Public Opinion on Intelligence and Counterterrorism Cooperation between Democracies and Autocracies: The Case of German-Egyptian Relations

The literature on international intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation increasingly covers the strategic challenges and moral hazards that democracies face in their interactions with authoritarian regimes. Against this background, we employ a representative online survey in the first in-depth examination of the conditions under which the public in a European democracy is willing to support intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation with a highly authoritarian regime. Our results confirm that in the case of the German public, reports about human rights abuses and foreign intelligence meddling by the Egyptian government increase concerns over the utility and morality of such cooperation.