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International History and the Study of Public Opinion: Towards Methodological Clarity

2012; Routledge; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07075332.2012.690194

1949-6540

Daniel Hucker,

Historical Influence and Diplomacy

Abstract International historians have long been fascinated by public opinion and its influence on policy-making, citing it frequently as one of the many factors that inform foreign-policy choices. However, historians – and international historians in particular – have yet to develop any substantial or rigorous methodological frameworks capable of revealing the actual influence of popular opinion at the highest levels of diplomatic policy. This article intends to redress this deficiency by outlining a methodological approach that elucidates the role of public opinion in the decision-making process. In so doing, it will also explore the tensions between different approaches to the study of international history, notably the apparent divergence between traditional ‘diplomatic’ history on the one hand and the more theoretically diffuse ‘international’ history on the other. The conceptual framework forwarded here will suggest that the two approaches need not be in opposition, at least when seeking to explain the formative role of public opinion on foreign-policy making. Indeed, the careful application of inter-disciplinary theoretical frameworks not only enriches our understanding of international history in its totality, but also reveals much about the diplomatic fulcrum of our discipline. Keywords: public opinionforeign policypolicy-makingrepresentationsperceptions Notes 1. Editorial, The Times, 12 Dec. 1894. 2. For an overview of this, beginning with Thucydides’ discussion of public opinion in History of the Peloponnesian War, see L. Benson, ‘An Approach to the Scientific Study of Past Public Opinion’, Public Opinion Quarterly, xxxi (1967–8), 532. See also R. M. Worcester, ‘The Internationalization of Public Opinion Research’, Public Opinion Quarterly, li (1987), S79. 3. E. Katz, ‘Introduction’ in T. L. Glasser and C. T. Salmon (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent (New York, 1995), xxi. 4. E. M. Carroll, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs, 1870–1914 (London, 1931), 3–4. 5. Z. Steiner, ‘On Writing International History: Chaps, Maps and Much More’, International Affairs, lxxiii (1997), 531. 6. P. Finney, ‘Introduction: What is International History?’ in Finney (ed), Palgrave Advances in International History (Basingstoke, 2005), 1. 7. P. Finney, Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (London, 2010), 22. 8. P. Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu, the “Cultural Turn” and the Practice of International History’, Review of International Studies, xxxiv (2008), 155. 9. D. Reynolds, ‘International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch’, Cultural and Social History, iii (2006), 91. See also the subsequent debate between Reynolds, Finney, and Antony Best in Cultural and Social History, iii (2006), 472–95. 10. T. G. Otte, ‘Diplomacy and Decision-Making’ in Finney (ed), Palgrave Advances in International History, 39. 11. Steiner, ‘On Writing International History’, 531. 12. See, for example, Robert Young's thoughtful reflection on how his own background, beliefs and attitudes have shaped his work on French history: R. J. Young, ‘Formation and Foreign Policy: Biography and Ego-histoire’, French History, xxiv (2010), 144–63. 13. J. L. Gaddis, ‘In Defense of Particular Generalization: Rewriting Cold War History, Rethinking International Relations Theory’ in C. Elman and M. F. Elman (eds), Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 301. 14. S. Pelz, ‘Toward a New Diplomatic History: Two and a Half Cheers for International Relations Methods’, in Elman And Elman (eds), Bridges and Boundaries, 87. 15. J. Black, Debating Foreign Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Farnham, 2011), xii. 16. This concern was remarked upon in the editors’ ‘Introduction’ in Elman and Elman (eds), Bridges and Boundaries, 4. Similarly, the ‘diplomatic twitch’ invoked by Reynolds can be seen as a backlash against ‘culturalist’ international history. Reynolds, ‘International History’, 75–91. For an overview of ‘culturalist’ approaches, see A. J. Rotter, ‘Culture’ in Finney (ed), Palgrave Advances in International History, 267–99. Peter Jackson, who is generally receptive to recent trends and developments, has also identified drawbacks to ‘culturalist’ approaches, suggesting that they need to be applied more thoughtfully and carefully to the study of international history. See Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, 162. 17. P. Finney, ‘The Diplomatic Temptation’, Cultural and Social History, iii (2006), 475. 18. Pelz, ‘Toward a New Diplomatic History’, 99. 19. M. Mösslang and T. Riotte, ‘Introduction: The Diplomats’ World’ in Mösslang and Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World: The Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815–1914 World (Oxford, 2008), 10. 