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Building on recent efforts to bridge the elites/events dichotomy in the wartime opinion literature, we test the explanatory power of, and offer a theoretical extension to, the elasticity of reality hypothesis using the case of British support for the war in Afghanistan from 2001 through 2010. Marshaling an array of aggregate, individual-level and experimental survey data, as well as an original database of 2677 content-coded newspaper articles, we find evidence that the unshaken elite consensus behind the Afghan campaign failed to sustain strong support for war, even among the most politically engaged segments of the British public. However, we do find evidence that elites retained a measure of influence over citizens’ prospective attitudes about the war’s future conduct, even as they were unable to influence more general and retrospective assessments of Britain’s involvement in the conflict.
In stark contrast to theories of elite opinion leadership, a cross-partisan elite consensus failed to maintain strong public support among Britons for the war in Afghanistan.
We argue that elites are better able to influence the public’s prospective policy preferences for war, even when they cannot shape the public’s retrospective assessments.
Analyses of aggregate and individual-level public opinion data are consistent with our argument.
An original survey experiment confirms the capacity of British elites to influence public’s willingness to stay the course in Afghanistan.
