Existing theories of foreign policy opinion formation tend to treat elites as a black-box category for members of the nonpublic. This misses important nuances in public perceptions of elites. We argue that elite vocation serves as an important source cue, signaling elite access to information and elite knowledge that can be brought to bear on that information. We use a survey experiment to evaluate our hypotheses comparing four types of elites: elected officials, academics, career professionals, and members of the media. We find that, even accounting for partisanship, people still evaluate elites as knowledgeable and credible. There are also important differences in public perceptions of elites that should be accounted for in our theories of opinion formation. These findings have important implications for the in vogue death of expertise argument as well as research on public perceptions of foreign policy and public opinion formation.

中文翻译：

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凋灵精英？精英信誉和知识在外交政策公众认知中的作用

现有的外交政策舆论形成理论倾向于将精英视为非公众成员的黑箱类别。这忽略了公众对精英的看法中的重要细微差别。我们认为，精英职业是一个重要的来源线索，表明精英可以获得信息和精英知识，这些知识可以用来影响这些信息。我们使用调查实验来评估我们的假设，比较四种类型的精英：民选官员、学者、职业专业人士和媒体成员。我们发现，即使考虑到党派之争，人们仍然认为精英知识渊博且可信。在我们的舆论形成理论中，公众对精英的看法也存在重要差异。