Motivational Bases of Foreign Policy Attitudes and Behavior: An Empirical Analysis

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Abstract
This study explores the relationship between different modes of attachment to one's country and attitudes toward foreign affairs. Rather than conceiving of national attachment in the narrow sense of emotional nationalism which characterizes a great deal of previous research, it employs the conceptual framework developed by Daniel Katz and Herbert Kelman to differentiate among various motivational orientations toward the nation-state. Four such orientations: the ideological, functional, normative, and symbolic are operationalized as variables in a survey on Danish attitudes on membership in the European Community and various other foreign policy issues. Motivational orientations are shown to be good predictors of foreign policy attitudes, particularly with respect to broad issues like international involvement and relations with the Third World. The main differences are found between ideological orientation on the one hand and the remaining orientations on the other. On some issues, the attitudes of symbolically oriented individuals also differ from what could be called the mainstream of functionally and normatively oriented persons. These patterns of motivational orientation differ markedly from those found in studies of Greek and American populations. However, they seem to support our assumption of a relationship between societal structures and levels of modernization on the one hand and motivational patterns on the other.

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