Hearts, Minds, and Pocketbooks: Anti-Americanism ...

Hearts, Minds, and Pocketbooks: Anti-Americanism and the Politics of Consumption in the Middle East Lindsay J. Benstead and Megan Reif University of Michigan Abstract: Arab boycotts of American products intensified after 9-11. Scholarly neglect of this form of political action reflects an assumption that people do not change buying habits for political causes. Many studies of political consumption view it as a phenomenon of advanced democracies. We propose hypotheses about why and under what circumstances it occurs in the Middle East, observing that consumption is an important form of participation where formal channels are closed or grievances are directed toward an external actor. We argue that consumer activism against such targets is often weak because people boycott only symbolic, substitutable, and socially visible commodities that minimize information costs and maximize social network enforcement. People with positive views about one or more aspects of the target also are unlikely to sustain boycott behavior. We test our propositions with data from a survey of 800 Algerian students, conducted at the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Keywords: Political participation * Political consumption * Political consumerism * Political Economy of Consumption * Consumer boycotts * Public opinion * Globalization * Middle East * Algeria

Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Washington, DC. November 18-22, 2005. LINDSAY J. BENSTEAD is a doctoral candidate in political science and public policy at the University of Michigan and MEGAN REIF is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Michigan. The authors are grateful to the University of Algiers Faculty of Economics for use of survey data collected in 2004 with support from the Algerian Ministry of Education, the Educational Partnerships Program of the US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the University of Michigan. Special thanks go to Mark Tessler, Abdallah Bedaida, Abdelhak Khennouche, Lazhar Chine, Horma Bailiche, Fares Chelali, Madi Mohamed, Naouel Merabeti, Sohaila Imansouren, Chafika Belghanem, members of the Middle East Studies Association and of the University of Michigan Interdisciplinary Working Group on Consumption "Consumption Junction" who attended presentations of the draft and provided helpful comments and suggestions. Address correspondence to Lindsay J. Benstead ([email protected]) and Megan Reif ([email protected]). * Authors’ names are listed alphabetically.

Anti-Americanism and the Politics of Consumption in the Middle East

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INTRODUCTION The “hearts and minds” of Arabs and Muslims are the subject of growing popular and scholarly interest. The media, universities, and Western governments invest substantial resources to discern the mood of the “Arab Street”. Public opinion research has documented Arab and Muslim dissatisfaction with the United States (US),1 inspiring Bush Administration public diplomacy initiatives,2 including the use of Madison Avenue advertising consultants, an American Arabic language television channel, and the 2005 “listening tour” of the Middle East, led by former White House Press Secretary and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes. For obvious reasons, efforts to ascertain and influence Arab hearts and minds have focused, for the most part, on the political and foreign policy implications of Arab public opinion. Existing survey data measures levels of support for democracy, political Islam, and terrorism. The economic hearts and minds of ordinary Arabs and Muslims remain largely unexplored. This research examines whether Arab political attitudes toward the United States have economic implications and under what circumstances Anti-Americanism is expressed through consumption patterns. Although journalists cover Middle East consumer boycotts3 of US and Israeli products, research and public diplomacy focus on politics. Corporate and government officials downplay the potential impact of consumer boycotts, noting the continuing popularity of American material culture, consumers’ inability to identify the country-of-origin of most products, and a willingness to differentiate American policy from

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See, for example, the following reports on polling results: Laucius, Joanne. 2002. Arabs in Mideast, Africa love Canada. Ottawa Citizen, October 31, A1, Page, Susan. 2004. Survey tracks deepening distrust toward U.S. USA Today, 7A, Pew Research Center. 2005. Global Opinion: The Spread of Anti-Americanism. In Pew Global Attitudes Project, edited by A. Kohut: Pew Research Center, Radler, Melissa. 2003. Poll finds growing antipathy to US. The Jerusalem Post, 5, Sachs, Susan. 2004. Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies. New York Times, 3, Staff Reporter. 2005. The Lost Battle for Hearts and Minds. The Independent, 30, Zogby, John. 2003. A war for hearts and minds. New Scientist, April 5, 27. 2 See, for example, Feldman, Linda. 2005. Can Karen Hughes help US image abroad? Christian Science Monitor, March 16, 3, Goldenberg, Suzanne. 2005. Bush steps up global charm offensive. The Guardian, March 14, 15, Hughes, John. 2005. 'Cultural diplomacy' is key to winning hearts and minds. Christian Science Monitor, 9, Kessler, Glenn, and Robin Wright. 2005. U.S. Image in Bad Shape; Huges Set to Begin Public Diplomacy. The Washington Post, A16. 3 For a history of the term, “boycott”, see Micheletti, Michelle. 2003. Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


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the American products they enjoy.4 They also express the belief that individuals are simply not willing to give up desirable products in order to express their grievances.5 In the words of one marketing director, “Consumers abroad act much like their US counterparts: Most don’t take their political views to the cash register.”6 PUZZLE AND MOTIVATION The attitude of this marketing director is consistent with the political science literature on political participation, which has neglected consumption as a sphere of political activity. Briefly, political consumption can be defined as the deliberate buying or avoiding of certain commodities in order to maintain consistency with personal political and ethical values or to achieve, by acting in concert with others, a change in the policies of corporations or governments associated with those commodities. Scholarly neglect may be attributable to the vulnerability of political consumption to the collective action problem. The costs of refraining from or changing consumption, like voting, should outweigh the benefits. Without enforcement or selective incentives, individuals should not bear the costs of acquiring information about products and finding substitutes, preferring to “free-ride” off of the actions of others. Success is highly uncertain because it depends on the actions of many individuals.7 The probability that the behavior of a single individual will be critical to achieving the desired outcome is low, while he benefits from a successful outcome whether he participates or not (Sen, Gürhan-Canli, and Morwitz 2001, 12). Formal consumer boycotts, as well as voluntary, informal changes in consumption motivated by political preferences, should fail or never occur at all, yet levels of self-reported informal ethical

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See Dunlap, Dennis. 2004. Hate the policy, love the product: U.S. brands enjoy good rep despite Iraq conflict. Marketing News, May 15, 9, Guyon, Janet. 2003. Brand America. Fortune, October 27, 179, Khermouch, Gerry, and Diane Brady. 2003. Brands in an Age of Anti-Americanism. Business Week, August 4, 69, Staff Reporter. 2003. Wars and Boycotts, Both Fade Away; So says branding guru Jan Lindemann, who rejects suggestions that the Iraq war will spark a global backlash against U.S. products. Business Week Online, April 8. 5 For official US statements articulating these positions, see Middle East Economic Digest. 2002. Trade: The big chill. MEED Weekly Special Report, August 23, 24. 6 Staff Reporter. 2003. Wars and Boycotts, Both Fade Away; So says branding guru Jan Lindemann, who rejects suggestions that the Iraq war will spark a global backlash against U.S. products. Business Week Online, April 8. 7 A good summary of the classic puzzle of voting can be found in Aldrich, John H. 1993. Rational Choice and Turnout. American Journal of Political Science 37 (1):246-278. See also Hirschman, Albert O. 1982. Shifting Involvements: Private Interests and Public Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Boston: Harvard University Press.


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consumption and participation in consumer boycotts have risen in successive waves of the World Values Surveys, the European Social Survey, and other public opinion surveys (John and Klein 2003; Norris 2002; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). Several studies point to the growing frequency of and effectiveness of consumer campaigns aimed at changing public policy and corporate behavior (Micheletti 2003; Micheletti 2004; Sen, Gürhan-Canli, and Morwitz 2001). This growing phenomenon has inspired calls for further research on alternative forms of political participation (see, e.g., Norris 2002; Stolle and Hooghe 2004b; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005), but current research focuses almost exclusively on advanced industrialized democracies. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that political consumption is also common in the Middle East, where the conditions for political consumption emphasized in the literature do not exist. Furthermore, the motivation behind Arab consumer boycotts is particularly puzzling for political science because the targets and outcomes of the boycotts lie outside the boycott participants’ immediate political sphere. Their political consumption can be described as empathetic, whereby citizens of one country take action on behalf of distant third parties to achieve ends that will have a negligible direct influence on their own lives. Empathetic consumption should be particularly vulnerable to the free-rider problem. According to public opinion surveys, the most important issue among Arabs, regardless of where they live, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, motivating consumer boycotts across the region dating as far back as 1951, when Coca-Cola closed franchises as a result of the Arab Boycott of Israel and American companies doing business with Israel (Micheletti 2003). With the continuation of the conflict and the US presence in Iraq, renewed calls to avoid certain products are spread by word of mouth, the Internet, popular authorities, and some governments. 8 Qatar’s Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh

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A formal Arab boycott of American products began in September 2000, after the second Palestinian uprising. NGOs, religious leaders, and students set up National Boycott Committees in a number of countries to provide a list of American products to boycott and European or domestic substitutes. Habibi, Nader. 2003. U.S. Trade Relations with the Middle East: Has the United States lost market share to Europe because of its Middle East policy? Paper read at Annual Conference of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey (ERF), December 16-18, at Morocco. See also Curtiss, Richard H. 2002. Arab Boycotts, Both Formal and Informal, Well Under Way. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:62, Janardhan, N. 2002. Mideast: street anger turns into calls for boycott of U.S. goods. Global Information Network April 22:1.


