Political Systems, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy: The United States and the Netherlands
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207803300111 |
| Author | Bernard C. Cohen |
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| Subject Matter | Opinion and Policy |
BERNARD
C.
COHEN
Political
systems,
public
opinion,
and
foreign
policy:
the
United
States
and
the
Netherlands
The
mobilization
of
public
opposition
in
the
United
States
to
the
proposed
Panama
Canal
treaties in the summer
of
1977
provides
a
useful
introduction
to
a
discussion
of
public
opinion
and
foreign
policy, because
it
draws
our attention
to
a
number
of
fundamental
points
which
are
ordinarily
overlooked. Firstly,
that
such
an
issue
has
arisen
so
soon
after
the
'lessons
of
Vietnam'
-
and
at
the
hands
of
a
President
who
seemed
to
be
saying
in
his
election
campaign
that
he
had
learned
those
'lessons'
-
compels
us
to
recognize
that
this
kind
of
event
is
part
and
parcel
of
a
political
process.
That
is
to
say,
it
has
developed
not
as
a
function
of
how
much
or
how
little
we
know
or
have
learned
about
public
opinion and
its
work-
ways,
but
rather
as
an
aspect
of
a
struggle
to
determine
whose
preferences
in the
policy
matter
under
discussion
(in
this
case,
sovereignty
over
the
Panama
Canal)
ought
to
be
the
controlling
ones.
Secondly,
this
issue
reminds
us
that
our
focus
on
the
subject
of
public
opinion and
foreign
policy
is
ordinarily
national
in
scope.
That
is
to
say,
the
substantive
problems
of
foreign
policy
arise
in
a
national context,
and
the
political
problems
of
organiz-
ing or
undermining support
for
those
issues
among
the
popula-
tion
have
to
be
seen
in
the
same
context.
Thirdly,
the
case
of
the
Panama
Canal
treaties underscores
the
significance
of
the
political
system
in
the
United
States
for
the
entire
process
of
the
mobiliza-
tion
(and
eventual
deployment)
of
public opinion in
the
matter.
The
constitutional
requirement
of
the consent
of
the
Senate
to
treaty
ratification
clearly
structures
a
political
strategy
that
would
Quincey
Wright
Professor
of
Political
Science,
University
of Wisconsin-Madison;
author
of
a
number
of
works
relating
to
public
opinion
and
foreign
policy-
making.
196
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
serve
to
defeat
the treaty,
and
thus
it
suggests
a
role for
public
opinion
in
that
strategy.
The
implications
of
these
observations
are
rather
straightfor-
ward.
The
role
that
public
opinion
plays
in the
formulation
of
foreign
policy
in
any
country
is
inescapably
related
to
the
political
system
of
that
country,
since
the
political
system
defines
the op-
portunities,
the
constraints,
the
channels,
the
mechanisms
that
are
available
to
non-governmental
actors
to
participate
in foreign-
policy
making.
Furthermore,
a
comparison
of
these
system-related
roles
in
different kinds
of
political
systems
should
shed
some
fur-
ther
light
on
the
relationships
that
may
exist
within
each
system,
as
well
as
lay
the
basis
for
more general
theoretical
observations
about
non-governmental
participation
in
foreign-policy
making
in
democratic
states.
I
will
pursue
these
implications
further
here,
by
looking
at
some
important
political-system differences
between
two
Western
democracies
-
the
United
States
and
the
Nether-
lands
-
and
at
the consequences
of
these
differences
for
the
pub-
lic-opinion
institutions in
the
two
countries.
I
do
not
mean
to
imply,
however,
that
the political
systems
alone
shape
public-opinion
institutions
in
these
(or
other)
coun-
tries.
Obviously
these
two
countries
differ
in
a
number
of
ways
which
have
little
to
do in the
first
instance
with
the political
sys-
tem
itself,
but
which
may
nonetheless
affect
public-opinion
insti-
tutions.
Ideally,
it
would
be
desirable
to
hold
constant,
in
this
comparison, everything
except
the
differences
in political
system
that
I
want
to
examine;
but
that
is
hardly
possible
in
the
real
world
that
is
our
laboratory.
Instead,
I
will look
first
at
the
politi-
cal-system
differences
and
at
their
implications
for
public
opinion;
and
then
I
will
ask
whether
and
how these
observable
differences
in
public-opinion
institutions
might
be
accounted for
or
modified
by
other
differences
that
characterize
these
countries.
II
Three
aspects
of
the
political
systems
of
the
United
States
and
Holland
compel
our
attention:
the
organization
of
political
power,
the
nature
of
the
political-party
system,
and
the
structure
of
politi-
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