Description
The UK confronts a shifting security landscape, evident through the 2021 Integrated Review and its 2023 update. These highlight a desire for fresh security perspectives amid unparalleled global challenges. Yet rather than engage with the views of British publics, elite, expert policy networks have been privileged in their development. Where public opinion is used, it is through opinion polling. Yet opinion polling on national security is problematic. Such polling tends to frame ‘national security’ in quite traditional ways – focusing on the security of the state, and the use of military force, and arguably reproduces existing policy narratives on national security, as opposed to opening space to contest them. How then can we integrate public opinion into national security debates in a way that is robust and representative?
This paper endeavours to rethink how public opinion can be mobilised within national security policymaking. First, by reflecting on the current limits of public engagement, and assessing whose voices are not heard in this policy space, and second, through developing methodological approaches that 1) foreground mixed-methods approaches and qualitative methods into and alongside opinion polling development; 2) formulating open-ended questions that avoid preconceived policy biases; and 3) actively seeking the participation, and over-sampling of, marginalised communities whose security experiences and expressions may diverge from the broader UK population.