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Omar bin Saeed al-Badna, Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, leaders of India’s Darul Uloom religious school in Deoband, and the Syrian government have made public declarations that their followers should replace US products with substitutes from politically-friendly countries. 9 While some are skeptical of the long-term effects of Arab boycotts, they do seem to have a real impact, at least in the short term. Boycotts reduced Coca-Cola’s sales by 10 percent and American-franchised fast food business by 50 percent in the Middle East in 2002,10 hurt KFC sales and jobs in Pakistan and Oman, inspired widespread demand for new alternative brands such as Mecca Cola and Qibla Cola, 11 and damaged the overall image of American brands.12 Some evidence suggests that these trends are reflected in a relative loss of US market share of merchandise exports since 2001 (Habibi 2003). Companies are responding with surveys designed to help them create marketing campaigns to counter these effects.13 While Middle East trade represents only 4-5 percent of total US trade, the US imports substantial energy resources from the region. There is also growing interest in the link between markets and Middle East politics. In an explicit response to the 9-11 Commission Report, which linked the lack of free trade and economic opportunity to terrorism, the Bush Administration is pursuing the creation of a Middle East Free Trade Area initiative by 2013 (Bolle 2005). Arab boycotts on behalf of citizens in other countries resemble empathetic political consumption in other settings, such as efforts to improve working conditions in Nike sweatshops around the world and to end apartheid in South Africa. Explanations for such altruistic consumption patterns, however, emphasize variables unique to post-industrial societies, such as a rise in post-materialist values or a 9 See Middle East Economic Digest. 2002. Trade: The big chill. MEED Weekly Special Report, August 23, 24, Pallister, David. 2003. Arab boycott of American consumer goods spreads. The Guardian, January 8, 3, Weber, Joseph. 2003. The Postwar Stakes for Business. Business Week, April 21, 38. Targeted brands include McDonald’s and Burger King, Tide and Ariel detergents, Pampers, Coke and Pepsi, Starbucks, Marlboro, Hasbro, Johnson & Johnson, Levis, Gap, and Heinz are some of the brands that have been targeted. 10 Vaknin, Sam. 2003. Economics of the Middle East. United Press International, February 27. Arab media sources, such as the newspaper, Al-Hayat, claim that Arab countries represent a more substantial segment of the consumer market for American goods and claim that the economic impact is even more significant than do Western sources. See, for example, "American companies lost $200 million in one month due to Arab boycott." 2002. Financial Times Global News Wire – Asia Africa Intelligence Wire. May 5. 11 Haig, Matt. 2003. War of the Brands. Financial Times, June 5, Hutton, Will. 2003. The Perils of Empire: Goodbye, Coke. Hello, Mecca Cola. The Washington Post, April 20, B04. 12 Garten, Jeffrey E. 2003. Anger Abroad is Bad for Business. Business Week, November 10, 30. 13 Postlewaite, Susan. 2003. U.S. marketers try to head off boycotts. Advertising Age, March 31, 3-4.


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decline in trust in more formal, traditional avenues for political expression as a result of the rise in postmodern, individualistic consumer culture. Recent studies have analyzed data from Europe and have called for inclusion of political consumption in surveys of political participation, but no research has explored systematically whether political consumption is occurring outside of Europe and the US This study advances theoretical propositions that seek to explain why political consumption occurs in the Middle East and other developing countries where democracy is nascent and the conditions under which individuals participate in political consumption. We evaluate our expectations with new data from a 2004 survey of over 800 Algerian undergraduates. Survey data on consumption is rare, particularly in postsocialist and developing country settings (Zukin and Smith Maguire 2004). Why Algeria? Although selected out of convenience-- data availability and the authors’ experience in Algeria, the country and the dataset provide an interesting opportunity to ascertain whether general calls for political consumption in the Middle East have an influence on the behavior of ordinary consumers in Algeria. Given their physical distance from the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iraq war, Algerians live on the periphery of the region and may be less likely to refrain from consuming desirable American products. Patterns of political consumption in survey data in this context would provide particularly striking evidence that political consumption is a real phenomenon that influences individual behavior in the Middle East. Consumption in Algeria in general and among the survey respondents in particular may be shaped by two competing forces with opposing empirical implications. First, the influx of American- and Western-made consumer goods has been rapid and voluminous since 2002. Despite its long history of interaction with the West, the Algerian market has opened to foreign manufactured goods only recently, after decades of isolated socialism, economic crisis, and political violence during the “Black Decade” of the 1990s that resulted in over 150,000 civilian deaths and roughly 1.5 million displaced persons. Although the US has long been one of Algeria’s top five trade partners, replacing Italy as its second-largest import partner after France (see


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Table 1), merchandise trade between the US and Algeria is small. It has acquired great visibility in the past few years, with images of Pepsi and Coca-Cola adorning storefronts and restaurants in Algeria’s major cities. Restaurants like McAmin’s and McCool appropriate the logo of McDonald’s golden arches. Many Algerian young people devour American music, films, and videogames acquired via hundreds of Satellite television stations or distributors of pirated media. They express enthusiasm about the prospect that McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, and other American franchises might open in Algeria.14 These facts support skeptics who predict that Middle East boycotts will be insignificant because American products are highly desirable to the average consumer: they often lack local substitutes, represent quality and status, and are relatively new and novel, all factors that undermine political consumption (Witkowski 1989). Conditions that encourage political consumption also exist in Algeria. In December 2002, Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first post-independence president, hero of the Algerian war for independence, and leader of the non-aligned movement during the 1960s presided over a conference in Cairo organized to oppose the impending US attack on Iraq. He concluded with a declaration calling for Arab people to boycott US and Israeli products. Motivated by economic rather than political considerations, Algeria’s Forum des chefs d’entreprises (FCE) announced the "consommer algérien" campaign in 2002, with a slogan "made in bladi"15 and a mascot targeted at Algerian youth, renewing it again in 2005 with additional publicity (Larguet 2002; Taleb 2005). More significantly, evidence of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib came to light as data collection began, along with publicity about Israeli attacks on civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The National League of Algerian Students sponsored an exhibit at the University of Algiers featuring images of civilian casualties in Iraq and the Palestinian territories juxtaposed against photographs and posters representing American military power and photos of demonstrators burning US flags. At least one survey respondent included a written

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Based on the authors’ personal observations while conducting research in Algeria. For images depicting the popularity of American and Western consumer brands in Algeria, see http://sitemaker.umich.edu/megan.reif/consumption. 15 Bladi refers to hometown, or country and is commonly used by musicians and media in the Maghrib.


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comment stating: “we are boycotting American products”. The analysis can thus be viewed as an exploration of the economic response of students to Abu Ghraib. The salience of events such as Abu Ghraib may make all respondents political consumers in the short term, washing out any variation and overstating the extent to which individuals are really willing to change their buying habits over time. Yet the affinity for American popular culture and products, as well as the perception that trade with the US can benefit Algeria, militate against political consumption. The dataset permits study of nuance in opinion and behavior with respect to the United States in a consumeroriented population immediately after an important event that fueled anti-American sentiment across the region. The paper proceeds with a review of how literatures from several disciplines conceptualize and explain political consumption and a discussion of the Algerian context and its correspondence with existing theory. The next section defines political consumption and advances theoretical propositions and expectations about the circumstances under which people alter their consumption choices in accordance with their values and attitudes about politics and political events. Finally, the results are presented and interpreted, concluding with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research. LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL SIGNFICANCE Political consumption entails paying the costs of participation—seeking information about and avoiding or choosing products--on an ongoing basis. Does the free-rider problem render political consumption an insignificant form of political behavior, or are people willing to sacrifice their preferences consistently for political reasons while shopping for things they want and desire? Most studies of consumption take for granted that they are. Despite challenges posed by the free-rider problem, political consumption is significant enough to have attracted a substantial literature. The literature is mixed with regard to the prevalence, effectiveness, and utility of political consumption as a form of participation. Some studies find a strong association between ethical values and consumption choices (Becker 1939; Carrigan, Szmigin, and Wright 2004; Creyer and Ross 1997), while others detect


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inconsistencies between ethical or political attitudes and individuals’ actual economic behavior (Boulstridge and Carrigan 2000; Carrigan and Attala 2001; Lysonski and Pollay 1990). In his classic work, Weapons of the Weak, for example, Scott (1985, 250-55) observed that small-scale peasant efforts to coordinate labor boycotts collapsed as a result of defections by individuals pursuing short-term economic self-interest. New survey data finds that citizens view consumer activism as a an effective and distinctly political act akin to volunteering in associations or political parties (Keum et al. 2004; Micheletti 2003; Micheletti, Follesdal, and Stolle 2004; Norris 2002; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). Much work on the subject characterizes consumer activism as a new form of political participation associated with modernization, globalization, and diminishing state control of transnational actors. Political consumption requires a “transition to consumer society”, in which the products people consume define meaning and identity more than the products of their labor (Ackerman 1997; Dant 2000; Elliot 1997; Ruane 1995; Zukin and Smith Maguire 2004).16 While human societies always placed symbolic meaning on goods, modern consumer society is characterized by heterogeneity in the “baskets of goods” that different individuals consume, made possible by mass production. Modern manufacturing enables people to allocate more time to acquiring information about, choosing, and using finished goods than to fulfilling basic needs, such as food and shelter (Nicosia and Mayer 1976: 68-69) and shifts the primary location of consumption from the private household to more urban public spheres of work, social group, or school (Jackson 1999). Some argue that this transition is alienating, displacing collective kinship and ethnic identities, political activity, and individual freedom with new, alien class divisions and the illusory freedom of individual product consumption (see, e.g., Miller 1995; Ngai 2003; Rumbo 2002). As a result, some scholars worry that consumerism undermines genuine democratic political participation, creating confusion between “private choices made by consumers with civic choices made by citizens” (Barber 1998, 36) and substituting “privatized abundance for a communal civic culture” 16

For a summary of theories about interpretations of the social meaning of consumer goods and consumption, see Holt, Douglas B. 1997. Postructuralist Lifestyle Analysis: Conceptualizing the Social Patterning of Consumption in Postmodernity. The Journal of Consumer Research 23 (4):326-350.


