Public Opinion and British Foreign Policy Since 1945: Research in Progress?

Michael Biddis , The Age of the Masses: Ideas and Society in Europe since 1870 ( Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977).

See Hugh Thomas , The Suez Affair (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967).

The sociology of the CND is discussed in A.J.R. Groom , British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons (London: Francis Pinter, 1974), pp.326-465.

K.J. Lieber , British Politics and European Unity : Parties, Elites and Pressure-Groups (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

E. Windrich , Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (London : Croom Helm, 1978), and Alan Sked and Chris Cook , Post-War Britain: A Political History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).

D.C. Watt , Britain Looks to Germany: A Study of British Opinion and Policy Towards Germany since 1945 (London: Oswald Wolff , 1965), p.146.

F.S. Northedge , Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy 1945-78 (London : George Allen and Unwin, 1974), see especially Chapter 12.

J. Frankel , British Foreign Policy 1945-73 (London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1975), pp.39-46.

K. Waltz , Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics : The American and British Experience (London: Longmans, 1968 ), pp. 172-173.

First coined by G. Almond in The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1950).

David Vital , The Making of British Foreign Policy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968), p.84.

James Barber , Who Makes British Foreign Policy (Milton Keynes: The Open University, 1976), p. 92, takes the view that mass opinion only constrains, though specific pressure-groups may have a more positive impact.

William Wallace , The Foreign Policy Process in Britain (London: Oxford University Press for Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1975), p.89.

R. G. Richards, Parliament and Foreign Affairs (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967).

K. Waltz , op. cit, Chapter 4; and P.G. Richards , "Parliament and the Parties" in R. Boardman and A. J. R. Groom (eds.), The Management of Britain's External Relations (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp.245-262.

For examples see Robert Mackenzie , British Political Parties (2nd Edition, London: Heinemann, 1963), and S.H. Beer , Modern British Politics: A Study of Parties and Pressure-Groups (London : Faber, 1965).

W. Wallace , op. cit, pp.90-100, and James Barber , op. cit, pp.76-88. Also see, on the Labour Party, M.R. Gordon , Conflict and Consensus in Labour's Foreign Policy 1914-55 ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), and R. Fielding , The Making of Labour's Foreign Policy (London: Fabian Tract 433, 1975).

Cited in P. Abrams , "Social Structure, Social Change, and British Foreign Policy", in Karl Kaiser and Roger Morgan (eds.) Britain and West Germany: Changing Societies and the Future of Foreign Policy (London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1971), p. 138.

Written by David Butler, with a variety of authors, for every general election since 1951, entitled The British General Election of.... (London: Macmillan).

"Polls Digest", in British Public Opinion, Autumn 1979, p.20.

F. Gannon , The British Press and Germany 1936-39 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), and Colin Seymour-Ure , "The Times and the Appeasement of Hitler" in Colin Seymour-Ure , The Political Impact of Mass Media (London: Constable , 1974), see also Colin Seymour-Ure , The Press, Politics and the Public (London: Methuen, 1968).

P. Elliot and P. Golding , "The News Media and Foreign Affairs", in R. Boardman and A. J. R. Groom , op. cit, pp.305-330.

W. Wallace , "The Rôle of Interest-Groups" in R. Boardman and A. J. R. Groom , op. cit, pp.263-288.

Chris Cook , Sources in British Political History 1900-51: Vol. I: A Guide to the archives of Selected Organisations and Societies (London: Macmillan, 1975).

A question also raised by Martis G. Steinlert in her interesting paper, "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Reflections and Suggestions of an Historian", written for the London Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research. 1975.

For example see B.C. Cohen , The Public's Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973) which deals with the United States.

These arguments are developed with reference to a particular period in C.J. Hill , The Decision-Making Process in Relation to British Foreign Policy, 1938-41 , D. Phil. Thesis at the University of Oxford, 1978.