American Public Attitudes toward Foreign Policy

American Public Attitudes toward Foreign PolicyAuthor(s): Michael A. Maggiotto and Eugene R. WittkopfSource: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 601-631Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600514 .

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American Public Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy

MICHAEL A. MAGGIOTTO EUGENE R. WITTKOPF

University' of Florida

This article explores the manner in which the American public structures its attitudes toward foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era. There is general agreement among analysts that the unidimensional internationalist-isolationist continuum was a casualty of Vietnam. But there is disagreement over what kind of attitudinal structure has supplanted it. Basically, the disagreement revolves around the number of dimensions necessary to characterize attitudinal structure adequately. In exploring the conceptual foundations underlying mass attitudes toward foreign policy, this article validates a fourfold typology derived from the joint distribution of two orthogonal attitudinal factors, cooperative and militant internationalism. It then examines the political and socioeconomic correlates of mass attitudes toward traditional foreign policy issues. Finally, by controlling for contextual variables, it attempts to reincorporate attitudes toward nontraditional foreign policy issues into the bidimensional factor space, largely unsuccessfully. We speculate in conclusion that the inconsistencies that often seem to accompany foreign policy objectives and behaviors concerning nontraditional issues may not owe to any sinister origins, but may simply be an elite manifestation of what we uncovered in the mass sample.

Ole R. Holsti (1979) argued persuasively in his presidential address to the International Studies Association that the postwar consensus about the appropriate role of the United States in world affairs was a casualty of the Vietnam War. Holsti's argument is supported by empirical work on American elite attitudes undertaken with James N. Rosenau (1979a, 1979b, 1980, 1981 a, 1981 b), analyses that undergird Holsti's metaphori-

AUTHORS' NOTE: This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant SES-8014984. The data analyzed were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), were gathered under the sponsorship of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, and are described in

INTERNATIONAL, STUDIES QUARTERL.Y, Vol. 25 No. 4, December 1981 601-631 ) 1981 I.S.A.

601



602 INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

cal description of American attitudes as a three-headed eagle: cold war internationalists, post-cold war internationalists, and isolationists. This description bears striking resemblance to the attitude structure Mandelbaum and Schneider (1979) discerned in a study of mass publics: conservative internationalists, liberal internationalists, and noninternationalists.

Wittkopf (1981), critiquing and extending Bardes and Olden- dick's (1978) analysis, found an even more pronounced bidimensional structure. As in the work of Mandelbaum and Schneider, the four cells of this joint distribution indicate that nonelites evaluate not simply whether the nation should be involved in international affairs, but also how it ought to pursue that role.

The upshot of these analyses is that it is no longer appropriate to think of American attitudes as arrayed along a single, internationalist-isolationist continuum. Instead, the cleavages in American society regarding the nation's appropriate role in world affairs have become more complex, and Vietnam appears to have been the experience precipitating the emergence of a new structure of attitudes.

The purposes of this article are to elaborate on Wittkopfs earlier conclusions by (1) exploring the conceptual foundations underlying mass attitudes toward foreign policy; (2) validating the fourfold attitude typology derived from a bidimensional structuring of traditional foreign policy issues; and (3) examining the political and socioeconomic correlates of mass attitudes toward traditional issues using multivariate techniques. Finally, its purpose is (4) to determine whether mass attitudes toward nontraditional foreign policy issues can be reincorporated into the bidimensional structure of traditional issues by controlling for contextual variables.

Rielly (1975). Neither the original collector of the data, the National Science Foundation, nor the ICPSR bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations reported here. We would like to thank Leroy N. Rieselbach and the anonymous reviewers of this quarterly for their helpful suggestions. An earlier version of the article was delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, November 6-8, 1980.



Maggiotto, Wittkopf / AMERICAN ATTITUDES 603

Dimensional Expectations

That the American public structures its attitudes toward foreign policy in a reasonable fashion is no longer arguable. Numerous works confirm this (Bennett, 1974; Gamson and Modigliani, 1969; Modigliani, 1972; Patchen, 1970; Rogers et al., 1967; Verba et al., 1967). The question now centers on the form of this structure.

Converse's (1964) pioneering work on domestic and foreign affairs belief systems placed a premium on unidimensionality, conforming to a liberal-conservative axis to orient beliefs about issues. Those capable of such extreme parsimony were lauded as ideologues. They manifested "structural consistency" (or what Converse called "constraint") in their world views, thus allowing an analyst to predict attitudes on one issue from knowledge of and about attitudes on another. Not surprisingly, few ideologues were found. Stokes (1966), however, raised a fundamental question: Was the absence of coherent belief systems in mass publics due to a nonideological or atheoretical approach by citizens, or was it due to the inherent nature of the issues themselves and to the criterion of judgment? Later, investigators questioned the value of parsimony itself (Marcus et al., 1974) and, at the individual level, the applicability of any single ideological dimension (Barton and Parsons, 1977). Stimson (1975) provided some reconciliation among these competing models by demon- strating the existence of a bidimensional structure (relative parsimony), at least among the better educated.

Analogous studies in the foreign policy area suggest the same intellectual tensions. A consensus rejecting the continued utility of the internationalist-isolationist dimension as the single, defini- tive axis now seems to exist. What persists is disagreement on the degree of parsimony evident in beliefs about foreign affairs. On one hand, Bardes and Oldendick (1978, 1980) argue for a relatively complex multidimensional structure. They wrote (1978: 502), in summarizing their findings, that

involvement is not the sole continuum along which foreign policy views are arrayed. Militarism, alliance building, disengagement




and humanitarianism all represent distinct, substantive dimensions for structuring opinions on international affairs. Consider- ing the prevailing view of public attitudes on foreign policy, the presence of five interpretable dimensions is a significant finding. Even though the analysis of a large number of items increases the probability of discovering multiple factors, the five dimensions found here are well organized and meaningful in the context of U.S. foreign policy. Clearly, public attitudes toward international affairs cannot be described as unidimensional. The complex issues of foreign policy . . . elicit responses grounded in several dimensions rather than linked to a single internationalism continuum.

