The Press, Public Opinion, Arms Limitation, and Government Policy in Britain, 1932-34: Some Preliminary Observations

One of the least understood issues concerning interwar Britain is the connection between public opinion and the development and implementation of foreign and defence policy. And what is true generally of these crucial elements of interwar British statecraft is doubly so for perhaps their most nettled subset: disarmament. Public opinion polling did not begin in Britain till 1937; yet in 1932-34, when Britain played a leading role in the League of Nations-sponsored World Disarmament Conference, government ministers and their civil service and armed forces advisors sought to produce policy for this conference that would balance between limiting the national armoury and protecting national and Imperial security. Their reading of public opinion was crucial; but so, too, was the reading that the opposition parties and extra-parliamentary interest groups did and the subsequent pressures that they brought to bear on the government. This article offers some preliminary observations on the efficacy of using the national press as a means both of assessing public attitudes and of connecting the public debate over disarmament policy with policymaking within the British government.     

The Road to Pergau Dam: Aid Policy,Ideology, and the Thatcher Government

This analysis charts the changes in British aid policy under the Margaret Thatcher government (1979–1990). In particular, it examines the impact of so-called neo-liberal ideology in overseas development strategy in an era where “structural adjustment”—aid in return for market-based reforms—became World Bank and International Monetary Fund orthodoxy. There is some evidence to show British increases in multilateral aid during the 1980s supported a neo-liberal aid policy. Bilateral aid policy, however, demonstrated a subordination of aid to foreign policy and a pro-business—not ideologically pro-market or neo-liberal—alignment. One of the results of these structural changes was the Pergau Dam scandal at the end of the Thatcher years.     

Syria's and Lebanon's Meandering Road to Independence: The Soviet Involvement and the Anglo-French Rivalry

This article attempts to describe and examine the process of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR, Syria, and Lebanon. While it places special emphasis on the reaction of Britain and France - the hegemonic powers in the Levant, to this development, it also examines the implications of the growing French-British tension in this area on the Soviet-Syrian-Lebanese process of rapprochement. This article covers the period from mid-1944 - the beginning of the Soviet-Lebanese-Syrian diplomatic dialogue, to 1950 - the year which marked Syria's tilt towards neutralism and the powers reaction to it.     

The G7, International Terrorism and Domestic Politics: Modeling Policy Cohesion in Response to Systemic Disturbance

This work probes the variability in G7 cohesion in response to relatively new disturbances in the international system. Using a domestic politics model, we argue that G7 cohesion weakens in the face of international terrorism in the context of variable domestic consequences to common foreign policy responses to this systemic disturbance. We compare the predictions from our model with predictions stemming from neorealist and liberal/institutionalist explanations. We find that, consistent with the domestic politics explanation, G7 foreign policy cohesion declines as internal terrorism increases.