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(McGovern 2003, 69). Putnam (2000) and others have drawn attention to a deterioration of civic culture and social capital, pointing to declining trust in government institutions and weakening identification with political parties. These scholars view alternative forms of participation with skepticism because they argue that activities such as political consumption and internet activism are less collective, reinforcing of distrust of government and reducing critical forms of formal participation, such as voting. While the role of boycotts in the American civil rights movement, for example, Cohen (2003) concludes that mass consumption has eroded American community and civil society. On the other hand, others attribute rising political consumption to the emergence of postmaterialist values that emphasize quality of life and individual autonomy over material possessions, which does not necessarily imply a decline in civic engagement. 17 They argue that these informal and creative means of activism may be more flexible and democratic than older, hierarchical structures (see, e.g., Inglehart 1999) and more effective in a globalized system where national governments autonomy is diminishing.18 New survey research has explored these propositions, suggesting that those who distrust political institutions participate in other ways that they view as more effective. These scholars argue that political consumption complements, rather than replaces, other mechanisms of civic engagement (Anderson and Tobiasen 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). In this view, consumption choice

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For a summary of new forms of political engagement, see Stolle, Dietland, and Marc Hooghe. 2004b. Review Article: Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in Western Societies. British Journal of Political Science 35:149-167. Explanations for the in political consumption are summarized in Anderson, Jørgen Goul, and Mette Tobiasen. 2004. Who Are These Political Consumers Anyway? Survey Evidence from Denmark. In Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, edited by M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal and D. Stolle. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Stolle, Dietland, Marc Hooghe, and Michelle Micheletti. 2005. Politics in the Supermarket: Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation. International Political Science Review 26 (3):245-269. 18 For more extensive discussion of the implications of political consumerism for different theories of civic culture and declining social capital, see Anderson, Jørgen Goul, and Mette Tobiasen. 2004. Who Are These Political Consumers Anyway? Survey Evidence from Denmark. In Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, edited by M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal and D. Stolle. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Keum, Heejo, Narayan Devanathan, Sameer Deshpande, Michelle R. Nelson, and Dhavan V. Shah. 2004. The Citizen-Consumer: Media Effects at the Intersection of Consumer and Civic Culture. Political Communication 21:369-391, Stolle, Dietland, and Marc Hooghe. 2004b. Review Article: Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in Western Societies. British Journal of Political Science 35:149-167, Stolle, Dietland, Marc Hooghe, and Michelle Micheletti. 2005. Politics in the Supermarket: Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation. International Political Science Review 26 (3):245-269.


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can generate opportunities for creativity and individualism, imbuing mundane day-to-day buying experiences with meaning and giving people new ways to act on an overwhelming social world (see, e.g., Arnould 1989; Elliot 1997; Ford, Karande, and Seifert 1998; Howes 1996; Micheletti 2003; Thompson and Haytko 1997). As Douglas and Isherwood write, “The most general objective of the consumer can only be to construct an intelligible universe with the goods he chooses” (1979, 65). Mass production and distribution make diverse, quality products available to people of all economic backgrounds, minimizing visible class differences. With diverse product choices, individuals can adopt new identities, allowing them to challenge existing group power structures or prevent the dominance of one cultural, religious, or group identity (Herrmann 2002; Holt 1997; McCracken 1986). As the result of an interactive process and tension between forces of “incorporation and resistance” consumers are not passive recipients of goods but appropriate them for local ends and adaptation of local tradition and culture (Bastürk 1995; Borooah 2000). In addition, while capitalists manipulate and target markets, they also become responsive to changes in consumer tastes and preferences, creating increasingly customized products and rising consumer expectations (Zukin and Smith Maguire 2004). Studies of political consumption during earlier periods in history tend to share this optimism and reveal that it was a form of political expression long before globalization and industrialization. 19 Indeed, boycotts, nonimportation movements, and other forms of consumer activism contributed to political mobilization as early as the American Revolution (Breen 2004; Witkowski 1989). In their edited volume, Daunton and Hilton (Daunton and Hilton 2001) argue that “a civil society of consumption” has been an element in opposition to political regimes since the 18th century (Hilton and Daunton 2001, 12). Because consumption may include elements of resistance against a social and political order or a dominant culture, it can empower individuals to express themselves through more direct political participation. Hirschman argues that consumers’ disappointment with products, services, and private consumption in achieving happiness encourages them to turn to direct political action against producers and governments more 19

A study of American boycott of Japanese goods in the 1930s suggests that scholars and policy makers at that time also perceived political consumption as a new phenomenon. Becker, Nathan M. 1939. The Anti-Japanese Boycott in the United States. Far Eastern Survey 8 (5):49-55.



generally, thereby cultivating civil society (1982, 62-64). Political consumption may create “cultural resources” for participation (Holt 1997) or serve what Stolle and Hooghe (2004a, 279) call a socializing function. In fact, in his provocative study of the American boycott of British goods before the Revolution, Breen (2004) finds that boycott participation awakened a sense of personal efficacy and political community, generating voluntary associations to publicize and enforce it. He argues that the movement enabled marginalized groups, such as women, men who lacked property, and rural populations to become political actors long before the introduction of universal suffrage, creating national unity that Breen argues was necessary for the Revolution’s ultimate success. The choice to consume a product gave people an opportunity for political expression that would not have otherwise existed. As Hilton and Daunton (2001, 27) write, “specific instances of consumer politics have provided the site for the articulation of political identities, based on the lines of class, gender, ethnicity, and nation.” Product choice may empower individuals to speak with their pocketbooks when they cannot vote or participate in civil society (Micheletti 2003). Arguing that people are consumers before they become citizens, the historical evidence suggests that the private sphere of the market can substitute for participation when the public political sphere prohibits, excludes, or regulates citizen access.20 In fact, Heldman (2001, 186), writing about East Germany, argues that because authoritarian regimes provide their leaders with more control over the economy, they will be linked more directly to the politics of products, and consumer consciousness will have a strong impact on the political economy of these states (See also Berghoff 2001). Marginalized members of contemporary societies may be more likely to use economic forms of political expression, either because they lack time and access to networks for more traditional forms of participation, or, in the case of women, they have greater responsibility for household purchasing and consumption (Besnier 2004; Micheletti 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). Relatively powerless colonial subjects of the British empire in India, for example, used access to consumer goods to take 20

Indeed, those who designed the survey used in this study could not include questions about political participation and explicit political attitudes because of their sensitivity so soon after the 2004 election, while they enjoyed greater flexibility with regard to questions about consumption. Similarly, while the World Values Survey has been carried out in Algeria, for reasons of political sensitivity, questions about voting and political participation, including boycotts, were not included.



political action through Gandhi’s movement (Micheletti 2003; Micheletti 2004; Witkowski 1989). The standardization of goods and greater choice has been equated with democratization because it gives ordinary people means of expression once reserved only for the elite. 21 The view of consumption choice as a precursor to more direct political activism is consistent with Deutsch’s (1971) classic conception of the way in which economic differentiation leads to political awareness and mobilization. The optimists conceptualize political consumption as one tactic within a menu of strategies that citizens can use to influence authority. These strategies can substitute or complement other strategies depending on the aims of political action, the nature of the targeted authority, and the institutional arrangements that determine access—or opportunity structures—available to citizens. When political consumption is conceived in this way, by neglecting it political scientists overlook an important component of political participation and may understate the true level of citizen activism. Considering multiple forms of expression is particularly important in the Middle East, where citizens excluded from political decision making resort to alternative means--both violent and non-violent--to register their grievances. This research views political consumption as a substitutable means of participation and seeks to understand the circumstances under which it is used. Consumption in the Middle East Scholars of transitions to consumer society are interested in post-socialist settings, examining how access to foreign goods has changed market and political behavior following a period when statecontrolled production and distribution tied all consumption to the state (Rojšek 2001; Zukin and Smith Maguire 2004). The Middle East is on a similar trajectory but has attracted little attention from students of consumption. We expect consumption to be a significant outlet for political expression in the Middle East for several reasons. First, economic liberalization and transition to consumption-oriented society are outpacing the development of civil society and democratic governance. Where political institutions are unresponsive, political parties banned, or elections are characterized by fraud, citizens’ may see their 21

For a review of additional literature positing a relationship between consumer society and civic engagement and democracy, see Zukin, Sharon, and Jennifer Smith Maguire. 2004. Consumers and Consumption. Annual Review of Sociology 30:173-97.