Hughes (1978), on the other hand (see also Russett and Hanson 1975; and Mandelbaum and Schneider, 1979), has noted that it may still be appropriate to think in internationalist-isolationist terms, but has argued for distinguishing military from nonmili- tary instruments of policy. Vietnam is viewed as the catalyst precipitating such a two-dimensional phenomenon; this experience had the effect of realigning attitudes toward domestic liberalisnm and external involvement in a manner consistent with what one might expect from a well-ordered belief system. Wittkopfs (1981) earlier findings fall between these extremes: A multidimensional structure captures the range of public attitudes toward foreign policy matters broadly defined, whereas a tri- dimensional structure depicts attitudes toward issues approxi- mating those described by Bardes and Oldendick as "policy issues."

Perhaps conceptually we can reconcile these seemingly contradictory empirical findings as they relate to American foreign policy by distinguishing between "easy" and "hard" issues (Carmines and Stimson, 1980: 80). Easy issues are those that elicit "gut responses" rather than reasoned analyses. They tend to be "symbolic rather than technical," to "deal with policy ends [rather] than means," and to have been "long on the political agenda." Hard issues, on the other hand, are often new and complexly related to long-standing concerns. For example, we might conceive of the proposition that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted




subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures" as an easy issue, but the proposal to achieve this end through covert activities against a popularly elected regime in Chile as a hard issue.

Easy issues are thus more traditional in nature; hard issues are nontraditional. As affirmed in the research reported below, such reasoning facilitates an understanding of otherwise seemingly contradictory findings; in effect, by combining issues concep- tualized as both easy and hard, one should expect more qualifica- tions about the nature of foreign policy belief systems than by concentrating on traditional issues alone. Furthermore, we will show that easy (traditional) foreign policy issues are ordered in a bidimensional fashion, and that hard (nontraditional) foreign policy issues are not yet fully incorporated into this framework.

The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes

To define the structure of foreign policy attitudes among Americans, we used the Louis Harris survey conducted for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) in late 1974. The survey was a national probability sample containing 1513 respondents. Over 200 questions specifically designed to elicit responses to common underlying dimensions were isolated, numerical codes were assigned to the responses, and these were summed to create Likert-type scales. The aim was twofold: to use as much of the intended richness of the data as possible, and to avoid the inherent instability of single-indicator measures of underlying constructs (Kritzer, 1978). 1

1. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the reliability of the scales. We set the level at which we were willing to accept the reliability of each at alpha =.7. Items were deleted from each scale if they unduly depressed the value of alpha. In only a few cases was it impossible to reach this level of reliability through the elimination of nonscale items. Of the 234 items examined initially, only 35 were eliminated from the final 22 scales. The alpha level and number of items for each scale are reported in Table 1. Additional information about the scales is available from the authors on request.




TABLE 1 Classification of Foreign Policy Attitude Scales into Issue Categories

"kasy" Issuies "Hard " Issuies A tteistiveriess Measuires

DETENTE: Closer ties between VILTNAM: In Vietnam American IlOLLOWNLWS: I (respondent) the United States and the Soviet power was applied inadequately follow news about international Union are desirable (9, .84). (8, .69). at'fairs closely ( I 1, .90).

ACTIVECOOPERATION: The IMPACTFP: American foreign INTElRlST: I (respondent) ant United States should pursue policy has a major domestic im- very interested in reading news- an active role in world affairs, pact (9, .82). paper articles relating to the attempting to mold the course USNOTDEPLND: The United local, state, national, and inter- of international events, but States is not heavily dependent national scenes (5, .79). with an emphasis on coopera- on the rest of the world (7, .75). tive ties with other nations (7, .54). WORLDNOTDE'PE'ND: The rest

of the world is not heavily de- JUSTII:IED Regardless of con- pendent on tlte United States sistency with American prin- (9,n.71). ciples, the United States is justified in dealing with other SACRIIFICE: Personal sacrifices nations if there is an advantage can be endured so as to help to the United States (4, .72). others abroad or to reduce

American dependence on POWER: The United States can forign s esesources

go it alone in world affairs; it ( 18, .76). need not cooperate with other (18, .76).

nations (6, .65). LXPANDI:I.DS: Present' fiederal programs ought to be expanded USRELATIONS: In terms of the (9, .60).

interests of the United States, it is important that the U.S. RELIABELL: News sources tend maintain good relations with to be reliable (9, .82). as many countries and regions PLURALISMIS: A multitude ot' as possible (7, .92). institutions play an important

LEADER: It is important that role in determining American the United States be a world foreign policy (9, .72). leader in a broad range of PLURALISMBE: A multitude of security and nonsecurity issue institutions should play a more areas (10, .76). important role in determining

USGOALS: The goals of Ameri- American foreign policy tItan can foreign policy should en- they now do (7, .68). compass a wide range of security and nonsecurity issue areas (18, .86).

MIELINVOLVE: Numerous sit- uations might justify United States military involvement abroad, including the use of' American troops ( 12, .87).

COMMUNIST: The larger the number of nations or regions that become comntunist, the more threatened would be American interests (6, .90).

E CONOMICAID: F:oreign economic aid should be supported because of its multiple benefits (9, .14).

MILITARYAID: Military aid should be supported because of its multiple benefits (9, .7 3).

NOTE: Each attitude scale is identified by an acronym followed by a simple assertion that summarizes the scale. Respondents were given a lower numerical score the more strongly they agreed with the assertion, and a higher numerical score the more strongly they disagreed with it. The numbers in parentheses are respectively the numbers of the items forming the scale and Cronbach's alpha for the scale, which measures its reliability.




Table I classifies the scales into one of three groups. The first comprises eleven scales made up of items measuring more or less traditional foreign policy issues, such as the importance of the United States in world affairs, the utility of foreign aid, the threat of communism, support for the use of American troops abroad, and support for reaching accommodations with the Soviet Union.

