The Role of Public Opinion in the Formulation of British and French Foreign Policy, 1938-1939

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine the role of public opinion on the formulation of British and French foreign policy between the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and the outbreak of the Second World War. More specifically, it analyses how public opinion was perceived by the respective policymaking elites, and thus influenced the course of foreign policy. Therefore, rather than offering an analysis of public opinion per se, it shall examine how certain dominant tendencies of public opinion carried more weight, pervading the corridors of power, and thus assuming significance as an historical actor, contributing to the policymaking process. In so doing, a considerable gap in the existing literature will be filled. Within the abundant historiography of this period, the subject of public opinion remains relatively under-explored. More pertinently, those studies that purport to analyse public opinion rarely seek to examine the specific link between public opinion and the policymaking process. Utilising a notion of `representations', this thesis seeks to ascertain how certain dominant tendencies of opinion assumed greater potency than others, and thus had a greater impact on the policymaking elites. Differentiating between `residual' and `reactive' representations of opinion, it illustrates how elite perceptions of public opinion evolved in the crucial period between the Munich Agreement and the outbreak of war in September 1939.