Public Opinion Onf Foreing Policy Issues

Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Issues

Richard C. Eichenberg
Subject: Contentious Politics and Political Violence, Policy, Administration, and Bureaucracy,
Public Opinion, World Politics
Online Publication Date: Apr 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.78
Summary and Keywords
Scholars and governments are interested in four sets of questions concerning public opin
ion on foreign policy and national security policy. First, what do public opinion polls mea
sure? How do citizens, who are generally uninformed about foreign policy and world af
fairs, 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 charac
terize public opinion as rational, in the sense that it is fairly stable, coherent, and respon
sive 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.
Keywords: polling, opinion surveys, public opinion, citizen opinion, global public opinion, foreign policy, war and
conflict, gender politics, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, public mood, European Union, ideology, empirical internation
al relations theory
Introduction
The last 50 years have seen a substantial increase in citizen questioning of their govern
ments’ security policies, beginning with citizen protest against the Vietnam War and con
tinuing in the more recent popular disillusionment with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a result, scholars now argue that the study of foreign and national security policy can
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no longer be based solely on the military aspects of deterrence, coercion, and war.
Rather, as Michael Howard put it, governments and scholars must pay attention to reas
surance, the requirement of governments to “persuade one's own people, and those of
one's allies, that the benefits of military action, or preparation for it, will outweigh the
costs” (1983, p. 317).
This article proceeds from the assumption that public opinion will continue to be an im
portant concern in debates about international issues, especially concerning issues of war
and peace. It is therefore all the more important to clarify exactly what “public opinion”
means, how it can be measured, and how it behaves. There is fertile ground for such an
inquiry. Over the last 40 years, public opinion polling has spread to most corners of the
globe, making international comparisons much easier than was the case previously. More
over, scholarship on public opinion and foreign policy has produced a virtual revolution in
the way scholars understand the process of opinion formation and change. In particular,
research has brought new answers to four sets of important questions:
1. What do public opinion polls measure? How do citizens, who are generally unin
formed about foreign policy and world affairs, form opinions on these matters? Quite
simply, how can we measure “public opinion”?
2. How “rational” is public opinion? Is it stable or volatile? Are opinions coherent? Do
opinions plausibly reflect the flow of world events? Does public opinion respond to
what governments do? Precisely what is the form of that response?
3. What factors influence the formation of citizen opinions? Specifically, what is the
impact of fundamental attitudes toward war and military force? How important are
partisanship, ideology, and gender?
4. How universal are the determinants of citizen opinion, especially on crucial issues
of war and peace? Are the findings in cross-national comparisons the same as those
in the U.S. or European contexts?
In this article, I review the scholarly literature on these questions and present data from
public opinion surveys to illustrate the discussion. The immediately following section de
scribes why the answers to an individual survey question can be close to meaningless.
However, I also present two examples to show that the combination of many questions on
policy issues can measure the public’s “mood” on policy choices. Subsequent sections ex
amine the questions of how “rational” these opinions are; precisely how opinion moods
fluctuate in response to government policies; and the impact of ideology, partisanship,
and gender, as well as the importance of fundamental attitudes toward war. Finally, I dis
cuss the extent to which citizen opinions across the globe reveal both universal logics and
the logic of specific national characteristics.
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Measures: From Single Questions to Policy

Mood
Ambivalence and “Mood.”
Scholars of public opinion are aware of a paradox: the very grist of their studies—the sin
gle survey question at a single point in time—is close to meaningless in gauging “public
opinion.” Responses to a single survey question are highly sensitive to the wording of that
question (Eichenberg, 1989, 2005; Mueller, 1973, 1994).
Why are citizen responses to survey questions so sensitive to the wording of the ques
tion? One reason is that some policies involve technical issues that are distant from citi
zens’ daily lives. Unless events conspire to make them salient to citizens, opinion surveys
often yield a fair percentage of disinterested or uninformed opinions. A second reason is
that citizens lack information about world affairs and therefore look for cues to help re
solve uncertainty about complex policy issues. We know, for example, that different ques
tions about the possibility of war with Iraq showed highly different percentages within
many countries. The mention of Saddam Hussein, casualties, or ground troops in ques
tions about the Iraq war provided cues that conditioned the percentage who favored the
war (Eichenberg, 2005; Everts & Isernia, 2005). When survey questions mentioned the
United Nations or the support of allies for the war, this produced different percentages
because these are quite distinct cues. Lacking detailed information about a range of for
eign policy issues, citizens do not engage in an extensive search for that information but
often use simple cues contained in the question itself. Similar cues might come from the
morning headlines or a conversation over the water cooler, which helps explain why even
an identical question might yield different percentages over the course of a week or even
several days.
A second explanation for the instability of individual responses is contained in a simple,

