Mass and Elite Foreign Policy Opinions

Since the Vietnam War, public preferences on foreign policy issues have played a greater role in the American political process. Yet comparatively little is known about the manner in which attitudes on international affairs are formed and how they are related to other political cognitions. Using data from two large studies of foreign policy opinion conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in 1974 and 1978, this research examines the question of how mass and elite opinion differs in a number of foreign policy domains and looks at whether these distinctions have changed across years. In general, there are patterns of difference in the foreign policy beliefs of the elites and the mass public, the most striking being in their “internationalist” view of the U.S. role in world affairs, with smaller distinctions in the domains of human rights, detente, world problems, Americanism, and international organizations.