Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T05:29:18.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Realist Tradition in American Public Opinion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2008

Daniel W. Drezner
Daniel W. Drezner
Affiliation:
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For more than half a century, realist scholars of international relations have maintained that their world view is inimical to the American public. For a variety of reasons—inchoate attitudes, national history, American exceptionalism—realists assert that the U.S. government pursues realist policies in spite and not because of public opinion. Indeed, most IR scholars share this “anti-realist assumption.” To determine the empirical validity of the anti-realist assumption, this paper re-examines survey and experimental data on the mass public's attitudes towards foreign policy priorities and world views, the use of force, and foreign economic policy over the past three decades. The results suggest that, far from disliking realism, Americans are at least as comfortable with the logic of realpolitik as they are with liberal internationalism. The persistence of the anti-realist assumption might be due to an ironic fact: American elites are more predisposed towards liberal internationalism than the rest of the American public.Daniel W. Drezner is Associate Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University ([email protected]). Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2007 International Studies Association meeting in Chicago, IL, and at Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He is grateful to Bethany Albertson, John Brehm, Joshua Busby, Jon Caverley, Richard Eichenberg, Benjamin Fordham, Nikolas Gvosdev, Don Green, Jacob Hacker, Lawrence Kaplan, Andrew Moravcsik, John Mearsheimer, Gideon Rose, Bruce Russett, Gregory Sanders, Stephen Teles, and John Schuessler for their comments and suggestions. Luisa Melo performed valuable research assistance, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States provided generous support during the drafting of this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
© 2008 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almond, Gabriel. 1950. The American People and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger.
Almond, Gabriel. 1956. Public opinion and national security. Public Opinion Quarterly 20 (2): 371–78.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Michael, and John Brehm. 2002. Hard Choices, Easy Answers: Values, Information and American Public Opinion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Art, Robert. 1998/99. Geopolitics Updated: The Strategy of Selective Engagement. International Security 23 (1): 79–113.Google Scholar
Art, Robert. 2003. A Grand Strategy for America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Audley, John, and John Anker. 2004. Reconciling Trade and Poverty Reduction. Washington: German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Audley, John, and John Anker. 2005. Perspectives on Trade and Poverty Reduction. Washington: German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Bacevich, Andrew. 2005. The New American Militarism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bailey, T.A. 1948. The Man in the Street. New York: Macmillan.
Bauer, Raymond, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Lewis Dexter. 1963. American Business and Public Policy. Chicago: Aldine.
Boettcher, William, and Michael Cobb. 2006. Echoes of Vietnam? Casualty framing and public perceptions of success and failure in Iraq. Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (December): 831–54.Google Scholar
Bouton, Marshall, ed. 2002. Worldviews 2002: American Public Opinion & Foreign Policy. Chicago: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Bouton, Marshall 2004. Global Views 2004: American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy. Chicago: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Brewer, Paul. 2004. Public trust in (or cynicism about) other nations across time. Political Behavior 26 (December): 317–40.Google Scholar
Brewer, Paul. 2006. National interest frames and public opinion about world affairs. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 11 (4): 89–102.Google Scholar
Brewer, Paul, et al. 2004. International trust and public opinion about world affairs. American Journal of Political Science 48 (1): 93–109.Google Scholar
Brewer, Paul, Sean Aday, and Kimberly Gross. 2005. Do Americans trust other nations? A panel study. Social Science Quarterly 86 (March): 36–51.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard. 1994. Crisis, war, and public opinion. In Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, ed. W. Lance Bennett and David Paletz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brooks, Stephen. 1997. Dueling realisms. International Organization 51 (3): 445–77.Google Scholar
Burbach, David. 1994. “Presidential Approval and the Use of Force.” Defense and Arms Control Studies Program Working Paper, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Buzan, Barry. 1984. Economic structure and international security. International Organization 38 (4): 597–624.Google Scholar
Carr, E.H. 1964 [1939]. The Twenty Years Crisis. New York: Harper and Row.
Chittick, William, Keith Billingsley, and Rick Travis. 1995. A three-dimensional model of American foreign policy beliefs. International Studies Quarterly 39 (3): 313–31.Google Scholar
Christensen, Thomas J., and Jack Snyder. 1990. Chain gangs and passed bucks: Predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity. International Organization 44 (2): 137–68.Google Scholar
Citrin, Jack, Ernst B. Haas, Christopher Muste, and Beth Reingold. 1994. Is American nationalism changing? Implications for foreign policy. International Studies Quarterly 38 (1): 1–31.Google Scholar
Converse, Philip. 1964. The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter. New York: Free Press.