The second group consists of nine scales encompassing nontraditional items, which tap opinions regarding such issues as the "lessons" of Vietnam, the domestic impact of foreign policy, American dependence on the world and its dependence on the United States, and the importance of various foreign policy- making institutions. These scales are more appropriately thought of as encompassing "hard" than "easy" issues, since most items constituting them relate to phenomena that were relatively novel at the time of the CCFR's survey. Responses to questions about American policy-making institutions, for example, are likely to have been informed by the Watergate affair and Nixon's resigna- tion, which occurred only a few months before the survey was taken. Similarly, the Paris peace agreement on Vietnam was less than a year old and American troops were still involved in the Southeast Asian War.2 Also, the full impact of the fourfold increase in the price of oil effected by the OPEC cartel in the winter of 1973-1974 was still to be felt. The scale measuring attitudes toward the expansion of federal programs (EXPAND- FEDS) is one scale that might have been classified differently; but we regard it as a hard issue, since seven of its nine items relate to nonforeign policy programs.

The third group contains only two scales (FOLLOWNEWS and INTEREST), which measure attentiveness to and levels of interest in foreign affairs.

2. Carmines and Stimson (1980: 80-81) distinguish between easy and hard issues in attempting to explain issue voting in the American electorate. They argue that Vietnam is a clear illustration of a hard issue, since, among other reasons, the issue was "muddled" in 1968 ("war and peace are simple enough ends, but the major party candidates did not offer that choice"), while in 1972 the withdrawal issue as presented "was pragmatic, not symbolic. It dealt with the best means of ending the war, but with nearly universal agreement on the ultimate end. And it was an issue of relatively brief duration. ..."




Previously, a principal components analysis (using Pearson's r and pairwise deletion of missing data) of the twenty substantive foreign policy scales measuring easy and hard issues yielded a multidimensional model akin in structure, if not always in precise content, to Bardes and Oldendick's (1978). The two most important dimensions derived from the combination of easy and hard issues can be labeled (1) cooperative internationalism and (2) militant internationalism. The four remaining dimensions reflect attitudes regarding (3) satisfaction with American policy- making institutions, (4) the importance of U.S. relations with other nations, (5)foreign aid as an instrument of policy, and (6) a need to reorient American policy and policy-making institutions.3

If attention is confined to the eleven traditional scales, the factor solution produces three dimensions. Once again, cooperative and militant internationalism emerge as the first two factors. The third is a specific foreign aid factor consisting of the two scales that reflect relatively narrow substantive issues of aid.4 Dropping the two aid scales forming the specific aid factor and refactoring the nine scales that cut across broad, traditional

Because Carmines and Stimson are concerned with issue voting, they argue that easy and hard issues can be distinguished empirically on the basis of the level of political information possessed by the voter. We are unable to make such a test here, largely because we are dealing with attitudes rather than voters' choices, but also because we have no "independent" measure (such as a candidate's position on an issue) against which to measure a survey respondent's level of political information. We nevertheless find the distinction between easy and hard issues useful conceptually as a way of distinguishing among disparate survey items and helping to explain empirical results that otherwise differ substantially from most traditional views of American public opinion toward foreign policy.

In this connection, we should note that "time on the agenda" as a principal criterion for determining hard issues is not meant to imply that the questions themselves may never have been asked (indeed, Carmines and Stimson note that all issues contain easy and hard elements). Rather, it is meant to suggest that the circumstances giving rise to their placement on a national survey seem to reflect, in our view, unusual or changed circumstances. The responses are therefore more likely to evoke reasoned analyses than gut reactions. One possible indication of this view is the fact that the response rate(that is, respondents with nonmissingdata) is, on the average, 15% lower on the nine-scale measure of hard issues compared to the eleven measuring easy issues.

3. These results are displayed in their entirety in Wittkopf (1981). 4. The foreign aid factor accounted for only 9.6% of the common variance in the

unrotated factor matrix. Substantively, that the aid scales did not load with the other traditional foreign policy scales suggests that attitudes toward foreign aid are not intimately associated with other types of internationalist attitudes. See Wittkopf (1979) for an elaboration of this reasoning.




TABLE 2 The Dimne nsionality of Attittides Toward Foreign Policy;'

Orthlogonally

Unirotated Rotated Factorsb Factol'S Coo era tile illilitan t

Iwter- 1nter- I HII /1 ijatiolali1sM 11atiOiialisfin

DETENTE .59 -.44 .54 .74 -.04

ACTIVECOOPERATION .66 -.27 .51 .70 . 13

JUSTIIIED .51 -.47 .58 .68 -.11

POWER -.57 .19 .36 -.58 -.15

USRELATIONS .60 .10 .37 .45 .41

LEADER .49 .56 .55 .11 .74

USGOALS .64 .39 .56 .3 2 .68

NIILINVOLVE .33 .54 .41 -.02 .64

COMIMIUNIST .03 .71 .51 -.36 .61

a. Unities entered in the main diagonal. Loatdings equal to or greater thlani an absolute value of .40 are underscored. All loadings are rounded to two places. b. Varimax rotation. Only factors with eigenvalues greater than or equal to 1.0 have been rotated.

foreign policy concerns produced a factor solution in two dimensions: cooperative internationalism and militant internationalism (Table 2).

Unlike the unidimensional continuum traditionally used to characterize American attitudes toward foreign policy, the results displayed in Table 2 indicate a bifurcation of the postwar internationalist posture of the American people. They suggest an erosion of the consensus about America's role in the world upon which most of its post-World War II foreign policy has been built, thus lending credence to Mandelbaum and Schneider's (1979: 41) argument that "it is appropriate to think of foreign policy attitudes as arrayed along two dimensions, an internationalist- isolationist dimension (whether the United States should play an active role in world affairs) and a cross-cutting liberal conservative dimension (what kind of role it should play)." The results are




also consistent with Holsti's (1979) metaphor of the three-headed eagle, used to describe the domestic cleavages regarding Ameri- can foreign policy that have emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War.