yet elegant theory of survey responses developed by John Zaller and Stanley Feldman (Za
ller, 1992; Zaller & Feldman, 1992). They argue that citizens are relatively uninformed
about issues and, more importantly, that they are also ambivalent and conflicted. On con
troversial issues such as social equality or war and peace, people are likely to possess
competing or even contradictory opinions. One may, for example, strongly prefer the
peaceful resolution of a particular international conflict while at the same time acknowl
edging that military force might become necessary or approve it after it is employed. For
any particular issue or policy choice, individuals possess a range of ambivalent senti
ments.
How is this ambivalence resolved when an individual is presented with a survey question
that requests a relatively simple response? According to Zaller and Feldman, people con
sult a number of “considerations” that are most salient in their memory at the moment of
the survey, that is, information that is most accessible in the respondents’ thinking. For
those who have thought little about the specific issue, this might reduce to the considera
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tions that are communicated by the question itself—mentioning the UN might resolve the
ambivalence for some in the direction of “peace.” Other considerations might be commu
nicated by additional questions in the same survey. For example, if the survey question
naire includes a long series of items about the casualties that could occur in war, this will
likely affect the responses to subsequent questions about using military force (Zaller &
Feldman, 1992; see also Mueller, 1994). Ansolabahere, Rodden, and Snyder (2008) reach
a similar conclusion; they find that citizens do have stable policy preferences that are ob
scured by the “noise” of measurement error that accompanies surveys taken at different
points in time.
These observations show why the responses to a single survey question are of limited val
ue. Single questions are rooted in one specific wording at a single moment in historical
context, and they evoke a particular set of considerations for respondents. Individuals
may formulate their answers differently in response to another question that evokes dif
ferent considerations at a different moment in time. The implications for students of pub
lic opinion are clear. One can only gain a reliable assessment of “public opinion” on a par
ticular issue or policy choice by studying as many variations in question wording as possi
ble. Further, to fully understand how events external to the survey influence the consider
ations of respondents, one has to study how opinions unfold over time. The examples in
the following two sections illustrate these points.
The U.S. Mood on Defense Spending
In his study of the attitudes of U.S. citizens toward the role of government, Stimson
(1999) describes his concept of a public “mood.” He observes that there are hundreds of
survey questions on increasing or decreasing the government’s role in the domains of so
cial security, healthcare, education, and many other policy areas. Each question reveals a
different level of support for increasing or decreasing the U.S. government’s role.
Nonetheless, Stimson demonstrates that the movement over time of these individual sur
vey items has much in common—they tend to move up or down together. There is, he ar
gues, a “common disposition” to favor (or oppose) an increase in the role of government
in citizens’ lives. The utility of Stimson’s insight is heightened by the fact that his index of
policy mood based on this set of questions is a very good predictor of election outcomes
in both U.S. presidential and congressional elections. Citizens know what they want, and
they vote accordingly (Stimson, 1999).
We can extend Stimson’s logic to the field of international affairs by studying citizen sup
port for defense spending in the United States. The defense budget represents the core of
national security policymaking, and considerable evidence discussed below shows that
the public’s influence on budgeting outcomes is significant. Yet ascertaining the public’s
support for defense spending is no easy task. Nonetheless, Figure 1 shows that the U.S.
public’s defense spending “mood” has been fairly consistent over time. The figure shows
three separate survey questions that measure support for defense spending. The first
two, by the Gallup organization and the General Social Survey (GSS), ask slightly differ
ent versions of the question of whether defense spending is too much, too little, or just
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right. The third series is constructed from a defense spending scale in the American Na
tional Election Study (NES). For each of the series, I calculate support for defense spend
ing as the percentage that favors an increase divided by the total favoring either an in
crease or a decrease in spending. Put briefly, the measure represents support for defense
as a percentage of the total who express an opinion on increasing or decreasing the de
fense budget.
Figure 1. Three measures of net support for defense

spending in the United States. “Net support” is de
fined as “increase” divided by the sum of “increase”
and “decrease” in surveys on defense spending.
Source: Gallup and GSS surveys are available