ability to exercise economic choices as more meaningful than political engagement. Second, citizens of developing countries, most of which are former colonies, often hold the view – one that their leaders actively promote -- that their national governments are not the only, or even primary, source of wellbeing or dissatisfaction. International financial institutions and transnational corporations are salient in the minds of many ordinary citizens of developing countries as important influences on their lives. Whether because of colonialism, Cold War alliances, or the cooperation in the international war on terror, citizens in many developing countries have long attributed the very survival of their leaders to foreign powers and external forces. This view is encouraged by leaders who actively fuel resentment toward the West in order to redirect anger and frustration that might otherwise be directed toward them. Third, even when they have the ability to select their own leaders and engage in civil society, Arab citizens have access to few direct political mechanisms through which to express grievances against influential third parties that cannot be reformed or voted out of office easily through direct political action. Writing about the American colonial nonimportation movement, Witkowski describes the mechanism at work in the minds of political consumers seeking to influence foreign governments: “The colonists hoped to inflict economic hardships upon English merchants and manufacturers who would, in turn, pressure their politicians for a change in parliamentary legislation” (1989, 220). In parallel contemporary settings, citizens may view consumption choice as one of the few ways to act, particularly when the basket of goods from which they can choose includes imports from politically-influential foreign powers. The history and context of the present environment of political consumption is important to understanding why product choice is politically salient in the Middle East. Following a period of post-colonial, Cold-War era independence, during which many developing countries sought to reassert their cultural and political identities, many Arab countries now find themselves again facing greater foreign influence, making a transition from a period in which socialism, an important component of Arab nationalism, could be supported by resource wealth, 22 to an era in which the intervention of international financial institutions and other outside forces is increasing. Meanwhile, 22

Middle East Economic Digest. 2002. Trade: The big chill. MEED Weekly Special Report, August 23, 24.



the collapse of state employment has left many unemployed. Algeria is in many ways representative of these broader Middle Eastern patterns. Following the end of the 130-year French colonial occupation in 1962 after a violent war for independence (1954-62), Algeria sought to reverse policies of “Frenchification”, which suppressed traditional educational, religious, and economic institutions, as well as the Arabic language. The post-independence, single-party state of the revolutionary Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) embraced, like many Arab states, a Soviet- and Chinese-inspired socialist model that promoted industrialization through state-owned enterprises and egalitarian social welfare policies. During this period, Algeria’s prosperity increased access for millions of men and women to education and jobs during this period and made the regime of Houari Boumedienne (1965-1978) very popular. Algeria’s socialist economic orientation and a foreign policy of non-alignment meant isolation from the West and limited access to imported consumer goods from capitalist economies. By the 1980s, international economic crisis and high population growth exacerbated the system’s inefficiencies, increasing urban unemployment, housing shortages, and the rich-poor gap. Increasingly, ordinary Algerians viewed the government as corrupt. Political demands emerged with declining imports and increasing prices, erupting in riots in 1988. Indeed, this unrest, like others in authoritarian states, can be seen as motivated by issues of consumption (See, e.g., Berghoff 2001; Heldman 2001). Unable to meet economic demands, Chadli Benjedid (1979-1992) finally turned, like his North African counterparts, to the IMF, which required economic as well as political reform, including a new constitution that ended the one-party political system. As political space opened, mobilization occurred rapidly among the religious segments of society, which had enjoyed some freedom to organize during earlier periods of repression (International Crisis Group 2004). Campaigning under the theme “Islam is the solution”, the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique de Salut – FIS) united disparate Islamist groups, the urban poor, and the middle class, winning a majority of seats in the June 1990 municipal elections and in the first-round of the December 1991 parliamentary elections (Kepel 2002). Threatened by the prospect of an Algeria governed by Islamists, the military annulled the elections in January 1992, triggering a decade of civil war between



armed splinter groups of the FIS and the army, with attacks taking innocent lives on both sides (Kepel 2002, 254). People who openly embraced Western culture were often targeted. In the midst of the chaos, the 1994 structural adjustment program began to liberalize trade and privatize state-owned enterprises. Algeria deregulated its merchandise trade regime and restrictions on foreign imports (Wetzel 2003). Though incomplete, Akacem (2004) characterizes Algeria’s economic transition, bolstered by improving oil and natural gas revenues, as remarkable. Increasing revenues enabled the regime to gain the upper hand in the civil war, giving it the confidence to reintroduce electoral competition. Algeria has to a great extent emerged from the “Black Decade” as a result of the disintegration of the Islamist movement and President Bouteflika’s policy of Civil Concord, which began in 2001 and offers amnesty and reintegration into society to any individual turning himself in, renouncing politics, and surrendering his arms. Foreign goods now fill Algeria’s markets, but would have been impossible to find a few years ago.23 For many Algerians, the availability of foreign products and ease of shopping after years during which using some Western products or leaving home after dark was unsafe represents a shift away from a survivalist mode of existence (Daley 2001). Information access also has changed dramatically, with internet users growing from 50,000 to 500,000 between 2000 and 2005, and the number of internet cafés approximately 3,000 (Wheeler 2005). With a relatively literate population, Algerians may have greater access to and awareness of issues surrounding political consumption, even though they are at the periphery. At the same time that American and European products are entering the market, Algeria’s political relationship with the West and the US have shifted, imbuing imported products not only with political symbolism. Once a leader in the “Non-Aligned Movement,” Algeria also has recently engaged in high-profile cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism, becoming America’s third largest trading partner in the MENA region and its second largest exporter of oil. President Bouteflika cemented his relationship with the US in a highly publicized visit to the White House in 2004. President Bouteflika won what was considered a relatively free and fair election by Middle Eastern standards in April 2004 23

Authors’ personal experience shopping and communicating with Algerian families.



and enjoys substantial support, but fringe Islamist groups, such as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), make occasional threats against foreigners and reiterate antiAmerican statements issued by extremists in other parts of the Middle East. The Algerian partnership with the US in the war on terror is not without controversy, but survey data suggests that while Algerians dislike US foreign policy, they differentiate between ordinary Americans, American culture, and policy (Tessler 2005). As Algeria emerges from its isolation, an influx of advertising messages about the lure of consumption and material goods exists alongside memories of an era of independence and nationalism and calls to boycott those goods. The ambivalence that this situation creates makes Algeria an interesting place to study consumption and calls for nuanced explanations of political consumption. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL EXPECTATIONS Social scientists have defined consumption activity as the buying, using, and disposing of commodities (Nicosia and Mayer 1976). In classical economics, consumption fulfills a set of universal and stable needs, predetermined by human nature and the environment, and is constrained by wealth and price. Critics of this approach argue that consumption is driven by material as well as non-material spiritual or psychological needs and wants, all of which can be constructed and mediated through social and political institutions.24 Thus, in many studies of consumption in the social sciences, commodities have both an intrinsic or instrumental value and a social, symbolic, or expressive meaning beyond their role in meeting physical needs. Individuals are engaging in expressive consumption when they choose goods for their symbolic value in upholding non-material values and beliefs and affirming or resisting group identity. When aimed at changing the behavior of others or society—the target--either through example and trend-setting or formal campaigns to influence others, consumption can be described as instrumental. We characterize political consumption as expressive if an individual purchases or uses goods according to her own or others’ ethical or political values and opinions and instrumental if she alters the number and types of 24

For a summary of the classical approach and its critics, see Firat, A. Fuat, and Nikhilesh Dholakia. 1998. Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theaters of Consumption. London: Routledge, Lie, John. 1997. Sociology of Markets. Annual Review of Sociology 23:341-60.



products she consumes with the aim of preventing the success or changing the policies of producers, industries, countries-of-origin, or other targets associated with those products, or influencing the consumption habits of others.25 Consumers may also increase their consumption of certain products, such as buying American products, to support certain principles or institutions. Such “affirmative” choices are often called “buycotts” while “boycotts” withhold consumption. Activist political consumption may also include organized or spontaneous efforts to reject consumption or a category of consumption entirely, exemplified by anti-consumerism campaigns such as Adbusters’ “TV turnoff week”. 26 Previous research has found it difficult to distinguish, empirically or theoretically, between expressive and activist political consumption. Expressive behavior, such as voluntarily buying local rather than foreign products, may be an indicator of propensity for activism, while buying products that comply with religious values is less clearly political. The combined effect of both types of political consumption is likely to be empirically equivalent, even if expressive consumption is less explicitly political and blurs the line between shopping in accordance with one’s enduring values and preferences and buying in order to achieve a political objective. With this limitation in mind, we present several general hypotheses about the circumstances under which we expect political consumption to occur. While we cannot claim to resolve whether both expressive and activist consumption constitute political participation, we will examine crude measures of these two dimensions -- whether self-reported opinions about the United States are consistent with actual product choice, as well as whether consumers who report changing their consumption behavior in response to political events such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal actually consume fewer

25

The term, "consumption", rather than "consumerism" is used here because it refers to the act of using or consuming, while the latter term, although increasingly used to describe consumer activism, refers also to a systemlevel characteristic or ideology, such as the equation of happiness with consumption and the view that increasing consumption and consumer choices are economically desireable. See Thorstein Veblen’s critique of consumption in his classic, Theory of the Leisure Class. In The Collected Works of Thorstein Veblen. Vol. 1. 1899. Reprint, London : Routledge, 1994, 1-404. See also Trentmann, Frank. 2004. Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption. Journal of Contemporary History 39 (3):373-401. Oxford English Dictionary.OED Online. Oxford University Press. http:// dictionary.oed.com. 26 Firat describes this “holistic rejection of an established pattern of consumption” as de-patterning (1998, 135). See also Rumbo, Joseph D. 2002. Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of Adbusters. Psychology & Marketing 19 (2):127-148.



