PONE-D-20-29273

A regional approach to foreign policy attitudes, poverty and ethnicity in Moldova

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Raileanu Szeles,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: General Comments

The paper titled “A regional approach to foreign policy attitudes, poverty and ethnicity in Moldova” deals with an interesting topic, focused on a well-centred perspective. It is under the scope of the Journal and, in my view, it provides a better understanding of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova, with a focus on their relation with different indicators of poverty, ethnicity and other individual- and regional level characteristics. It constitutes an interesting focus for reflection.

This work is well written and easily understandable. The structure of the paper, the revision of the literature and the method are well designed. Results and conclusions are very well supported by the literature as well as the empirical analysis.

I give some pieces of advice to the authors to improve the paper, particularly for providing a more detailed explanation in some sections. I think that this more comprehensive explanation will contribute to the fluency of reading as well as to the understanding of the econometric modelling.

Specific Comments

When the two-level variance components model is explained in section 3. Methods, the authors provide a description of all components of equation (1), except the component referred to the group level residual. Although this becomes perfectly clear when you continue reading the work, it is convenient to specify it the first time it is cited.

In the paragraph in which the main variables of interest are described (section 4. Ethno-geopolitical context and Data, in the section dedicated to data), it would be interesting to directly justify the variables chosen according to the academic literature referred to in the previous sections.

I want to point out a minor format matter in the last paragraph of the third section (Methods) since there is a different font format to the rest of the paper.

Reviewer #2: The flow of information throughout the paper is well structured. Very informative piece of work

The main contributions of the submitted article are:

(1) It provides a clear analysis of public opinion on foreign policy for Moldova. It adds an alternative view to the literature in its field since most of the studies are US-based.

(2) It also connects regional patterns and socio-economics issues such as poverty and ethnicities with public perception on various foreign policies currently present in the Moldovan society.

Additional Comments:

- The title of the paper is misleading based on the scope of the article.

- Abstract is hard to read. It does not provide a clear path of what the paper wants to achieve.

- Please, provide more details regarding data availability within the manuscripts and supporting information files. This is not clear at all.

- Kindly, provide a brief context on the Transnistria conflict within your article. Why the conflict was not briefly described in the paper?

- Page 8: Attention to details. References used in the preparation of the paper were not found in the references section. For instance, See Baltag (2013)

- Page 8: It is not clear to readers, what is the pro-poor economic growth of 5%. Please, clarify or add more details.

- Page 8: What do you mean by regional perspective? At this stage, It is not very clear to readers. Please, provide more details.

- Typo on page 8: "the most important ethnic groups in Moldova ae Romanians"

- Page 10: "but rather as latent values explaining the factor loadings according to the factor analysis". Kindly, provide more details, since it is not clear to readers.

- Page 12: " then the use of multilevel models becomes totally justified" Add references to support your approach.

- Page 14: " In the equation below". Shouldn't be in the equation above?

- Page 16. Provide some context/details about the use of Age square in your analysis.

- Typo on page 17: "patters"

- Typo on page 19: "detoted"

- Page 19: Please, provide clarification, details for CTT

- Page 21: is TV missing from Fig 2? If so, there is inconsistency with comments and table 2 on Page 20.

- Page 25: By reading the following "However, the NATO membership is not a seen as an appropriate foreign policy measure for Moldova, not by Moldovans, and nor by Gagauz people, and one explanation could be the strong Russian opposition (Schelegel, 2018).

Aren't Gagauz people Moldovan citizens? The paragraph could imply a different interpretation. Please, clarify.

- Typo on page 25: "are in opposition with the all policy" Please, remove 'the'

- Page 26: The information provided about attitudes toward refugees is almost negligible. Add more text regarding refugees in Moldova.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Examining the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova

PONE-D-20-29273R1

Dear Dr. Raileanu Szeles,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

María Carmen Díaz Roldán, Ph.D Economics

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The flow of information throughout the paper makes this piece of work easy to follow. Very informative and well-structured research manuscript.

Few typos were identified, particularly in the new paragraphs added to the latest version of the manuscript.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No