Ignoring public opinion: the Australian and Polish decisions to go to war in Iraq

Abstract

This article investigates why the governments of Australia and Poland decided to contribute military forces to the United States led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 when a majority of Australian and Polish citizens were opposed to national involvement in the invasion. The objective of the article is to increase understanding of the conditions under which governments ignore the public in their foreign policymaking. The article examines the explanatory power of four intervening variables: issue salience, elite debate, timing of the next election and the importance assigned to international gains by the government. On the basis of the Direct Method of Agreement, the article concludes that government perceptions of international gains and the timing of the next election were potentially necessary factors for the outcomes of the cases, while issue salience and elite debate were not necessary conditions. A distant election may, thus, provide sufficient electoral protection for a government that conducts a foreign policy to which the public is opposed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Another alternative explanation is partisan accountability. According to Bueno de Mesquita et al (2003), leaders aim to satisfy their winning coalition and not necessarily the public at large. There are, however, no data on partisanship for the Polish case. Australian data, on the other hand, shows some partisanship in that more supporters of the opposition were against the war (84 per cent), while government supporters were less negatively oriented. However, even among government supporters a majority of 55 per cent were against the war (Newspoll 2003).

² Earlier research on Australia's Iraq decision includes Sheridan (2006), O'Connor and Vucetic (2010), Cox and O'Connor (2012) and Goot and Goldsmith (2012). Previous research on Poland's decision includes Osica (2004), Zaborowski (2004), Lubecki (2005) and Wolfe and Radziszewski (2012).

³ For instance, Davis (2012) argues that, when an external threat is significant, governments are likely to ignore pacific public opinion, and vice versa. Geunwook Lee (2006) argues that South Korea's decision to support the US in the Iraq War was linked to the aim of influencing the Americans in relation to their own main focus, that is, North Korea.

⁴ The public opinion poll institute used here is the Australian-based Newspoll. These surveys were conducted on the telephone, by trained interviewers in all states of Australia and in both city and country areas. Telephone numbers and the person within the household were selected at random. The data were weighted to reflect the population distribution. More information is available at < http://www.newspoll.com.au>.

⁵ Interestingly, opinion was almost even on the day when the question was taken to Parliament and attacks were imminent (19–20 March) and even in favour of Australian participation once military action had begun (21–23 March). However, these two polling results were after the government had made the decision (17 March), so they are of less analytical value for the purposes of this article.

⁶ An earlier version of this case study was published in Doeser (2013).

⁷ According to Poland's 1997 Constitution, the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and acts as the representative of the state in its external relations with responsibility for ratifying international treaties, appointing Polish ambassadors and accrediting foreign ambassadors in Poland. However, it is the cabinet that conducts foreign policy.

⁸ Most of the survey data presented in the Polish case study are based on polls from the CBOS, which use nationwide representative 1000- or 1500-adult population random-address samples. More information about the construction of samples is provided at < http://www.cbos.pl/EN/about_us/design.php>.

⁹ Thus, at this point in time, the opposition to the war did not involve a majority. However, the opposition would increase in January 2003 (see below), and would constitute a majority of Poles in the lead-up to the war.