Foreign Policy and Public Opinion: Government Strategies to Sway and Control Public Opinion in the Face of Its Internationalization

The end of the Cold War, the proliferation of opinion polls and the ever-increasing media coverage of international current events are recent developments that have profoundly altered the impact of public opinion on foreign policymaking. A look at government practices in this domain since the early 1990s shows a mounting concern among policymakers for current public opinion, sometimes even beyond their national borders. It also reveals government measures to influence and control, to harness, “spin” or censure the expression of the various currents that compose public opinion. Indeed, veritable communication strategies have become an essential ingredient of the secret calculations that hitherto formed the core of foreign policymaking. The Hobbesian gladiator has entered the mass media arena in search of electoral support, arguments for international negotiations or an extra dollop of power. But he implicitly acknowledges that public opinion, with its penchant for transnational solidarities, has become an established contender: so he must relinquish his erstwhile monopoly on foreign policymaking.