Does foreign policy represent the views of the public? Assessing public and elite opinion on New Zealand's foreign policy

This article1 1. We would like to thank Philip Nel, Robert Patman, Steve Hoadley and Chris Rudd for their advice and overall contribution to this research project. We would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. View all notes investigates public opinion on New Zealand's foreign policy, drawing on the findings of a comprehensive poll of general public and elite opinion conducted in 2008. It analyses what New Zealanders think about a range of foreign policy issues and whether public opinion matches actual foreign policy. It argues that the majority of the public support the broad parameters of official policy, but that there are significant differences of opinion in some specific areas, particularly trade agreements and defence. These differences correspond in particular to political orientation and age, gender and income level. The article also outlines the key differences between public opinion and the opinion of the positional elite. Overall, it is argued that the New Zealand public does have clear opinions on foreign policy issues and that these are generally consistent. The article proposes more frequent polling and more public debate over foreign policy.     

News Photographs and Environmental Agenda Setting

Who and what influences the issues that policymakers attend to is central to the question of how power is exercised in politics. This study builds upon research by Soroka that proposes an expanded model of agenda setting as a means to examine how the media influences issue salience for the public and policymakers. It expands on Soroka's model by investigating the hypothesis that photographic attention to environmental issues in the news media influences issue salience for the mass public and governmental decision makers. There is little research that substantiates the idea, but it is widely believed that photographs have influence on the policy agenda. I use a dynamic, multidirectional model to estimate whether the volume of news photographs, in addition to news stories, influences issue salience among the mass public and policymakers. Data are longitudinal and measures of attention are operationalized as the number of congressional committee meetings, concern for the environment as a “most important problem” in public opinion polls, environmental news stories in The New York Times, and environmental news photographs in Time magazine. Results suggest that photographic attention does influence environmental policy agenda dynamics in some counterintuitive ways that are distinct from the effects of the news stories. While news stories appear to increase public attention toward the environment, they have little influence on policymaker attention. News photographs, on the other hand, appear to drive congressional committee attention but elicit an ambivalent public response.     

Public Spending on the Arts as Morality Policy: The Structure of Public Attitudes

Successfully reframing a political issue as morality policy should strengthen the hand of those charging immorality. However, reframers face a daunting task in shifting public opinion. In 1989, Christian conservatives attempted to reframe the debate over federal funding for the arts from waste to immorality, by attacking grants for "anti-Christian" and "homoerotic" art. Using General Social Survey data from before, during, and after the attempted reframing, this article assesses the reframers' success in heightening the salience of religion, commitment to civil liberties, and attitudes toward sexuality in public thinking about government spending on the arts.     

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

This article is a research synthesis addressing four questions critical to our understanding of the determinants of public policy. How often and how strongly do hypothetical determinants of policy—public opinion, interest groups, the party balance, and other factors—actually influence policy? Do some hypothetical determinants of policy have more influence than others? Does the way we measure policy affect our ability to explain it? And is there a connection between how strongly particular variables affect policy, and how much effort we devote to studying them? It turns out that variables hypothesized to influence policy more often than not have no effect. When variables do affect policy, researchers very seldom say anything about how much impact they have. Variables that convey the most information to policymakers about what the public wants have a greater impact than other variables, but it is less clear how the measurement of policy affects our findings. Researchers pay much attention to hypothetical determinants of policy unlikely to matter very much, and little attention to those likely to be the most important. Implications for future research are considered.     

Black-Atlantic counterfactualism: speculating about slavery and its aftermath

This paper critically examines the role of counterfactual thought and argument in a series of interconnected contexts that span what Paul Gilroy termed the ‘black Atlantic’ and what Ali Mazrui described as ‘Global Africa’. The paper aims to show that a more or less explicit use of conjecture and speculative reasoning has characterised attempts to represent and demand recognition for the horror, inhumanity and injustice of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and New World slavery, and their legacies. To do so, the paper examines a number of interrelated examples, including the campaign for reparations for slavery in the USA; African demands for reparations for slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism that draw on ideas about the continent's ‘underdevelopment’; and speculative writing that imagines alternate historical geographies of slavery. The paper argues that their concerns with Atlantic slavery and its consequences evince a particular way of engaging with the past that might, at first sight, appear to be aligned with a broader temporal sensibility associated with notions of ghostly return, haunting and trauma. The paper argues, however, that such an assumption is mistaken and that the presence of counterfactualism here illustrates a rather different philosophy of history at work. By highlighting forms of making the past present that are speculative rather than spectral, the paper aims to open up new lines of geographical enquiry that will enhance understanding of Atlantic slavery and its aftermath.     

Re-examining the Australian public's attitude to military casualties: post-heroic or defeat-phobic?

