The Development of Foreign Policy Belief Systems in the US

Early students of public opinion believed that foreign policy attitudes are volatile and unstructured. Therefore, they recommended that decision makers should not take public opinion into account. But in the aftermath of the Vietnam War scholars recognized that attitudes of the general public are both well-structured and politically relevant. Ordinary citizens are able to draw on general domain-specific beliefs to attain opinions even on remote foreign policy issues. Given the international developments since the end of the Cold War the question remains how belief systems responded to these changes. Utilizing data from four waves of Chicago Council surveys it can be demonstrated that foreign policy attitudes are structured along three dimensions over time, labelled 'militant internationalism', 'cooperative internationalism' and 'economic nationalism'. Furthermore multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses indicate that belief systems in 2002 closely resemble those of 1978, while major changes occurred in the early 1990s.