Unpacking the Elite–Public Foreign Policy (Dis)Connect: “Jealously Preserving” Military Neutrality in Serbia, Yet for Different Reasons?
Unpacking the Elite–Public Foreign Policy (Dis)Connect: “Jealously Preserving” Military Neutrality in Serbia, Yet for Different Reasons?

Summary/Abstract: Public opinion on foreign policy was for decades largely dismissed in international relations and foreign policy studies, typically under the assumption that it merely mirrored elite preferences. Subsequent scholarship, however, has challenged this view by documenting numerous instances of “foreign policy disconnects”, showing that public and elite attitudes diverge more frequently and persistently than initially assumed, with significant implications for policymaking. Distinguishing between preference-level (mis)alignment, understood as support for or opposition to a given policy, and belief-level (mis)alignment, which captures the reasoning behind such positions, this article seeks to unpack these disconnects, enabling a more nuanced understanding of the elite–public nexus in foreign policy. On this basis, it introduces a novel matrix of foreign policy (dis)connects, yielding four ideal types: full connect, divergent connect, convergent disconnect, and full disconnect. The framework is applied to the case of Serbia’s military neutrality, often portrayed as a stable consensus between policymakers and the public within Serbia’s multi-vector foreign and security policy. Drawing on discourse analysis of Serbia’s strategic framework since 2007 and original 2023 survey data, the article shows that while both policymakers and the public endorse neutrality, their underlying justifications diverge, with public attitudes appearing less normative and idealistic than elite narratives suggest. As a divergent connect, the case demonstrates that apparent preference alignment can obscure belief-level tensions, with such mismatches capable of both limiting and enabling policy change.

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