Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T02:37:40.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Popular Diplomacy and Policy Effectiveness: A Note on the Mechanisms and Consequences (Comment on Birn)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

J. David Singer
J. David Singer
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

While the Washington Conference of 1921–2 was not the first occasion on which public opinion had exercised an impact upon great power diplomacy, it seems to have provided one of the more dramatic illustrations of a process already well under way. In his Discourses, Machiavelli (p. 248) had already noted the dangers of building policy on the opinion of the people:

And if you propose to them anything that, upon its face, seems profitable and courageous though there be really a loss concealed under it which may involve the ruin of the republic, the multitude will ever be most easily persuaded to it. But, if the measure proposed seems doubtful and likely to cause loss, then it will be difficult to persuade the people to it, even though the benefit and welfare of the republic were concealed under it.

Type
Open Diplomacy
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 320 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adler, Selig (1957, 1966), The Isolationist Impulse. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Almond, Gabriel A. (1960), The American People and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Arthur S. ed., (1968), International Communication and the New Diplomacy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Sisley (1954), Popular Diplomacy and War. Rindge, N. H.: R. Smith Pub.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Johan (1968), Conference Diplomacy. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana.Google Scholar
Kruglak, Theodore (1962), The Two Faces of TASS. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Lee, John, ed. (1968), The Diplomatic Persuaders. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter (1915), The Stakes of Diplomacy. New York: Holt & Co.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccoló, (1940), The Prince and the Discourses. New York: Random.Google Scholar
Memoirs of Prince Metternich (1882), Vol. 5. London: Bentley. Smith, G. W., tran.Google Scholar
Murty, B. S. (1968), Propaganda and World Public Order. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nimmo, Dan (1964), Newsgathering in Washington. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Rieselbach, Leroy N. (1966), The Roots of Isolationalism. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Rosenau, James N. (1961), Public Opinion and Foreign Policy. New York: Random.Google Scholar
Singer, J. David (1969), ‘Feedback in International Conflict: Self-Correcting and Other-wise’, in Jones, Ronald G., ed., Essays in Honor ofLudwig von Bertalanffy. New York: Braziller.Google Scholar