There is a strongly held view that public opinion and foreign policy don't mix. According to this view, public opinion is too unstable and ill-informed to be able to deal with the remote and complex issues which arise in the international arena. Consequently, issues of peace and war are best left to the diplomats, the statesmen and the generals.
This piece of conventional wisdom has been challenged by those who claim that public opinion on foreign policy responds rationally to international events; some have even argued that public opinion is a factor in a seismic change which is already under way and in which the spread of democracy will guarantee international peace.
The war against Yugoslavia poses problems for both of these perspectives.
First, and most obvious, Yugoslavia is not a democracy and, under Milosevic, it poses all the old problems of what democracies should do when confronted with dictatorships and whether public opinion will support what needs to be done.
Secondly, whatever it is this war is not remote. Daily and nightly reports bring the issues painfully home.
A feeling of being caught between a rock and a hard place might well describe the reaction not only of Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs but of the Irish public in the face of NATO's campaign.
On the basic issue of, as the question put it, "the NATO military action in Serbia", Irish public opinion is split down the middle: 46 per cent support this action, 42 per cent oppose it and 12 per cent don't know.
The split in public opinion is almost identical on the question of the use of ground forces in Kosovo. The fact that the IMS/Sunday Independent poll, using a differently-worded question, came up with very similar results on the NATO bombing campaign reinforces the conclusion that, collectively, Irish public opinion finds this a hard issue.
This stalemate in public opinion holds across most sectors of Irish society, with one major exception - gender. Irish men clearly support the NATO action (57 per cent support); Irish women clearly do not (only 37 per cent support). The size of the difference is striking in a society which has up to now shown very little differentiation in political preference between the sexes.
It is worth noting some broad contrasts with the results of polls taken at different times in a number of European countries using various questions.
A comparison over a fair cross-section of European countries, including some countries in central and eastern Europe, shows that, on the basic issue of support for or opposition to the NATO campaign, Irish public opinion is out of step. In all but two of 10 countries for which data were readily available, clear majorities supported the NATO action. The exceptions were the two neutrals among the 10, Sweden and Ireland.
The Swedish data go back to close to the beginning of the bombing campaign and show that Swedish public opinion was divided three ways, though with a plurality against: 39 per cent thought it was wrong, 34 per cent thought it was right, and 27 per cent did not know.
On the other hand, and unlike the Irish case, more recent Swedish data show strong support for sending NATO ground troops into Kosovo.
While Irish public opinion may be out of line, there is one constant which seems to hold across all countries, namely the difference between men and women. Whether this is genetic or cultural, perennial or rooted in the feminist politicisation of women is hard to say.
What is clear is that political leaders anxious about public support for their foreign policy need to tailor their message to persuade this large and increasingly vocal constituency.
Persuasion is particularly important in a political system which is prone to referendums. Ireland would appear to be on the way to becoming such a system, at least on major foreign policy changes. Indeed, the Taoiseach has contributed to this momentum when, as leader of the opposition, he argued that any proposals for a closer association with NATO "must be put to the people in a referendum before any decision is taken" and when he looked for a "cast-iron" pledge from the then government in this regard.
Given this background, there can be little argument about the relevance of public opinion to foreign and defence policy in Ireland; such relevance is a fact of life. Moreover, it would appear from the Irish Times/MRBI poll that this is the way the people want it.
Respondents in the survey were asked: Should there or should there not be a referendum on the issue of Ireland joining the NATO-led Partnership for Peace programme? A very substantial majority said yes: 71 per cent in favour of a referendum, 18 per cent against and 11 per cent don't know. And support for holding a referendum is as high in the Taoiseach's own party.
And how would the Irish people vote in such a referendum? Current indications are that they would vote yes. Following a brief reference to the fact that there are various ways in which neutral and non-neutral states in Europe co-operate in the military field, respondents were asked whether they "agreed or disagreed that Ireland should be prepared to join the NATO-led Partnership for Peace to engage in joint peacekeeping exercises?" Sixty-two per cent said yes, 25 per cent said no and 13 per cent had no opinion.
Allowing for differences in question wording, the underlying distribution of opinion was very similar in last Sunday's Sunday Independent/IMS Poll.
The Irish Times/MRBI question was asked in the very same format in September 1996. Support for PfP has slipped somewhat in the meantime; in 1996 it was 77 per cent. Presumably this slippage has been due to NATO's recent controversial role in the Balkans, though one cannot be sure.
What one can be sure of is that a lot of people differentiate between their attitude to current NATO policies and their attitude to a limited association with NATO in PfP. Further analysis shows that the bulk of those who oppose the NATO bombing are still in favour of joining PfP (53 per cent yes to 24 per cent no)
Whether current levels of support for PfP would survive the vicissitudes of a referendum campaign is another matter. Given the recent experience with the referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty, there must be a question mark over whether the reality of a referendum would live up to the promise and whether, indeed, popular enthusiasm for a referendum would survive another anodyne campaign.
In any event, if complex issues are to be decided in this way, we need to ensure that the referendum process can deliver not so much the "right answer" as a valid answer.
Prof Richard Sinnott is director of the Centre for European Economic and Public Affairs at UCD