Australia, like most other developed democracies, is often alleged to suffer from ‘casualty phobia’. The perception that the Australian public will not tolerate casualties in foreign conflicts has shaped the decisions of both civilian and military policy makers. Measures taken to protect Australian forces from casualties may, for instance, also serve to increase the risk to civilians in the country to which they are deployed. The USA underwent a similar debate some years ago. Innovative public opinion research techniques—especially ‘survey experiments’ which allow researchers to establish causal relationships by consciously manipulating one variable while holding others constant—have established that the American public are not reflexively casualty-phobic and that the impact of casualties on public opinion can be outweighed by other factors, such as the public's confidence in the mission's overall success. In this article, the author replicates one of the key survey experiments from the US debate, suitably adapted to Australian conditions, with a nationally representative sample of Australian voters. The author finds that the same pattern holds in Australia as in the USA: casualties do lower public support for a given mission, but the mission's chances of success matter more.     

Public opinion,the press and the failed Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations of 1939

For nearly 80 years, historians have debated whether the western powers or the USSR should be blamed for the failure of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations in 1939. This rather tired debate features here, but only in the background. Instead, these negotiations provide a case study for exploring the interface between the press, public opinion, and foreign policymaking, identifying an example of how policymakers’ perceptions of popular opinion wielded a tangible impact on diplomacy. The article will show that, from late April through to early June 1939, British and French public opinion, as mediated by the press, demanded a ‘Grand Alliance’. The popular pressure needed to facilitate a Soviet alliance was in place, and, combined with broader diplomatic and strategic imperatives, nearly delivered one. Perceptions of public opinion also help explain why this alliance remained elusive. Emboldened by their own readings of western newspapers, the USSR increased their demands, confident that domestic pressures would compel London and Paris to yield. But this was a fatal miscalculation. From mid-June, Western opinion turned against Moscow, and familiar anti-Soviet tropes resurfaced. By charting this evolution in public sentiment, this article provides a fresh perspective on the factors contributing to the failure of these negotiations.     

Trans-Subsystem Dynamics: Policy Topography, Mass Opinion, and Policy Change

We argue that the treatment of trans-subsystem change, and particularly the role of public opinion in fostering such change, within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has been underspecified. We propose a model of "policy topography" that combines the concepts of public opinion, clusters of linked subsystems, and policy issue venues. While the ACF has characterized subsystems as relatively self-contained, we argue that they are more usefully understood as operating in a relatively permeable fashion among evolving clusters of subsystems linked together by networked relations, strategically overlapping policy considerations, and public opinion disruptions. The "policy topography" model offers opportunities to assess the relationships across policy subsystems, and to better specify the critical relationship between public policy and mass opinions. We offer examples, and suggest hypotheses along with avenues for appropriate empirical analysis.     

The opinion–policy link in Australia

Whether or not policy is responsive to public opinion is central to questions of representation. Democracy by many accounts is premised on there being a strong correspondence between public opinion and policy. This link has not, however, been examined in detail in Australia. This article examines the policy–opinion link in a more robust way than that has previously been achieved in Australia, through the use of legislative data from the Australian Policy Agendas Project (APAP) and public opinion data from Roy Morgan. The article asks: is policy congruent with public opinion in Australia? In addressing this question, we examine to what extent policy accords with the preferences of the public. This in turn provides us with some answers about how representative Australian democracy is, as well as contributing to an international debate about the responsiveness of policy to public opinion.

政策是否要对舆论负责,这是代表制的核心问题。民主的前提往往就在于舆论和政策之间的息息相通。但在澳大利亚,人们并没有仔细地研究过二者间的关联。本文根据澳大利亚政策议题计划提供的立法资料以及罗伊摩根提供的舆情资料,对政策—舆论关联做了比以往充分多的研究。本文试问：政策与舆论在澳大利亚是否一致？我们考察了政策在多大程度上符合民意。这也为澳大利亚民主在多大程度上具有代表性的问题提供了答案,对于国际上争论政策对民意的回应问题也具有参考意义。。     

Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.     

Punctuated Equilibrium in Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby and U.S. State Policymaking from 1990 to 2003

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in all states and a significant rise in new legislation to control tobacco use. The tobacco industry, nevertheless, was able to generally keep state tobacco taxes low and counter significant regulatory threats to tobacco sales. From this, I conclude that the policy monopoly favoring the tobacco industry did not significantly change, despite the symbolic appearance of punctuation in the policy system.     

Labour and the bomb: the first 80 years

The UK government's consideration of whether to replace Trident evokes past controversies about the bomb including occasions when the Labour Party advocated unilateral renunciation of British nuclear weapons. Out of office, fierce debate engulfed the party, fuelled by, and in turn fuelling, intra-party conflict. In power, while Labour governments took different decisions on key defence issues to their Conservative counterparts, they nevertheless ensured that the UK remained a nuclear weapons state. Labour also ensured the habits of secrecy in nuclear decision-making were ingrained, though these were challenged by the current government. This article examines the development of Labour's approach to nuclear weapons since 1945. Particular attention is given to the 1980s as members of the current cabinet will have clear recollections of campaigning on an anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s. The Blair government has embarked on public debate ahead of a formal decision and should the issue of Britain's nuclear status become embroiled in a political battle over the leadership succession, anti-nuclear sentiment may re-emerge. Yet if the past is guide to the future, the history of Labour governments suggests that the real debate will be about what replaces Trident not whether it is replaced.     

