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Popular Diplomacy and Policy Effectiveness: A Note on the Mechanisms and Consequences (Comment on Birn)

While the Washington Conference of 1921–2 was not the first occasion on which public opinion had exercised an impact upon great power diplomacy, it seems to have provided one of the more dramatic illustrations of a process already well under way. In his Discourses, Machiavelli (p. 248) had already noted the dangers of building policy on the opinion of the people: And if you propose to them anything that, upon its face, seems profitable and courageous though there be really a loss concealed under it which may involve the ruin of the republic, the multitude will ever be most easily persuaded to it. But, if the measure proposed seems doubtful and likely to cause loss, then it will be difficult to persuade the people to it, even though the benefit and welfare of the republic were concealed under it.