Examining Public Attitudes towards Recent Foreign Policy Issues: Britain's Involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts

Abstract

This article assesses which factors underpin public attitudes towards two recent and controversial foreign policy issues: Britain's involvement in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using data from the 2005 and 2010 British Election Studies, it undertakes a statistical examination of which sociological and political factors are related to support for and opposition to British involvement in these conflicts. It shows that attitudes are structured both by social characteristics and by beliefs and evaluations rooted in domestic politics. The former include gender, age and ethnic group, while the latter include partisanship and newspaper readership. It demonstrates the need for further investigation of foreign policy attitudes among the British public.