Religion and Ethnic Minority Attitudes in Britain toward the War in Afghanistan

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Clements
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Population ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Impact

AbstractPublic opinion research has demonstrated that minority religious and ethnic groups hold distinctive preferences on foreign policy issues, including military interventions in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. There has been little scholarly research in Britain into the attitudes of minority groups on foreign policy issues. This article uses a nationally-representative survey of the ethnic minority population in Britain to examine the sources of public opinion towards the war in Afghanistan. Using multivariate analysis, it finds strong effects for religious affiliation, religiosity and political alienation. There is also evidence of a “gender gap” and age-related differences. The paper contributes to the literature on the impact of religion on public opinion and foreign policy and to analysis of the political attitudes of minority groups in Britain.

Populism and Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertjan Verbeek ◽  
Andrej Zaslove
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of international politics on the rise of populist parties as well as the impact of populism on the foreign policy of the countries in which populist parties are present. It argues that the end of the Cold War, the advent of globalization, and the impact of regional organizations (e.g. the European Union) presented opportunity structures that facilitated the rise of populist parties. Similarly, the chapter argues that the effect of populist parties on their countries’ foreign policy is largely due to their attaching ideology. The chapter thus distinguishes between four types of populist parties, each attaching salience to different foreign policy issues: the populist radical right, the populist market liberal, the populist regionalist, and the populist left.

How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jennifer Pan ◽  
Zijie Shao ◽  
Yiqing Xu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Composite Measures ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Tv News

Abstract Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.

Intervention and Intransitivity: Public Opinion, Social Choice, and the Use of Military Force Abroad

1995 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Taylor Gaubatz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that the problems identified in the literature on public choice should critically affect our research on public opinion and our understanding of the impact of public opinion on foreign policy. While a robust literature has emerged around social choice issues in political science, there has been remarkably little appreciation for these problems in the literature on public opinion in general and on public opinion and foreign policy in particular. The potential importance of social choice problems for understanding the nature and role of public opinion in foreign policy making is demonstrated through an examination of American public attitudes about military intervention abroad. In particular, drawing on several common descriptions of the underlying dimensionality of public attitudes on major foreign policy issues, it is shown that there may be important intransitivities in the ordering of public preferences at the aggregate level on policy choices such as those considered by American decision makers in the period leading up to the Gulf War. Without new approaches to public-opinion polling that take these problems into consideration, it will be difficult to make credible claims about the role of public opinion in theforeignpolicy process.

scholarly journals Sanctions as tools in the US foreign policy after the cold war

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Joksimovic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

In searching for various opportunities to act in pursuing its foreign policy and endeavors to achieve a dominant role in the global processes USA has developed a broad range of instruments including a financial assistance as a way to be given support for its positions, intelligence activities, its public diplomacy, unilateral implementation of sanctions and even military interventions. The paper devotes special attention to one of these instruments - sanctions, which USA implemented in the last decade of the 20th century more than ever before. The author explores the forms and mechanisms for implementation of sanctions, the impact and effects they produce on the countries they are directed against, but also on the third parties or the countries that have been involved in the process by concurrence of events and finally on USA as the very initiator of imposing them.

Regional identity and support for integration: An EU-wide comparison of parochialists, inclusive regionalist, and pseudo-exclusivists

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 639-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brigevich
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Multilevel Analysis ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
The European Union ◽  
New Regionalism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Impact

The rise of “new regionalism” is one of the most salient features of the post-Cold War international order. Despite the resurgence of regionalism in Europe, little consensus exists on how regional identity impacts public opinion toward the European Union. To remedy this problem, this study examines the impact of three types of individual-level regional identity on support for integration: parochialism (exclusive regionalism), inclusive regionalism, and pseudo-exclusive regionalism. Contrary to scholarly expectations, the multilevel analysis reveals that inclusive regionalists are as equally Eurosceptic as parochial regionalists. In general, regional identity depresses support for integration unless it is expressly combined with a supranational identity. This finding holds true even in minority nations, where respondents are, on the whole, less Euro-friendly.

Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Issues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Eichenberg
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Attitudes Toward War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Scholars and governments are interested in four sets of questions concerning public opinion on foreign policy and national security policy. First, what do public opinion polls measure? How do citizens, who are generally uninformed about foreign policy and world affairs, form opinions on these matters? Second, how rational is public opinion? Is it stable or volatile? Are opinions coherent? Do opinions plausibly reflect the flow of world events? Third, what factors influence the formation of citizen opinions? Specifically, what is the impact of fundamental attitudes toward war and military force, partisanship, ideology, and gender? Finally, how universal are the determinants of citizen opinion, especially on crucial issues of war and peace? Are the findings in global comparisons the same as those in the American or European contexts? Considerable scholarship has been devoted to these four questions. Scholars now characterize public opinion as rational, in the sense that it is fairly stable, coherent, and responsive to real world events. Attitudes toward war and military force are a major focus of the research literature because many specific policy attitudes flow from fundamental views of war. Gender has also become a major focus of research because many studies find that women are less supportive of the use of military force for most purposes. Finally, scholars are beginning to discover that some opinion patterns are universal across societies, while others are more affected by the individual characteristics of national societies. Studies of global public opinion have expanded greatly, with recent scholarship focusing on global attitudes toward gender equality, immigration, and climate change.

Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies

1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Risse-Kappen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
The Impact

The paper discusses the role of public opinion in the foreign policy-making process of liberal democracies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, public opinion matters. However, the impact of public opinion is determined not so much by the specific issues involved or by the particular pattern of public attitudes as by the domestic structure and the coalition-building processes among the elites in the respective country. The paper analyzes the public impact on the foreign policy-making process in four liberal democracies with distinct domestic structures: the United States, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan. Under the same international conditions and despite similar patterns of public attitudes, variances in foreign policy outcomes nevertheless occur; these have to be explained by differences in political institutions, policy networks, and societal structures. Thus, the four countries responded differently to Soviet policies during the 1980s despite more or less comparable trends in mass public opinion.

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