Abstract

The notion that the public will guides and even determines public policy-making is, of course, one of the fundamental tenets of democratic theory. To the discomfort of most democratic theorists, it is also one of the most often and most convincingly challenged. Most of the available evidence amassed in recent decades suggests that the influence of public opinion on policy-making, particularly foreign policy-making, is indirect rather than direct, sporadic rather than steady, and, above all, complex rather than simple.1 The notion that the public will pervades the corridors of power, particularly those of a foreign ministry, thus appears as untenable to most observers of those corridors as the thought that the public will should pervade would be unenticing to most officials who walk them.

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