A new
joint study of the Chicago Council on Foreign
Relations (CCFR) and the Program on International
Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland
finds that the American public and American leaders—including
senior Congressional staffers, administration
officials, and leaders in business, labor, media
and other areas— agree on many key foreign
policy issues, but that Congress frequently votes
contrary to this consensus. The study found American
leaders misperceive the public position on these
issues, especially when it comes to multilateral
initiatives. Congressional staffers similarly
misread their own constituents. At the same time,
most Americans mistakenly believe that Congress
as a whole and their own representative, vote
consistent with their preferences. Steven Kull,
director of PIPA comments, “What we have
found are serious gaps in the democratic process
when it comes to Congressional foreign policy.”
This study is based primarily
on surveys of 1,195 American adults and 450 American
leaders by CCFR, and 959 American adults by PIPA,
all conducted from July through September 2004.
Both public surveys were conducted by Knowledge
Networks, and the survey of foreign policy leaders
was conducted by Ipsos-Reid. The survey of leaders
included Congressional staffers and administration
officials as well as leaders in business, labor,
the media, education, religion, foreign policy
research, special interest groups, and education.
Surveys of the public and leaders conducted by
CCFR and PIPA in 2002 were also included in the
analysis.
The most consistent disconnect
between public/leader consensus and Congressional
voting was on multilateral agreements and actions.
Leaders and the public showed strong support for
multilateralism in principle, with large majorities
specifically supporting the United States generally
making foreign policy decisions within the UN,
US participation in the Kyoto Treaty on climate
change, US participation in the International
Criminal Court, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
and the treaty banning land mines—all of
which Congress has not supported. In addition,
large majorities of leaders and the public opposed
increasing defense spending and in 2002 opposed
proceeding to build a missile defense system—both
of which Congress has done. Congress has also
passed resolutions expressing strong solidarity
with Israel and criticizing the Palestinians,
while a strong majority of both leaders and the
public favors taking neither side in the conflict.
In 2002 majorities of the public and leaders favored
the United States only going to war with Iraq
with UN approval, while both houses of Congress
voted down legislation endorsing such a position.
In some cases a majority of Republican staffers’
attitudes did diverge from the general leader/public
consensus, but the majority of Congressional staffers
overall and administration officials did not,
except a bare majority (52%) of Congressional
staffers overall opposed ICC.
The study has also found that leaders, including
Congressional staffers, are unaware of the public’s
position on many of these issues. When the 450
leaders were asked what the majority public position
on these issues would be, only a minority answered
correctly on seven of the nine issues widely endorsed
by the leaders and the public.
The American public is
also apparently unaware that Congress as a whole
is voting in ways that are inconsistent with its
preferences, thus undermining public motivation
to put pressure on Congress. When Americans were
asked how they think Congress is voting on these
issues, they tended to assume, in most cases incorrectly,
that Congress as a whole was voting consistent
with their preferences.
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In addition to
asking leaders overall about the public’s
position on various issues, Congressional staffers
were also asked specifically what their own constituents’
position would be. In most cases, only minorities
of staffers correctly perceived what the majority
attitude was in their districts. Curiously, staffers
whose views were actually in accord with their
constituents tended to assume this was not the
case, while the minority of staffers whose views
were at odds with the majority of their constituents
showed a strong bias toward assuming, incorrectly,
that their constituents agreed with them.
Members of the
public were also asked how they thought their
Congressional member would vote on a number of
issues. For purposes of comparison, respondents
were divided into two groups: those whose member
voted for the legislation in question and those
whose member voted against it. Naturally, if the
public were informed about their member’s
position, the prediction of the majority in one
group about the vote would be the opposite of
the other group, in line with the actual member’s
vote. However, this was never the case. Strikingly,
there was only a very modest difference between
the perceptions of respondents whose member voted
for the legislation in question and respondents
whose member voted against it. This variation
did tend to be in the correct direction, suggesting
that at least a little information about members’
positions is getting through to the public. But
overall it appears that assumptions about how
one’s own member votes are being influenced
very little by how members do, in fact, vote.
Once again respondents’
assumptions about how their member voted were
highly correlated with respondents’ own
policy preferences. In short it appears that,
in the absence of information to the contrary,
Americans tend to assume that Congress overall
and their own member vote in ways that are consistent
with the way that they would like Congress and
their member to vote. For the foreign policy issues
explored, in most cases, this was a misperception.
For more information on the PIPA/CCFR
study see:
Report
of Findings
Questionnaire
Press
Release
More information
about CCFR