through the IPOLL database of the Roper Center for
Public Opinion Research at the University of Con
necticut. The NES responses are available from the
NES website: http://electionstudies.org/nesguide/
toptable/tab4d_3b.htm.
Not surprisingly, the three question formats do yield different levels of support. Nonethe
less, the three series clearly move together, suggesting that each reflects a collective dis
position regarding spending on the defense budget. These questions on defense spending
therefore confirm that something coherent can be measured from what at first blush ap
pears to be a cacophony of separate items. Later in this article we will see that these
same opinions respond in a systematic fashion to the government’s actual defense spend
ing decisions and that the U.S. government subsequently responds systematically to the
public’s mood. Thus, from the raw materials of individual survey questions, we can begin
to construct a picture of the democratic politics of defense policy.
The Mood in Europe
Can the analysis of policy mood be generalized to public opinion outside the United
States? One might argue along with Stimson that “[p]ublic opinion is about as institution-
free as anything in politics can be. And it is the specifics of political institutions that so re
strict our ability to create theories of general interest. The happy message, then, is that a
model of public opinion that works for the American case ought to transfer across nation
al boundaries with a minimum of difficulty” (1999, p. xxii). According to this logic, the
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thought processes of people everywhere are likely to be the same. This means the same
lack of specific information about foreign policy; the same ambivalence on difficult politi
cal issues; and the same tendency to resolve uncertainty and ambivalence by using the
cues. These cues can be contained in the wording of survey questions, the considerations
that are evoked by major political events, and by referencing their values, partisanship,
gender, and other personal characteristics. If correct, we should find general dispositions
in public opinion outside the American political system.
Consider the process of European integration, which began modestly in 1957 with the es
tablishment of a common market. During the 1980s and 1990s, the process accelerated
rapidly with an expansion from 6 to 15 members, the further liberalization of the Euro
pean market, and the transition to a single European currency in the Maastricht Treaty of
1992. By 2004, the European Union (EU) had expanded to 25 members and had dramati
cally increased the number of policy domains covered by the union’s legislative authority.
It had also established the euro as the common currency for all of Europe. At the same
time, public support for the process of integration grew in importance. The public reacted
very negatively to the Maastricht Treaty, which caused the union’s governing body—the
European Council—to state in 1996 that “citizens are at the core of the European con
struction: the Union has the imperative to respond concretely to their needs and
concerns” (Presidency Conclusions, European Council, Turin, March 29, 1996, p. 1).
The EU conducts a great deal of polling to monitor the “needs and concerns” of its citi
zens. Yet measuring support for “integration” is hardly easy. The technical meaning of the
word is fairly clear; integration is a process of gradually merging the authority of what
were formerly separate sovereign states. But in practice, “European integration” has had
at least three purposes in both official and scholarly discourse. First, the establishment of
the original Common Market was accomplished quite explicitly in the pursuit of peace,
following the cosmopolitan argument that the causes of war are rooted in the competitive
anarchy of a system of separate sovereign states. Second, the common market and Euro
pean Union were designed to increase European prosperity. Finally, framed as it was by
the Cold War, the Common Market obviously had implications for European power. Power
would flow to Europe by combining the resources and influence of the individual member
states and by eliminating their separate and even competing voices on the world scene.
All three of these purposes are reflected in the EU’s survey questions about European in
tegration. Figure 2 displays the European average in response to three questions. The
first, labeled unify, evokes the cosmopolitan notion of eliminating sovereignty by asking:
“In general, are you for or against efforts being made to unify Western Europe?” A sec
ond question—benefit—addresses the more utilitarian concern of prosperity. It asks: Has
“(your country) … on balance benefited or not from being a member of the EC (common
market)?” Finally, a question on community membership offers elements of both utilitari
an and cosmopolitan sentiment, asking: Do “you think that (your country’s) membership
of the European Community [common market] is a good thing, neither good nor bad, or a
bad thing?” The reference to “your country” and the “good versus bad thing” juxtaposi
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tion probably weights the question in a nationalist, instrumental direction, while the ref
erence to membership in the European community has mild cosmopolitan overtones.
Figure 2. Results for three survey questions on sup

port for European integration. The graph shows the
average responses from surveys in all EU states that
have been members since 1985.
Source: Commission of the European Union, Stan

dard Eurobarometer (bi-annual). Retrieved from
http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/
standard_en.htm.
Figure 2 reveals that until the mid-1990s, the three questions displayed a clear hierarchy
of support. The cosmopolitan overtones of the “unify” question evoked the most favorable
responses, followed by the mixed message of membership and the starkly utilitarian ques
tion on “benefit.” However, beginning with the collapse of support on all three measures
that followed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, benefit and membership appear to have be
come close to identical. Anticipating the theme of the next section of this article, I would
argue that this is a perfectly rational evolution. After the Maastricht Treaty the EU ex
panded its powers into more and more policy areas that affected the material interests of
European citizens—hence, there was a lot more cost and benefit to be concerned about
(Eichenberg & Dalton, 2007). The fact that Europeans would increasingly interpret the
membership question in a fashion similar to the benefit question therefore suggests that
citizens had correctly identified the shifting nature of the integration process.
In any case, the differences in support for integration found in the three questions show
that citizens resolved any uncertainty by responding to the cosmopolitan or utilitarian
considerations evoked by the question and by changing policy circumstances. Nonethe
less, Figure 2 also suggests that a common disposition—what we might call a “European
integration mood”—also permeates these sentiments. Although the membership question
did peak somewhat higher about the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, clearly there
is a great deal of common movement in the three measures.
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Is Public Opinion on Global Issues “Rational”?

We have seen that the combined impact of short-term considerations and the personal
predilections of survey respondents produce opinion moods that ebb and flow in ways
that make a good deal of sense given what we know about the policy issues.
This pattern of stable, sensible movement in citizen opinion contradicts a longstanding

consensus concerning public opinion on foreign policy. Prior to the 1980s, the prevailing
view of scholars was that an uninformed, disinterested public was almost by definition in
capable of producing a “rational” public opinion on foreign policy matters (this view is
presented in detail in Holsti, 2004, pp. 25–98). In particular, many foreign policy experts
characterized public opinion as irrational in several specific senses of the word. First, it
was argued that public opinion was highly changeable, indeed unstable, in the sense of
revealing large swings from one opinion to another for no apparent reason. Second, pub
lic opinion was incoherent: an opinion on one foreign policy issue was unlikely to be relat
ed to views on other, even similar issues. Finally, public opinion could therefore not have
any real relation to world events or policy actions, because the information needed to
form such opinions was low. In addition, public opinion was too changeable and incoher
ent to produce any plausible relationship between the real world and public opinion. And
if opinion was so irrational, how could foreign policy be governed democratically?
Stability
Images of overly unstable foreign policy opinions changed after Shapiro and Page’s
(1988) landmark study of American public opinion and foreign policy. They amassed an
extensive database of survey questions on foreign policy in the United States between
1935 and 1985. When they calculated the magnitude of change between any two identical
items, their analysis is telling: public opinion turned out to be very stable. In half of more
than 1,000 surveys, there was no significant opinion change between adjacent time
points. Among those questions that did reveal change, the largest share was rather mod
est. Moreover, Page and Shapiro examined reversals in the direction of opinion that might
suggest a fickle or capricious public. Such fluctuations were very rare: they occurred in
only 18% of the relevant survey questions, leading Shapiro and Page to conclude that
“[t]his would not seem to support the notion that the public has fickle and vacillating
moods toward either foreign or domestic affairs” (1988, p. 219).
Stability also characterizes a variety of opinions on foreign policy and national security in
the Western European countries. After studying a large number of Western European
public opinion surveys on the East–West military balance, nuclear weapons and arms con
trol, defense spending, and the NATO alliance, I concluded that “continuity in public opin
ion was far more prevalent than change” (Eichenberg, 1989, p. 198). Similarly, employing
data from over 1,000 survey questions in France, Germany, and Italy, Isernia, Juhász, and
Rattinger (2002) found results that were strikingly similar to those of Shapiro and Page.
Page 8 of 20

Overall, opinion was characterized by moderate change, and reversals in the direction of
opinion change were rare.
Coherence
A separate question is whether individual opinions are coherent, that is, whether views
on one issue are correlated with views on similar issues. For example, if one has a gener
ally favorable view of the United Nations, should one also favor securing UN approval be
fore using military force to resolve conflicts? Similarly, if one is positively disposed to de
fense spending and using national military forces for deterrence or conflict resolution,
should one also downplay the role of the United Nations?
These sorts of question have animated a substantial body of scholarly research, which
finds that individual opinions are relatively coherent. Eugene Wittkopf conducted the
most comprehensive research on this topic. Wittkopf (1990) studied surveys by the Chica
go Council on Foreign Relations on American public opinion and U.S. foreign policy. These
surveys are particularly valuable because they include a very large number of questions
on a variety of political, military, and economic issues. Analysts can investigate the de
gree to which citizens’ views on one set of issues (such as international institutions) are
correlated with their views on other issues (such as the use of military force).
Wittkopf’s most important finding is that Americans have long been divided on a crucial
question: the role of military force in international relations. Americans divide into three
groups on this question. A “hardliner” group largely endorses the threat or use of military
force and considers issues of power balance and competition to be primary in internation
al relations. An “accommodationist” group is critical of military force and therefore favors
the use of multilateral international institutions to resolve global conflicts. A mixed “inter
nationalist” group favors elements of both militant and cooperative engagement in world
affairs. Also, a small isolationist group opposes all types of international engagement.
Equally important, Wittkopf finds that citizen opinions on a range of international issues
tend to cluster together within these groups. Indeed, the strong correlation among many
survey items is what defines the groups. Thus, a person who favors a strong role for the
UN also tends to be critical of military power; to favor trade as a tool for building interna
tional cooperation; and to disdain unilateralism while endorsing multilateralism. A mili
tant internationalist would have largely opposite opinions. The key point is that citizen re
sponses to many different questions are correlated in this way. Their opinions are, in a
word, coherent.
Studies of public opinion in Western Europe reveal the same coherence. These studies are
similar to Wittkopf’s finding for U.S. public opinion: opinions about the role of military
force in international relations seem to most strongly condition the worldview. For exam
ple, Ziegler (1987) studied European public opinion toward transatlantic relations during
the 1980s, including survey items on NATO, defense spending, and support for missile de
ployment in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Like Wittkopf, he found that
opinions tend to cluster into a relatively militant group (generally favoring military solu
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tions) and a more dovish group, with a “mixed group” also existing. A host of other stud
ies have found a similar structure among Europeans and the American public (Jenkins-
Smith, Mitchell, & Herron, 2004). Like individual opinions, moreover, these clusters of at
titudes have been relatively stable since 2002 (Everts & Isernia, 2015).
Plausibility
We thus have evidence that public opinion is “rational” in the dual sense of exhibiting sta
bility and coherence. But what of plausibility? Does public opinion change in ways that re
flect events occurring in the global environment or in reaction to government policies?
And what is the form of that response? The examples described earlier provide substan
tial evidence that public opinion moves plausibly in reaction to events and policy. In addi
tion, Shapiro and Page (1988) found that public opinion rarely reverses direction. Based
on extensive analysis of a number of foreign policy opinions, they further concluded that
“[t]hese changes have seldom, if ever, occurred … without reasonable causes, such as the
actions of foreign friends or enemies or changes in the United States’ position in the
world” (1988, pp. 220–221).
Can we generalize about the form taken by the reactions of the public? Some opinion
change is clearly instrumental; it reacts to the success or failure of government policy.
For example, the evaluations of European integration described earlier are strongly cor
related with the EU’s economic policy performance. Europeans react negatively to bad
economic news but positively to the gains made from expanding trade (Eichenberg & Dal
ton, 2007; Gabel, 1998). Aside from this instrumentality, there is also evidence that public
reactions to events reflect a desire for moderation in policy. For example, Nincic (1988)
studied American evaluations of foreign policy toward the Soviet Union under Presidents
Carter and Reagan. Nincic’s principal question was whether public opinion considered
presidential policies too “hard” or too “soft.” The results were clear: under Carter, re
spondents tended to argue that policy was too “soft,” and under Reagan too “hard.” Nin
cic labels this pattern the “policy of opposites” and suggests that the public essentially re
acts by expressing a desire to “reign in” presidents who move too far in either direction.
The pattern of “opposites” in public reactions to defense and foreign policy also suggests
the more general relevance of Stimson’s (1999) notion of a moderate zone of acceptabili
ty in citizen issue opinions. When government policy moves outside the zone of what the
public will accept (or tolerate), public opinion will react by demanding a return to accept
able policies.
There is substantial evidence of this pattern of “opposites” in public reactions to changes

in defense spending in the United States and in Western Europe. Wlezien (1996) concep
tualizes the pattern in terms of a “thermostat” metaphor: if policy (in this case defense
spending) moves below or above the public’s desired level, opinion will react in the oppo
site direction by favoring a countervailing change for subsequent years. Following this
metaphor, Wlezien finds a negative correlation between changes in the defense budget
and public opinion. Indeed, the “thermostat” phenomenon characterizes citizens’ reaction
to budgetary change in both the defense and domestic policy domains in the United
Page 10 of 20

States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere (Eichenberg & Stoll, 2003; Wlezien, 1996;
Soroka & Wlezien, 2009). Moreover, the evidence suggests that governments subsequent
ly adjust budgets to reflect public preferences, a finding that holds in the United States
and several European countries (Hartley & Russett, 1992; Wlezien, 1996; Eichenberg &
Stoll, 2003). In both domestic and foreign policy, then, the thermostat reaction suggests
that for the public, moderation is a virtue—and governments do take notice.
The studies of opinion clusters discussed immediately above suggest that citizens with
very hawkish or dovish views are not the majority in either the United States or Europe.
Rather, the plurality or even majority of citizens are “pragmatists” (Asmus, Everts, & Iser
nia, 2004) or “internationalists” (Wittkopf, 1990) who prefer a mixture of forceful and con
ciliatory policies. Not surprisingly, therefore, if policy moves too far in either direction, a
substantial number of citizens will signal the opinion that the thermostat should be
turned back in a more moderate direction.
What Variables Influence the Formation of Citi

zen Opinion?
Research demonstrates that public opinion on foreign policy issues is more structured
than was once commonly believed. This is not because citizens are highly informed about
foreign policy issues, but rather because the wording of survey questions (among other
factors) contains clues that resonate with broader citizen values and preferences. For ex
ample, people may not know much at all about the internal politics of Syria, but they are
likely to have some predisposition about their country becoming involved in the Syrian
civil war.
Recent scholarship emphasizes four additional factors that citizens employ as filters to as
sist them in forming opinions on new or complicated issues in foreign policy: basic atti
tudes toward war and military force, ideology, partisanship, and gender. The importance
of attitudes toward war is evident in a number of studies. For example, we saw in the pre
vious section that foreign policy opinions in the United States and Europe cluster into two
attitude clusters that basically measure support for more forceful and more cooperative
approaches to international politics. Similarly, Bartels studied American opinions of de
fense spending and concluded that the “dominant influence was a general willingness ‘to
use military force to solve international problems’ … it is the dominant determinant of de
fense spending preferences in every specification, regardless of which other variables are
included …” (1994, p. 481). Eichenberg and Stoll (2015) found the same result in their
study of American and European opinions of defense spending: controlling for a number
of other variables, basic attitudes toward war were by far the strongest and most consis
tent correlate of support for the defense budget.
Not surprisingly, the importance of fundamental attitudes toward war and military force
are an important correlate of support for specific wars and other military interventions.
For example, Everts and Isernia (2015) find that a basic hawkish or dovish orientation
Page 11 of 20

was the strongest correlate of American and European support for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. A similar study of British citizen opinion on participation in the military ac
tions in Afghanistan and Libya found that support was best explained by fundamental atti
tudes concerning the morality and the costs and benefits of the wars (Reifler et al., 2014).
Perhaps not surprisingly, many studies also show that attitudes toward war are them
selves strongly correlated with an individual’s ideology and partisanship. It is not surpris
ing because political polarization on war and peace issues has been part of the ideologi
cal and partisan divides in many countries for over a hundred years. Moreover, as Berin
sky (2009) has recently demonstrated, partisanship provides a cue that citizens use to fol
low elite debates as they seek to form opinions on new or complicated issues. Research
by Everts and Isernia (2015) and by Eichenberg and Stoll (2015) also shows that funda
mental attitudes toward war are strongly correlated with a person’s ideology. Given the
consistency of these findings, it is tempting to suggest that attitudes toward war may in
fact be the “international” component of what we normally consider a citizen’s ideology.
Partisanship, in turn, is rooted in ideology, so it is not surprising to find that many foreign
policy opinions are strongly correlated with partisanship. In fact, it is likely that citizens
look first and foremost to party leaders for cues as they form their opinions (Berinsky,
2009). Nonetheless, it is important to note that the relationship between partisanship,
ideology, and attitudes toward war is not immutable. In fact, using the World Values Sur
vey to study acceptance of war in global public opinion (“willingness to fight for one’s
country”), Welzel, Inglehart, and Puranen (2015) find that the related processes of eco
nomic growth, social change, and cultural change lead to a shift in values that is less sup
portive of participation in war, a finding that has great importance for the future.
Finally, gender has emerged in recent scholarship as an important influence on foreign

policy attitudes, attitudes toward war, and attitudes toward international trade. For exam
ple, Berinsky (2009) showed that women were less likely to favor the United States enter
ing World War II. Scholars have also found a significant difference between the views of
men and women in support for the Vietnam War (Mueller, 1973), the Persian Gulf War
(Conover & Sapiro, 1993), and the war in Afghanistan (Huddy, Feldman, & Casese, 2009).
An additional study demonstrated that women were less likely to support the use of mili
tary force during every military intervention by the United States from 1990 through the
beginning of the Iraq War (Eichenberg, 2003). There is also evidence that women are
more skeptical of war as an instrument of policy in most countries of the world (Eichen
berg & Read, 2015). Because attitudes toward war are a major influence on more specific
security policy choices, the implication is that gender is one of the most important corre
lates of opinions on national security issues.
The same is true of scholarship on citizen attitudes toward international trade. For exam
ple, Mansfield, Mutz, and Silver (2015) find that women are significantly less supportive
of liberalized trade, a finding that they attribute to women’s lesser attachment to compet
itive values, their aversion to relocating in pursuit of employment, and their higher levels
of isolationism in general. Other studies of attitudes toward international trade find that
an individual’s level of education and location in the labor force are important influences
Page 12 of 20

(Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2006; Scheve & Slaughter, 2001). Given these findings, the study
of gender polarization on both security issues and international trade is likely to be an im
portant part of the future research agenda.
Are There Universal Patterns in Global Public

Opinion?
Because most scholarship is based on U.S. and European public opinion, a question aris
es: How universal are patterns in public opinion on global issues, especially on the crucial
issues of war and peace that have preoccupied global audiences for more than 20 years?
The attitudes of U.S. citizens on war and peace issues—the use of military force—are now
well understood. Jentleson and Britton (1998) showed that the support of U.S. citizens for
using military force is heavily influenced by the objective for which force is used. Support
for restraining or defending against foreign adversaries (foreign policy restraint) is very
high, as is support for humanitarian relief operations, presumably because these actions
enjoy normative and legal legitimacy and because the military requirements of success
are fairly clear. In contrast, support for involvement in civil wars is low, because such ac
tions enjoy less legal legitimacy and perhaps also because they are risky and potentially
costly operations. In a study of all U.S. military interventions since 1981, Eichenberg
(2005) confirms the importance of the principal policy objective and also finds that U.S.
citizen support for peacekeeping missions is low, perhaps because they risk involvement
in civil strife situations.
These findings have been replicated in a number of studies with similar results, although
each new study offers a theoretical improvement (for comprehensive reviews of this liter
ature, see Holsti, 2004; Eichenberg, 2005). Most important is the work of Larson, who ar
gues that U.S. public support for military operations is a cost-benefit calculation: citizens
evaluate the potential benefits of the action in terms of the stakes involved and the proba
bility of success and the costs of the action in terms of the human and financial costs. In
his study of a number of military conflicts involving the United States, Larson finds ro
bust support for his argument (Larson, 1996; Larson & Savych, 2005). The importance of
rational calculation is also confirmed in additional studies that find that the stakes, hu
man cost, and relative success of the mission are key determinants of citizen support, al
though the principal policy objective remains a major influence on base levels of support
(Feaver & Gelpi, 2004; Gelpi, Feaver, & Reifler, 2005/2006; Eichenberg, 2005).
How universal are these patterns? Do the considerations that influence the opinions of
U.S. citizens also operate elsewhere around the globe, or do opinions elsewhere differ
from findings in the U.S. setting? Until recently, it was difficult to answer these questions.
Although there have been studies of citizen opinion in individual European societies
(Everts & Isernia, 2001; Bobrow & Boyer, 2001) or concerning individual historical con
flicts (Sobel & Shiraev, 2003; Everts & Isernia, 2005), there have been no truly compara
tive, historical studies of the sort that characterize scholarship on U.S. public opinion.
Page 13 of 20

Moreover, public opinion outside of Europe and the United States has received limited at
tention. True, there has been tremendous growth in truly comparative, global polling, es
pecially concerning American foreign policy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but
survey organizations also conduct surveys on a wide variety of other global issues.
Nonetheless, scholars have only begun to tap these global sources in basic research on
the sources of attitudes (Goldsmith, Horiuchi, & Inoguchi, 2005; Everts & Isernia, 2015).
Certainly there are clues to the determinants of support for using military force in global
public opinion. For example, both in Europe and elsewhere there is substantial evidence
that the legitimacy surrounding the action is a key influence, as evidenced by the en
dorsement of international institutions, coalitions, or alliances (Sobel & Shiraev, 2003;
Everts & Isernia, 2005). Public opinion in Europe also shows a sensitivity to risk and casu
alties (Everts & Isernia, 2015), and one cross-national study of opinion in 64 countries
showed that support for the U.S. war against Afghanistan in 2001 varied with such nation
al characteristics as alliance memberships, trade with the United States, past experience
with terrorism, and the percentage of Muslims in the population (Goldsmith, Horiuchi, &
Inoguchi, 2005). There is, in short, some limited evidence that support for using military
force demonstrates both universal aspects that condition support in all countries (interna
tional legitimacy) and national variations in which the characteristics and international
position of a country influence the level of support for military actions.
One important study examined support for using military force using two sets of vari
ables, universal logics and national characteristics (Eichenberg, 2006). The study of 81
countries included public opinion surveys before and during the Persian Gulf War, the
wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the U.S.-led wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Signifi
cantly, there is a universal logic to support for using military force. The principal policy
objective of the action, the degree of international legitimacy attached to the action, the
participation of international forces, and the risk and costliness of the action are very
strong correlates of support for using military force. This pattern holds even controlling
for such national characteristics as relative wealth, military power, trade relationships,
and religious composition of the population. One example illustrates the importance of
these universal logics. Generally, societies with large Muslim populations have been skep
tical of using military force. However, during the Gulf War in 1991, 19 survey questions
about coalition military action against Iraq were asked in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, all countries with majority Muslim populations.
Support for military action against Iraq averaged 50% in these countries and approached
60% in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In the other conflicts, support for using force averages
25% in predominantly Muslim societies.
This finding reinforces the universal importance of policy objectives and international le
gitimacy to support for using force. The restraint of a demonstrably aggressive neighbor
in the Persian Gulf overrode whatever doubts that Muslims in the region might have had
about the use of force against Iraq in 1991. The fact that the coalition military effort had
Page 14 of 20