Daalder, Ivo, and James Lindsey. 2007. Democracies of the world, unite! American Interest 11 (2): 34–44.Google Scholar
Destler, I.M. 1986. American Trade Politics. 3d ed. Washington: Institute for International Economics.
Doyle, Michael. 1983. Kant, liberal legacies, and foreign affairs, part 2. Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (4): 323–53.Google Scholar
Drezner, Daniel. 2005. Trade Talk. American Interest 1 (2): 68–76.Google Scholar
Drezner, Daniel. 2007a. All Politics Is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Drezner, Daniel. 2007b. Lost in translation: The transatlantic divide over diplomacy. In Growing Apart: America and Europe in the 21st Century, ed. Jeffrey Kopstein and Sven Steinmo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Druckman, James. 2001. The implications of framing effects for citizen competence. Political Behavior 23 (3): 225–56Google Scholar
Eichenberg, Richard. 2005. Victory has many friends: U.S. public opinion and the use of force, 1981–2005. International Security 30 (Summer): 140–77.Google Scholar
Elliott, Kimberly, and Richard Freeman. 2003. Can Labor Standards Improve under Globalization? Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
Everts, Philip, and Pierangelo Isernia. 2005. The war in Iraq. Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (Summer): 264–323.Google Scholar
Feaver, Peter, and Christopher Gelpi. 2004. Choosing Your Battles. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Feaver, Peter, and Christopher Gelpi. 2005/06. Success matters: Casualty sensitivity and the war in Iraq. International Security 30 (Winter): 7–46.Google Scholar
Friedberg, Aaron. 2000. In the Shadow of the Garrison State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Friedman, Thomas. 1999. The Lexis and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Stauss Giroux.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2006. America at the Crossroads. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gelpi, Christopher, and John Mueller. 2006. The costs of war. Foreign Affairs 85 (1): 139–44.Google Scholar
Gholz, Eugene, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky. 1997. Come home, America: The strategy of restraint in the face of temptation. International Security 21 (1): 5–48.Google Scholar
Gilboa, Eytan. 2005. The CNN effect. Political Comunication 22 (1): 27–44.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1996. No one loves a political realist. Security Studies 5 (Spring): 3–28.Google Scholar
Gowa, Joanne. 1986. Anarchy, egoism, and third images. International Organization 40 (2): 167–86.Google Scholar
Grieco, Joseph. 1990. Cooperation Among Nations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Herrmann, Richard, and Jonathan Keller. 2004. Beliefs, values, and strategic choice. Journal of Politics 66 (May): 557–80.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Richard, Philip Tetlock, and Matthew Diascro. 2001. How Americans think about trade. International Studies Quarterly 45 (1): 191–218.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Richard, Philip Tetlock, and Penny Visser. 1999. Mass public decisions to go to war: A cognitive-interactionist framework. American Political Science Review 93 (3): 553–73.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert. 1977. The Passions and the Interests. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hiscox, Michael. 2006. Through a glass and darkly: Attitudes toward international trade and the curious effects of issue framing. International Organization 60 (July): 755–80.Google Scholar
Holsti, Ole. 1992. Public opinion and foreign policy: Challenging the Almond-Lippmann consensus. International Studies Quarterly 36 (4): 439–66.Google Scholar
Holsti, Ole. 1996. Public opinion on human rights in American foreign policy. American Diplomacy 1 (1): http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/ad/ad_v1_1/hoo01.html.Google Scholar
Holsti, Ole. 2004. Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Huntington, Samuel. 1957. The Soldier and the State. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hurwitz, Jon, and Mark Peffley. 1987. How are foreign policy attitudes structured? American Political Science Review 81 (4): 1100–20.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, John, and Anne-Marie Slaughter. 2006. Forging a World of Liberty under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century. Princeton: Princeton Project for National Security.
Inglehart, Ronald, Neil Nevitte, and Miguel Basanez. 1996. The North American Trajectory. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Jacobs, Lawrence, and Benjamin Page. 2004. “The Media and the Foreign Policy Establishment.” Presented at the Midwestern Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 15–18.