The "Mouse That Roared": Agenda Setting in Canadian Pesticides Politics

Issue redefinition and venue shopping have been identified as key strategies for enacting agenda and policy change, but much work remains to be done in elaborating these processes. I argue that an important aspect of issue redefinition involves shifting not only the image of an issue but also the bases for considering those issues—what I call policy principles. Policy principles are the core values, beliefs, or guidelines attached to policies that help direct decision making. The emergence and acceptance of new principles by the public and policymakers can be a vital source of policy change, at times having far greater consequences for policy than redefining an issue. Venue shopping is also a multifaceted undertaking involving efforts by policy entrepreneurs and advocacy groups to keep issues out of venues they would rather not participate in as well as move decision making to new arenas. Moreover, while the literature suggests that shifting venues is usually a sensible strategy, sometimes venue shopping can backfire. A case study of the municipal movement to restrict the nonessential use of lawn and garden pesticides in Canada illustrates these theoretical points and shows the applicability of agenda setting models to contexts outside the United States.     

The Preemptive Power of State Supreme Courts: Adoption of Abortion and Death Penalty Legislation

We offer a theory about public policy adoption that depicts a game between state supreme courts and state policymakers. We hypothesize that court ideological hostility or friendliness operates to discourage or encourage policy enactment, with the likelihood of subsequent court intervention magnifying the relationship. To test the argument we examine the influence of court ideology on the enactment of state abortion and death penalty laws since the 1970s. Empirical analyses provide strong support for our theory, indicating that court ideological hostility or friendliness significantly influenced state abortion and death penalty policy enactments. In addition, the likelihood of court intervention conditioned this relationship, with the most pronounced effect occurring where subsequent court review was mandatory. The findings reveal courts exert important preemptive influence on law without hearing a case. This facet of judicial influence expands the traditional view of actors involved in the policymaking process.     

Australian Foreign Policy under the Abbott Government: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics?

While foreign policy featured prominently on the Australian political agenda in late 2014, the manner of Australia's engagement with the world challenges the idea of a ‘pivot’ from domestic politics to foreign policy. In particular, the government demonstrated a tendency to prioritise domestic political considerations, in particular public opinion, in its dealings with the outside world. This was evident across a range of issue areas: from the ‘internationalist’ agenda of asylum, climate change and aid to more traditional concerns such as bilateral relations with Indonesia and international security. This article explores these dynamics and asks what implications this has for both Australian foreign policy and theoretical accounts of the role and desirability of public engagement with foreign policy in international relations thought.     

New Labour - New Europe?

The key question often asked of the new Labour government’s approach to Europe is whether this is new Labour, new Europe or new government, old Britain? There are three routes into the EU which Britain could follow: (1) it could play a lading part in the definition of a new political role and vision for an enlarged EU in the twenty-first century; (2) it could be a constructive and pragmatic participant in EU policy discussions, but without an overall vision for the EU; 93) it could become a side player within the EU, left behind as Europe develops in directions it cannot support. In its tone and rhetoric, the new government is certainly aiming for the first of these roles. On policy substance, however, its approach is somewhat cautious and pragmatic. In the four policy areas examined in this article - employment, the single currency, enlargement and institutional reform - some striking changes in tone and emphasis are not wholly matched by new policy innovations. This indicates continued caution over public opinion and the question of sovereignty. However, as the authors argue in the final section, British public opinion allows considerable scope to define a new role for Britain in the EU, while domestic constitutional reform could begin to change the nature of the sovereignty debate.     

口碑史料厘定

口碑史料是史料的四大类型之一。现代概念上的口碑史学在中国尚未真正建立起来 ,史学界对口碑史料的认识相当模糊。为纠谬补苴 ,使口碑史料与其他类型的史料彻底区别开来 ,笔者主张把口碑史料定义为 :由历史研究者亲自采访得来的、仅供自己使用的口耳相传的史料。它应包括口述回忆、口头传说和专用口语三部分。     

Policy Cues and Ideology in Attitudes toward Charter Schools

Charter schools have generated support from politicians in both major American political parties while stimulating intense debate among interest groups. We investigate whether and how public attitudes reflect interest group polarization or politician consensus. Using an original survey, we find that charter school opinions diverge along ideological lines among high‐information respondents. With embedded experiments, we manipulate respondents' information using policy cues tied to opposing sides of the charter debate: We assess whether the role of private companies and nonunion teachers changes support for charter schools. We find that the public responds favorably to some informational cues; conservatives without prior information are especially persuaded by information about nonunion teachers. This explains how polarized opinion can develop even in the absence of strong partisan sorting among top political leaders and clarifies the partisan and ideological context of ongoing education policy debates.