Decisionmaking in a Glass House: Mass Media, Public Opinion, and American and European Foreign Policy in the 21st Century - Softcover

This is an excellent volume on the interactions among public attitudes, media behavior, and foreign policy. It is full of interesting insights and provocations from some of the best scholars and critics in the field, and it helps to illuminate the complex dynamics of post-Cold War media and opinion politics. -- Susan Herbst, Northwestern University Each essay is a substantive treatment of its topic. Many of the eighteen essays are valuable individually. * Contemporary Sociology * These essays . . . provide important insights and raise provocative questions that will prove essential as a foundation upon which other scholars will base their research. * American Political Science Review * A good candidate for contemporary status as a basic text from which to ponder how the broad theoretic framework of concepts identified by Hennessy has evolved in the 35 plus years since Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the White House and Nikita Krushchev was in the Kremlin. The talent pool which produced this book runs wide and deep. One is hard put to cite a chapter that isn't worthwhile, either as a datamine or for the threoretic stimulation offered, and sometimes for both the quality and clarity of evidence and theory. * International Journal Of Public Opinion Research * This excellent collection represents the state of the art in comparative studies of public opinion and foreign policy. -- Bruce Russett, Yale University

No longer preoccupied with the East-West divide, contemporary foreign policymakers now have to confront regional conflicts, peace-enforcing and humanitarian missions, and a host of other global problems and issues in areas such as trade, health, and the environment. During the Cold War a widely-shared consensus on national interest and security in the United States and western Europe affected news reporting, public opinion, and foreign policy. But with the end of this Cold War frame of reference, foreign policy making has changed. As we enter the new century, the question is how and to what extent will the new realities of the post-Cold War world as well as advances in communication technology influence news reporting, public attitudes, and, most of all, foreign policy decisions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In this volume, American and European scholars examine change and continuity in these important aspects of the foreign policy process at the beginning of the 21st century.