Elite Misperceptions and the Domestic Politics of Conflict

• In Event: Elites, Psychology, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

For public opinion to shape foreign policy, the public must be aware of foreign policy, and policy makers must be aware of public opinion. While IR scholars have probed the accuracy of the first assumption, they have tended to ignore the second, assuming that leaders correctly perceive public preferences. We argue that misperceptions can occur in the domestic side of foreign policy-making rather than just the international side, with important implications for a range of models of domestic politics in IR. We test our theory in the context of the domestic politics of international institutions, fielding a paired experiment on a nationally representative sample of American adults and an elite sample of American foreign policy opinion leaders, showing that IO endorsements exert powerful effects on both elite and mass opinion in the United States alike, but that leaders’ stereotypes of the public mean they systematically underestimate the extent to which Americans are swayed by IO cues. These results have important implications for the study of multilateralism, public opinion about foreign policy, and efforts to either establish or falsify theoretical models of domestic politics in IR with reference to public opinion data alone.

Authors

• Joshua D. Kertzer, Harvard University

• Joshua Busby, University of Texas, Austin

• Jonathan Monten, University College London

• Jordan Tama, American University-SIS

• Craig Kafura, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs