Mind the Gap
Mini Teaser: Why policymaking elites and foreigners alike distrust the judgment of Americans.
Page and Bouton also argue that, "When officials adopt policies opposed by the public, they place American foreign policy on a weak foundation." This argument does not seem terribly persuasive, however, in light of Page and Bouton's evidence. It is difficult to argue that U.S. foreign policy is fragile if foreign policy has been consistently implemented despite three decades of disagreements between policymakers and the public at large. Americans might have different views on world politics than their elites -but these gaps are not significant, because Americans usually do not vote their foreign policy preferences.
The persistence of the foreign policy disconnect is also problematic when thinking about the gaps between American and non-American views. Kohut and Stokes suggest that this gap has been overstated. The question, however, is whether these misperceptions can and will be corrected. Psychologists talk about the problem of "pluralistic ignorance", in which large numbers of people hold similar misperceptions about what other people believe. People tend to assume that if the government pursues a particular policy, it will garner majority support. At this point, global public opinion equates the policies of George W. Bush with the policy preferences of the American people.
The 2006 midterm elections do suggest that policymakers cannot stray too far from public preferences. Clearly, frustration over Iraq played a role in voters kicking out Republican majorities. This does not mean, however, that voters will be any more enamored of the Democrats (see: immigration, illegal). In the end, the relationship between Americans and their policymakers on foreign policy can best be summed up by paraphrasing of Abraham Lincoln. Politicians can ignore the foreign policy views of some Americans all of the time, and some of their views all of the time; they can't, however, ignore all of their views all of the time.
Daniel W. Drezner is an associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is the author of All Politics Is Global(Princeton University Press, forthcoming) and keeps a daily weblog at www.danieldrezner.com.
[1] Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes, America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked (New York: Times Books, 2006), 259 pp., $25.00.
Benjamin I. Page and Marshall Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 356 pp., $20.00.