Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Responsiveness in Western Democracies

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A Meta-Analysis

The central question at the intersection of democratic representation research and foreign policy analysis has concerned the influence of public opinion on foreign policy. Using systematically coded information extracted from a sample of original studies, this meta-analysis offers the first contribution of its kind to the debate. The impact of public opinion is analyzed with regards to different issue areas, alternative factors and political units. It concludes that revisionism receives more support than traditionalism, responsiveness in foreign policy is highest with respect to the use of military force abroad and lowest in foreign aid, the effect of public opinion is significantly diminished by alternative factors, and that foreign policy is most responsive in the USA. A set of recommendations provides a brief agenda for improving future original research.

Keywords: Foreign Policy, Policy Responsiveness, Meta-Analysis

The vast majority of citizens in Western democracies would still unhesitatingly subscribe to

the words of Albert Dicey, the British constitutionalist who had already argued a century ago

that “the opinion of the governed is the real foundation of all government” ([1905]1981, p. 3).

However, while representative government has been considerably reformed in all Western

polities since the early 20th century, the degree to which policy output represents a systematic

result of the input of public opinion remains the primary indicator of democratic quality

(Lijphart, 1999, p. 2; Manza & Cook, 2002; Pennock, 1952; Pitkin, 1972, p. 209). The

attractive simplicity of this benchmark belies a minefield of less simple questions. Do

decision-makers really respond to public opinion? Are some issue areas more conducive to

policy responsiveness than others? Which factors besides public opinion determine policy? Is

the public better represented in some polities than in others? While all of these questions

pertain to the entire policy set of government in representative democracies, they have been

discussed with especial vehemence in the domain of foreign policy.

Extending across different subfields of political science, this debate has seen the

emergence of two antagonistic poles over decades of research.1 One camp of scholars has

clustered around a traditionalist approach by taking a skeptical view on the influence of public

opinion (e.g., Almond, 1950; Carr, [1945]2001; Domhoff, 2002; Kreps, 2010; Morgenthau,

[1948]1993; Rielly, 1999). While traditionalists admit that the public cannot be completely

neglected, they consider it a marginal factor at best. In contradistinction, revisionists view

public opinion as a systematic determinant of foreign policy because decision-makers have

incentives to react in accordance (e.g., Burstein, 1998; Doyle, 1986; Manigart & Marlier,

1993; Maoz & Russett, 1993; Verba et al., 1967). For revisionists, the public opinion –

foreign policy nexus is strongly marked by bottom-up effects, whereas traditionalists reverse

the direction of the causal arrow. Although the body of research accumulated over decades is

impressive, the jury is still out on the matter. 1The scholarly landscape is undoubtedly more nuanced than this dichotomy suggests, but for the purpose of this article, it provides a suitable taxonomy.

This meta-analysis offers an innovative contribution of evidence by treating the

findings original scholarship on foreign policy responsiveness has arrived at over generations

of research as a rich data source in its own right. More precisely, it extracts the results of

individual studies by systematically coding them so as to generate data for further hypothesis-

testing. As such, it presents the first non-narrative attempt to take stock of the literature on

foreign policy responsiveness.

The article is structured around five parts. First, the theoretical arguments behind each

one of the aforementioned questions are laid out in order to formulate specific hypotheses.

Central is the general influence of public opinion, followed by a set of more refined

hypotheses. The data-gathering process is described in more detail in the second section.

Third, the methodology is explained as it departs from usual routines applied in political

science reviews. In section four, the results of the tests are presented. Suggestions to improve

future original research are provided in section five.

Traditionalists vs. Revisionists

Foreign policy has traditionally been considered a more complex domain than domestic

policy. As it does not deal with simple “doorstep issues” (Zaller, 1992), it necessitates

considerable intellect and conversance with the intricacies of international politics. According

to the traditionalist line of argumentation, however, international politics is beyond most

ordinary citizens’ comprehension. The public should thus accept to follow the decisions of

more far-sighted elites in their own interest (Almond, 1956; Lippmann, 1952). It is worth

quoting Morgenthau ([1948]1993, p. 161) in full.

“Thinking required for the successful conduct of foreign policy can be diametrically

opposed to the rhetoric and action by which the masses and their representatives are

likely to be moved. [...] The statesman must take the long view, proceeding slowly

and by detours, paying with small losses for great advantage; he must be able to

temporize, to compromise, to bide his time. The popular mind wants quick results; it

will sacrifice tomorrow’s real benefit for today’s apparent advantage.”

Since Morgenthau, this understanding of statecraft has not lost much of its validity, if

anything at all. For Colin Powell (2008, p. 216), diplomacy “is persuasion in the shadow of

power. It is the orchestration of words against the backdrop of deeds in pursuit of policy

objectives.” Two central claims, subsumed in the literature under the "Almond-Lippmann

Consensus" (Holsti, 1992), have underpinned the traditionalist perspective. The first has been

based on the assumption that public opinion is inherently capricious because most ordinary

citizens are ignorant and easily deluded (Carr, [1945]2001; Converse, 1964; Sartori, 1969).