American and Western products. First, we explore whether self-reported political consumers actually consume in ways that are consistent with there views and the circumstances under which they do so. Second, we examine what factors predict political consumption, asking whether individual characteristics and values can explain why some people are political consumers and others are not. Although the consumption literature emphasizes the importance of studying the political meanings associated with specific commodities (Hilton and Daunton 2001), few studies provide an explicit theory about whether and why political behavior may be associated with certain targets and not others, and some products and not others. As discussed previously, there are costs that make political consumption subject to the free-rider problem: (1) the information or transaction costs of determining (a) whether a given product or set of products falls within the criteria for avoidance or selection and (b) whether abstaining or choosing a product will have an effect on the desired political outcome, and (2) the extent to which the product is desired or preferred, or what Sen and colleagues (Sen, Gürhan-Canli, and Morwitz 2001) call the costs of withholding consumption. The first type of cost will be low for boycotts that specify a particular brand, but higher for blanket boycotts or calls for ethical consumption that require consumers to determine whether a product is from a particular country-of-origin (COO) or has been produced with manufacturing processes targeted in the boycott. Product brands and styles that are highly symbolic in their association with the target--what several studies have called “social visibility” or “symbolic value”--have lower information costs—most people would not need to do research to determine whether Coca-Cola originated in the United States (although further research might show that local bottling and other aspects of its production are highly localized), while many educated consumers are unaware that Nokia is a Finnish, not an Asian, company. One does not hear boycotters in the Middle East calling for Muslims to avoid traveling on US-made airplanes or transportation equipment, a common US import. Determining whether boycotting a product will communicate the intended message also bears information costs, though the failure to do so may have unintended consequences contrary to the goals of political consumption. As the Coca-Cola example above suggests, information costs are high for determining whether the production and profit chain of a product is such that a boycott will communicate



the message (of falling sales) to the target (the US) or harm an unintended target (the local economy). It is unusual to find boycott leaders, for example, calling for pressure on local companies to stop buying raw materials or capital equipment from foreign sources, even though such inputs make up the bulk of American imports to the Middle East (Bolle 2005). Publicly-used, conspicuous products are witnessed by others and the COO thus has greater importance, either as a symbol of quality and status or as trigger of feelings about the politics and history of the COO (Piron 2000). As a result, unless they seek out or receive specific information about specific targeted products, individuals should employ political consumption primarily for symbolic products. In addition, many scholars have pointed out that people are more willing to withhold consumption when the number and availability of close substitutes is high. Accordingly, we advance the following hypotheses: H1:

Individuals are more likely to engage in political consumption the greater the social visibility and symbolism of targeted products (“Symbolic Product Hypothesis”)

H2:

Individuals are less likely to engage in political consumption the stronger their preference or desire for the targeted product. (“Preference Strength Hypothesis”)

H3:

Individuals are more likely to engage in political consumption the greater the number and availability of substitutes for the targeted product.27 (“Product Substitute Hypothesis”)

The information costs of determining the potential impact of refusing certain products includes acquiring knowledge about the number of other boycott participants (John and Klein 2003), a subject beyond the scope of this paper. However, because consumption of symbolic products like Coke or Levis is often visible to others, these products provide better signals about the aggregate level of collective participation and thus the likelihood of communicating the desired message to the target. Social visibility of products may also produce additional costs to nonparticipation in the form of social pressure or stigmatization if an individual’s peer group sees him or her consuming products that the group has collectively decided to boycott. Noting the extent to which individuals in a consumer society use consumption of products to shape their identities and associate themselves with different social, class, ethnic, kinship, vocational, ideological, religious, or other groups in society, the consumption literature

27

One might expect the costs of boycotting to be particularly high for products that are necessary for living, such as food and gas, but these products also have many substitutes and are thus the kind most often boycotted. Separate hypotheses about sacrifice of necessary goods would be subsumed by the theory of substitutes.



also argues that social influence is an important determinant of individual consumption choice. The proposition that individuals’ consumption choices are interdependent is central to the consumption literature because it is this interdependence that gives products social meaning. While some individuals may choose to use their purchasing power to differentiate themselves from or challenge a dominant group, people often choose products that affirm collective ties. Sen, Gürhan-Canli, and Morwitz (2001) suggest that political consumption is particularly subject to compliance with behavior of reference groups, formal or informal, arguing that individual “susceptibility to normative influence” is important in determining boycott behavior (401). An empirical implication of this hypothesis is that individuals with more extensive and cohesive social networks should be more likely to engage in political consumption than isolated individuals. Those who spend a great deal of their time with others at work, school, or in social activities are more likely to both purchase and use products in the presence of others. Thus, students, those who work in service jobs and other tasks requiring interaction with clients and colleagues, and people active in religious or other associational groups should represent a large proportion of political consumers. Reputation matters more to those who live and work in close-knit communities with repeated contact with the same individuals. They should therefore be more likely to use their consumption for political ends and to match their stated intentions with their actual choices. We expect students to be a particularly active group in this regard. While our data do not allow us to test this hypothesis with respect to different vocational and generational groups, this hypothesis has important implications for the civic decline thesis, which has assumed that political consumption is a poor substitute for formal political action because it is individualistic and encourages further isolation from community. This is also consistent with findings that political consumers are also more likely to participate in other ways, suggesting that political consumption is a function and extension of community rather than a substitute for it. Accordingly, we propose the following hypotheses: H4:

Individuals are more likely to engage in political consumption the larger their social network and the greater their daily interactions with others. (“Social Influence Hypothesis”)



As noted previously, some have suggested that political consumption is a tool used by populations that are excluded formally or informally (because they lack the time, for example) from other forms of participation or by the nature of their status have greater access to consumption processes. Women, for example, have been excluded from politics but also make household buying decisions more frequently than men. To the extent that consumption can be used to challenge the dominant order, nondominant groups may engage in political consumption more frequently. On the other hand, critics of this view note that political consumption is sensitive to both income and availability of leisure time in which to use products and gain information about the implications of consumption. Education is also a correlate of political participation activities that have high informational costs. These two factors mitigate the argument that consumption is an egalitarian and empowering form of action. However, those who study mass consumption have pointed out that differences in the tastes and consumption levels for many types of products have flattened out so that class and educational differences become less and less important. Target Corporation’s democratization of fine design for the masses, on the one hand, and concomitant upwardly mobile appeal to the sophisticated readers of The New Yorker through purchase of the magazine’s entire ad space in August 2005, on the other, is an example (Lazare 2005). Thus far, we have argued that Algerians in general are likely to engage in political consumption when the US is the target because they are marginalized in the sense that they have no direct influence over US policy. We have no reason to expect that marginalized groups within Algerian society would respond differently to US policy. The literature suggests the following hypotheses, which may or may not be relevant to political consumption directed against a foreign target: H5a:

Women, ethnic minorities, and other potentially excluded groups in society interested in gaining political access or challenging dominant groups are more likely to engage in political consumption.

H5b:

Individuals with higher levels of education are more likely to be political consumers.

H5c:

Individuals with higher levels of income are more likely to be political consumers.

The patterns are likely to be different in the Algerian context, where identifying marginalized groups is difficult. On the one hand, Westernized, affluent, French-speaking intellectuals and women were targeted



with violence by Islamists during the 1990s. Though more educated, informed, and wealthy, they are more likely to welcome Algeria’s new openness to the West and foreign imports after a decade of living in fear. Similarly, women may associate the growing Algeria-US relationship with greater freedom of choice with respect to clothing. Thus women, educated individuals, and those with higher incomes may be less likely to engage in boycotts against the US, contrary to theories about political consumption. On the other hand, the government has actively excluded Islamists from political life and has discouraged public expressions of extreme religious views. American and European support for Algeria’s war on terror and efforts to prohibit the use of religion and religious slogans for political parties politics may contribute to a greater tendency toward political consumption among more religious individuals. The Berber-speaking population also has grievances against the regime and has appealed to the US and other Western powers. This group also has sought to differentiate itself from the Arabic-speaking population, including, in some cases, greater affinity for Western culture and products. Thus, although marginalized domestically, Berber speakers are probably less likely to engage in political consumption for US products. One neglected aspect of political consumption research is the extent to which participation may vary according to the strength and intensity of a person’s interest and feelings about the political issue or entity that motivates and will be the target of action. Some participation may be motivated primarily by social pressure, while others may feel so strongly about an issue, company, or country-of-origin that they are willing to engage in expressive political consumption whether or not a formal boycott exists. In response to negative publicity about Arab dissatisfaction with the US, corporate and government officials, as well as Middle East experts, often observe that Arabs and Muslims are quick to differentiate between ordinary Americans, American cultural and scientific contributions and goods, companies and products, and the American government’s foreign policy. Middle Eastern governments at times encourage boycotts of American products, perhaps encouraging citizens to redirect their grievances to outside powers, while at other times they use their association with the US to political advantage. President Bouteflika, for example, publicized his 2004 visit to the White House and made sure that the media covered his embrace of President Bush. It is well known that countries in the region are negotiating free trade agreements with



the US and that their populations view such measures as beneficial. In reality, there is a great deal of ambivalence about American influence in the Middle East. Even while people have unequivocal opinions about US foreign policy in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, American movies and literature are very popular. As one Algerian student put it, “there is no comparison to American movies.”28 Is likely, then, that political consumption directed toward large and multi-faceted entities, where the communicative power of any single consumption choice is only very indirectly related to the target (boycotting American movies to leverage a change in US foreign policy, for example), is consistent only for individuals who have extremely negative feelings about the target across multiple issue areas. For example, a consumer who avoids a company for animal testing is more likely to return to the company once the offensive policy is changed than a person who opposes the company’s pricing, hiring, testing, and environmental practices. Accordingly: H6a:

An individual is more likely to engage in political consumption against a given target the greater the number of target characteristics, policies, or practices she opposes.

