Foreign Policy Dimensions: A Comparison Between the United States and Sweden

Abstract

In this article we compare the structuring of citizens' attitudes on foreign policy issues in the U.S.A. and Sweden. Most of the studies in this area have been carried out on U.S. data, which have made any generalization of the findings to other states difficult. The material is the 1995 SOM study, with a sample of 2,800 individuals. Swedish citizens' foreign policy attitudes were structured along two dimensions. The first dimension showed similarities with Wittkopf's “militant internationalism” dimension; the second dimension showed similarities with Chittick, Billingsley, and Travis's “multilateralism-unilateralism” dimension. As in the United States, ideology has a high explanatory power on individuals' placement on the first dimension, but in Sweden gender and attitudes on “green issues” have some additional explanatory power. On the second dimension education has high explanatory power in both Sweden and the U.S.A., but in Sweden attitudes on “green issues” are also of importance. In the article we argue for a plausible theoretical interpretation of the Swedish foreign policy dimensions that is somewhat different from the one offered in the American case.