Survey results on political knowledge have always given traditionalists much ammunition in

this regard (e.g., Erskine, 1963; Rielly, 1999). The second claim has rested to a great part on

the first, but emphasizes its consequences. As the public does not hold coherent views, it is

the prerogative and duty of elites to educate and lead it (Lipset, 1966). Government has a

“vital function [...] in terms of educating and credibly persuading the public on matters of

foreign policy” (Rielly, 1999, p. 40). In short, for traditionalists, foreign policy is a top-down

process in which the public has no role beyond the regular exercise of its democratic right to

vote.

In contrast, revisionists question whether pure factual knowledge is sufficient enough

a finding to discount public opinion as a collection of non-attitudes, and hence an irrelevant

influence on foreign policy ab initio. Particularly in the USA, the Vietnam experience ushered

in new thinking. Verba et al. (1967) were among the first to put the public’s intellectual

capacity in a more favourable light, but subsequent studies have continued to arrive at more

qualified assessments (Achen, 1975; Caspary, 1970; Chanley, 1999; Knopf, 1998). Major

revisions came from Page and Shapiro (1982, 1992) and Shapiro and Page (1988), who found

that foreign policy opinion is highly stable and responds to changes in the international

environment reasonably well. More generally, personal values and traits of character (Bartels,

1994; Brewer & Steenbergen, 2002; Schoen, 2007), national and sub-national identities

(McLaren, 2002; Mols, Jetten, & Haslam, 2009; Schoen, 2008), utilitarian calculations

(Eichenberg & Dalton, 1993; Gabel, 1998), the human costs of military intervention (Mueller,

1994, 2008), its purpose, the participation of partners, elite dissensus, the deployment of

conscripts and expected positive conflict outcomes (Boettcher & Cobb, 2006; Eichenberg,

2005; Feaver & Gelpi, 2004; Gelpi, Feaver, & Reifler, 2006) have all been identified as

systematic determinants of public opinion formation on foreign policy in many Western

democracies.

In combination with a second assumption, these findings form the basis of the

revisionist bottom-up line of argumentation. If public opinion systematically reacts to its

political environment by registering events and policy changes, decision-makers who seek to

get into or remain in office have incentives to monitor it and adjust policy output accordingly

(Eichenberg & Stoll, 2003; Wlezien, 1995). From a position of impartiality, a meta-analytical

null hypothesis would therefore expect a positive relation between public opinion and foreign

policy as often as a negative one or none at all.

Hypothesis 1: On average, revisionists and traditionalists are correct an equal number of

times. In general, foreign policy is as often positively related to public opinion as it is not.

Issue Area

Just as domestic policy consists of disparate issue areas likely to produce different levels of

responsiveness, so does foreign policy. If issue areas are aggregated into a single index, these

important differences are likely to be missed. However, it should substantially matter whether

a budget point such as foreign aid shows more policy responsiveness than the deployment of

military forces to theatres of fighting. This review focuses on four important issue areas:

foreign aid, defense spending, the use of military force abroad and European integration.

Calls for more commitment from the developed world to helping the less rich in

reducing poverty have recently increased again in number and intensity. In particular, the UN

has not shied away from openly criticizing national governments whose contributions have

fallen short of their pledges. During the Cold War, foreign aid has also often been used as a

political rather than a purely economic instrument. As such, foreign aid clearly is a powerful

lever for the objectives of donor nations. The general tenor, however, seems to support the

traditionalist argument in this area (Canes-Wrone & Shotts, 2004, p. 692; Page & Barabas,

2000, p. 349; Rielly, 1999, p. 9; Wlezien, 2004, p. 15).

Another budget position closely linked to foreign policy is defense spending. Beyond

its impact on a country’s armed forces and defense industrial base it sends out strong signals

towards the international environment. States which perceive another state as a threat may

take comfort from decreasing defense budgets. Reductions in defense appropriations may also

be interpreted by allied states as an evasion of responsibilities. Sociological work has often

disregarded public opinion as an explanatory variable, but wrongly so according to some

(Burstein, 1998; Jencks, 1985). At most, electoral cycle stages feature in models of military

Keynesianism (Mintz & Hicks, 1984; Wallace, Borch, & Gauchat, 2008). An accusing finger

cannot be pointed at the political science community, where defense spending has topped the

list of issues scholars of policy responsiveness have been interested in (Manza & Cook, 2002,

p. 640). In contrast to foreign aid, however, it appears to support the revisionist perspective

(Bartels, 1991; Eichenberg & Stoll, 2003; Wlezien, 1996).

The impact of public opinion on the initiation, conduct and termination of military

conflict - the “most momentous and costly act of foreign policy” (Ostrom & Job, 1986, p.