H6b:

An individual is less likely to engage in political consumption against a given target if she has positive feelings about at least some target characteristics, policies, or practices and differentiates between them. (“Differentiating Hypotheses”)

Survey respondents were asked to indicate their strength of agreement with propositions that trade with the United States and American cultural influence are beneficial for Algeria. We describe respondents as unidimensional if they unequivocally either support or oppose US influence in Algeria with respect to both trade and culture. Those who are ambivalent or feel strongly in favor of economic influence but are opposed to cultural influence can be characterized as multidimensional. These respondents are willing and able to differentiate between different aspects of US policy (trade and political policies) and American culture. With this set of “differentiating” hypotheses we emphasize the extent to which political consumption depends on the particular context in which consumption occurs, particularly whether individuals have multiple types of interactions with different types of products representing a particular company or COO across different issue dimensions. When the target of political consumption is an entire country, consumers receive multiple messages from diverse sources about all of the factors involved in 28

Personal interaction with members of Algerian family who hosted the authors during their time in Algeria.



consumption discussed above, as well as the existence and likely effectiveness of any politically-oriented consumption aimed at the target. If these hypotheses are valid, only those Algerians who have unequivocally negative feelings about the US across multiple issue areas should engage in political consumption, while those who feel ambivalent about the US should be less likely to avoid American products. METHODOLOGY We employ two types of regression models to assess these hypotheses. The first set of logit and OLS models relate to Hypotheses 1-3 and looks at product brand characteristics, where the primary independent variable is the respondent’s self-reported avoidance of American products as a response to US policy. The dependent variables are, alternatively, self-reported purchasing behavior of US products of varying symbolism and substitutability and the level of importance the respondent places on various countries-of-origin for products. We follow by assessesing hypotheses 4-6, with self-reported political consumption as the dependent variable and the social networks and dimensionality of attitudes toward the US as the primary independent variables. Bivariate and multivariate analysis are carried out using data from a survey of over 800 Algerian undergraduates.29 Data and Limitations Data are from a survey of 820 undergraduates at the Caroubier Campus of the University of Algiers, conducted in June 2004 under the auspices of the Faculty of Economics. Following extensive training, a team of economics graduate students designed the 15-page, 63-question self-administered questionnaire, distributing it to a randomly-selected sample of undergraduate courses in Economics and Islamic Studies departments during a four-day period. The sample included 3,618 undergraduates in Economic Sciences and Management, of which 694 responded (19.2 percent), and 720 Islamic Studies

29

We do not seek to explain consumption in general, but rather seeks first to establish whether or not those who report being political consumers actually consume fewer American goods, and second, to identify some individual attributes and attitudes that make a person more likely to be a political consumer. Because the models do not seek to predict brand choice, they will have little overall explanatory power. In addition to descriptive statistics (see Appendix 1, Table 3 and Appendix 3), regression models are used in order to permit control for covariates that, if omitted, would overstate the extent to which political consumption determines brand choice.



undergraduates, of which 98 responded (13.6 percent). The minimum response rate,30 including 32 students who did not report their departmental affiliation, is 820, or 18.9 percent. While not satisfactory in absolute terms, the response rate does not represent only refusals. While the period in which the survey was conducted—during exams—made random sampling possible (see Appendix 2), it also meant that many selected respondents did not wish to participate due to the other demands on their time, such as their need to study, to catch public transportation, or general unfamiliarity with surveys. To the extent that non-response is attributable only to these factors, it should not produce systematic bias. Further, the actual response rate is probably higher for two reasons. First, some undergraduates were included in the sample multiple times if more than one of their classes was sampled. Therefore, the total number of students sampled may be less than 3,618. Second, some faculty members did not permit access to their students and, while efforts were made to resample new classes, time did not always permit substitution of another class, reducing the actual number of questionnaires distributed substantially. Large numbers of surveys were distributed for this reason with the goal of obtaining a sufficiently large sample during a short time. As a result, the 18.9 percent response rate is almost certainly an underestimate and is acceptable according to the professional literature (Johnson and Owens 2003). Finally, there is a great deal of variation in response that suggests that while participation was voluntary, the results are not systematically biased. Islamic studies students were not more reticent than economics students in responding to the survey. The response rates between the faculties are comparable. This suggests that, to the extent that question sensitivity generated non-response, neither economics nor Islamic studies students are more likely to refuse. Further, even the most sensitive questions on the survey—those asking whether the students’ consumption of US products had changed in response to recent international events—were not subject to high rates of item non-response (87.2 percent). Further, 50.8 percent of those who responded said that their consumption of US goods had decreased. Other sensitive questions generated similarly high rates of response. 30

This corresponds to the American Association of Public Opinion Research Response Rate 1. American Association for Public Opinion Research. 2000. Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys. Lenexa, Kansas: AAPOR.



Despite limitations presented by the response rate, the inclusion of two diverse faculties and the large sample relative to the population of interest provides information about a relatively under-studied group of people in Algeria, as well as in the broader Middle East. Of the approximately 630,000 university students in Algeria, more than half are women (Benziane 2005). The University of Algiers is the country’s largest, with 90,000 students. The Faculty of Economics alone has a population of 20,000 students, while there are only 2,000 students in Islamic Studies. Furthermore, like most countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, approximately 60 percent 31 of Algeria’s population is under the age of 24 and represents the largest portion32 of the 30 percent who are unemployed. With a bleak labor market and relatively free and universal access to university education, many Algerian youth remain in the education system as long as possible as undergraduate or graduate students at one of the country’s 56 universities (Benziane 2005). After graduation, most are unlikely to find jobs and, as a result, are unlikely to marry (Kouaouci 2005). Thus the sample represents a significant segment of Algeria’s population. The Caroubier campus may be uniquely representative in that it has more students from the interior of Algeria because courses are taught in Arabic. Caroubier is more conservative than other campuses and is thus more representative of Algeria as a whole than other university settings, which, like those in America, tend to be more liberal than the rest of the country. Students have a choice to attend French-speaking campuses, so surveys of students elsewhere would understate the degree of political consumption. Including a variable measuring the language of questionnaire response is included and may be viewed as a proxy for this coastal-interior dynamic. 33 There is considerable diversity in the sample that reasonably reflects the larger population. For example, 655 (83.8 percent) of respondents report Arabic as their mother tongue, while 110 (14.1 percent) and 17 (2.2 percent) report speaking a Berber language, French, or another language at home (N=782). 31

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Available at . 32 Approximately 65% of the 1.26 million unemployed, or 826,957 people, are under 25. Kouaouci, Ali. 2005. Population Transitions, Youth Unemployment, Postponement of Marriage and Violence in Algeria. In Islam, Democracy and the State in Algeria: Lessons for the Western Mediterranean and Beyond, edited by M. Bonner, M. Reif and M. Tessler. New York: Routledge. 33 Lindsay Benstead. Conversation with female journalist, Algiers, September 29, 2005.



These figures are relatively close to general estimates that Arabs and Berbers make up 80 and 20 percent of Algeria’s population, respectively. In the context of studying consumption, economics students are, arguably, a special population. We expect economics students, however, to be less political in their choices given their training in rational economic decision making, so any finding of patterns of political consumption will be particularly strong evidence of its existence. The inclusion of Islamic studies students in the sample, as well as the system of recruitment into different faculties in Algeria may also mitigate this problem. Students in Algeria’s university system are placed in different faculties based on a combination of their personal preferences, performance, and the convenience of the location. Most respondents (486, or 58.3 percent) chose their area of study, 234 (28.1 percent) were placed, and 114 (13.7 percent) attend one of the faculties at Caroubier because of proximity.34 We believe that the diversity of reasons for attending Caroubier may mean that this sample of students is reasonably representative of other students in Algeria. Women are overrepresented in the sample, making up 61.1 percent (483) of respondents, while 307 (38.9 percent) are men (N=790), yet Algerian women made up only 46.7 percent of social sciences undergraduates in 1995 (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 2002, 13). Although male respondents make up a higher proportion of Islamic studies students than of Economics students, this difference is not statistically significant. The mean respondent age is 21.6 years, and ranges from 17 to 39 (N=750). The majority, 751 (92.4 percent), are single, eight (1.0 percent) are married, 49 (6.1 percent) are engaged, and one (0.1 percent) is divorced (N=809). Most respondents—682, or 85.4 percent, had an urban home residence while only 117 (14.1 percent) were from a rural background (N=799). Islamic Studies students are much more likely than economic sciences students to reside in a rural area. Only 11.6 percent of economics students compared to 37.2 percent of Islamic Studies students live in a rural area. Most respondents live at home with parents (591 or 75.0 percent) with only 166 (21 percent) residing in university residence, four (0.5 percent) with a spouse, 11 (1.4 percent) residing alone, and six (0.8 percent) reporting that they have no lodging (N=788). 34

Some of the students selected two reasons for attending Caroubier (N=834).