Jacobs, Lawrence, and Benjamin Page. 2005. Who influences U.S. foreign policy? American Political Science Review 99 (1): 107–23.Google Scholar
Jackson, Patrick T., and Stuart Kaufman. 2007. Security scholars for a sensible foreign policy: A study in Weberian activism. Perspectives on Politics 5 (1): 95–103.Google Scholar
Jenkins-Smith, Hank, and Kerry Herron. 2005. United States public responses to terrorism. Review of Policy Research 22 (6): 599–623.Google Scholar
Jentleson, Bruce. 1992. The pretty prudent public: Post-Vietnam American opinion and the use of military force. International Studies Quarterly 36 (1): 49–74.Google Scholar
Jentleson, Bruce, and Rebecca Britton. 1998. Still pretty prudent: Post-Cold War American public opinion on the use of military force. Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (4): 395–417.Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert. 2006. Dangerous Nation. New York: Knopf.
Kagan, Robert, and William Kristol. 2000. Present Dangers. San Francisco: Encounter.
Kaufmann, Chaim. 2004. Threat inflation and the failure of the marketplace of ideas. International Security 29 (Summer): 5–48.Google Scholar
Kennan, George. 1984. American Diplomacy, expanded edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Key, V.O. 1961. Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York: Knopf.
Kissinger, Henry. 1960. The Necessity for Choice. New York: Praeger.
Kissinger, Henry. 1994. Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Klarevas, Louis. 2002. The “essential domino” of military operations: American public opinion and the use of force. International Studies Perspectives 3 (4): 417–37.Google Scholar
Kohut, Andrew, and Bruce Stokes. 2006. America against the World. New York: Times Books.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1978. Defending the National Interest. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1991. Global communications and national power: Life on the Pareto frontier. World Politics 43 (3): 336–66.Google Scholar
Kull, Steven. 2004. “Americans on Globalization, Trade and Farm Subsidies.” Program on International Policy Attitudes, Washington, DC.
Kull, Stephen, and I.M. Destler. 1999. Misreading the Public. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Larson, Eric. 1996. Casualties and Consensus: The Historical Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for U.S. Military Operations. Santa Monica: RAND.
Layne, Christopher. 1997. From preponderance to offshore balancing. International Security 22 (1): 86–124.Google Scholar
Layne, Christopher. 2006. The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Legro, Jeffrey, and Andrew Moravcsik. 1999. Is anyone still a realist? International Security 24 (3): 55–106.Google Scholar
Lepgold, Joseph, and Timothy McKeown. 1995. Is American foreign policy exceptional? Political Science Quarterly 110 (3): 369–84.Google Scholar
Lieven, Anatol, and John Hulsman. 2006. Ethical Realism. New York: Pantheon.
Lind, Michael. 2006. The American Way of Strategy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lippmann, Walter. 1955. The Public Philosophy. Boston: Little, Brown.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1996. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York: W.W. Norton.
Maliniak, Daniel, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney. 2005. Inside the ivory tower. Foreign Policy 151 (November/December): 58–64.Google Scholar
Maliniak, Daniel, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney. 2007. The view from the ivory tower. Program on the theory and practice of international relations. Foreign Policy 159 (March/April): 62–9.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, Michael. 1996. Foreign policy as social work. Foreign Affairs 75 (January/February): 16–32.Google Scholar
McDougall, Walter. 1997. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776. New York: Mariner Books.
McFarland, Sam, and Melissa Matthews. 2005a. Who cares about human rights? Political Psychology 26 (June): 365–85.Google Scholar
McFarland, Sam, and Melissa Matthews. 2005b. Do Americans care about human rights? Journal of Human Rights 4 (3): 305–20.Google Scholar
Mead, Walter Russell. 2002. Special Providence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Mearsheimer, John. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.
Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen Walt. 2003. An unnecessary war. Foreign Policy 134: 50–9.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen Walt. 2006. The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy. Middle East Policy 13 (3): 29–87.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen Walt. 2007. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Mermin, Jonathan. 1997. Television news and American intervention in Somalia: The myth of a media-driven foreign policy. Political Science Quarterly 112 (3): 385–403.Google Scholar
Monten, Jonathan. 2005. The roots of the Bush doctrine. International Security 29 (Spring): 112–56.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans, and Kenneth Thompson. 1985. Politics among Nations, 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mueller, John. 1973. War, Presidents, and Public Opinion. New York: Wiley.