541) - has been a central question at the intersection of foreign policy analysis and democratic

representation research. This also includes the use of military force short of involvement in

full-scale war. Traditionalists hold that public opinion “has shown itself to be a dangerous

master of decision when stakes are life and death”2, but at least as far as the USA is concerned,

the Vietnam War has fundamentally changed the political calculations the executive has to

make when confronted with the option of deploying military force. In particular, decision-

makers may have to continue justifying the human costs of a military engagement for which

the public has lost its enthusiasm, if it has ever shown much initial support at all, and suffer

electoral punishment as a result. This logic is not peculiar to the US. Although other

democracies do not have the capacities to use military force abroad on the same scale, their

decision-makers are faced with similar calculations (Balme, 2000; Isernia, 2000). Based on

this logic, strong evidence of bottom-up effects in the area of military force deployments has

been convincingly presented by statistical analyses as well as detailed case study research

(Burstein & Freudenburg, 1978; Foyle, 2004; Mor, 1997).

European integration has from the start been an expressly elitist project. Jean Monnet

himself thought it “wrong to consult the peoples of Europe about the structure of a community

of which they had no practical experience”3. A sizeable body of research in this field has

since corroborated this top-down view (Gabel & Scheve, 2007; Ray, 2003; Steenbergen,

Edwards, & de Vries, 2007). The problems that began to surface in the ratification process of

the Treaty on European Union, however, let the “permissive consensus” (Lindberg &

Scheingold, 1970) fray around the edges. Most recently, the Irish referendum on the Lisbon

Treaty which followed hard on the heels of the French and Dutch throw-out of the

constitution helped public opinion achieve an unprecedented level of attention. The

permissive consensus seems to have now turned into a more balanced constraining dissensus

(Hooghe & Marks, 2005).

2Lippmann (1955), quoted in Holsti (1992, p. 442). 3Quoted in Featherstone (1994, p. 157).

On the one hand, studies examining the determinants of public opinion on European

integration have been numerous (e.g., Eichenberg & Dalton, 1993; Gabel, 1998; Hooghe &

Marks, 2005; McLaren, 2002; Mols, et al., 2009; Schoen, 2007, 2008). On the other hand, a

shortage of work on integration policy responsiveness persists, so much so that Schmitt and

Thomassen have spoken of “dark corners of socio-political linkage” in this area until a decade

ago (2000, p. 335). In summary, foreign aid and European integration have been issue areas in

which elites appear to exercise their discretion in a decidedly traditionalist manner, whereas in

defense spending and the use of military force abroad they seem to be less able to do so.

Hypothesis 2a: The effect of public opinion on foreign policy differs with the issue area. It is

lower for foreign aid and European integration than for defense spending and the use of

military force abroad.

Alternative Factors

As Henry Kissinger put it in his memoirs, “[t]he foreign policy decisions of any large state

emerge from a complicated pattern of bureaucratic, domestic, and international pressures”

(1979, p. 160). Gauging the effect of public opinion in neglect of these pressures may

therefore yield inflated results. Actors such as business associations, political parties and

epistemic communities, or conditions such as legislative institutions, the stage of the electoral

cycle and a climate of international rapprochement can all influence foreign policy in addition

to, or interaction with, public opinion. While domestic policy is almost always determined at

the domestic level, in foreign policy the set of potential explanatory factors extends to the

international level of analysis.

A lean framework is presented in Figure 1. All alternative factors, conditions as well

as actors, exist at either the international or the domestic level. Each of them may influence

foreign policy in addition to public opinion, or in interaction with it, through their impact on

decision-makers. At the same time, decision-makers themselves are actors whose own opinion

“competes” with that of the public in the generation of policy output. A feature of public

opinion itself, the salience attributed to an issue directly influences the public’s own

effectiveness. When salience increases, so should policy responsiveness.

FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Figure 1: Taxonomy of Foreign Policy Determinants

Foreign actors may influence the direction of foreign policy when, for example, in security

alliances disproportionately contributing partners put pressure on fellow members to increase

their commitments (Isernia, 2000). However, emphasis is often given to actors at the domestic

level because foreign policy is still made by national governments exposed to various actors

vying for influence from “rings of power” (Hilsman, Gaughran, & Weitsman, 1993). In

particular, some have argued that the public’s impact is often dwarfed by that of business

(Domhoff, 2002; Gilens, 2005; Jacobs & Page, 2005), ethnic minorities or religious groups.

Mearsheimer and Walt (2006), for example, argue that many disastrous US policy choices

respecting the Middle East are attributable to Israeli lobby groups. Similar perspectives exist

on the linkage between US foreign policy towards Cuba and the influence of Cuban-

Americans (Brenner, Haney, & Vanderbush, 2008; Rubenzer, 2008, 2010). Moreover, the

domestic media is considered by some authors not just as a conveyor belt of information but

an independent actor in its own right (Baum & Potter, 2008). Most centrally, policy-makers

themselves “compete” with public opinion in that their socialization and personality also

shape their political orientations (Hermann, 1980; Inglehart, 1970; Peffley & Rohrschneider,

2007; Wittkopf & Hinckley, 2000). A coarse ideology proxy in statistical analyses is party

membership, but personalities and belief-systems are indubitably much more nuanced (Foyle,

1997; Renshon, 2008; R. Y. Shapiro & Jacobs, 2000; Winter, Hermann, Weintraub, & Walker,

2005). As La Balme (2000, p. 275) argues, “policymakers do not systematically respond to

public opinion and can in fact choose to confront it when convinced of the judiciousness of

their political choices”. Surveys on their own do certainly not determine their decisions, but

by now there exists plenty of evidence that in anticipation of electoral repudiation or loss of

prestige policy-makers do take them into account (Druckman & Jacobs, 2006; Geer, 1996;

Geer & Goorha, 2003; Maestas, 2003; Sudman, 1982).

