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American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy after September 11: The Iraq War

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Public Participation in Foreign Policy

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Abstract

Having entered into its ninth year in March 2011, the Iraq War is now America’s fourth longest war, behind only the Revolutionary War and the conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and exceeding in length even the Civil War and the Second World War. It has also established a record in another significant respect; it has generated far more surveys of public attitudes than any previous conflict. John Mueller (1994) described the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq as ‘the mother of all polling events’, but it has long since relinquished that title to the conflict that began with the invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003. Although the United States has played by far the most important role in Iraq, the war has also become the topic of vast numbers of surveys in scores of other countries (some of the vast numbers of surveys are summarized in Kohut and Stokes, 2006; Holsti, 2008; Katzenstein and Keohane, 2006).

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Authors
  1. Ole R. Holsti
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Otago, New Zealand

    James Headley (Senior Lecturer in Politics), Andreas Reitzig Ph.D.  & Joe Burton B.Sc.Econ.M.Int.St. (Degree in International Relations, Masters degree in International Studies) (Senior Lecturer in Politics),  &  (Degree in International Relations, Masters degree in International Studies)

  2. Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

    Joe Burton B.Sc.Econ.M.Int.St. (Degree in International Relations, Masters degree in International Studies) (Degree in International Relations, Masters degree in International Studies)

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© 2012 Ole R. Holsti

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Holsti, O.R. (2012). American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy after September 11: The Iraq War. In: Headley, J., Reitzig, A., Burton, J. (eds) Public Participation in Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230367180_3

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