20. Despite being relatively scarce, analyses that focus on public opinion (particularly journal articles and chapters) are nonetheless too numerous to list in full, so a ‘sample’ of relevant monographs will have to suffice: Y. Lacaze, L’opinion publique française et la crise de Munich (Bern, 1991); J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Français de l’an 40, 2 vols. (Paris, 1990); J.-J. Becker, 1914: comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre: contribution à l’étude de l’opinion publique printemps-été 1914 (Paris, 1977); E. M. Carroll, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs, 1870–1914; D. Waley, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War, 1935–6 (London, 1975); L. M. Case, French Opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire (Philadelphia, 1954); K. A. Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1848–64: A Study in Diplomacy, Politics and Public Opinion (Toronto, 1975); P. Miquel, La paix de Versailles et l’opinion publique française (Paris, 1972); R. B. McCallum, Public Opinion and the Last Peace (Oxford, 1944); D. F. Schmitz, The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD, 2005); J. M. Hogan, Woodrow Wilson's Western Tour: Rhetoric, Public Opinion and the League of Nations (College Station, 2006); D. Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Farnham, 2011); S. Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2003), and by the same author, Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion, 1950–1953 (Oxford, 2008). 21. Cited in P. Beaud, ‘Common Knowledge on Historical Vicissitudes of the Notion of Public Opinion’, Réseaux, i (1993), 119. See also the editors’ ‘Introduction’ in W. Donsbach and M. W. Traugott (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research (London, 2005), 1–5. 22. Benson, ‘An Approach to the Scientific Study of Past Public Opinion’, 551. 23. Waley, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War, 11. 24. W. Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy (Boston, 1955), 20, 24. 25. G. A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York, 1960), 53, and Almond, ‘Public Opinion and National Security’, Public Opinion Quarterly, xx (1956), 376. 26. B. C. Cohen, The Public's Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston, 1973), 62. 27. B. C. Cohen, ‘The Relationship between Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Maker’ in M. Small (ed), Public Opinion and Historians: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Detroit, 1970), 69–70. 28. See, for example, P. J. Powlick and A. Z. Katz, ‘Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus’, Mershon International Studies Review, xlii (1998), 30, J. Hurwitz and M. Peffley, ‘How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured: A Hierarchical Model’, American Political Science Review, lxxxi (1987), 1099–120; R. Y. Shapiro and B. I. Page, ‘Foreign Policy and the Rational Public’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, xxxii (1988), 211–47, and T. W. Graham, ‘The Pattern and Importance of Public Knowledge in the Nuclear Age’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, xxxii (1988), 319–34. 29. O. R. Holsti, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippmann Consensus’, International Studies Quarterly, xxxvi (1992), 451–2; Powlick and Katz, ‘Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus’, 30. 30. Worcester, ‘Internationalization of Public Opinion Research’, S79; Carroll, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs, 3. 31. G. C. Thompson, Public Opinion and Lord Beaconsfield, 1875–1880 (London, 1886), i. 3. 32. S. Hilton, ‘The Spanish-American War of 1898: Queries into the Relationship between the Press, Public Opinion and Politics’, Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos, vii (1994), 71. 33. Canning cited in H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (London, 1939), 168; Salisbury cited in K. Wilson, ‘Introduction: Governments, Historians and “Historical Engineering”’ in K. Wilson (ed), Forging the Collective Memory: Government and International Historians through Two World Wars (Oxford, 1996), 18; the Auswärtiges Amst official cited in D. Geppert, ‘The Public Challenge to Diplomacy: German and British Ways of Dealing with the Press, 1890–1914’ in Mösslang and Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World, 134. 34. Dulles memorandum, 16 May 1954, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, ii. 1448. 35. Note by Sir W. Everett on the Convention concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, 7 Oct. 1899, T[he] N[ational] A[rchives, Kew, London], FO 881/7473, no. 289, enclosure no. 3. 36. Wilson to the Plenary Session of the Paris Peace Conference, 14 Feb. 1919, cited in L. E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (Cambridge, 1987), 78. 37. Case, French Opinion on War and Diplomacy. 38. D. Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism (Oxford, 1992), 4. See also I. Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria, 1933–1945 (Oxford, 1983), 5. 39. These can be consulted online: http://www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/prefets/ (Accessed 9 Dec. 2011). 40. Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 17. 41. Lacaze, L’opinion publique française, 47. 42. L. Reinermann, ‘Fleet Street and the Kaiser: British Public Opinion and Wilhelm II’, German History, xxvi (2008), 470; L. Beers, ‘“Is This Man an Anarchist?” Industrial Action and the Battle for Public Opinion in Interwar Britain’, The Journal of Modern History, lxxxii (2010), 35. 