary. So, at either end of the spectrum, ideological syndromes drive attitudes toward the United States. The majority of Islam, and perhaps many in America and the West as well, are in the middle with mixed multidimensional views of America. But we knew that before this study, and knowing it better now does not diminish the relevance of the ideological contest going on for the hearts and minds of the publics in the middle. Both syndromes and multiple dimensions are at work, and ideological clarity remains as relevant to the outcome as sensitivity to multiple dimensions of anti-Americanism. That is evident when, after so much worthy effort, this study offers little more than this bromide for how U.S. diplomacy might counter anti-Americanism: “[I]t requires sophisticated policies of public diplomacy that pay attention to the multifarious details that region by region characterize the popular view of the United States” (p. 201).