Book Review: Review Essay: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad, by Martha Bayles and Public Opinion & International Intervention: Lessons from the Iraq War, edited by Richard Sobel, Peter Furia, and Bethany Barratt

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-839
Author(s):  
Giovanna Dell’Orto
Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572096785
Author(s):  
Lars Berger ◽  
Adrian Gallagher

Analysing Arab public opinion on the international community’s response to the Syrian crisis, we expand existing scholarship by injecting a non-Western perspective into the oftentimes Western-centric debates on intervention. We demonstrate that publics in two prominent Arab Spring countries were quite willing to embrace intervention in Syria in order to depose Bashar al-Assad. More specifically, our analysis reveals that both interests and values shape support for different types of international intervention in Syria. In the context of the distinction between policy-driven and culture-driven anti-Americanisms, we show that Egyptian and Tunisian evaluations of US foreign policy behaviour and, to lesser extent, US culture correlate with support for Western-led intervention in Syria.


Asian Survey ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1089-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hall

Abstract Over the past decade, India has invested significant resources in public diplomacy, using traditional and new approaches to build and leverage its soft power. This article examines the reasons for this investment, the various forms of public diplomacy India employs, and the effectiveness of its efforts to shape public opinion. It finds that Indian investment in public diplomacy is partly a response to concerns about the perceived growth of Chinese soft power and partly a function of changed beliefs in the foreign policy-making elite about the uses of new social media. It also finds that India's new public diplomacy seems to have met with some––albeit patchy––success in augmenting its soft power.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomoko Akami

AbstractThis article argues that what we now call public diplomacy emerged in the mid- to late 1930s in the case of Japan. It questions the notion that public diplomacy is new in contrast to 'traditional' diplomacy. It also questions the conventional understanding of Japan's diplomatic isolationism of the 1930s. The article argues that as a result of greater mass political participation, the idea of 'international public opinion' emerged as a new norm in inter-war international politics. States increasingly regarded news and cultural activities as crucial resources of their soft power for winning this international public opinion. Responding to technological developments in communications, they developed a more systematic approach to propaganda in order to utilize these resources in mainstream foreign policy. Even in the age of the socalled rise of nationalism and diplomatic isolationism, Japan could neither afford not to respond to other states' actions nor to ignore international public opinion. In the diplomatic crises of the 1930s, Japan began to coordinate news and cultural propaganda activities, and integrated them into a broader propaganda scheme. Here we see the origin of what is now called public diplomacy. This modern and internationalist thinking then prepared the institutional base for wartime propaganda.


Asian Survey ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 766-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natsuyo Ishibashi

This paper investigates why the Iraq issue did not become decisive enough to topple Japan's LDP-Komeitōō coalition government in the November 2003 lower house election, even though the majority of the public opposed the Iraq war and the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
John M. Thompson

The introduction highlights the paradox that confronts modern US presidents, in that they enjoy considerable power in the realm of foreign policy but also face many potential constraints, such as partisanship and powerful lobby groups. It observes that though there are many books on the subject, there are few studies of how individual presidents have dealt with this aspect of statecraft. The introduction explains that Roosevelt presents an ideal case study for this subject and offers a preview of the book’s principal arguments. It also explains the book’s methodology, which entails a series of case studies, placing particular emphasis on public opinion and the role of the press, and describes original aspects of the book such as Roosevelt’s use of public diplomacy. The introduction also offers a preview of the book’s structure and the content of each chapter.


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