At what cost? Power, payments, and public support of international organizations

The drivers of public support for international organizations (IOs) are multifaceted and contested. Focusing on the US, we argue that citizens weigh elite cues about the financial burden associated with funding IOs and the influence over IOs that such funding yields. Moreover, we identify political ideology as a powerful moderator – theorizing that conservatives should respond more positively to cues about US influence and more negatively to cues about financial costs than liberals. We find support for the core theory, but also counterintuitively find that the negative effect of the cost treatment manifests primarily amongst liberals as opposed to conservatives. A second, pre-registered experiment reveals that conservatives support increasing funding to IOs to secure US influence, and may even support increasing taxes to do so, especially when cued by a co-partisan. By contrast, liberals who learn that funding provides influence prefer to cut funding to IOs, even when cued by a co-partisan.