Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs
eBook - PDF

Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs

How Public Opinion Affects Presidential Decision Making

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs

How Public Opinion Affects Presidential Decision Making

About this book

Do American presidents consider public opinion when making foreign policy decisions? In a democracy, it is generally assumed that citizen preferences inform public policy. For a variety of reasons, however, foreign policy has always posed a difficult challenge for democratic governance. In Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs, Thomas Knecht offers new insights into the relationship between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy. He does so by shifting our focus away from the opinions that Americans hold and toward the issues that grab the public's attention. Policy making under the glare of public scrutiny differs from policy making when no one is looking. As public interest in foreign policy increases, the political stakes also rise. A highly attentive public can then force presidents to choose foreign policies that are less politically risky but usually less effective. By tracking the ebb and flow of public attention to foreign policy, this book offers a method of predicting when presidents are likely to lead, follow, or simply ignore the American public.

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Yes, you can access Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs by Thomas Knecht in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Linguistics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Figures and Tables
  6. Preface and Acknowledgments
  7. A Note on the Surveys
  8. Introduction
  9. Chapter One: Foreign Policy in the Shadows and the Spotlight
  10. Chapter Two: The Five Stages of Decision Making
  11. Chapter Three: Patterns of Public Attention
  12. Chapter Four: The Persian Gulf Crisis
  13. Chapter Five: Operation Desert Storm
  14. Chapter Six: The Ethiopian Famine-Problem Definition and Option Generation
  15. Chapter Seven: The Ethiopian Famine-Decision, Implementation, and Review
  16. Conclusion
  17. Appendix A: Quantitative Methods
  18. Appendix B: Case Study Methods
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index
  21. Back Cover