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The aggregate changes in public opinion attitudes toward foreign policy issues in three West European countries during the cold war decades (1954-1990) are analyzed. The stability hypothesis is addressed from different angles to ascertain the amount of change in public opinion attitudes toward foreign policy issues in France, Germany, and Italy. Results reveal a low level of volatility in public opinion that corresponds with the findings for the American public. On the other hand, French, German, and Italian public opinion shows a somewhat higher level of fluctuation than in the United States. Attitudes toward NATO, the United States, and the Soviet Union closely reflect the evolution of world politics and therefore represent a reasonable reaction to international events and crises.

In several recent studies George Rabinowitz and his co-authors challenge the 'classical' spatial model of issue voting, the proximity model, by introducing a directional model. In this article we examine whether different measurement of perceived issue positions of candidates or parties leads to diverging judgments about the predictive power of the directional model (which is claimed to be empirically superior), as compared to the proximity model, using data from the USA and Germany. The results demonstrate that the measurement preferred by Rabinowitz et al. tends to bias empirical findings in favour of directional theory. If we use a more plausible operational definition of issue positions of candidates and parties the directional model in both countries fails to turn out superior.

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