43. B. Holman, ‘The Air Panic of 1935: British Press Opinion between Disarmament and Rearmament’, Journal of Contemporary History, xlvi (2011), 289–91. 44. Corbin to Georges Bonnet (French Foreign Minister), 29 Nov. 1938 [Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris], Série Z, no. 281. 45. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 70. For examples of this growing awareness of, and sensitivity to, the press in nineteenth-century Britain, see D. Halvorson, ‘Prestige, Prudence and Public Opinion in the 1882 British Occupation of Egypt’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, lvi (2010), 430, and D. Brown, ‘Diplomacy and the Fourth Estate: The Role of the Press in British Foreign Policy in the Age of Palmerston’ in J. Fisher and A. Best (eds), On the Fringes of Diplomacy: Influences on British Foreign Policy, 1800–1945, (Farnham, 2011), 37, 51. 46. P. Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London, 1981), 56. 47. D. Geppert, Pressekriege: Öffentlichkeit und Diplomatie in den deutsch-britischen Beziehungen (1896–1912) (Munich, 2007), 5. 48. M. Small, ‘Historians Look at Public Opinion’ in M. Small (ed), Public Opinion and Historians: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Detroit, 1970), 16. 49. Casey, Cautious Crusade, xxiv–xxv. 50. M. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (Princeton, 2006), 27. 51. P. Bourdieu, ‘L’opinion publique n’existe pas’, Les temps modernes, cccxviii (1973), 1292–1309. 52. H. Blumer, ‘Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling’, American Sociological Review, xiii (1948), 542–9; J. R. Beniger, ‘The Impact of Polling on Public Opinion: Reconciling Foucault, Habermas, and Bourdieu’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, iv (1992), 207. For a detailed exposition of opinion polling, see L. Blondiaux, ‘Ce que les sondages font à l’opinion publique’, Politix, x (1997), 117–36. 53. C. T. Salmon and T. L. Glasser, ‘The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent’ in Salmon and Glasser (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, 449 54. K. Lang, ‘What Polls Can and Cannot Tell Us about Public Opinion: Keynote Speech at the 60thAnnual Conference of WAPOR’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, xx (2008), 17. 55. P. Laborie, ‘De l’opinion publique à l’imaginaire social’, Vingtième Siècle, Revue d’histoire, xviii (1988), 104. 56. S. Herbst, ‘On the Disappearance of Groups: 19th- and Early 20th-Century Conceptions of Public Opinion’ in Glasser and Salmon (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, 90–1. 57. F. H. Allport, ‘Toward a Science of Public Opinion’, Public Opinion Quarterly, i (1937), 14. 58. For example, Mona Ozouf and Keith Baker have used Habermas when writing extensively and persuasively about the role of ‘opinion publique’ in revolutionary-era France See Ozouf, ‘“Public Opinion” at the End of the Old Regime’, The Journal of Modern History, lx, supplement (1988), S1–S21, and ‘Quelques remarques sur la notion d’opinion publique au XVIIIe siècle’, Réseaux, v (1987), 79–103; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), ‘Politics and Public Opinion under the Old Regime: Some Reflections’ in J. Censer and J. Popkin (eds), Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley, 1987), 205–46, and ‘Politique et opinion publique sous l’ancien regime’, Annales, xlii (1987), 41–71. For more on the importance of Habermas, see J. Cowans, ‘Habermas and French History: The Public Sphere and the Problem of Political Legitimacy’, French History, xiii (1999), 134–60. 59. See J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA, 1989). 60. J.B. Thompson, The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Cambridge, 1995), 71. For more on the various critiques of Habermas, see L. Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere (London, 2005), 29–55, 89–106. 61. C. Calhoun, ‘Introduction’ in Calhoun (ed), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1992), 17. 62. Cited in Kennedy, Realities Behind Diplomacy, 38. 63. Laborie, ‘De l’opinion publique à l’imaginaire social’, 117. 64. P. Laborie, Les Français des années troubles: De la guerre d’Espagne à la Libération (Paris, 2001), 38. 65. R. Rémond, preface to J.-J. Becker's 1914, 1. 66. K. Bowie, Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699–1707 (Woodbridge, 2007), 1. 67. Carroll, French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs, 4–5. 68. Laborie, ‘De l’opinion publique à l’imaginaire social’, 104. 69. For an overview, see S. Moscovici, ‘The Phenomenon of Social Representations’ in R. M. Farr and S. Moscovici (eds), Social Representations (Cambridge, 1984), 1–69. It is worth noting, as Irwin Deutscher has, that Durkheim actually referred to ‘social representations’, and that it is only in English translation that the term ‘collective representations was attributed to him (Deutscher, ‘Choosing Ancestors: Some Consequences of the Selection from Intellectual Traditions’ in Farr and Moscovici (eds), Social Representations, 74). 70. Cited in C. Howarth, ‘A Social Representation is Not a Quiet Thing: Exploring the Critical Potential of Social Representations Theory’, British Journal of Social Psychology, xlv (2006), 67. 