ABSTRACT
T he reputation of public opinion in relation to foreign policy issues has risen remarkably in recent decades, especially among scholars and observers and practitioners of international politics. Research on public opinion and foreign policy has been one of the most challenging fields. Marked by dramatic steps forward, it has compelled the research community to revise several of the claims established in the 1950s and the 1960s (Eichenberg 1998; Jacobs and Shapiro 1994; Hoisti 1992, 1996; Powlick and Katz 1998; Russett and Graham 1989; Shapiro and Jacobs 1989). Numerous studies have challenged the traditional wisdom and identified the so-called mood theory as a myth (Shapiro and Page 1988,213). Among other things, the revisionists claim that the public is reasonably well informed, possesses stable and structured foreign policy beliefs, and even contributes to a wise official foreign policy (Graham 1988; Shapiro and Page 1988; Page and Shapiro 1992; Jentleson 1992). One of the most thorough accounts of this new thinking was presented by Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro
(e.g., 1992). Their central argument states that American public opinion has by no means been moody and capricious. Rather, it has, most of the time, reacted rationally to changes in the international environment. Unfortunately, to date, most of the revisionist insights have been based only on empirical evidence from American studies, so we cannot be certain whether similar conclusions apply to other publics.