As John and Klein (2003) emphasize, political consumption is only a puzzling phenomenon if people refrain from preferred products over sustained periods. This and other survey evidence does not measure, at the individual level, whether politically-oriented consumption decisions are enduring or whether, as many companies in the Middle East assume, individuals quickly abandon their ideals for the best deal and most attractive product. The only way to measure sustained political consumption would be through the use of panel surveys, which has not been done. This survey represents merely a snapshot of attitudes at a very specific, and arguably unusual, place and time. It is possible that the patterns we see are artifacts of the timing of the survey. This study also suffers from limitations common to secondary analysis of existing data, such as issues of index construction and measurement. Measurement and Bivariate Analysis Instrumental Political Consumption The survey asked respondents whether international political events such as the US war in Iraq have influenced their consumption of American products during the past two years, followed by a question asking whether their consumption of American products has decreased, increased, or stayed the same (See Appendix 3 for question wording and distributions for all variables used in the analysis). 35 Existing survey-based empirical studies of consumption typically ask respondents whether they make purchases consistent with ethical and political considerations (expressive) and whether they have participated in formal consumer boycotts (instrumental) (see, e.g., Keum et al. 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). This analysis employs self-reported, politically-motivated change in consumption habits as a comparable proxy. “Indifferent Consumers” (N=219, or 30.5%) are respondents who said they had never thought about changing their consumption of American products as a result of international events, while “Resilient Consumers” (N=92, or 12.8%) are those who report that they did not change their

35

For original French questions, see http://sitemaker.umich.edu/megan.reif/consumption. Arabic questionnaire available upon request.



consumption patterns, and “Political Consumers” (N=408, 56.8%) are those who do.36 Furthermore, nearly all (90 percent) political consumers claim to consume fewer American products; those who report political consumption do claim to carry out their intentions in a sustained way. In the analysis, we model these categories as ordered responses, whereby the respondents inclination to think about and act as a political consumer increases. While the categories are more appropriately viewed as unordered categories, ordering them facilitates presentation of results, which are not improved or changed with the unordered multinomial logit model (see Analysis section, below). Social Visibility, Symbolism, and Access to Substitutes (Hypotheses 1-3) Products have different degrees of social visibility, symbolism, and substitutability, and it is difficult to identify products that represent each in a mutually exclusive way. This study is limited to the questions asked in the survey, which includes questions about three types of products common in the literature: beverages, clothing, and technological goods (mobile phones). Table 2 summarizes whether each product is purchased, consumed, or used in the presence of others (social visibility), the clarity of its country-of-origin with respect to brands and styles, the degree to which it is either culturally or politically symbolic (referring to the extent to which choosing to consume the product will be interpreted as a statement about a specific political issue directed against a target), and the availability of local substitutes. Questions addressing the specific brands chosen or the importance of certain brand characteristics are used in a series of regressions designed to test whether self-reported political consumption is associated with actual behavior. Soda Beverages represent highly substitutable, socially visible, and symbolic commodities. As Carrier and Heymann write, “toiletries, clothes, beverages, foodstuffs and television programmes abound in the literature. Such items are cheap, which helps make them particularly suited for analysis. For most people, the difference in price of different soft drinks is minor, so that the difference between them can be treated 36

These categories are similar to those used in Woodnutt, Tom, and Greig Burnside. 2004. Wake Up and Smell the Cynicism: Anti-Americanism and its Implications. Paper read at the Annual Conference of The Market Research Society: Research 2004: Welcome to the Dream Economy, March 11-12, at London, England.



as almost nothing but symbolic” (1997, 398-99). In colonial America, drinks took on symbolic significance, with colonial consumers resolving to abandon British tea and foreign liquors (Witkowski 1989, 223). Many stores in Algeria post logos of Pepsi or Coca-Cola and associate themselves with these brands, which may represent quality, availability of other imports in the store, or a certain cultural orientation. On the other hand, products like Mecca Cola, introduced recently by a French Muslim entrepreneur as an alternative to American brands following the war in Iraq, are widely available in Algeria and turn beverage choice into a form of political expression (Hutton 2003). Selecto or Orangina, with its slogan, c’est Algérien, are alternatives. Respondents were asked to list their first, second, and third brand preference for soda if they consume soda (see Appendix II). We combined these variables to create a variable indicating whether respondents include any American brands among their top three choices. No respondents listed all American brands in their top three choices, so the variable indicates whether the respondent prefers only Algerian or non-US brands or includes one or two US brands in his or her top three choices. Respondents where then asked to weigh the importance of different considerations in determining the brands of soda they buy according to a 5-point Likert scale where 1 indicates low importance and five indicates high importance, including the importance of Algerian, Muslim Country, American, or European Brands (See Appendix II for question and distributions). The five-point scales are the dependent variables in a series of ordinary least squares regression analysis. Those who report changing their consumption habits as a result of international political events prefer American beverages less than those who report unchanged consumption habits. Table 3a distinguishes respondents by categories of political consumption and shows cross-tabulations and difference of means tests for brand preferences. While 42 and 52 percent of indifferent and resilient consumers, respectively, include an American soda brand in their top three, only 26 percent of political consumers do so. Seventy-four percent of political consumers, compared to 48 percent of resilient consumers prefer only non-US brands. Table 3c indicates that political consumers rank a non-US country of origin as more important than indifferent or resilient individuals. As expected, consumers appear to



carry out self-reported intentions when buying a product that is highly symbolic and has numerous local substitutes. Mobile Phones All mobile phones in Algeria are foreign, but are less symbolic of a specific COO. Cellular phone brands in Algeria have diverse origins, including East Asia (Samsung), Finland (Nokia), and the United States (Motorola), but consumers are unaware of the manufacturer’s COO. Furthermore, the service providers are Algerian, so an individual’s choice of phone brand may be constrained by the service provider. The questionnaire asked respondents to identify which brand they wanted to own. As in other Islamic countries, the growth of mobile phone use in Algeria has been exponential. There are three million cellular subscribers in a population of 32 million, but a potential 15 million customers makes Algeria one of the top five cellular phone markets in the MENA region. 37 While cell phones are extremely useful, they are expensive and may be considered luxury goods that represent wealth and status. Further, in the university setting, mobile phones are popular for text messaging among friends and thus acquire social utility. The phone has high visibility, but the COO is unclear from the name. Few people have land lines in Algeria, making mobile phones a necessity more than a symbol of technological novelty or luxury. Table 3b presents a cross-tabulation of preferences for American and non-American brands according to respondents’ self-reported political consumption. Political consumers are no more likely to prefer non-US brands than resilient and indifferent consumers. The American brand in Algeria, Motorola, has minimal presence. The number who prefer Motorola (45) is small, but, contrary to the patterns for the more visible products, political consumers (28) nevertheless select it as their preferred brand more often than the other two groups (Table 3b). Similarly, there is no difference in the profile of consumers who prefer Asian or European brands. While consumers may be motivated by specific features of the phones or restricted to brands by the Algerian service providers, it is likely that those who report that they are avoiding US products are unaware of

37

Staff Reporter. 2004. Nokia consolidates Middle East and North Africa operations. Al Bawaba: The Middle East Gateway, August 9.



Motorala’s COO. Political consumers may not be spending the time and effort to identify a product’s COO. The number of respondents who prefer an American brand, however, is not large enough to perform multivariate analysis. Clothiing Clothing has cultural importance and ambiguous and multiple political meanings. While labels make it easy to identify COO when buying clothing, clothing is differentiated mainly by Western versus traditional style and not by brand. Most Western-style clothing in Algeria is imported from Europe, though many men wear American jeans and tee-shirts that depict American musicians. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and other US brands or knock-offs are popular in Algeria. Clothing reflects personal piety, social influence, practical concerns, and class. Many studies focus exclusively on clothing and how it has been manipulated for political ends. In Nazi Germany and revolutionary France, for example, citizens were encouraged to dress in ways that would cement nationalism. In the American colonial independence movement, “buy local” clothing campaigns were aimed at stimulating local production, paired with calls to abstain from lavish British styles and accoutrements in favor of simpler, locally-made clothing “the wearing of homespun clothes became a signal of patriotism while the display of imported finery was condemned as an attack on economic self-sufficiency” (Witkowski 1989, 144). Similarly, in Algeria’s war for independence, women began taking on the veil as both a signifier of resistance against the French as well as a practical way to conceal and transport weapons. During the late 1980s and 1990s, clothing took on different significance as part of the larger Islamization campaign by the FIS, where women (and some men) were targeted for wearing Western styles. With so many competing factors determining clothing choice, it may or may not be associated with political consumption. Those who wish to wear Western styles can easily choose European over American brands, but only the buyer will know the COO. It is easy to avoid buying American clothing brands in Algeria, so that choosing to wear visible American brands like Nike is a very deliberate choice. As with soda, respondents were asked to weigh the importance of different criteria with respect to their decision about what clothing to buy and wear: American brand or style; European brand or style;



