Public Opinion and International Intervention: Lessons from the Iraq War.

• Author: Kotok, Alan
• Position: Book review

Public Opinion and International Intervention: Lessons from the Iraq War

Review by Alan Kotok

Public Opinion and International Intervention: Lessons from the Iraq War, Edited by Richard Sobel, Peter Furia, and Bethany Barratt, Potomac Books: Dulles, VA, ISBN-13: 978-1-59797-492-9, 2012, 322 pp. $60.00 (hardcover), $29.95 (paperback)

The world rarely speaks in unison on policy issues, but public opinion outside the U.S. was almost universally opposed to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. The negative spillover from the Iraq invasion affected broader attitudes towards U.S. global leadership for the next several years, presenting challenges for American diplomacy worldwide, both public and traditional.

A new book--edited by Richard Sobel of Northwestern University, Peter Furia at University of Virginia, and Roosevelt University's Bethany Barratt--presents essays by social scientists on the ground in 12 democracies that examine how opinions about the war in Iraq affected policies of those governments. While the book's contributors look for empirical connections between public opinion and government actions and consequences, public diplomacy practitioners can find lessons in the the essays as well.

The book covers six countries that took part in the invasion of Iraq or the occupation that followed, and six countries that chose not to take part:

Participants: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Netherlands, and Japan Non-participants: Germany, France, Mexico, India, Turkey, and Canada

For each country, the essay authors addressed five questions:

[left arrow] Did the government's initial decision about whether or not to participate in the Iraq War reflect societal opinions?

[left arrow] How did domestic institutional constraints and electoral politics affect the way in which governments presented their decisions to domestic audiences?

[left arrow] How, if at all, has public opinion about Iraq itself changed?

[left arrow] How, if at all, has the country's policy in regard to Iraq itself changed?

[left arrow] Has a government's policy decisions about the Iraq War had any positive or negative electoral consequences?

Fortunately, the authors of each chapter used the five questions as guidelines and not as a cookie-cutter template, which gives each essay a unique quality. In general, those countries taking part in the coalition forces made for more interesting stories, since the dynamics between public opinion and government policies or...