The two internationalism dimensions are distinguished pri- marily in terms of Americans' views of the Soviet Union and the role of military force. As summarized in Table 2, respondents scoring highest on the cooperative internationalism dimension are likely to support detente but unlikely to see communism as a threat to the United States. They are also prone to emphasize cooperative ties with other nations (ACTIVECOOPERATION), to deprecate the view that the United States can go it alone in world affairs (POWER), and to espouse a realpolitik approach to foreign affairs (JUSTIFIED). By contrast, those scoring highest on the militant internationalism dimension are likely to see communism as a threat to American interests and to oppose detente with the Soviet Union. They are also more likely to ascribe to the view that the United States has global responsibil- ities, as suggested by their support of American leadership (LEADER) and the pursuit of foreign policy goals (USGOALS) across a broad spectrum of security and nonsecurity policy arenas. Perhaps most important, high scores on the militant internationalism dimension are more willing to support the use of American troops abroad than are those scoring highest on cooperative internationalism.

Respondents' positions on these dimensions can be used to partition the sample into four mutually exclusive categories, corresponding to the internationalist-isolationist and cross- cutting liberal-conservative dimensions suggested by Mandel- baum and Schneider. Isolationists oppose both militant and cooperative involvement in world affairs. Internationalists, in contrast, score positively on both dimensions. As the term suggests, these individuals support active American involvement in world affairs, favoring a combination of conciliatory and conflictual strategies consistent with the pre-Vietnam internationalist foreign policy paradigm.

A third group, which we have termed hardliners, consists of those scoring positively on the militant internationalism dimen-




sion (which reflects fear of communism and a willingness to use American troops abroad) but negatively on the cooperative internationalism dimension (which reflects an emphasis on cooperative links with the rest of the world). Mandelbaum and Schneider describe these people as conservative internationalists. Holsti's (1979) epithet, "cold war internationalists," seems equally applicable. Finally, we label those who score negatively on the militant internationalism dimension, but support cooperation with the rest of the world, accommodationists.5 Accom- modationists are empirical counterparts to Mandelbaum and Schneider's liberal internationalists and Holsti's "post-cold war internationalists." Thus, our opinion model suggests that while pre-Vietnam internationalists persist as identifiable counterpoints to isolationists, two other groups have emerged with a qualified commitment to foreign involvement: accommodationists and hardliners.

Figure I depicts the distribution of respondents among the four attitude types. Obviously, there is considerable variation among the individuals constituting each of the categories. Respondents would be clearly distinguished from those in adjacent categories only if they made up a vector positioned equidistant (at a 45- degree angle) from the horizontal and vertical axes defining the zero points on the two internationalism dimensions. But even then there would be differences in intensity of opinion among respondents as defined by their distance from the origin of the axes along the 45-degree lines. The overall message conveyed by

5. We have chosen this term rather than simply "pro-detente," since the cluster of attitudes extends beyond this particular policy position regarding the Soviet Union. In this context, it is interesting to note that while our choice of accommodationists was made independently of Roger Hansen's use of the same term in his book on the North-South conflict, Hansen's description of North-South "accommodationists" nevertheless applies in important ways to this cluster of respondents. As used to describe government officials, scholars, and observers of world politics who have adopted a "global agenda perspective" toward the North-South conflict, "accommodationists" include those who see "North- South relations [as] only one part of a perspective fundamentally concerned with finding that balance between order and justice which will provide for some modicum of world order in the 1980's and beyond" (Hansen, 1979: 67). Analogous views and terminology can be found in much of the literature in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy in the early to middle 1970s. See Gershman's (1980) "The Rise and Fall of the New Foreign-Policy Establishment" for a useful, if critical, summary of much of this literature.




Support Cooperative Internationalism

ACCOMMODATIONISTS INTERNATIONALISTS (27%) (30%)

Oppose Support Militant Militant

Internationalism Internationalism

ISOLATIONISTS HARDLINERS (20%) (23%)

Oppose Cooperative Internationalism

Figure 1: Dimensions of Mass Foreign Policy Attitudes: Cooperative Internation- alism Versus Militant Internationalism (N = 1063)

these findings is nevertheless clear: The American people are overwhelmingly internationalist in orientation (note that isolationists form only 20% of the sample), but they are far from united concerning the form internationalism should take.

Correlates of Typological Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy

Ideally, one should validate this typology with a set of behaviors. Construct validity is the strongest test (Lord and Norvick, 1968; Nunnally, 1967; Kerlinger, 1973). Realistically, however, such a stringent test is not possible empirically. The best compromise is a comparison of "philosophy" with attitudes toward more specific policy referents. If the fourfold typology has theoretical meaning, it should provide some ordinal pattern of relationships to responses on specific foreign policy questions.




The CCFR survey contains several questions, other than those used to construct the Likert scales, that can be used to validate the fourfold categorization of respondents. For example, respondents were asked what action, if any, the United States should take if a friendly country were attacked. As expected, internationalists generally applaud an American response that embraces the entire spectrum of policy instruments, from economic and military aid to the use of American troops. Also as expected, isolationalists shun any kind of involvement.

The interesting distinctions, however, are those between accommodationists and hardliners. Of the hardliners, 39% are willing to use the entire arsenal of policy instruments, compared to only 12% of the accommodationists. However, if the "troops and manpower" options are deleted, the proportion of accommodationists willing to support the aid option increases dramatically to 53%, while the proportion of hardliners declines marginally.

Clearly, accommodationists and hardliners evaluate the efficacy of military involvement abroad quite differently. Their divergence of opinion is underscored by responses to other items. Of the accommodationists, 72% favor economic aid, compared to 53% of the hardliners. But on the question of military aid, these proportions are markedly different: Only 14% of the accommodationists favor giving military aid to other nations, while 38% of the hardliners support this option.

Military spending generates equally sharp differences. Although more than half of all respondents favored keeping military spending "about the same as it is now," 57% of the accommodationists but only 19% of the hardliners advocated a reduction in defense spending. At the same time, a mere 3% of the accommodationists favored an expansion of spending, compared to 24% of the hardliners.

