The Poll Truth

Many politicians and policy-makers like to claim that the American public has turned isolationist now that the Cold War is over. In Misreading the Public, Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (pipa) at the University of Maryland, and I. M. Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, debunk this claim. To do so they bring together a wealth of information from a variety of sources–including opinion polls, personal interviews with policy-makers, original focus groups, and PIPA surveys. In the process, the authors make a compelling argument that there is a substantial gap between some inside-the-Beltway perceptions of public opinion and what most Americans actually think.

The book opens with stark quotations from politicians and pundits asserting that Americans have turned inward–that they hate foreign aid, despise the United Nations, have no interest in humanitarian missions abroad, don't want to cooperate in international peacekeeping, and refuse to sacrifice even a single American soldier for anything other than a narrowly defined national interest.

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Kull and Destler show in convincing detail that these assertions are wrong. Among their findings: By a two to one margin Americans want their country to play an “active part” in world affairs, especially in cooperative, multilateral efforts in which other countries share the burden; there is substantial support for foreign aid aimed at humanitarian causes; people generally approve of the United Nations and want to strengthen it; most Americans favor U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations and are willing to accept some casualties for a good cause; and, though most people want to cut rather than increase military spending, there is support for a substantial defense budget as long as it is not spent on unilateral uses of force.

Of course there are complexities. Most Americans, for example, put a much higher priority on domestic rather than foreign affairs and want to cut the amount of money spent on foreign aid–especially military assistance and aid to corrupt or undemocratic countries. Though most Americans think the United States should pay its U.N. dues, they also think the international body needs administrative reforms. And while public resistance to foreign commanders and aversion to U.S. casualties is less than what is often claimed, most Americans say they would like U.S. troops to constitute a smaller fraction of peacekeeping forces.

Many of these findings confirm and extend points that are already familiar to students of public opinion. Surveys have continually shown that large majorities of Americans support the United Nations and favor cooperative, multilateral international policies. Disdain for the United Nations has mostly come from the chattering classes, not the American citizenry.

The most innovative data reported in the book go beyond what Kull and Destler call “raw” responses to standard survey questions. In their surveys, the authors probed why people hold the opinions they do and they tried to assess what Americans would favor if they were exposed to strong internationalist arguments and correct information about current policy. This type of exploration can produce some illuminating findings, but it also entails certain dangers.

On several issues, the PIPA surveys not only asked the usual sorts of questions with neutral or carefully balanced wording, but deliberately offered strongly one-sided arguments or made assertions about key facts before asking for respondents' views. The obvious danger of this procedure is that careless or tendentious presentation of the results can make it appear that people hold opinions that only the pollsters' prodding made them go along with.

For the most part, Kull and Destler avoided this danger. For example, they often presented arguments from several contending points of view and asked respondents how convincing or unconvincing they found each one. This strategy can help one assess the mushiness or solidity of public opinion. In several instances, Kull and Destler found that internationalist arguments increased expressions of support for internationalist policies, but that isolationist arguments failed to produce a similar increase in support for isolationist policies.

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“I never vote, but I'm often polled.”

The authors generally made sure that the “facts” they presented to respondents were indeed facts. But their facts were not always unproblematic. For instance, they told some respondents that 1 percent of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid. But this is correct only if expenses for U.S. armed forces based and deployed abroad are not included. (In at least one instance the PIPA pollsters carefully explained to respondents that such Defense Department spending was excluded from the definition of foreign aid.) Likewise, the figure they used to describe the U.S. share of world assistance–13 percent–refers only to development aid.

To strengthen their use of factual assertions and factual prologues, the authors often asked one random subsample of respondents only standard questions while giving another subsample new information first. This technique produced some striking differences in results. For example, though most respondents favored spending less on foreign aid, those who were told that only 1 percent of the budget was used for this purpose wanted to increase rather than decrease it.

Another strength of Kull and Destler's study is that they often directly asked people what their perception of current policy was. This resulted in some surprising findings. Asked what proportion of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid, the average respondent said 20-30 percent. And the average respondent estimated the U.S. share of world assistance to be 60 percent.

Still, when interpreting these findings it is easy to fall prey to a subtle danger: the temptation to count as “real” opinion only what respondents say after they have been straightened out with the facts. Misinformed or unrepresentative opinion can be quite real. Current public doubts about foreign aid spending–even if based on misconceptions–do have electoral consequences, unless or until those misconceptions are cleared up.

To avoid this interpretive pitfall, “informed” public opinion should be understood as hypothetical opinion that has potentially important, but contested, normative significance in a democracy. Also, it is crucial that the information provided to respondents is in fact correct, relevant, and complete–and not simply a reflection of the researcher's biases. Even then, perhaps the best arena for correcting public opinion is the forum of open public debate, not poll questions or focus groups.

One other limitation of the book should also be mentioned. To determine inside-the-Beltway views of public opinion, Kull and Destler interviewed 83 elite policy-makers. However, this is not a large number of interviews and they did not constitute a random sample of leaders. They were also conducted at a particular historical moment–during the 1995-96 Gingrichled “revolution” in Congress. This conservative wave of opinion no doubt influenced the types of responses Kull and Destler received during their interviews.

Still, many of the interviewees who expressed badly distorted views of public opinion held important positions in the media or were on congressional international relations committees. The PIPA studies undoubtedly served to educate many of them, especially those who participated in the authors' workshops. Kull and Destler repeatedly called participants to tell them survey results and get their reactions.

Special PIPA surveys showed that the constituents of four vehemently anti-U.N. House members actually supported the United Nations by large margins. In response to the surveys, the four did not simply fold up their tents and creep away. But media reports suggest that they did moderate their rhetoric a bit.

This is an outstanding study well worth reading.