71. S. Moscovici, ‘Why a Theory of Social Representations?’ in K. Deaux and G. Philogène (eds), Representations of the Social: Bridging Theoretical Traditions (Oxford, 2001), 20, 24. 72. Moscovici, ‘The Phenomenon of Social Representations’, 44. 73. S. Hall, ‘The Work of Representation’ in S. Hall (ed), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London, 1997), 17 (original emphasis). 74. Ibid. 25 (original emphasis). 75. J. D. Peters, ‘Historical Tensions in the Concept of Public Opinion’ in Glasser and Salmon (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, 16. 76. Holsti, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’, 444. 77. Moscovici, ‘The Phenomenon of Social Representations’, 68. 78. This, of course, borrows from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London, 1991). 79. B. Shore, Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning (Oxford, 1996), chapters 9 and 10. For a very useful overview of recent trends and developments in social representations research, see J. H. Liu and J. László, ‘A Narrative Theory of History and Identity: Social Identity, Social Representations, Society, and the Individual’ in G. Moloney and I. Walker (eds), Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process, and Power (Basingstoke, 2007), 85–107. 80. For a discussion of the role of representations in constructing ‘legitmizing myths’, see J. Sidianus and F. Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression (Cambridge, 1999), 45–9. For more on the notion of mental or cognitive ‘maps’, see A. K. Henrikson, ‘The Geographical “Mental Maps” of American Foreign Policy Makers’, International Political Science Review, i (1980), 495–530; Z. Steiner, ‘Elitism and Foreign Policy: The Foreign Office Before the Great War’ in B. J. C. McKercher and D. J. Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy, 1895–1939 (Edmonton, 1984), 19–56; and S. Casey and J. Wright (eds), Mental Maps in the Era of Two World Wars (Basingstoke, 2008). 81. For more on Bourdieu's conception of ‘habitus’, and how it can be applied to the practice of international history, see Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’. 82. W. Lippmann, Public Opinion (London, 1922), 89–90; Allport, ‘Toward a Science of Public Opinion’, 16–17. 83. Lippmann, Public Opinion, 95. 84. Lacaze, L’opinion publique française et la crise de Munich, 47. 85. J. V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge, 2002), 4–5. 86. M. Siegel, ‘“To the Unknown Mother of the Unknown Soldier”: Pacifism, Feminism, and the Politics of Sexual Difference among French Institutrices between the Wars’, French Historical Studies, xxii (1999), 421–51. See also, by the same author, The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Patriotism and Pacifism, 1914–1940 (Cambridge, 2004). 87. For example, Georges Bonnet has been characterized by his biographer as being part of ‘la génération de feu’, his aversion to war continuing to shape his policies as France's Foreign Minister in the late 1930s. See J. Puyaubert, Georges Bonnet: Les combats d’un pacifiste (Rennes, 2007), 150. For a more general overview of this subject, see D. Hucker, ‘French Public Attitudes towards the Prospect of War in 1938–1939: “Pacifism” or “War Anxiety”?’ French History, xxi (2007), 431–49. 88. Howarth, ‘A Social Representation is Not a Quiet Thing’, 79. 89. Allport, ‘Toward a Science of Public Opinion’, 16–17. 90. E. Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin (Chicago, 1984). 91. J. M. Fields and H. Schuman, ‘Public Beliefs About the Beliefs of the Public’, Public Opinion Quarterly, xl (1976), 437. 92. Becker, ‘L’opinion publique: un populisme?’, 92–6. For more on the various other ‘theories’ pertaining to perceptions of public opinion, see W. P. Eveland and C. J. Glynn, ‘Theories on the Perception of Social Reality’ in Donsbach and Traugott (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research, 155–63, and C. J. Glynn, R. E. Ostman, and D. G. MacDonald, ‘Opinions, Perception, and Social Reality’ in Glasser and Salmon (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, 249–77. 93. J. Joll, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions (London, 1968), 6. 94. P. Renouvin, ‘L’opinion publique et la guerre en 1917’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, xv (1976), 4. Renouvin identified four types of sources available for the historian of public opinion: (1) the press; (2) material related to political parties, pressure groups, and trade unions; (3) official sources monitoring opinion, such as police reports; and (4) private correspondence of decision makers, and their diaries and memoirs. Renouvin acknowledged that all these sources are patchy and often unreliable, hence the ‘elusive’ nature of public opinion. 95. For examples, see W. Mulligan, ‘The Alabama Affair and British Diplomacy, 1865–1872’ in Mösslang and Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World, 105–32, and Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement, 22. 96. J. R. Beniger and J. A. Gusek, ‘The Cognitive Revolution in Public Opinion and Communication Research’ in Glasser and Salmon (eds), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, 236. 97. Mösslang and Riotte, ‘Introduction: The Diplomats’ World’, 20.