The rejection of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda highlights an emphasis on a foreign policy based on prudence rather than adventurism. One signal of Americans' prudence is their emphasis on economic strength over a muscular foreign policy. When asked, more than 65 percent of Americans agree that a robust economy is a more important determinant of a country's strength than military might. It is therefore not surprising when Page and Bouton find that even less than a year after the September 11 attacks, Americans wanted to expand government programs in health care, education and crime more than the defense, homeland security or intelligence budgets. In both books, Americans demonstrate a marked preference for the U.S. government to focus more on solving domestic concerns than foreign policy problems.

To be sure, Americans are comfortable with the idea of America as a superpower. This does not mean, however, that the public endorses unilateral American leadership. Kohut and Stokes point out that in every Pew survey since 1993, fewer than 15 percent of Americans endorsed the idea that America should be the "single world leader." Page and Bouton find a majority of Americans rejecting the idea that the United States should act as the world's policeman-instead, more than 70 percent of Americans support the United States "do[ing] its share in efforts to solve international problems." They conclude, "there is broad agreement among Americans in virtually all social groups: they favor prudent-but only prudent-uses of military force, with help from allies and international organizations." Americans do not shrink from uses of force to advance security interests, but it is far from the first resort for the public. When acting abroad, polling demonstrates robust American support for acting in concert with allied countries and, to some extent, multilateral institutions.

Whither Multilateralism?

The "to some extent" in the last paragraph highlights one area where the books disagree: Just how much do Americans embrace multilateralism? Both books show that, all else equal, Americans prefer to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally. The question is what happens when there are trade-offs between the two approaches.

The Foreign Policy Disconnect is emphatic in declaring that "most Americans prefer cooperative, multilateral, and diplomatic methods as the chief means to pursue their foreign policy goals." To support this argument, Page and Bouton show that pluralities of Americans support strengthening all international organizations they are asked about-including the United Nations. More than 70 percent of Americans supported American participation in the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol to protect global warming. Healthy majorities of Americans-including conservatives and Republicans-support giving up America's veto in the UN Security Council if it meant a more effective global body. Similar majorities endorse giving the UN limited powers of taxation to raise a standing multilateral force. In questions about going to war or deploying American forces as peacekeepers, public support appears to be highly contingent on whether there is multilateral support. Page and Bouton conclude from this that most Americans are "neoliberal institutionalists."

The analysis in America Against the World adopts a somewhat different view: "If asked to choose, Americans prefer proactive, assertive unilateral action to multilateral efforts beset by delay and compromise." Kohut and Stokes note that Americans still favor reserving the right to use pre-emptive military force to a much greater extent than Europeans. Although Americans wanted a UN imprimatur for Operation Iraqi Freedom, polls still demonstrated 75 percent support for a unilateral invasion by March 2003. And although there is support for the icc in the abstract, Kohut and Stokes point out that that support is soft. A majority of Americans oppose allowing U.S. soldiers to be tried in The Hague. This is in sharp contrast to France, Germany and the uk, where majorities supported having their soldiers tried by the icc. Kohut and Stokes conclude that, "In case after case, Americans are multilateralists in principle and unilateralists in practice."

The data in these books, as well as other polling results, suggest that when Americans are enthusiastic about multilateralism, it is because they believe it can facilitate burden sharing. In both books, questions that suggest multilateral cooperation will translate into other countries doing their fair share generate strong support-similarly, questions that imply America will shoulder the burdens alone generate almost no support. On global warming, the support for Kyoto found in Page and Bouton should be tempered by Kohut and Stokes' finding that a strong majority of Americans want poorer countries to bear as much of the burden in dealing with global warming as richer nations.

A recent Bertlesmann Foundation poll crystallizes how Americans think about international cooperation. When asked to choose between the best framework for ensuring peace and security, the populations of most major powers prefer "a system led by the United Nations" over either a balance of regional powers or a unipolar world. The United States was the only country in the survey where a majority supported the balance of regional powers over the UN.

The Gaps

Despite disagreements over multilateralism, these books paint a rough consensus of how Americans think about the world. Do these views differ from the rest of the world? The biggest gaps in attitudes are primarily on questions that do not have much to do with international relations. America Against the World finds that Americans are far more individualistic and optimistic than most other populations. On the role in government in society, Americans were distinct among the advanced industrialized states in valuing personal freedom from government interference over the provision of social safety nets. One explanation for this distinction is the extent to which Americans believe themselves to be in control of their own destiny; 65 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement that "success in life is determined by forces outside our control"-roughly thirty percentage points higher than in Europe. Americans possess a uniquely sunny faith in the wonders of technological innovation.

In some ways, then, Americans are exceptional. However, Kohut and Stokes point out two ways in which this exceptionalism is overstated. First, the differences in base attitudes do not translate into differences on foreign policy issues. For example, even though Americans are far more religious than Europeans, there is no evidence that this religiosity factors into American attitudes about foreign policy. This is true at both the collective and individual levels.

The surprise in America Against the World is that Europeans and not Americans are the truly exceptional public in the world. In contrast to the rest of the world, Europeans are the outliers when it comes to attitudes about nationalism and religion-they're turned off by both kinds of creeds. American levels of patriotism and devotion to God look perfectly normal when compared to the non-European parts of the globe. Kohut and Stokes conclude, "This pattern recurs time and again: Americans are different from Europeans, especially Western Europeans, but they are closer to people in developing countries on many key attitudes and values."

The gap between American and foreign attitudes may not be as great as commonly perceived, but Page and Bouton argue that the gap between mass and elite attitudes about foreign policy has been vastly underestimated. To support this contention, they analyze the differences between public and policymaker attitudes about foreign policy. On economic, defense and diplomatic policy questions, they found a 10 percent gap between policymakers and the public more than 70 percent of the time. One could argue that a policy that receives 80 percent support from policymakers and only 65 percent support the public is not a big deal. However there are opposing majorities of the public and policymakers on more than a quarter of the issues. The degree of difference persists regardless of changes in party control over the legislative and executive branches.

Foreign economic policy is where the most prominent gap between elite and mass public opinion exists. According to Page and Bouton, in 1994 there was a public-policymaker gap on 95 percent of the economic questions. Policymakers have consistently favored freer trade, been less exercised about the trade deficit, and cared less about protecting jobs than the American public. There is a significant gap on the question of legal immigration-policymakers want more and Americans want less. Policy elites typically prefer spending larger amounts of foreign aid than ordinary Americans. On the whole, Americans are far more protectionist than their policymakers.

Does the public matter?

Clearly, there are gaps between American public opinion, world public opinion and actual foreign policy. Does this matter, however? There are few calls for public opinion to have a larger input on either the Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court-why should foreign policy be any different?

Page and Bouton counter by suggesting that expertise is not important for foreign policy. The Foreign Policy Disconnect supports this contention by showing that higher education and information about the world have little correlation to individual attitudes about foreign policy. This is a thin reed of argumentation, however. Foreign policy expertise is more than just a better general education-it entails more specialized training. It should not be surprising that Page and Bouton found the greatest gap on defense issues came in 1990, when policymakers concluded that the Cold War was over before the public did. Similarly, the American people exaggerated the economic threat posed by Japan and Europe in the early 1990s. This is not to say that experts are always right and the public is always wrong-but perhaps American foreign policy does not need to perfectly mirror public opinion (Page and Bouton do not help their argument when they use their polling results to sell a social democratic agenda that goes way beyond their foreign policy remit).

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