Many theories about domestic politics assume that political leaders understand what the public wants, but a new article co-authored by SIS Professor Jordan Tama in the British Journal of Political Science challenges that idea. Using surveys of nearly 5,000 foreign policy experts and over 13,000 Americans collected between 2004 and 2024, Tama and his co-authors find that elites often misread public opinion on foreign policy.

In particular, the authors show how elites tend to think the public is more isolationist and less interested in global engagement than it actually is. An additional experiment supports this finding, showing that elites also underestimate how much the public is influenced by signals from international organizations. Those who already believe the public is isolationist are the most likely to get it wrong.

Tama's study suggests that these misunderstandings come mainly from stereotypes about the public, rather than elites simply projecting their own views. This has important implications for how we study political decision-making, public opinion on foreign policy, and theories that rely on the assumption that leaders accurately understand what people want.

Read the article here.