On the Foreign Policy Beliefs of the American People: A Critique and Some Evidence

Abstract

A reconceptualization of Holsti and Rosenau's three-headed eagle is proposed which locates the categories of Americans' foreign policy beliefs they posit along two empirically derived attitude dimensions described as cooperative and militant internationalism. The reconceptualization incorporates differences between unilateralist and multilateralist preferences, argued by Holsti and Rosenau to presage a fourth head on the eagle. Drawing on the quadrennial foreign policy surveys sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the hypothesized emergence of unilateralist and multilateralist preferences is probed empirically, and comparisons across time and between elites and masses are made based on the typology of Americans' foreign policy beliefs derived from the two internationalism dimensions, as described by the labels accommodationists, hardliners, internationalists, and isolationists.