Algerian-made; and made in a Muslim country (Table 3d). Resilient consumers rank the importance of American brand name one point higher than do indifferent or political consumers, while political consumers rank Muslim COO one point higher than the other two groups. These distinctions are significant in a difference of means test. Social Influence and Social Networks (Hypothesis 4) Two questions provide a proxy for social influence. Respondents indicated the importance of parents and friends in determining clothing choice on a five-point scale (see Appendix 2). As consumption increasingly occupies public space outside the home, the influence of friends and social acquaintances should have more impact on political consumption than family influence. The questions seem to be measuring two different dimensions of external influence, with a correlation between parental and peer influence only 0.24 and substantial variation on each question (see Appendix 2). Peer influence is a general, though imperfect, proxy for the respondent’s susceptibility to the influence of external social networks. We expect that those who are influenced more by their friends are more likely than those influenced by their parents to engage in political consumption. Demographic Characteristics: Marginal Groups, Educational, and Income Characteristics (Hypotheses 5) Income Student consumption is likely to be mediated by the family income, except for lower cost items like soda. Students have few personal resources. Based on questions about students’ own income that they describe as “pocket money”, the median respondent receives only 101-500 dinar ($1.40 - $7.00) per month. Most of the respondents (609, or 82.7 percent) do not work, though many -- 434 (5.9 percent) are looking for jobs. Some (48, or 6.5 percent) work in their own business, 34 (4.6 percent) work part-time, 23 (3.1 percent) work in the informal sector, and 22 (3.0 percent) work full-time (N=735). Even if they do not have a job, most (360) students report that their motivations for wanting to work are primarily for personal expenses such as clothing or for university expenses like books (179). Many fewer are motivated to work to support their family regularly (60) or from time to time (93) (N=576). About one-fifth (157, or



22 percent) report that their families earn less than 10,000 dinar ($135) per month, while the majority (412, or 57 percent) live in households that earn 10,001 to 30,000 dinar monthly ($402). Only 77 respondents have families that earn 30,001 to 60,000 dinar ($805) and another 77 have families that earn more than 60,000 dinar (10.7 percent in each category). Respondents’ family income is not related to their area of study, gender, or religiosity, but those with a rural residence are disproportionately from lower income categories. With 57 percent of respondents in the same income category, this analysis cannot draw firm conclusions about income and political consumption. Educational and Demographic Characteristics The sample has little variation with respect to educational level, and a disproportionate number of respondents were in their second year of college at the time of the survey, making it difficult to assess the influence of education on political consumption. However, it is possible to code whether the respondent completed the French (left) or the Arabic (right) side of the questionnaire.38 A respondent’s choice to answer in French may capture greater educational achievement, a cultural affinity for the West, or cosmopolitanism. A preference for French in the questionnaire may also reflect the generation of the respondent’s parents. Older Algerians who came of age during the independence and post-independence period were trained primarily in French and this preference may influence their children (Tessler, Konold, and Reif 2004). On the other hand, differences in question wording may have led some respondents to choose the French version as better expressing their opinions. Questions about gender, maternal language (Berber, French, or Arabic), rural or urban domicile, and the language of questionnaire response are included. Those who list a non-Arabic maternal language (N=126) are somewhat more likely to respond in French (N=51, or 40 percent) than native Arabic-speakers (N=649), who responded in French only 20

38

Initially, the analysis included variables identifying maternal language (Arabic, Berber, or French), but these results were never significant nor did their exclusion affect any models. Maternal language did not predict whether the respondent actually answered the questionnaire in Arabic or French.



percent of the time (N=132). This variation suggests that response language is indeed measuring a different dimension, possibly coastal or interior region of origin. 39

Religiosity Although our theoretical framework makes no predictions about the likely effect of religion on consumption, the literature, in the tradition of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, views religion as an important component in the transition to consumer society, as religious ideology is adapted to accommodate economic change. As discussed previously, very religious individuals may be characterized as marginalized by a US-supported secular regime associated with repression of political Islam and thus more likely to boycott American products. Secondly, religious individuals may feel more strongly connected to the larger Muslim community and thus greater empathy for their coreligionists in Iraq, Palestine, or elsewhere. Third, religious individuals may be more attached to and subject to the influence of another kind of social network particularly predisposed to political action, a proposition consistent with the literature on political participation from American politics and the anecdotal observation that religious organizations in the United States often lead boycotts, such as the recent Christian Right boycott of Walmart, Target, and other retailers for omitting the word “Christmas” from holiday marketing strategies. Finally, those with strong religious beliefs may be less likely to embrace materialism and consumption, of which American products may be particularly symbolic. However, there is nothing in Islam that precludes affluence and material consumption, and the survey data show no association between religiosity and overall frequency of consumption (results not shown). Religion, then,

39

Lindsay Benstead. Conversation with female journalist, Algiers, September 29, 2005. Those who respond in French may be more likely to be from coastal cities, which were much more culturally influenced by the French and where French and Western music and other cultural products are consumed more readily, while those who prefer Arabic are more likely to come from the non-coastal cities of the interior and to have less exposure to and affinity for French culture and language. Part of this orientation is cultural. Pro- and Anti-France attitudes going back several generations may condition what language is spoken in home and at school.



is measuring a number of different dimensions of political behavior that are difficult to interpret. For all of these reasons, it is important to include religiosity when examining political consumption, but interpreting its meaning must be done with extreme caution. The survey did not include questions typically used to measure religiosity, such as frequency of prayer and mosque attendance. As a proxy for religiosity, we combine two questions measuring the importance of religious considerations and religious leaders (Imams) for clothing decisions. The correlation of these two variables is .49, with a Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of .66; both of which are reasonable. Using each measure separately does not affect the results, but cases are lost if they are not combined. Where one variable is missing, the value for the other is included in the scale. This measures religiosity imperfectly in that influences on clothing choice measure social norms as much as they do faith. However, the responses vary substantially, and other common measures are subject to an equivalent degree of social desirability bias.40 Although it may introduce bias in our favor for our analysis of clothing, these questions could be promising additions to measures of religiosity in future studies, especially those which measure social and personal Islam, as opposed to political Islam (Tessler 1997). US Orientation: Dimensionality of Political Attitudes toward the Target (Hypotheses 6) Two questions on the survey use Likert scales to assess strength of agreement with two propositions: (1) trade with the United States is beneficial for Algeria and (2) American culture is beneficial for Algeria. Additionally, the questionnaire asked a series of questions about the benefits of trade and American fast food franchise investment in Algeria, including a question asking whether respondents think American fast food tastes good. Since most Algerians have never tasted American fast food, the question is interesting in that it measures perception of American product quality in the abstract. Attitudes about this question are likely to have been shaped by advertising on Satellite television, which most Algerians receive. We use these three questions to capture the dimensionality of feelings about the United States. There is substantial variation on each question and they are not highly correlated with one 40

Mosque attendance is an incomplete measure of religiosity in women, who are not expected to attend regularly. Because they consider daily prayer obligatory, frequencies among Muslims may have less variation and may be subject to exaggeration.



another,41 suggesting that they are indeed measuring different characteristics of the United States and its relationship with Algeria (see Appendix 3). We combine the questions on trade and culture to identify four types of consumers to capture dimensionality of attitudes toward the United States (see Questions Q.44 and V.44 in Appendix 3), coding those who agree or strongly agree with the statements that both trade with the US and American cultural influence are beneficial for Algeria as having a “Pro-US Orientation”. If the respondent disagrees or disagrees strongly with both statements, he or she can be said to have a “Anti-US Orientation”, while those who are opposed to American cultural influence but embrace trade have a “Pro-Trade Orientation.” The remaining respondents with middling positions on both trade and culture are coded as “Ambivalent” toward the US 42 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The Relationship between Political Consumption, Product Symbolism, and Buying Behavior The results of multivariate analysis are presented in Tables 4 and 5. 43 Although the N is considerably less than the number of students sampled, we did not find a systematic pattern of nonresponse for the same individuals across similar questions, nor do we suspect that non-response for independent variables are correlated with the dependent variables.44 The first two tables convey findings

41

The questions about trade and culture have a correlation coefficient of .43 and perceptions of US fast food have a .30 and a .33 correlation with trade and culture, respectively. 42 Alternative coding schemes, such as including non-response as a category, or placing more Ambivalent consumers in one of the other categories based on a strong trade or cultural position and mid-range position on the other item does not significantly change the results. 43 All models were estimated with Stata Stata Statistical Software: Release 8. StataCorp LP, College Station, TX. All figures generated with package of commands associated with Long, Scott, and Jeremy Freese. 2005. spostado: Stata 8 & 7 commands for the post-estimation interpretation of regression models University of Indiana, 2004 [cited November 16 2005]. Available from www.indiana.edu/~jslsoc/spost.htm, Mitchell, Michael. 2005. postgr3. Graphs of predicted values after estimation command Statistical Computing and Consulting UCLA Academic Technology Services, [cited November 16 2005]. Available from http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ado/analysis, Mitchell, Michael , and Phil Ender. 2005. xi3.Extended xi: Enhanced version of xi with 3 way interactions Statistical Computing and Consulting UCLA Academic Technology Services, [cited November 16 2005]. Available from http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ado/analysis. 44 While modeling non-response using selection models, such as the Heckman model, is one option, the authors are not seeking to explain particular outcomes as much as associations between certain variables of interest while controlling for several related factors. Strong theoretical explanations for non-response based on the available variables are not immediately evident, and using such models would complicate presentation and interpretation of



for the effects of self-reported political consumption on actual brand choice. The first two columns of Table 4 present logit coefficients and marginal effects for consumption of Coke and Pepsi, controlling for perceptions of US product quality, income, and frequency of soda consumption. Political consumers are less likely to choose these drinks. Those who report avoiding US products are 12 percent less likely to consume American soda than the indifferent respondents (p