Still other questions illustrate the difference between accommodationists and hardliners on issues relating to communism and the Soviet Union, intervention in the affairs of other nations, and cooperation with them. Accommodationists, for example, are nearly evenly split on the question of whether there will be more communist countries in ten years than "today," while nearly 70%




of the hardliners subscribe to the affirmative view. Paralleling these responses, somewhat less than half of the hardliners believe it is possible to reach long-term agreements with the Soviet Union, whereas 87% of the accommodationists believe this is possible. Similarly, 81% of the accommodationists feel that American involvement in Chile was a "dark moment" in recent American history, while less than half of the hardliners shared this view.

Finally, the relatively greater cooperative and go-it-alone orientations of the two groups are reflected in responses to questions about how to deal with the oil situation. One item asked what policies should be adopted "if the United States, Western Europe, and Japan were faced with another oil embargo by the Arab states." Accommodationists were more likely than hardliners to favor sharing America's oil (61% versus 37%), while hardliners were more prone to let Western Europe and Japan fend for themselves (54% to 34%).

To recapitulate, these data validate the description of the four basic types of opinion holders among the American public, growing out of the bifurcation of attitudes toward foreign policy. Internationalists support the broad involvement characteristic of the pre-Vietnam consensus about America's role in the world, including cooperative as well as more strident American approaches to the external world. Isolationists are at the other end of the continuum, recoiling from any kind of involvement. Accommodationists embrace a strategy of selective internationalism that emphasizes cooperation among nations and opposition to military involvement and other forms of interventionism. Hardliners move in the opposite direction. They share a sense of America's global responsibility, and they are internationalists on military matters. But, perhaps because they believe communism is a threat to the United States and are skeptical about the possibility of cooperating with "the enemy," hardliners champion a go-it-alone posture toward the world, a position that distinguishes them from isolationists as well as internationalists and accommodationists.6

6. These interpretations are supported empirically by comparisons of the mean




In short, the American public does manifest structural consistency across a reasonably broad spectrum of policy issues. Thus, in a political system where the executive bears almost exclusive responsibility for taking foreign policy initiatives, we can suggest that the president can expect to find support for the broadest range of policy and program initiatives among interna- tionists; opposition to be strongest to all of them among isolationists; and support to be most selective among accommodationists and hardliners.

factor scores for each group of respondents on the cooperative and militant internationalism dimensions, as shown below. The diagonal in the table displays the mean factor score for each group on the cooperative internationalism dimension in the upper right, and the mean on militant internationalism in the lower left. The off-diagonal elements to the right show the t values between the corresponding row and column categories for cooperative internationalism; the entries to the left display the t values between groups on militant internationalism. In nine of these twelve comparisons, the difference in means is significant at p < .01. Of these, only one is somewhat-surprising: the significant difference (but in the "predicted" direction) between internationalists and accommodationists on cooperative internationalism. As expected, the difference in means for the three remaining groups is not statistically significant (between isolationists and hardliners on cooperative internationalism, and between hardliners and internationalists and between isolationists and accommodationists on militant internationalism).

Cooperative Internationalism

Militantt Isola- IJntel.- Al CC'OP71O- Intternlationtalismit tionlists Ilardlinlers ntationialists dationtists

Isolationists t = .177 t = 32.68* t = 32.60*

Hardliners t= 27.39* = 32.58* t= 32.89* -_.79

Internationalists t = 29.61* t = -- 1.17 \- -.67 t = -6.15*

Accommodationists t = 1.89 t = 31.27* t = 33.67* \ 3 .77

NOTE: Negative values indicate support for the underlying dimension. *p <.O0




Political and Demographic Correlates of Foreign Policy Attitudes

The political and socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents forming the four categories of opinion holders are illustrated in Figure 2. Respondents were placed into one of the four cells, depending on whether they supported or opposed either or both of the internationalism dimensions based on factor scores calculated for each respondent for each factor shown in Table 2.7

An earlier paper (Wittkopf, 1981) examined the individual effects of the ten factors displayed in Figure 2 on each of the twenty scales making up the sets of easy and hard issues. Political philosophy, region, education, age, and occupation were significantly related to at least half of the scales. Least important in discriminating among respondents' attitudes were size of place, party identification, and sex. Furthermore, as Figure 2 suggests, the background characteristics of respondents falling into the accommodationist and hardline quadrants correspond in many respects to those once associated with internationalist and isolationist predispositions (see Hughes, 1978). Accommodation- ists are characterized by the liberal political philosophy and generally higher socioeconomic status once associated with internationalists; hardliners are characterized by attributes once associated with those generally isolationist in orientation.

Because the political and socioeconomic background variables are neither mutually exclusive nor statistically independent, the previous analyses of the factors may obscure as much as they illuminate. To rectify this, we here use covariance analysis to determine which set of background factors best predicted respondents' position on the cooperative and militant internationalism dimensions. The "attentiveness" of respondents was controlled by using the INTEREST and FOLLOWNEWS scales as covariates. The background factors were partitioned into three sets, each

7. One-way analysis of variance tests for the two internationalism dimensions, using each of the political and socioeconomic characteristics as factors, indicate that all of the factors discriminate significantly among respondents at the .05 level (with the exception of party identification for the cooperative internationalism dimension, and size of place, income, and race for militant internationalism).



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containing those variables assumed to be most closely related to one another. The objective was to find the set of background factors that predicted respondents' position on the two interna- tionism dimensions most parsimoniously.

The first set of variables included occupation, size of place, income, education, and race; the second included occupation, size of place, income, education, and sex; the third, party identification, political philosophy, region, and age. Education emerged from the first two sets of factors as the best predictor of attitudes. It was then added to the third set of variables (among which political philosophy, region, and age were the best predictors of cooperative internationalism, and political philosophy and region of militant internationalism) to produce the results in Table 3.8

Overall, the model has little predictive capability (the R2s for cooperative and militant internationalism are .20 and .13, respectively). At the same time, the results are consistent with the usual observation that attentiveness to public affairs predicts attitudes. The more interested respondents are in reading newspaper articles relating to the local, state, national, and international scene, and the more they follow news about international affairs closely, the more likely they are to score high on the cooperative internationalism dimension. Those espousing militant internationalist attitudes are also likely to be interested in the news, but, unlike those scoring high on the cooperative dimension, they are not likely to follow news about international affairs closely.

