Peruvians and the World: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

In Peru’s diplomatic circles, it is not uncommon to hear arguments that invoke the very nature of foreign policy in an attempt to justify its disengagement with public opinion. Indeed, many Peruvian diplomats believe that, in keeping with the specific rationale of foreign policies, the task of drawing these up should be left to the country’s political and economic elite. This refusal to open foreign policy up to public criticism is based primarily on the assumption that the average person has limited knowledge of international affairs and that any opinions he or she might have are the fruit of ignorance. Yet the Peru, the Americas and the World 2010 opinion poll calls this assumption into question, revealing that Peruvians are not only interested in what is happening in the world, but are demanding that their country play a more active role on the international arena. In his essay, Farid Kahhat uses the results of the aforementioned poll to debunk the premises on which Peruvian diplomats act (generally in a vacuum far removed from public opinion) and illustrate that a country’s foreign policy —in this case Peru’s— remains a public policy and therefore cannot escape the scrutiny of the public eye. By way of example, he points out that, despite having relatively little direct contact with the outside world, Peruvians are interested in global affairs and believe their nation to be important within the international system, a self-perception that is perhaps linked to Peru’s good economic performance in recent years, namely that of regions like Callao and Lima that have closer ties to the global economy.