Date: Wednesday 15 June 2011

Time: 6.00-7.45pm

Venue: Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Victoria Embankment, Westminster, London SW1A 2LW

Speakers:

• Stephen Twigg MP, Shadow Foreign Office Minister
• Sir Robert Worcester DL KBE, Chair and Founder, MORI
• Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor, The Times
• Dr Graeme Davies, University of Leeds
• Dr Rob Johns, University of Essex

Chair: Hetan Shah, Chief Executive, Think Global - The Development Education Association

This Foreign Policy Centre event being held in partnership with the Universities of Essex and Leeds will provide a timely opportunity to have a discussion, in broad terms, about the relationship between UK foreign policy and public opinion, including debating questions such as:

• What factors act to influence public opinion on UK foreign policy and foreign policy issues?
• Does public opinion influence foreign policy or respond to it (or both)?
• How do the UK government and other political parties measure public opinion or 'take the temperature' of foreign policy issues? How do they respond?
• Is public opinion on foreign policy generally more or less strongly felt than on domestic policy?
• Do the UK government and other political parties pay as much attention to public opinion about foreign policy issues as they do to domestic issues? If not, why not?
• Should governments pursue foreign policies that people want or those which are in their and the country's best interests? If these two are at odds, how can and do governments and political parties respond and how successful are they in doing so?

Download Dr Rob Johns & Dr Graeme Davies' presentation (450 kilobyte PDF)