Mueller, John. 2005. The Iraq syndrome. Foreign Affairs 84 (6): 45–54.Google Scholar
Nau, Henry. 2002. At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Nincic, Miroslav. 1992. A sensible public: New perspectives on popular opinion and foreign policy. Journal of Conflict Resolution 36 (4): 772–89.Google Scholar
Nincic, Miroslav. 1994. Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Oneal, John, Brad Lian, and James Joyner. 1996. Are the American people “pretty prudent”? Public responses to U.S. uses of force, 1950–1988. International Studies Quarterly 40 (2): 261–79.Google Scholar
O'Rourke, Kevin, and Richard Sinnott. 2002. The determinants of individual trade policy preferences. In Brookings Trade Forum, ed. Susan Collins and Dani Rodrik. Washington DC: Brookings Institution.
Page, Benjamin, and Jason Barabas. 2000. Foreign policy gaps between citizens and leaders. International Studies Quarterly 44 (3): 339–64.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin, with Marshall Bouton. 2006. The Foreign Policy Disconnect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Page, Benjamin, and Robert Shapiro. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Peterson, Susan, Michael Tierney, and Daniel Maliniak. 2005. “Teaching and Research Practices, Views on the Discipline, and Policy Attitudes of International Relations Faculty at U.S. Colleges and Universities.” Williamsburg, VA: Program on the Theory and Practice of International Relations, The Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies College of William & Mary.
Powlick, Philip J., and Andrew Z. Katz. 1998. Defining the American public opinion/foreign policy nexus. Mershon International Studies Review 42 (May): 29–61.Google Scholar
Rankin, David. 2001. Identities, interests, and imports. Political Behavior 24 (4): 351–76.Google Scholar
Reiter, Dan, and Allan C. Stam. 2002. Democracies at War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rielly, John E., ed. 1999. American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1999. Chicago: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Robinson, Piers. 1999. The CNN effect: Can the news media drive foreign policy? Review of International Studies 25 (2): 301–09.Google Scholar
Rose, Gideon. 1998. Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy. World Politics 51 (1): 144–72.Google Scholar
Rosenau, James. 1961. Public Opinion and Foreign Policy. New York: Random House.
Rosenau, James, David Earnest, Yale Ferguson, and Ole Holsti. 2005. On the Cutting Edge of Globalization: An Inquiry Into American Elites. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Rousseau, David. 2002. Motivations for choice: The salience of relative gains in international politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (3): 394–426.Google Scholar
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1997. The past as prologue? Interests, identity, and American foreign policy. International Security 21 (2): 89–125.Google Scholar
Scheve, Kenneth F., and Matthew Slaughter. 2001. Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers. Washington: Institute for International Economics.
Scheve, Kenneth F., and Matthew Slaughter. 2004. Economic Insecurity and the Globalization of Production. American Journal of Political Science 48 (4): 662–74.Google Scholar
Schildkraut, Deborah J. 2002. The more things change … American identity and mass and elite responses to 9/11. Political Psychology 23 (3): 511–35.Google Scholar
Schweller, Randall. 2004. Unanswered threats: A neoclassical realist theory of underbalancing. International Security 29 (Fall): 159–201.Google Scholar
Solingen, Etel. 1998. Regional Orders at Century's Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Snyder, Jack. 1991. Myths of Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Strobel, Warren. 1997. Late-Breaking Foreign Policy. Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace.
Tai, Zixue, and Tsan-Kuo Chanfe. 2002. The global news and the pictures in their heads. Gazette: The International Journal for Communications Studies 64 (3): 251–65.Google Scholar
Todorov, Alexander, and Anesu Mandisodza. 2004. Public opinion on foreign policy. Public Opinion Quarterly 68 (Fall): 323–48.Google Scholar
Tucker, Todd. 2006. “Election 2006: No to staying the course on trade.” Public Citizen. Washington DC. Accessed at http://www.citizen.org/documents/Election2006.pdf.
Walker, Thomas, and Jeffrey Morton. 2005. Reassessing the “power of power politics” thesis: Is realism still dominant? International Studies Review 7 (June): 341–56.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. 2005. Taming American Power. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
Waltz, Kenneth. 1967. Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics. Boston: Little, Brown.
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw Hill.
Western, Jon. 2005. The war over Iraq: Selling war to the American public. Security Studies 14 (1): 106–39.Google Scholar
Wittkopf, Eugene. 1990. Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Durham: Duke University Press.
Woods, Kevin, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray. 2006. Saddam's delusions: The view from the inside. Foreign Affairs 85 (3): 2–26.Google Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 1998. From Wealth to Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press.