Borders The psychology of separation: Border Walls, soft power, and international neighborliness

Within the past 10 years, states around the world have accelerated the use of border walls and fences for purposes of border management and control. Much has been written about the cost and effectiveness of border walls, but no evidence-based research exists about their psychological impact. This study addresses the impact of border walls on third-party evaluations of countries and on perceptions of the quality of international relationships between neighboring states. Our main hypothesis is that those who are aware that a border wall exists between two countries will rate the neighboring states as having worse relations than would otherwise be the case. In addition, they will evaluate states with border walls more negatively than those without them. This potential effect is important because international relations are thought to be influenced by the “attractiveness” of states and their societies ,a phenomenon that international relations scholars refer to as “soft power”. Countries that are viewed positively by the citizens of other countries benefit from greater credibility and influence in international relations. Thus, scholarship on soft power focuses on factors that may positively or negatively affect perceptions of one country in the eyes of citizens of other countries. Because ordinary citizens often lack much information about other countries, they tend to rely on highly visible cues when making such judgments. In this study, we hypothesize that one such cue is a country’s border infrastructure.

Read more in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences >>