It has long been assumed that foreign-policy attitudes of the mass public are random, disorganized, and unconstrained if they exist at all. Further, foreign-policy thinking has not been found to be structured along standard ideological (liberal-conservative) lines, partisan lines, or class lines. We attempt to move the discussion from a question of whether foreign-policy attitudes are structured to a question of how they are structured. We propose and estimate (using a LISREL model) a hierarchically organized foreign-policy belief structure in which specific policy preferences are derived from postures (broad, abstract beliefs regarding appropriate general governmental strategies). These postures, in turn, are assumed to be constrained by a set of core values about the international community.

How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model

International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical. • The first book to tell the post-1945 story of International Security Studies and offer an integrated historical sociology of the whole field • Opens the door to a long-overdue conversation about what ISS is and where it should be going • Provides a detailed institutional account of ISS in terms of its journals, departments, think tanks and funding sources

/pdf/the-evolution-of-international-security-studies-2gdx67e39e.pdf

The Evolution of International Security Studies

Examining the history, conceptual breadth, and recent trends in the study of foreign policy analysis, it is clear that this subfield provides what may be the best conceptual connection to the empirical ground upon which all international relations (IR) theory is based. Foreign policy analysis is characterized by an actor-specific focus, based upon the argument that all that occurs between nations and across nations is grounded in human decision makers acting singly or in groups. FPA offers significant contributions to IR—theoretical, substantive, and methodological—and is situated at the intersection of all social science and policy fields as they relate to international affairs. A renewed emphasis on actor-specific theory will allow IR to more fully reclaim its ability to manifest human agency, with its attendant change, creativity, accountability, and meaning.

Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor‐Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations

This article surveys and assesses theories and research on public opinion and foreign policy. Most of the evidence is drawn from the literature on the United States. Three twentieth-century wars have had a significant impact on theory and scholarship. World War I-the first public relations war-and postwar efforts to create a new international order directed much attention to the nature of public opinion and its impact on foreign affairs, issues on which realists and liberals came to quite different conclusions. The period surrounding World War II coincided with the development of scientific polling. Much of the attention during and immediately after the war focused on the extent to which the public might support or oppose an internationalist American role. Extensive research during the first two decades after World War II yielded a broad agreement (the "Almond-Lippmann consensus") on three propositions about public opinion: (1) it is volatile and thus provides inadequate foundations for stable and effective foreign policies, (2) it lacks coherence or structure, but (3) in the final analysis, it has little if any impact on foreign policy. The Vietnam War and its aftermath stimulated a new

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2600734.pdf

Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippmann Consensus

Democracy requires that citizens' opinions play some role in shaping policy outcomes, including in foreign policy. Yet, although the literature on public opinion and foreign policy has made great progress in recent decades, scholars have reached no consensus concerning what the public thinks, or thinks about, with respect to foreign policy; how it comes to hold those opinions; or whether those opinions influence (or even should influence) foreign policy. In this article, we first review the extensive gains in scholarly knowledge in the area of public opinion and foreign policy over the past several decades, emphasizing relatively recent work. We then suggest a framework, based on the concept of market equilibrium, aimed at synthesizing the disparate research programs that constitute the literature on public opinion and foreign policy. To do so, in addition to considering the relationship between leaders and the public, we incorporate a third strategic actor, the mass media, which we believe plays a critic...

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060406.214132

The Relationships Between Mass Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis

Office-holders periodically face the problem of choosing among a set of career alternatives, and these alternatives customarily include the choice of dropping out of political life, or seeking reelection, or of choosing to seek higher office. This paper assumes that officeholders behave according to a rational calculus in making such choices, and that the main elements involved in the choice process include the probabilities and values attached by the candidate to his alternatives, and the investments required to obtain these alternatives. Political ambition, or the desire to seek higher office, is shown to develop as a product of the investments that politicians make in their political careers, and the investments are shown to be associated with the structural characteristics of community size and electoral competitiveness. The subjects of the research are 435 city councilmen from 89 cities of the San Francisco Bay Region, and the data include information derived from interviews with the councilmen and aggregate election data collected on each city.

A Theory of Political Ambition: Career Choices and the Role of Structural Incentives

Foreign policy seems to command more public attention than domestic policy and yet—insofar as it has been, researched—public opinion on foreign policy seems to have less impact on governmental decisions than does opinion in most other issue areas. There are at least two reasons, one normative and one empirical, why public opinion can be regarded as pertinent to some foreign policy questions—especially those associated with “life and death.” Normatively, it is desirable for political leaders in a democracy to commit national resources in ways generally approved by the populace. Large scale military commtiments should, if at all possible, meet with the approval of public opinion. Empirically, if they do not, experience has shown there are circumstances in which public disapproval of the course of foreign policy may be registered in national elections. Specifically, our one recent experience with a situation of partial mobilization and a limited but large-scale and indefinite commitment to military action in Korea did in time produce a distribution of opinion that suggested the war was very unpopular. And though its precise impact on the 1952 presidential election is difficult to assess there is little doubt that the Korean issue contributed significantly to the Eisenhower landslide.Among the questions raised by the Korean experience is whether the American public will easily tolerate the prosecution of long drawn-out wars of partial mobilization. Therefore, it is not surprising that another such war, in Vietnam, has stimulated a concern with public opinion.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400135415

Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam

Professionalization, in customary usage, refers to the assimilation of the standards and values prevalent in a given profession. Every profession, including politics, tends to have some set or sets of values that are widely held and which define what it means to be a “professional” within that field. These values are important because they affect the likelihood that the individual will achieve success in his profession. If the values are widely held, those that deviate from them are likely to be sanctioned by their colleagues, and people who fail to maintain the minimal standards of their profession are not likely to obtain professional advancement. Those who do behave according to the dominant values of their profession, however, are likely to be accorded the status of “professional” in the eyes of their colleagues, and that designation will contribute to the success of their careers. In the profession of politics, as in other professions, there is seldom one set of standards and values that prevails in all places at all times. These normative elements are likely to vary from political system to political system, to vary within a political system, and to vary within the profession of politics over time. In a highly centralized local political organization, for example, the achievement and maintenance of a position is likely to depend upon such values as deference and loyalty to the leaders of the political hierarchy.

A Theory of Professionalization in Politics

Data from the Partnership Attitude Tracking Study are analyzed to provide a greater understanding of the contributing factors to alcohol and other drug use among children and adolescents. The data were collected from children (ages 9 to 12) and teenagers (ages 13 to 17) in central locations (usually shopping malls) located in 100 primary sampling units across the United States. The analysis, which primarily employed stepwise multiple regression for model estimation, reinforced the importance of friends use, perceived risk, and tobacco and alcohol use in predicting marijuana use. An exposure model, which included antidrug advertisements, was a particularly powerful model. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Sociodemographic and attitudinal correlates of alcohol and other drug use among children and adolescents: analysis of a large-scale attitude tracking study.

Two theories of community conflict are examined in this paper with data from elections in 89 cities in the San Francisco Bay area. One theory is developed from the work on group conflict by Georg Simmel and Lewis Coser while the other is a rational choice theory based on assumptions about the costs and risks of conflict in different size cities. Both theories suggest that conflict, while more frequent in larger communities, is likely to become most severe in smaller communities. Both theories are confirmed by the pattern of findings in the analysis, but the rational choice theory proves to have the greater generality, i.e., that it can explain more of the findings in the paper.

Gordon S. Black

Papers

A Theory of Political Ambition: Career Choices and the Role of Structural Incentives

Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam

A Theory of Professionalization in Politics

Sociodemographic and attitudinal correlates of alcohol and other drug use among children and adolescents: analysis of a large-scale attitude tracking study.

Conflict in the Community: A Theory of the Effects of Community Size