Besides actors, conditions may also affect foreign policy. At the domestic level, the

single most important condition is the electoral cycle, which research has found to influence

policy-makers’ attentiveness to public opinion, especially in combination with their electoral

margins (Canes-Wrone, Herron, & Shotts, 2001; Canes-Wrone & Shotts, 2004; Nincic, 1990,

2008). Further conditions include the prevailing legislative structures of individual states

(Risse, 1991) and their economic situation. Defense economists, for instance, have analyzed

whether governments use defense spending as a partial remedy for structural economic

problems (Dunne, Smith, & Willenbockel, 2005; Pieroni, d'Agostino, & Lorusso, 2008; Smith,

1989).

At the international level, types of cycles exist independently of the electoral timetable,

following patterns similar to those of short-term business cycles or long-term Kondratieff

cycles by reflecting contemporary political climates. Building on the work of Klingberg

(Klingberg, 1952, 1983), Sobel (2001), for example, identifies three periods of extroversion in

US foreign policy since 1891, each lasting for about 27 years, and two periods of introversion,

lasting for about 21 years.4

4See Pollins and Schweller (1999) for a quantitative attempt to explain the existence of Klingberg Cycles.

Hypothesis 2b: Public opinion is not the sole determinant of foreign policy. Its estimated

effect is smaller when competing factors at both levels of analysis are controlled for than

when control occurs only on one level or none.

Political Culture

Representative democracy has survived as the sole form of government in all Western

industrialized countries. However, equality in kind is not the same as equality in degree, and

the quality of democracy may tend to be higher in some countries than in others. Political

culture may come a long way in explaining these differences if they indeed exist. In their

pioneering comparative study on the political culture of five nations, Almond and Verba

(1965) found that nowhere were democratic values more entrenched than in the USA. Its

citizens exhibited what the authors referred to as a “participant civic culture”. They were more

exposed to politics and more involved in political affairs, but most importantly, they felt “a

sense of competence to influence the government” (p. 313). In contrast, Italians viewed

government not as amenable to their influence, and even in Great Britain, which comes

closest to the USA in its political history of democratic stability, civic culture was found to be

deferential rather than participative. Germany fell in between the two. Subsequent studies

have identified changes of various magnitudes within these countries since Almond and

Verba’s initial study (Abramowitz, 1980; Conradt, 1980; Kavanagh, 1980; Sani, 1980), but

they have also been unable to substantially alter, let alone confute, their conclusions.

Culture shapes the political self-image of a country, which also translates into its

foreign policy. The participant civic culture of the USA identified by Almond and Verba

should then also help explain why the country has historically been second to none in the

promotion of democracy and self-government, despite recurring periods of isolationism and

disenchantment (Holsti, 2000). More than any other country’s foreign policy, US foreign

policy has promoted its domestic ideals in a highly self-conscious manner (Nau, 2000, p. 131).

Although studies on political culture are not primarily concerned with the quality of

representation, they thus reveal a great deal about the enabling conditions for policy

responsiveness to exist in the first place. As Haskell (2001, p. 10) succinctly put it, “[t]here is

no country on earth where the power of the voice of the people holds more sway than in the

United States”.

Hypothesis 2c: The effect of public opinion on foreign policy differs across countries with

unique political cultures. Due to its participant civic culture, policy responsiveness is highest

in the USA.

Data

The set of studies included in a review determines the conclusions it draws, but many reviews

rarely mention how they have collected their data. While making the inclusion procedure

transparent does not mean that the final set of studies thus sampled necessarily differs from a

set that would have resulted had studies been chosen by simply picking those the author is

familiar with, it is nonetheless preferable because significant biases, if any exist, can be

identified more easily.

Cumulative debate is sometimes impeded by an avoidable lack of formalities

regarding definitions. Most fundamentally, the concept of public opinion should be identical

across all studies in the sample. Donsbach and Traugott (2008) distinguish five traditions in

the terminological genealogy of public opinion, of which the survey research tradition is the

defining one for this review. 5 Survey results have become the single most-widely used

5The other four traditions are the political-normative tradition (public opinion as achievement of judgement), the functional tradition (public opinion as a social institution helping people to cope with complexity), the sociological tradition (public opinion as exerting social control on individuals) and the social-psychological tradition (public opinion as distributed dominant position on controversial issues).

measure of public opinion in politics, the media, and scholarship as they possess many

advantages over other indicators, such as election figures or political activism (Brettschneider,

2008; Verba, 1996). While not faultless of their own, they remain “the most accurate

instrument to monitor, gauge, predict, and assess the voice of the people” (Eisinger, 2008, p.

494). Thus, all studies employ the survey tradition in their conceptual use of public opinion.

With this requirement, the selection procedure has been carried out in the following

five steps. First, nine articles from the more general review on the impact of public opinion on

policy by Burstein (2003, p. 38f.) that were listed in the categories “defense”, “Vietnam War”,

and those listed in the policy category “many”, but which had analyzed at least one of the four

issue areas or an aggregate measure of foreign policy were extracted.6 Second, six relevant

references from the reviews by Aldrich et al. (2006), Holsti (1992) and Powlick and Katz

(1998) were added to this set. Third, the edited book by Nacos, Shapiro and Isernia (2000)

provided three more cases. Fourth, the reference sections of these 18 studies yielded another

23 studies. Fifth and lastly, 6 further studies were identified by searching for publications

citing any of these 41 studies on the JSTOR and EBSCO databases. The data source for this

review therefore includes a total of 47 cases.7 This sample should be of high quality because

all publications have appeared in reputable journals and with major publishers.

Review Method and Dependent Variable

The conventional approach social science reviews take is narrative. Most commonly,

developments in prevailing opinions and research findings are traced across time up to the

“state of the art”. Alternatively, sectoral perspectives compare results from different research

areas, e.g. political sociology and political science. This review is the first of its kind at the

intersection of foreign policy analysis and democratic representation research to depart from

6Jones (1994) is excluded due to an incorrectly specified interaction model in which main effects were left out and no usable information could be extracted. 7See Appendix.

this practice. Instead of only surveying the literature, it will use the results original research

has come to as a valuable data source in its own right for further hypothesis-testing. This

approach automatically brings up concerns which are rarely, if ever, addressed in narrative

reviews: how are results from qualitative studies and those from quantitative studies sensibly

compared, and how is impact measurement within and across methodological traditions put

on a common denominator?

Following the approach suggested by Burstein (2003), an artificial unit of analysis was

created, referred to as a coefficient. These coefficients must not be equated with those used to

construct marginal effects in regression analysis, although they may coincide. Instead, a

coefficient represents a primary textual or numerical expression that summarizes the

influence of public opinion on foreign policy, or any of the four specific issue areas examined

in this review, following detailed analysis in a study at least one of whose central research

objectives it is to form such an expression on the basis of survey data. In this form, the

definition ensures, first, that coefficients are standardized in that they can result from either

qualitative (textual) or quantitative (numerical) information. No single form of expression is

assumed a priori to be less rigorous. As Page (1994, p. 28) has noted, “[f]or all the progress

that statistical wizardry has brought us […] a great deal of important research on opinion-

policy relationships now relies on historical methods”. Nor does the analytical weight of a

coefficient differ between textual and numerical expressions, so that qualitative and

quantitative results stand on an equal footing.8 Second, the definition excludes studies which

treat public opinion as a mere “control variable” and are therefore not primarily interested in

its effects within their set of key research objectives. The reason behind this restriction is that

coefficients from such studies would only be “by-products”, thereby increasing the risk of

researchers not taking them as seriously in operationalization and/or interpretation as when 8The added benefit of this non-discrimination is a larger sample size. Note also that the combination of qualitative and quantitative data makes sense when indicators and impact measurement vary considerably because the verbal judgment of the original author with regards to the results is recorded, providing an implicit standardization of effect size.

the effect of public opinion on policy was a “main product”.9 Third, it also solves the problem

of duplication. Researchers often construct different models within one and the same

publication. From any single piece of original work that presented more than one model, only

the coefficient from what was explicitly, or implicitly, considered to be the main model was

recorded. Also, when more than one indicator of public opinion was used within this main

model, only the coefficient from the indicator that was considered closer to the content of the

respective policy was recorded. When more than one measure of representation was provided,

the one conceptually closest to the meaning of policy responsiveness as used in this article

was recorded.10 This left only four possibilities for any single study to provide more than one

coefficient. Either it analyzed distinct political units (i.e., USA and France, or Western and

Central Europe) or issue areas (i.e., foreign aid and defense spending), or it incorporated two

equally valid but different concepts of policy responsiveness (e.g., collective representation

and dyadic representation). Fourth and finally, as the expression of public opinion is defined

by the survey research tradition, only studies that exclusively used survey or poll data in their

analysis were included.11

The dependent variable – direction - is nominally-scaled. Its four categories are

“positive” – foreign policy is responsive and moves in the same direction as public opinion,

“negative” – foreign policy moves in the opposite direction of public opinion, “ambiguous” –

both directions occur, and “none” – neither a positive nor negative direction is identified. If

the first category is associated with the revisionist argument and the two categories “negative”

and “none” with the traditionalist approach to foreign policy responsiveness, a preliminary

9This is not to say that by-product coefficients do not reflect substantial research findings, but their quality is likely to be lower than the quality of “main-product” coefficients. 10For example, different measures of representation (proximity, centrism and responsiveness scores) are presented in Achen (1978). 11Coefficients from qualitative studies which used multiple definitions of public opinion, but still relied overwhelmingly on survey data, were also included. Coefficients from studies which used only legislators’ perceptions of public opinion rather than actual opinion were excluded.

conclusion is that the latter view has found much less empirical support with only 16 out of

the total of 77 coefficients (21%) in contrast to 50 coefficients (65%) for the former.

TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Estimating the Impact of Public Opinion

This section presents statistical tests of the hypotheses presented in the theoretical section.

The results are summarized in Table 2. Coefficients with an ambiguous direction have been

excluded as they support neither traditionalists nor revisionists. An exact binomial test

provides an answer to Hypothesis 1 (Agresti, 2002, pp. 18-20). Assuming a position of

impartiality to the arguments put forward by either camp, public opinion should influence

foreign policy as often as it does not, so that the likelihood π of observing an impact under the

null hypothesis, i.e. a “success”, is π = 0.5. With 50 successes in 66 trials, the sample

proportion is 0.76, which is statistically significant at the 0.1%-level. These findings provide

clear evidence in support of the revisionist argument that foreign policy is influenced by

public opinion. While the results of the test are beyond doubt, a note of caution has to be

sounded on the original data that went into it. In the natural as well as the social sciences,

including political science, it has been demonstrated that statistically significant effects

(conventionally at least α = 0.05) have a much higher probability of being published

(Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009; A. Gerber & Malhotra, 2008; A. S. Gerber,

Green, & Nickerson, 2001; Lehrer, Jeschke, Lhachimi, Vasiliu, & Weiffen, 2007; Ziliak &

McCloskey, 2008). These findings do not per se imply that the data is beset by problems of

publications bias, but if a publication bias indeed exists, the revisionist side is unduly

favored.12

TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

Table 3 presents the distribution of coefficients across the four issue areas. The total number

of 50 cases results from the exclusion of all coefficients which had an ambiguous direction or

referred to foreign policy in general rather than a specific issue area. Revisionists receive

higher empirical support in each category, even those in which there have been strong

expectations of the irrelevance of public opinion. While the margin is very narrow in the area

of foreign aid with 57% of coefficients showing a positive influence, it is impressive for the

use of military force abroad with 92%. Overall, responsiveness is lowest in foreign aid (FA),

followed by European integration (EI), defense spending (DS) and the use of military force

abroad (UMFA). The results from exact tests of independence shown in Table 2 indicate

whether these differences are also statistically significant across each combination of issue

areas. In fact, this is not the case for any of the odds ratios. Responsiveness is not significantly

different across issues areas that have traditionally been regarded as exemplifying discrete

elite decision-making and those where public opinion has been expected to matter. The only

comparison for which the odds ratio is associated with an acceptably low level of empirical

significance (p = 0.14), given the sample size, is between foreign aid and the use of military

force abroad. Public opinion is seven times as likely to influence the use of military force

abroad as it is to influence the allocation of foreign aid. This difference is of a considerable

magnitude. Similarly impressive, but not statistically significant at a reasonable level, is the 12Other sources of bias include confirmation bias (the suppression of evidence in conflict with the researcher’s initial hypothesis), saliency bias (the exclusion of non-salient foreign policy issues from survey questions) and citation bias (the higher likelihood of studies with significant results to be cited by others).

comparison between the use of military force abroad and European integration, with policy

responsiveness being four times as likely in the former as in the latter issue area.

TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

Table 4 presents the distribution of coefficients across the different levels of analysis and their

associated effect size. In view of the widespread acknowledgement regarding the importance

of issue salience, it is surprising that around 60% of all 77 coefficients have been generated

without regard to the contemporary level of salience of their issue area.13 In about 30%,

salience was at least indirectly considered through a qualification of the results. Only 10% of

coefficients were arrived at by measuring salience directly through public opinion and

incorporating it specifically in the analysis of foreign policy, but only half of those did so in

an interactive fashion as posited by theory. In consequence of this unfavorable data situation,

salience as a mediating factor was excluded.

Only those coefficients which had neither a negative nor ambiguous direction were

included. They were classified as revisionist if the effect was judged by the author(s) of the

original study to be of substantial magnitude; otherwise they were classified as traditionalist.14

With regards to the levels of analysis, coefficients were classified as “none” when the study

employed a bivariate research design (in a qualitative as well as quantitative sense) with no

controls, as “domestic” when either actors or conditions located at the domestic level, or both

of these factors, were included as controls, and as “dom. + international” when the analysis

13There exists a contagion effect. If the first coefficient was generated by a study without regard to salience, all further coefficients were more likely to also disregard salience. Conversely, if the first coefficient was generated by a study with regard to salience, all further coefficients were more likely to also take salience into account. 14 If the effect size was not literally described as “substantial”, it was recorded as such if the author used general synonyms such as “strong” or “considerable”. To be classified as traditionalist, the effect size had to be described as moderate, small or non-existent (or equivalent adjectives).

controlled for any combination of factors at both levels of analysis. The vast majority of

coefficients was generated by studies that exclusively concentrated on “domestic rings of

power” (Hilsman, et al., 1993). Despite Kissinger’s statement about the importance of

international factors in the making of foreign policy, it cannot be ascertained whether the

omission of such influences has generally represented a model misspecification in less

comprehensive research designs. In each specific case, empirical history, data availability and

academic background inform such decisions. Given the relatively low number of such

comprehensive studies, however, international factors may have received too short shrift.

Taking again into account the number of cases, the null hypothesis of independence between

the two variables can be rejected in favor of the one-sided alternative of positive correlation at

a value of r = 0.18.15 Put differently, the effect of public opinion on foreign policy decreases

when competing factors are controlled for. This relationship is largely driven by the

difference between no control and restricted control, thereby attesting to the high relevance of

domestic factors.

TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE

15Under the null hypothesis, the square root of the test statistic M2 follows an approximate standard normal distribution.

Table 5 presents the distribution of coefficients across two political units. The variable refers

to “units” instead of “countries” because individual countries have not always been the units

of analysis in original research. No less than 60% of all coefficients refer to the USA, the

reasons for which can only be speculated about. The most reasonable is the language factor in

the sample, which was drawn exclusively from English-language sources. In contrast, single-

country studies other than those on the USA are so few in numbers that statistical

comparisons are not meaningful. The category “other” therefore includes all coefficients from

single countries other than the USA, as well as political regions such as Western Europe. The

conventional argument is that responsiveness is significantly higher in the USA than

elsewhere because the former’s peculiar political culture facilitates a higher quality of

democratic representation. The test supports this hypothesis at a 10%-level of significance.

Responsiveness is in fact more than twice as high in the USA as in the group of all other

Western democracies.16

TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE

Recommendations

Even if all qualitative studies had been excluded from this review, a full meta-analysis of

either effect sizes or overall statistical significance would have been unfeasible. Quantitative

16 The relatively low number of observations precludes the application of multinomial log-linear models on contingency tables or multinomial logit models on the individual data that include control factors such as the area of foreign policy.

analyses have used very different indicators of public opinion and policy output, making it all

but impossible to rigorously synthesize original research. Against this background, the coding

scheme applied in this review has offered a practical, but presumably not the only, solution to

this problem. Standardized indexes along the lines of the policy liberalism scores introduced

by Stimson et al. (1995) could improve the comparability of individual findings and the

applicability of meta-analytical techniques. While the introduction of standard indexes

remains a long-term objective, other issues are more amenable to short-term action. These

include the specification of models in particular.

Given the widespread consensus regarding the importance of issue salience as a

variable conditioning the effect of public opinion on policy, it is all the more surprising to find

this conditionality directly incorporated into original research in only 5% of the sample.

Whether this neglect is a consequence of data availability could not be ascertained, but the

exclusion of salience represents a model misspecification that should be addressed in future

research. In this connection, it is also overly simplistic to assume that the effect of public

opinion on policy would work in isolation from alternative actors or conditions. Many studies

have nonetheless formulated such isolated relationships. Canes-Wrone and Shotts (2004),

Mor (1997) and Risse (1991), in contrast, have presented exemplary applications of

interactive relationships. At the very least, it is the attitudes and values foreign-policy

decision-makers themselves hold which condition the influence of the public.

Conclusions

This review has been the first of its kind to take stock of the literature on responsiveness of

foreign policy to public opinion in a non-narrative manner. As such, it has offered a more

rigorous analysis of the evidence previous research has produced at the intersection of

democratic representation research and foreign policy analysis.

The results have supported a revisionist view in which the formulation of foreign

policy depends on public opinion. While these findings are unambiguous in themselves, they

should be interpreted against the backcloth of a probable influence of a number of biases

which are difficult to quantify empirically, but are too serious to be ignored. In particular,

publication bias, whereby non-significant results (in a quantitative as well as qualitative

sense) detract from their probability of final publication may have worked in favor of the

revisionist view.

Foreign policy is not only a function of public opinion. Factors operating at both the

domestic as well as the international level play an equally important role, at times even a more

important one. The results have shown bivariate models to overestimate the public’s effect,

but domestic actors and conditions rather than international ones seem to be the central

controls. However, just as the process of foreign policy-making should not be reduced to the

influence of a single input, the set of inputs cannot be expected to have a homogenous impact

across all outputs. Foreign policy consists of diverse issue areas of which some may be more

amenable to the influence of public opinion than others. The use of military force abroad and

foreign aid is but one example for which evidence suggests such a differential.

Some observers of American politics may lament that all is not perfect with the way

democracy works in the US, but the evidence from this review suggests that if policy

responsiveness is used as the single most important criterion of democratic quality, then there

is nothing to be concerned about. Compared against the group of all other modern

representative democracies that have been analyzed in the sample of original studies, policy

responsiveness is higher in the US, the reason for which some would claim lies in its peculiar

political culture.

Notwithstanding the contributions this review has made to the debate, it has raised a

number of points future research should address. Some of them can be taken up rather easily,

while others rely on the joint effort of the research community. Besides the more direct effects,

this would also lead to improvements in the quality of non-narrative research synthesis.

Appendix 1: Sample of Original Studies

TABLE 6. Sample of Original Studies

Study Issue Area(s) Political Unit(s)

Achen (1978) General Foreign Policy USA

Bailey (2003) Foreign Aid USA

Balme (2000) Use of Military Force Abroad Europe

Bartels (1991) Defense Spending USA

Brettschneider (1996) General Foreign Policy, Defense Spending Europe

Brooks (1987) General Foreign Policy Europe

Brooks (1990) General Foreign Policy Europe

Burstein and Freudenburg (1978) Use of Military Force Abroad USA

Canes-Wrone and Shotts (2004) Foreign Aid, Defense Spending USA

Carruba (2001) European Integration Europe

Dalton (1985) Foreign Aid, Defense Spending Europe

Eichenberg and Stoll (2003) Defense Spending USA, Europe

Erikson (1978) General Foreign Policy USA

Foyle (2004) Use of Military Force Abroad USA

Hartley and Russett (1992) Defense Spending USA

Hellström (2008) European Integration Europe

Herrera et al. (1992) Defense Spending USA

Hill and Hurley (1999) General Foreign Policy USA

Hurley (1989) Defense Spending USA

Inglehart (1970) European Integration Europe

Isernia (2000) Use of Military Force Abroad Europe

Jacobs and Page (2005) General Foreign Policy USA

Jencks (1985) Defense Spending USA

Mattila and Raunio (2006) European Integration Europe

McAdam and Su (2002) Use of Military Force Abroad USA

McClosky et al. (1960) General Foreign Policy USA

McKeown (2000) Use of Military Force Abroad USA

Miller and Stokes (1963) General Foreign Policy USA

Monroe (1979) General Foreign Policy, Defense Spending,

Use of Military Force Abroad

USA

Monroe (1998) General Foreign Policy, Defense Spending,

Use of Military Force Abroad

USA

Mor (1997) Use of Military Force Abroad other

Murray (2006) General Foreign Policy USA

Ostrom and Job (1986) Use of Military Force Abroad USA

Ostrom and Marra (1986) Defense Spending USA

Page and Shapiro (1983) Foreign Aid, Defense Spending USA

Petry (1999) General Foreign Policy other

Petry and Mendelsohn (2004) Foreign Aid, Defense Spending, Use of

Military Force Abroad

other

Risse (1991) General Foreign Policy USA, Europe, other

Schmitt and Thomassen (2000) European Integration Europe

Shapiro et al. (1990) General Foreign Policy USA

Shapiro and Jacobs (2000) General Foreign Policy USA

Sobel (2001) Foreign Aid, Use of Military Force Abroad USA

Soroka and Wlezien (2004) Defense Spending other

Soroka and Wlezien (2005) Defense Spending Europe

Steenbergen et al. (2007) European Integration Europe

Wlezien (1996) Defense Spending USA

Wlezien (2004) Foreign Aid, Defense Spending USA

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Table 1. Coefficients by Direction

Direction Coefficients

Positive 50 (65%)

Negative 10 (13%)

Ambiguous 11 (14%)

None 6 (8%)

Total 77 (100%)

TABLE 2. Test Results*

Hypothesis H0 HA

Est. p Test

1 π = 0.5 π ≠ 0.5 0.758 0.000 Binomial

2a FA:DS θ = 1 θ < 1 0.365 0.241 Fisher Exact

FA:UMFA θ = 1 θ < 1 0.138 0.117 Fisher Exact

FA:EI θ = 1 θ ≠ 1 0.558 1.000 Fisher Exact

DS:UMFA θ = 1 θ ≠ 1 0.354 0.640 Fisher Exact

DS:EI θ = 1 θ > 1 1.498 0.510 Fisher Exact

UMFA:EI θ = 1 θ > 1 4.039 0.296 Fisher Exact

2b ρ = 0 ρ > 0 0.177 0.115 CMH**

2c θ = 1 θ > 1 2.459 0.099 Fisher Exact

* π true probability of success, θ true odds ratio, ρ true correlation.

** Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel.

TABLE 3. Coefficients by Issue Area and Direction

Issue Area / Direction Revisionist Traditionalist Totals

Foreign Aid (FA) 4 (57%) 3 (43%) 7 (100%)

Defense Spending (DS) 19 (79%) 5 (21%) 24 (100%)

Use of Military Force Abroad (UMF) 11 (92%) 1 (8%) 12 (100%)

European Integration (EI) 5 (71%) 2 (29%) 7 (100%)

Totals 39 11 50

TABLE 4. Distribution of Coefficients by Level and Effect Size

Level(s) / Effect Size Revisionist Traditionalist Totals

None 7 (54%) 6 (46%) 13 (100%)

Domestic 8 (29%) 20 (71%) 28 (100%)

Dom. + International 2 (33%) 4 (67%) 6 (100%)

Totals 17 30 47

TABLE 5. Coefficients by Political Unit and Direction

Pol. Unit / Direction Revisionist Traditionalist Totals

USA 33 (83%) 7 (17%) 40 (100%)

Other 17 (66%) 9 (34%) 26 (100%)

Totals 50 16 66