Do leaders, elites, and mass media shape public opinion on issues of war and terrorism from the top down? Or, in a more bottom-up fashion, does the public cling to certain ideas and fears to which national figures and a competitive news media then pander? Cato’s Senior Fellow John Mueller has a new White Paper out today entitled Public Opinion on War and Terror: Manipulated or Manipulating? in which he makes a persuasive, and controversial, case that, contrary to common assumptions and much commentary, public opinion is not very effectively manipulated from the top down and indeed it may work in the reverse direction. From the executive summary:

Leaders, elites, and the media may put ideas on the shelf, but that doesn’t mean people will buy them. And when they do, it may often be best to conclude that the message has struck a responsive chord rather than that the public has been manipulated.

As people sort through offerings on display, they pick and choose which ideas to embrace and which threats to fear. Some ideas become salient or even go viral while others stir no interest whatever. People can accept cues from those seeking to “manipulate” them—such as public officials, party leaders, opinion elites, the media, and advertisers. They can let themselves be affected by social and group influences or identities. They can respond to facts. They can apply rough, but ready, preexisting heuristics or attitudes, or “core” or “gut” values. Or they can simply succumb to whim and caprice.

This paper, mostly applying public opinion trend data, briefly illustrates the dynamic by assessing the public reaction in the United States to three episodes: First, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, focusing particularly on the fact that anxieties about terrorism persist despite reasonable expectations that they would have waned. Second, the extensive alarm inspired in the United States by the rise in 2014 of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Third, the 2003 Iraq War, evaluating the degree to which the George W. Bush administration was able to manage public opinion before and during the war, with some comparisons with public opinion on other wars, particularly the 1991 Gulf War.

In general, it finds that the public is not very manipulable at least on such salient issues as these. Indeed, it often appears that the public is manipulating the would‐​be manipulators more than the other way around. Moreover, after the public has clearly embraced a fear or idea, leaders, elites, and the media will often find more purchase in servicing the idea than in seeking to change it.

Mueller has been publishing important scholarly work on the intersection of public opinion and national security policy since the early 1970s. As the United States, in uneven fits and starts, begins transitioning out of the post‑9/​11 hysteria, this latest contribution is highly salient, in addition to being both counter-intuitive and compelling in its central claims. Read the paper here.