Suchergebnisse

The existing literature on environmental attitudes is dominated by two theoretical frameworks: cultural and rational choice explanations. This article proposes and examines two additional explanatory models: elite opinion leadership and media diffusion explanations. Compared to the dominant models, the two hypotheses introduced in this article have received little attention in the literature. Using the 1989 Harris survey, this article seeks to explore whether and how well public environmental attitudes are determined by elite opinion leadership and media diffusion in a cross-national context. The results of multiple regressions at both aggregate and individual levels demonstrate strong and significant direct elite influence on public environmental attitudes but challenge the direct media effect views in recent public opinion research.

The idea that each modern nation has one and only one paramount newspaper and that this paper reflects the major elite position of its country is not supported.

Why are some foreign policy votes partisan and others bipartisan? The authors argue that an electoral connection drives partisanship in congressional foreign policy voting. Members of Congress depend on core supporters for mobilization and money, and primary voters are likely to follow the opinion cues of partisan elites; as a result, when Republican and Democratic opinion elites hold more distinct views on an issue, one may expect to observe more partisan behavior in Congress on both low and high-politics foreign policy issues. An empirical analysis of elite public opinion and congressional voting on foreign policy issues for six Congresses between 1975 and 1996 supports the elite opinion cleavage argument.

This article analyzes elite opinion in South Korea as it applies to China's One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR), in order to better understand how a prominent Asia-Pacific middle power and US ally is approaching this development. Through a close analysis of the writing of foreign-policy elites in South Korea from 2013 to 2017, the study finds that OBOR was generally depicted as significant to China's re-emergence in regional and global affairs, but not as wholly detrimental to South Korean interests. Elites did not speak with one voice, but presented the government with a comparatively sanguine view of OBOR. The debate, we illustrate, created unlikely alliances between left- and right-leaning elites about some aspects of the initiative, but it also revealed tensions among conservative and centrist elites. In seeking to demonstrate their relevance to policy makers, however, elites inadvertently underlined their growing distance from the general public. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

A random sample of students (N = 472) from the California Instit of Technology were surveyed by mail questionnaire in an investigation of the connection between individuals' level of information, attitudes, & opinions on specific policies. It is shown that the effect of information on opinion is mediated by relative disagreement of information with existing attitudes. Respondents (Rs) who were predisposed to oppose the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) based on their attitudes toward defense became more opposed to SDI if they had higher levels of information, while Rs predisposed to favor SDI actually increased their support given more information. 4 Tables, 18 References. Adapted from the source document.

Respondents from an elite sample who are predisposed to oppose the SDI based on their attitudes towards defense become more opposed to SDI if they have higher levels of information, while respondents predisposed to favor SDI based on their attitudes may actually increase their support given more information. (Abstract amended)