Political philosophy, region, and education best predict respondents' attitudes toward international involvement. The mean responses (factor scores) by category (Table 3) indicate that the respondents fall among the four categories of opinion holders in nearly the same way as shown in Figure 2. Internationalists tend to be from the East and to espouse a middle-of-the-road political philosophy; hardliners are from the South, are conservatives politically, and tend to have a high school education or less;

8. Because our goal was parsimony, we set alpha = .01 as the level of probability for determining the "best" predictors. The only variable that consistently approached this level, and that therefore might have been included in our final model in place of party identification, was sex.




TABLE 3 Cova-ianice Analysis of Foreigni Policy Attitude Diiensioensa

Cooper ative Ililitant Jluter ntatioutalisiiw Inter nationalism

Soiur-ce of Variationt N Meant Beta Mecni Beta (F,) (F)

Party idenititicationi .04 .09 Republicani 176 -.11 -.1 1 Indepenidenit 267 -.14 .14 Democrat 403 -.21 -.02

(.93) (3,86)**

Political plilosoplhy .22 .26 Conservative 273 .03 -.09 Middle oftroad 359 -.1 1 -.09 Liberal 184 -.55 .16 Radical 30 -.35 1.23

(14.80)* (19.43)*

Regioni .15 .11 East 257 -.31 -.03 Soutlh 189 .09 -.15 Midwest 248 -.19 .14 West 152 -.22 .07

(7.17)* (3.64)*

Age .05 .03 18-29 251 -.25 -.03 3049 311 -.13 .01 50 and over 284 -.14 .04

(1.16) (.31)

Education .22 .11 None through eighth grade 78 .28 -.07 Some high school through graduation 409 -.06 -.09

Some college tlhrough postgraduate 359 -.40 .14

(20.30)* (5.02)*

Covaria tes INTEREST (9.15)* .12b (9.43)* .12b FOLLOWNEWS (1 1.96)* .13b (.63) _ 03b

a. Meanis are average factor scores by category atter adjusting tor the covariates and tactors. The F ratios tollowing the mieans, in parenitlheses, are based on ditterenlces among the categoric mieans. Only main ettects are shownl; nonie of thie two-way interactions is signiticant at the .01 level of probability. The interaction between political philosophy and educationi is signiticanit at the .03 level of probability. b. Raw regressioni coetficienit. Because all ot' the data were standardized prior to analysis, these coetticienits are approxnimately equal to standardized beta weights. *Statistically significant at .01 level of probability.

**Statistically significant at .05 level of probability.




accommodationists are either self-described liberals or radicals, are from the Midwest or West, and have at least some college education. The covariance analysis (Table 3) shows that the only deviation from this descriptive summary is that those with a high school education are in the internationalist, not the hardline group.

The multivariate analysis thus sharpens an understanding of the correlates of the bifurcated foreign policy attitude structure (other things being equal, age and occupation join party identification, sex, and size of dwelling place as relatively unimportant in distinguishing among respondents' foreign policy attitudes). But it has not altered (in fact, it has reinforced) the earlier conclusions implicit in the bivariate analyses: Despite the generally poor predictive quality of the multivariate model, the evidence suggesting sharp cleavages in the attitudes of the American people along political, social, and regional lines persists.

The Consistency of Foreign Policy Beliefs: From Easy to Hard Issues

What about "hard" foreign policy issues? The preceding analysis provides empirical support for a variety of other data- based and more speculative assertions that essentially make the same point: Americans no longer share a fundamental consensus about the appropriate role of the United States in world affairs. The consensus has eroded, exposing new attitudinal fissures that may preclude an easy reconstruction of bygone orientations. That hard foreign policy issues fail to conform to the bifurcated structure of attitudes toward traditional foreign policy issues reinforces the argument that a new foreign policy consensus will not be reconstructed easily. In many respects, hard issues reflect challenges to the preeminent position enjoyed by the United States in world affairs during the first quarter century following World War 11 (clearly Vietnam was such a challenge, but it was not the only one). Some also represent challenges impugning the virtue of American institutions, which in turn may have leeched




confidence in the idea of an exceptional American experience. But could it be that hard issues do in fact fit with more

traditional foreign policy concerns if we consider the same political and socioeconomic variables that pit accommodationists against hardliners? If so, then hard issues, too, could be meshed into the bidimensional foreign policy attitude structure that emerged in the 1970s. Put differently, we know that, since the scales classified as nontraditional did not fit with the bidimensional structure initially, the distinction between easy and hard issues is useful conceptually. Yet, if the American public manifests structural consistency in the foreign policy domain, and if this consistency extends beyond traditional issues, then perhaps with the introduction of controls, the association between traditional and nontraditional policy issues will be closer and more patterned than found earlier.

Table 4 shows the correlations between respondents' position on the cooperative and militant internationalism dimensions (using factor scores) and the Likert scales (using scale scores) that did not load highly with either factor dimension. Also included are the two foreign aid scales that formed a specific factor in the earlier analysis.

In several cases, the differences in both direction and strength of association between the Likert scales and the cooperative and militant internationalism factors are consistent with our previous discussion. Both foreign aid scales are positively associated with the factor dimensions, but differing perceptions of the utility of military instruments of policy are once more apparent. Those scoring high on the militant internationalism dimension are likely to believe that American power was applied inadequately in Vietnam, a view not shared by those scoring high on the cooperative internationalism dimension. Differences are also apparent in terms of the perceived domestic impact of American foreign policy and of the dependence of the United States on the world and vice versa. Perhaps these differences account for the somewhat greater willingness of those scoring high on cooperative internationalism to endure personal sacrifices to help others or to reduce American dependence on foreign sources of resources.