been endorsed by the United Nations was also a probable factor (Eichenberg, 2006).
Some considerations, it appears, are indeed universal.
Yet, even when controlling for universal logics, the effect of important national character
istics, such as relative wealth, relative military power, alliance commitments, and reli
gious composition of the population, remain strong correlates of support for using force.
Put briefly, poor, weak societies that are not allied with the United States are far less sup
portive of using military force than are wealthy, powerful allies of the United States. The
important conclusion concerning these relationships is that
[t]he experience and interests that are captured by national characteristics form
something of a structural baseline in national perspectives. Citizens of a country
that is poor, militarily weak, and outside the alliance orbit of the international
system’s dominant powers are unlikely to look positively on the use of military
force to resolve conflicts, especially when it is the military of the system’s most
powerful actors that form the core of the forces involved. Nonetheless, this struc
tural baseline is not immutable. There are also political and normative logics that
move support above and below the baseline of support. (Eichenberg, 2006, pp. 51–
52)
The different levels of support of Muslim citizens during the Gulf War of 1991 and the
Iraq War of 2003 is a perfect illustration. Support was low in the latter case because its
objective was regime change; it was carried out by just a few international actors led by
the United States; and it was not endorsed by the international community. In the former
case, the action aimed to reverse a clear case of aggression; it was sanctioned by the in
ternational community; and it was carried out by a broad coalition of actors.
Finally, it is important to note a number of studies of global public opinion that analyze
questions beyond the issue of war and peace. For example, using data from the World Val
ues Survey, Inglehart and Norris (2003) examine the impact of economic growth and cul
tural change on attitudes toward gender equality around the world. Brechin (2003) ana
lyzed global attitudes toward climate change, and Mayda (2006) studied global opinion
toward immigration. One innovative study analyzed the impact of U.S. foreign aid and
found that global opinions of the United States were positively related to the amount of
U.S. foreign aid received (Goldsmith, Horiuchi, & Wood, 2014). In summary, the last 20
years has seen a prodigious increase in global comparisons of opinions on a variety of
global issues, and this body of scholarship is likely to increase in the future.
Conclusions
In the past, research on citizen opinions of world affairs was something of a hard case for
those who hope for democratic control of policy. Citizens in most countries are not well
informed on global issues, and on many issues they are understandably ambivalent. As a
result, when the pollsters ask complicated questions about truly difficult decisions—such
Page 15 of 20

as the decision to go to war—citizens are likely to sway one way or the other, depending
on the exact words that are put before them.
Yet a review of scholarship on public opinion concerning issues of foreign policy, national
security, and war and peace reveals that citizens in most countries have quite sensible re
actions to these complexities. Although survey organizations are prone to place quite dif
ferent questions before respondents, their responses reveal identifiable “moods.” Citizens
notice the nuances of policies that are queried in public opinion surveys, and the “mood”
of citizens reveals itself. These moods are quite reasonable given the policy choices sur
rounding them, and the evidence suggests that governments represent this sentiment in
subsequent policy. Equally important, citizen opinions are “rational,” in the sense that
they are relatively stable, coherent, and plausibly related to world events, and recent re
search suggests that citizen do react to the policies that leaders choose, at times produc
ing tangible political costs to leaders (Tomz, 2007).
Finally, there is some evidence that citizen opinions on world affairs, especially on issues
of war and peace, share some universal judgments. Citizens in all countries value the in
ternational legitimacy that flows from the endorsement of international institutions. Citi
zens in all countries shy away from risky actions and from the possible loss of life in war.
But it is also true that attitudes are formed from a national perspective. Citizens of rich
and powerful states are more comfortable with the use of force in international relations.
Citizens of poorer and weaker states are far less enthusiastic. The conversation between
the citizens of these two groups represents an important challenge for the future.
Digital Materials and Global Polling Resources

Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Commission of the European Union, Eurobarometer.
Council on Foreign Relations, Public Opinion on Global Issues.
German Marshal Fund of the United States, Transatlantic Trends.
Global Barometer Surveys: includes links to Arab Barometer, Afro Barometer, Asian
Barometer, and Latino Barometer.
Pew Global Attitudes Project.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
World Values Survey.
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Richard C. Eichenberg
Department of Political Science, Tufts University
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Summary and Keywords

date: 24 September 2019

date: 24 September 2019

Measures: From Single Questions to Policy

A second explanation for the instability of individual responses is contained in a simple,

date: 24 September 2019

The U.S. Mood on Defense Spending

date: 24 September 2019

Figure 1. Three measures of net support for defense

Source: Gallup and GSS surveys are available

The Mood in Europe

date: 24 September 2019

date: 24 September 2019

Figure 2. Results for three survey questions on sup­

Source: Commission of the European Union, Stan­

date: 24 September 2019

Is Public Opinion on Global Issues “Rational”?

This pattern of stable, sensible movement in citizen opinion contradicts a longstanding

date: 24 September 2019

date: 24 September 2019

There is substantial evidence of this pattern of “opposites” in public reactions to changes

date: 24 September 2019

What Variables Influence the Formation of Citi­

date: 24 September 2019

Finally, gender has emerged in recent scholarship as an important influence on foreign

date: 24 September 2019

Are There Universal Patterns in Global Public

date: 24 September 2019

date: 24 September 2019

date: 24 September 2019

Digital Materials and Global Polling Resources

date: 24 September 2019

Brechin, S. R. (2003). Comparative public opinion and knowledge on global climatic

date: 24 September 2019

Howard, M. (1983). Reassurance and deterrence. Foreign Affairs, 61, 309–320.

date: 24 September 2019

Mayda, A. M. (2006). Who is against immigration? A cross-country investigation of indi­

Tomz, M. (2007). Domestic audience costs in international relations: An experimental ap­

date: 24 September 2019

Wlezien, C. (1996). Dynamics of representation: The case of US spending on defense.

Ziegler, A. (1987). The structure of European attitudes toward Atlantic cooperation.

Department of Political Science, Tufts University

date: 24 September 2019

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Figure 2. Results for three survey questions on sup

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