International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis

. . . this is an excellent book, one that belongs on a short list of indispensable recent books on public opinion and foreign policy. . . . * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *
In this highly original volume, Richard Sobel and Eric Shiraev advance research and theory in the study of public opinion and foreign policy. International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis is unique in that it tracks a single foreign policy crisis across different countries. Following Ole Holsti's apt advice, the contributors use cross-national data and other evidence to look at the extent to which public opinion influenced foreign policy in a critical case. Editors Sobel and Shiraev offer a necessarily complex theoretical framework, befitting the complexities of the different forms of contemporary democratic politics and the foreign policies that have to be wrestled with, which they, their contributors, and others of us will want to debate, criticize, and build upon or alter. In doing this we can attempt both to advance political science theory and to improve our understanding of real-world politics and, ideally, to provide guidance as nations individually and interactively confront new crises and wars. -- Robert Y. Shapiro, Columbia University