Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
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舆论与外交政策
DOI：
10.2307/587482
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发表时间：
1955
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
K. Younger
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Younger
我开始讨论这个问题时有些胆怯|在受过训练的社会学家面前，因为我对公众舆论的理解，尽管如此，是偶然的，这种不充分是社会学家认为值得尝试更系统的方法的主要原因之一。我想，我之所以来到这里，除了在下议院服务了近十年之外，我还在1950年大选和1951年大选之间的20个月里担任过外交部部长。您会同意，二十个月的时间太短，无法形成有关外交政策和公众舆论相互作用的令人信服的概括的基础。不过，我会尽力把我在任职期间的短暂经验与我从从事同一领域工作的其他人那里学到的东西联系起来。就公众舆论而言，外交政策提出的问题与国内政策完全不同。这些问题通常与普通民众关系更远，这可能是为什么对外交政策的控制往往比对国内政策的控制更长时间地保持某种寡头统治的原因。当我从内政部转到外交部时，这两个部与公众的关系以及他们所接待的代表团的性质的不同给我留下了深刻的印象。当我第一次回想起自己的经历时，我有些震惊地发现，当我或我的上司在做出重要决定时受到公众舆论的巨大影响时，我不能立即选择任何场合。我认为，在那个时期，与我们讨论最有关的问题是：英美两国对共产主义中国的政策分歧（在我到外交部之前六个星期，英国已经承认了中国人民政府）;西方国家的扩张，
tT is with some diffidence that I enter upon a discussion of this subject | before an audience of trained sociologists, for my understallding of public Xopinion, such as it is, is of the hit-or-miss variety, whose inadequacy is one of the main reasons why sociologists have thought it worth while to attempt a more systematic approach. I presume that I owe my presence here to the fact that, in addition to my service in the House of Commons for nearly ten years, I spent a period of 20 months between the General Elections of I950 and Ig5I as a Minister in the Foreign Office. Twenty months, you will agree, is too short a period to forrn the basis of convincing generalizations about the interaction of foreign policy and public opinion. I will however do my best to link my own brief experience when in office with what I have been able to learn from others operating in the same field. So far as public opinion is concerned, foreign policy presents a wholly different problem from domestic policy. The issues are usually remoter from ordinary people and this probably accounts for the fact that control of foreign policy has tended to remain somewhat oligarchic longer than control of domestic policy. When I moved from the Home Office to the Foreign Office the difference in the relationship of the two Ministnes with the public and the character of the deputations they received struck me very strongly. When I first cast my mind back upon my own experience, I was somewhat shocked to find that I could not immediately recollect any occasion when I or my superiors had been greatly affected by public opinion in reaching important decisions. The issues most relevant to our discussion which arose during that tirne were, I think, the divergence of British and American policies over Communist China (Britain had recognized the People's Government six weeks before I arrived in the Foreign Office); the expanded Western