TABLE 4 Association Between Foreign Policy Attitude Dimensions

and Attitude Scales Classified as "Hard" Issues (Pearson's r; Ns in parentheses)

Cooperative Militan1t A ttituide Scale Internationalism Internationalism

Foreign economic aid should be supported because of its multiple .33* .26* benefits (ECONOMICAID). (1044) (1044)

Military aid should be supported because of its multiple benefits .15* .40* (MILITARYAID). (1041) (1041)

In Vietnam American power was -.02 .24* applied inadequately (VIETNAM). (1046) (1046)

American foreign policy has a major -.03 .13* domestic impact (IMPACTIP). (851) (851)

The United States is not heavily dependent on the rest of the -.22* -.03 world (USNOTDEPEND). (957) (957)

The rest of the world is not heavily dependent on the United .02 -.13* States (WORLDNOTDEPEND). (921) (921)

Personal sacrifices can be endured so as to help others abroad or to reduce American dependence on foreign sources of resources .25* .10* (SACRIFICE). (953) (953)

Present federal programs ought to .24 * .17* be expanded (EXPANDFEDS). (1040) (1040)

News sources tend to be reliable .16* .20* (RELIABLE). (761) (761)

A multitude of institutions play an important role in determining American foreign policy .11* .28* (PLURALISMIS). (838) (838)

A multitude of institutions should play a more important role in determining American foreign policy than they now do -.00 .15* (PLURALISMBE). (812) (812)

*Statistically significant at .01 level of probability.




Moderate differences are apparent across the dimensions in the willingness of respondents to expand existing federal programs. Although the association with the EXPANDFEDS scale is posi- tive for both dimensions, the somewhat stronger association for cooperative internationalism is consistent with the proposition that cooperation and militancy tap an underlying liberalism-con- servatism about foreign policy that, in the post-Vietnam period, parallels similar alignments on domestic policy.

Finally, we note moderate differences between the two dimensions for the two "pluralism" scales. The differences for PLU- RALISMIS can perhaps be explained by differences in opinion about the extent to which foreign policy is made by "elites" (those supporting cooperative internationalism think "yes," maybe because they are a part of the "elite," and those supporting militant internationalism, "no"). Those supporting militant internationalism are also more likely to subscribe to the view that more institutions should have a voice in foreign policy-making. This view perhaps reflects the fact that "negotiation" rather than "confrontation" was largely the official policy of the Nixon administration at the time the survey was taken.

An analysis of covariance design using dummy variable regression was used to test the proposition that controlling for the background characteristics of respondents would improve the fit between attitudes toward traditional and nontraditional foreign policy issues. The procedure involved regressing each of the scales described in Table 4 on a "nearly saturated" model containing all those variables previously found to account significantly for variations among respondents' position on the two internationalism dimensions together with the appropriate interaction terms.9 The covariates are the factor scores for cooperative and

9. Dummy variables were created for each of the categorical variables known to predict (at p < .01) cooperative and militant internationalism (region, education, and political philosophy), and two-way interaction terms were created for each covariate and categorical variable. Two-way interaction terms were also created for INTEREST by FOLLOWNEWS, militant internationalism by INTEREST, and cooperative internationalism by INTEREST; a three-way term was created for cooperative internationalism by INTEREST by FOLLOWNEWS. A three-way term for militant internationalism by INTEREST by FOLLOWNEWS was not included in the analysis, since we know (from Table 3) that FOLLOWNEWS does not predict significantly respondents' position on the militant internationalism dimension. By the same logic, interactions among the categorical variables were excluded.




militant internationalism. Respondents' attentiveness was also controlled by using INTEREST and FOLLOWNESS as covariates. Statistically, the hypothesis would be sustained if the multiple correlation for the nearly saturated model (adjusted for degrees of freedom) were greater than the (adjusted) correlation with only factor scores for the two internationalism dimensions as predictors. Table 5 summarizes the results. For comparative purposes, we have listed the regression coefficients for the cooperative and militant internationalism dimensions in addition to the R2s.

Clearly the hypothesis has not been sustained. The average increase in the proportion of variance explained by the saturated model compared to the two-variable model is only 3% and never exceeds 6%. Beyond this, more than half of the Likert scales are less closely associated (as measured by b) with cooperative internationalism and militant internationalism in the nearly saturated model than in the two-variable model excluding controls.'0 The only empirical support for the hypothesis is in the Likert scales, for which the saturated model distinguishes more sharply between the two internationalism dimensions than does the two-variable model (as measured by the absolute difference in the b's within each model). The discrimination is clearest for the ECONOMICAID, VIETNAM, SACRIFICE, and RELIABLE scales.

Overall, then, controlling for the background characteristics of respondents does not significantly improve our ability to predict (that is, to anticipate) how Americans' views toward cooperative and militant internationalism will translate into opinions on

10. These conclusions as well as the data in Table 5 must be approached with some caution. In the saturated model, several of the interaction terms involving the two internationalism dimensions are statistically significant. We have not attempted to summarize these findings here, however, since the overall predictive capability of the saturated model, as measured by R2, is not markedly better than the predictive capability of the model including only the two internationalism dimensions. Moreover, it should be noted that many of the variables in the saturated model are collinear. Hence cooperative and militant internationalism may be somewhat more closely related to the other Likert scales than the data in Table 5 suggest, since some of the variance may be shared with other variables in the saturated model. The regression coefficients shown in Table 5 reflect only that covariance between the Likert scales and the internationalism dimensions after controlling for the effects of any variance shared by cooperative internationalism and militant internationalism with the other dependent variables.



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nontraditional (or, in the case of foreign aid, policy-specific) issues. In short, the bifurcation of American attitudes toward American foreign policy, which appears to be firmly lodged in political and socioeconomic cleavages within the public, has not yet been translated into corresponding attitudes toward some of the more novel issues on the domestic/foreign political agenda. We suspect that this empirical fact will exacerbate the process of reconstructing a domestically viable consensus regarding the nation's appropriate world role.

Summary and Conclusions

This article has demonstrated that the American public is capable of structuring its foreign policy attitudes in a reasonably parsimonious manner. A sixfold categorization exhausts the detail incorporated in the lengthy probe of attitudes conducted in 1974. But a bidimensional focus (cooperation versus militance) orders traditional foreign policy items. Moreover, when tested against specific attitudes regarding more or less traditional foreign policy issues, reasonably consistent patterns were observed that validated the descriptions of the cooperative and militant internationalism dimensions. The analysis of the political and socioeconomic correlates of the bifurcated attitude structure also provided evidence consistent with the view that public attitudes toward foreign and domestic political issues have become more consonant with one another. Whether the United States ought to pursue an active world role remains a matter of attitudinal difference, but how that role ought to be pursued has become an important matter of opinion, with the answer often falling along the liberal-conservative fault.

