Policy Diffusion or Insulation? Global Policy Choices and American Public Opinion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan M. Jensen ◽  
René Lindstädt ◽  
Justin Leinaweaver
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Policy Choices

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.

Public Opinion and International Policy Choices: Global Commitments for Japan and Its Peers?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davis B. Bobrow ◽  
Mark A. Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Global Order ◽  
International Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
International Public Goods ◽  
The Us ◽  
Actual Contribution ◽  
Do So

To understand the prospects for global order and progress in the coming years, we explore the joint implications of three premises: (1) states advantaged by the current international order have stakes in its regularity and predictability, and thus in moving to counter or prevent threats to those stakes; (2) along impure public and club goods lines, they are more likely to make efforts to do so when some private or club benefits result; and (3) public opinion provides a bounded policy acceptance envelope offering incentives and disincentives to national political elites to act as envisioned by the first two premises. We present a mosaic of public opinion in major OECD countries (the US, Japan, and major EU members) on three policy areas – foreign aid, UN peace-keeping operations, and environmental quality – that contain international public goods elements. Actual contribution tendencies in those areas found in our previous work largely conform to the public opinion patterns reported here. Within the limits of available data, domestic political incentives as represented by public opinion warrant neither extreme optimism nor pessimism about the prospects for continuing contributions by OECD states to sustaining orderly functioning of the current world system.

scholarly journals Policy beyond politics? Public opinion, party politics and the French pro-nuclear energy policy

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvain Brouard ◽  
Isabelle Guinaudeau
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Media ◽  
Nuclear Energy Policy

AbstractAt first sight, French nuclear energy policy offers a textbook example of how technical, constitutional and economic restrictions, powerful interest groups and path dependence constrain democratic responsiveness. This paper uses what might seem to be an unlikely case in order to question explanations of policy choices in terms of technocracy, path dependence and interest groups against the background of an under-estimated factor: party and coalition strategies. The original data collected on public attitudes towards nuclear energy and the attention dedicated to this issue in the media, as well as in the parliamentary and electoral arenas, show that the effect of public opinion is conditioned by party incentives to politicise the issue at stake. In other words, parties and coalition-making constraints act as a mediating variable between citizens’ preferences and policy choices. These findings point to the need to integrate this conditional variable into analyses of responsiveness and models of policymaking.

Dynamic Representation

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Stimson ◽  
Michael B. Mackuen ◽  
Robert S. Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Global Analysis ◽  
Policy Preference ◽  
Joint Function ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Dynamic Representation ◽  
Multiple Indicators ◽  
Public Views

If public opinion changes and then public policy responds, this is dynamic representation. Public opinion is the global policy preference of the American electorate. Policy is a diverse set of acts of elected and unelected officials. Two mechanisms of policy responsiveness are (1) elections change the government's political composition, which is then reflected in new policy and (2) policymakers calculate future (mainly electoral) implications of current public views and act accordingly (rational anticipation). We develop multiple indicators of policy activity for the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, then model policy liberalism as a joint function of the two mechanisms. For each institution separately, and also in a global analysis of “government as a whole,” we find that policy responds dynamically to public opinion change. This responsiveness varies by institution, both in level and in mechanism, as would be expected from constitutional design.

scholarly journals DIFUSI KEBIJAKAN KETERBUKAAN INFORMASI PUBLIK DI KABUPATEN BANDUNG BARAT

Responsive ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Rochmat Bahtiar ◽  
Mohammad Benny Alexandri ◽  
Candradewini Candradewini
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Diffusion Mechanism ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Public Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Government ◽  
Made In

Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengetahui bagaimana Pemerintah Kabupaten Bandung Barat menerapkan kebijakan Keterbukaan Informasi Publik melalui mekanisme difusi kebijakan. Empat mekanisme utama difusi kebijakan yaitu, pembelajaran, persaingan, peniruan dan pemaksaan yang telah dilakukan oleh Pemerintah Kabupaten Bandung Barat akan dipaparkan melalui metode penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Dengan begitu dapat secara eksplisit dapat terlihat berbagai upaya yang dilakukan dalam menentukan pilihan kebijakan yang dipengaruhi oleh penerapan kebijakan serupa yang dilakukan oleh Pemerintah Daerah lain.  The study was conducted to see how the Government of Bandung Barat District implemented the Public Information Disclosure policy through policy diffusion mechanism. The four main mechanism of policy diffusion, namely, learning, competition, imitation and coercion that have been carried out by the Government of Bandung Barat District will be presented through descriptive qualitative research methods. In this way, it can be seen explicitly from the various policies made in determining policy choices that can be based on policies taken by other local governments. 

Competing Values and Policy Choices: Israeli Public Opinion on Foreign and Security Affairs

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Shamir ◽  
Asher Arian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Competing Values ◽  
Value Conflict ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
General Proposition ◽  
Value Priorities ◽  
Security Affairs

Value hierarchies structure people's position on specific issues when values are in conflict. This general proposition is tested using surveys of Israeli public opinion on issues relating to the Israeli–Arab conflict. Value priorities are shown to be politically and ideologically structured, and not random, with certain value combinations more prevalent and more enduring than others. Most importantly, we establish that people's value hierarchies significantly structure policy preferences and changes therein. The more salient or acute the value conflict, the greater the correspondence between hierarchy and preference. This value trade-off approach presents a picture of Israeli public opinion which is very different from that usually portrayed: of a population firmly supporting a Jewish majority in their state, with a very strong desire for peace. The values of land and democracy are shown to be much less important.

scholarly journals Back to the Future: Democratic Responsiveness and the Estimation of Future Public Opinion

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-222
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley ◽  
Andrew Owen
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Democratic Responsiveness ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Future ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Experimental Findings

Abstract Research on the responsiveness of policy to public opinion has infrequently confronted the possibility that re-election seeking politicians’ policy choices may reflect their expectations about future public opinion. This article reports observational and experimental findings from a survey of senior Canadian policy-makers. Results from vignette-based experiments that manipulate the characteristics of current and estimates of future opinion show that policy-makers are responsive to the estimated direction of future opinion, but this relationship is conditional on high estimated future salience. Survey results shed additional light on the role that estimates of future opinion play in policy-making. Combined, these experimental and observational results suggest existing empirical work on policy responsiveness is incomplete.

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