Mapping the Elite–Citizen Gap

Abstract This chapter examines the size and patterns of a gap between elite and citizen legitimacy beliefs toward international organizations. It compares citizen and elite data regarding six international organizations in five countries. Public opinion data is taken from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey, and elite data is taken from the simultaneously fielded LegGov Elite Survey. The discussion first examines the elite–citizen legitimacy gap in the aggregate, combining all international organizations and countries. Then the data are disaggregated to identify variation in the size of the gap by international organization, by country, by organization within country, by elite sector, and by international organization within the elite sector. A notable difference does indeed exist between average elite confidence and average citizen confidence vis-à-vis global governance. The gap arises in the aggregate data, as well as separately in respect of each of the six international organizations, four of the five countries, and each of the six elite sectors. That said, the elite–citizen gap is generally larger in respect of international organizations working on human security than those working on economic issues. Regarding countries, the gap is largest in Brazil and negative in the Philippines, where the average citizen score is higher than the average elite score. Regarding sectors, the gap with citizen legitimacy beliefs is larger for bureaucratic, research, and business elites than for media, partisan-political, and civil society elites.