In addition to parsimonious structure for easy traditional issues, the findings include an anticipated inability to order nontraditional issues neatly. That hard or nontraditional issues are not easily assimilated into our typology of opinion holders is not surprising, for the challenges to American foreign policy during the 1970s have themselves been nontraditional. Whether




and how the United States ought to pursue a world role have been joined by questions about the viability of American policy- making institutions and by a radically altered American position in the world economic structure. Hence, we must be wary of suggesting that all politically relevant phenomena can be inter- preted validly from a doctrinaire position independent of circumstances. In this sense, it is not surprising that traditional and nontraditional foreign policy issues do not cohere neatly with one another.

Even within our typology of opinion holders, we may not have captured adequately the variation forming the third head of Holsti's (1979) three-headed eagle. Our model suggests that traditional internationalism and isolationism persist, but that new forms of internationalism have emerged that must be used together with the old to describe the public's posture toward the nation's appropriate world role. Holsti effectively implies the demise of traditional internationalism and its replacement with three types of opinion holders from among those previously supportive of an internationalist posture for the United States. Hardliners and accommodationists may be empirical counterparts to Holsti's cold-war and post-cold-war internationalists. The Third head on the eagle is made up of the isolationists or, perhaps more descriptively, the "semi-isolationists." As repre- sented by individuals such as former Senator George McGovern and former Ambassador George F. Kennan, semi-isolationists differ from isolationists in that they do not completely disavow a world role for the United States. What they do espouse is a more restrained and selective role:

They recognize the existence of conflicts along both a North- South and East-West axis, but they tend to dismiss as a dangerous delusion the notion-widely accepted in the United States during the decades following the end of World War II-that there is any compelling practical or ethical imperative for the United States to be centrally involved in the amelioration of all the world's ills. Especially discriminating selectivity should be exercised in limit- ing security commitments to the "indispensable minimum,"




defined, for example, by Kennan as Western Europe, Japan, and Israel. Most importantly, there must be an awareness that just as every international problem cannot claim American paternity, so it does not necessarily have a unique or effective American solution [Holsti, 1979: 351].

We suspect that semi-isolationist values are held by those individuals sitting somewhere near the origin of the axes in Figure 1, which reflects the intersection of the jointly distributed cooperative and militant internationalist dimensions. Such individuals may move in the direction of hardliners on Iran, nearer internationalists on Japanese trade relationships, or closer to accommodationists on Mexican petroleum. But our analysis does not capture these individuals empirically, much as Holsti's arguments and related empirical analyses do not capture the persistence of traditional isolationism and the pre-Vietnam internationalism born of a synthesis of cooperative and militant predispositions.

Regardless of the precise characteristics of America's post- Vietnam views of the world, there seems little question that the pre-Vietnam consensus eroded. Our findings from the 1974 CCFR survey only point in this direction. But in doing so they reinforce the arguments of many others. Holsti and Rosenau (1979a, 1979b) have demonstrated convincingly that Vietnam itself was a primary catalyst of this erosion." Beyond Vietnam, the seeming intractability of contemporary foreign policy issues may also be germane. As James Chace (1978: 14-15) observed in commenting on the viability of anti-Sovietism as the basis for a renewed broad foreign policy consensus,

the hardest problems today-bilateral relations with the U.S.S.R., southern Africa, the Middle East, the world economy-are

11. Whether Vietnam will have a lasting impact on American society might be questioned by others. Commenting on electoral realignments, Carmines and Stimson (1980: 89) argue that "only easy issues are salient enough over a long enough period to encourage parties to provide relatively clear and simple choices.... Hard issues'.. are too complicated and too subtle to provide a basis for a major reshuffling of party supporters. While their effects on the party system may be dramatic in the short term-as Vietnam was in 1972-their long-term impact is likely to be inconsequential."




inherently dilemmas requiring the most careful balancing of forces and interests. To force them into a hard-line Soviet mold would be ineffective at best and dangerous at worse.... As we confront the foreign policy problems that bedevil us, then, consensus may indeed be hard to come by. The kind of broad consensus that obtained during the postwar era and which became a shibboleth of American foreign policy may no longer be possible to resurrect short of war. American interests are too diverse and American power now much less predominant.

From this perspective, perhaps the often vociferous debates witnessed in Congress and echoed in the 1980 presidential sweepstakes about such fundamental foreign policy issues as SALT II, the Panama Canal treaties, and Middle Eastern arms deals should have been expected. If we assume with Clausen (1973) that decision makers reflect the attitudes and values of at least the activist elements of their constituencies, and if these elements behave in a manner congruent with our findings and speculations in the aggregate, then the policy conflicts among decision makers which emerged during the 1970s may have reflected accurately the shifting issue, context, and actor specific consensus displayed by the mass of the American public. Thus, when Congress and the executive appear to have been Janus- faced in their dealings with the world community and were accused of failing to respond to similar stimuli coherently, perhaps collectively they were bearing witness to the absence of a single, underlying, coherent foreign policy philosophy.

From the vantage point of late 1981, one might be tempted to argue that the bifurcation of American attitudes documented in this article was a transitory phenomenon, one peculiar to the 1970s, which, with the receding memory of Vietnam, is more of historical than of current interest. Certainly a case can be made for this perspective on the basis of developments in public attitudes since the 1974 CCFR study (see Podhoretz, 1980; Yankelovich and Kaagan, 1981). We also suspect, however, that while one element in the opinion typology described above may be dominant at a particular time, the forces giving rise to the other typological groups have not entirely disappeared. We might




therefore anticipate a reemergence of earlier conflicts among opinion groups focused on different substantive issues.

Date of receipt of final manuscript: May 6, 1981.

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Documents

American Public Attitudes toward Foreign Policy