Sharing 2,000 miles of border, the United States and Mexico have strong interests in common, but the growing levels of polarization might threaten their bilateral agenda.
Evidence demonstrates that severe polarization is harmful for democracy as it engenders intolerance, discrimination, erosion of social trust, and increased violence.
However, we need to learn more about the effects of polarization on public policymaking, mainly when there is more than one country involved.
The policy relationship between Mexico and the United States has been dominated by trade, immigration, and security. But a closer look reveals that the two countries share common problems related to water management, environmental protection, healthcare, and education, among many others.
However, increasing levels of polarization limit the potential for a more multifaceted bilateral collaboration.
This study investigates the level of polarization among future policy elites in Mexico and the United States and how this hinders policy cooperation.
Objectives
- Identify core political beliefs that prevail among future policy elites in Mexico and the United States and their perception of the neighboring country.
- Measure their degree of interest in the policy problems of the neighboring country and their willingness to participate in their solution.
- Investigate, through experimental methods, how existing biases and misconceptions can be changed to promote a better understanding of the neighboring country and the willingness to collaborate in developing binational policy.
Methods
- The study’s target population is graduate students enrolled in academic programs that prepare students interested in influencing the public sphere, such as public policy, global affairs, public management, and the like in the United States and Mexico.
- The sample will focus on universities in the four American states bordering Mexico: Arizona, California, Nuevo Mexico, and Texas. The Mexico sample will include students from states bordering the United States and those in Mexico City, as they have always influenced the U.S-Mexico bilateral agenda.
- Data will be collected through an online questionnaire with around 60 questions (response time is 10 -12 minutes).
- The topics of the questionnaire will concentrate on the following topics:
- government intervention and individual freedom
- accountability and corruption
- trust and civic participation
- discrimination and inequality
- views on the neighboring country’s public affairs
- To investigate potential interventions to mitigate existing biases and misconceptions among the target population in each country, the survey will adopt an experimental design. A random sample will be primed with a short text on a subject from the neighboring country to evaluate if that changes prejudices.
- The study has been exempted from review by the University of Texas at Austin’s Institutional Review Board (IRB)
Stakeholders
Academic departments, professional schools, and research centers specialized in the binational agenda of Mexico and the United States.
Schedule
Students in the United States and Mexico are expected to participate in the Fall 2023.
Deliverables
- A policy report describing the most salient results of the survey, emphasizing how polarization is damaging the potential for stronger policy collaboration between Mexico and the United States.
- A website describing the project’s main goals, research questions, relevance, stakeholders involved, and the papers derived from it.
- A short promotional video comprehensible to the general public.
- An academic article analyzing the effect of policy priming on depolarization with the aid of experimental methods.
