This chapter examines the decisions of the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and Poland regarding whether they would join with the United States in the Iraq coalition, the goal of which was to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Among these countries, there was much variation in both key variables identified as the ingredients of constraint and in the extent to which leaders were responsive to pressure from either their domestic publics or the United States. The key lesson from these case studies is that democratic constraint is fragile and elusive. These cases point to a variety of means by which policy makers outmaneuvered a consistently antiwar European public. Media and partisan political opposition are clearly an important part of the overall story and, more significantly, are among the few factors that hold steady from case to case.
City approaches to smart city evaluation and reporting: case studies in the United Kingdom
