The role of ideology and political sophistication in the structure of foreign policy attitudes

Abstract

Public opinion researchers have long believed that Americans' attitudes on foreign policy issues fail to demonstrate the level of structure and stability that is present in attitudes on domestic issues. Several recent studies have challenged this view, claiming that mass orientations toward foreign policy are coherent and rational but are structured differently than attitudes on other issues. Using data from the 1984 and 1988 American National Election Studies, I find that some members of the public evaluate foreign policy issues using the same ideological yardsticks as they do for domestic issues, while others exhibit less structured evaluations of both issue areas. I conclude that arguments suggesting that foreign policy attitudes have a unique organizational structure are unnecessarily complex. A more parsimonious model provides a similar degree of explanatory power and accounts for foreign and domestic policy attitudes equally well.