History, Philosophy Of Public Opinion And Public Opinion .

14THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCHinformation should make the “unseen facts”intelligible to political decisions makers and“organize public opinion” for the press andthe citizenry.Such minimalist conceptions of democracyequate it with any system offering competitiveelections, often placing considerable distancebetween the decisions of governing elitesand the desires of the masses. Pluralistformulations, which became ascendant inAmerican political science in the 1950sand 1960s, accept many of the minimalists’views of citizens but emphasize the role ofintermediary interest groups and quasi-elite“issue publics” in maintaining a competitivebalance of power and providing a critical“linkage” function in tying popular wishes togovernmental decisions. Analysts includingAlmond (1950) and Key (1961) invokedthe concept of “issue publics” (or “specialpublics”) to explain how policy in democratic societies can, despite wide swaths ofinattention and ignorance in the citizenry,nevertheless respond to public opinion in afairly rational manner. It stands to reasonthat, because politics routinely gives way tomore pressing matters of family, work andrecreation, people should focus their attentionon just a few matters of the most direct interestand importance. Nonetheless, for most issuesat least a segment of the population is arousedand interested enough to learn, discuss andform opinions. Issue publics represent thesmall, policy-oriented segments within themass polity that attend to particular problems,engage their political leaders and the mediaover these issues, and demand some degreeof elite responsiveness and accountability.Elections by themselves do not ensure astable and publicly responsive democraticstate; rather, it is a multiplicity of contendingminority interests, which, in pressing theirclaims, are able to bargain for policy accommodations. Hence modern democracies, atleast those offering relatively open electoralsystems and guarantees of civil liberties thatprotect contending minority interests, are“polyarchies” (Dahl, 1971), where politicalpower is effectively disaggregated and wherespecific policies are—unlike in the elite[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex]Paper: a4Job No: 4984model proposed by Schumpeter—anchoredto popular wishes through politically activesegments of the citizenry (Held, 1996).Pluralist conceptions of disaggregated andin some sense “fairly” distributed powerin society were challenged by many. Somecritics cast the model as elevating a descriptiveaccount of contemporary Western democracies to the status of a normative theory, andin so doing enshrining the status quo. Others(e.g., Pateman, 1970) argued that social,financial and political resources, includingknowledge and efficacy, are so maldistributedin the population that many groups in societylack the ability to mobilize. Assumptionsmade by liberal theory that people are “freeand equal,” argued Pateman, do not squarewith actual social and economic disparities,which effectively undermine any formalguarantees of equal rights. True democracyrequires that such inequities be ameliorated,and that the active participation of allsegments of society be fostered in democraticinstitutions of all kinds, which must be fullyopen and publicly accountable (Barber, 1984).Participatory democratic theorists argue,drawing upon the communitarian notions ofRousseau and other “developmental republicans,” that political autonomy arises fromcollective engagement in political actionand discussion. As Dewey (1927, p. 208)had earlier proposed in rebutting Lippman’s(1922) withering attack on citizens, “theessential need [is] improvement in the methods and conditions of debate, discussion,and persuasion.” The problem, many writerssubmit, is that the mass media transformpolitics into a kind of spectator sport. Opinionpolls and popular referenda, despite theirdemocratic aims, merely amplify defectiveopinions formed without any meaningfulpublic debate. The result is a citizenryconverted into a body that consumes politicalviews disseminated by elites through themass media, rather than an autonomous,deliberating body that discovers its ownviews through conversation. The sovereign,reasoning public is displaced by a massaudience assembled around political spectacle(Mills, 1956; Habermas, 1962/1989).Donsbach: Public Opinion Research (SAGE Handbook)Page: 147–24

THE PUBLIC AND PUBLIC OPINION IN POLITICAL THEORIESThese conditions, however, are not viewedas inevitable. Were people more broadlyempowered, this line of argument runs, theywould become politically transformed: “theywould become more public-spirited, moreknowledgeable, more attentive to the interestsof others, and more probing of their owninterests” (Warren, 1992, p. 8). The actof deliberating, in many treatments (e.g.,Gutmann & Thompson, 1996) is thought tobe especially transformative: it fosters mutualrespect and trust, leads to a heightened senseof one’s value as part of an active politicalcommunity, and stimulates additional foraysinto political engagement. The presumedvalue of discussion in stimulating and engaging the citizenry has thus figured heavily inrecent proposals for revitalizing the modernelectorate. Participatory democratic theoryin general and “deliberative democracy”theories in particular have emerged in tandemwith a multi-faceted critique of contemporarysocial and political life (e.g., Fishkin, 1991).Participatory democratic theory is countered by another contemporary trend in political philosophy that draws its inspiration notfrom classical republican and communitariannotions but instead from democratic theory’sliberal foundations. Much of the emphasisin liberal democratic theory has to do withdelineating the rights of the citizen against thestate, and balancing and distributing power toavoid its untoward concentration of power inthe hands of any single actor or alignment ofactors. Proponents of legal democracy (e.g.,Hayek, 1979), who are sometimes called neoliberals, view state efforts to ameliorate socialinequities as inevitably coercive and likelyto come at the expense of individual liberty.In this view, democracy is valuable primarilyin its protection of individual liberty; andthe more expansive the state, the larger itslegislative and bureaucratic reach, the moregrave the dangers to freedom. The potentiallycoercive powers of the state must consequently be highly circumscribed by the rule oflaw. The most legitimate means of collectivechoice and—thus the basis for any genuinelyliberal society, legal democrats argue—is thefree-market; and this mechanism operates[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex]Paper: a4Job No: 498415best when unencumbered by governmentintervention and regulation (e.g., Friedman,1962).Twentieth-century models of democracyhave thus moved beyond classical notions ingrappling with ever more complex industrialand corporate societies; yet they continueto range from the highly communitarian tothe highly individualistic in their conceptionsof the public and public opinion, drawingfreely from several centuries of philosophicalinquiry. “Democratic theory is in a state offlux,” writes Held (1996, p. 231), “There arealmost as many differences among thinkerswithin each of the major strands of politicalanalysis as there are among the traditionsthemselves.” As Price (1992, p. 2) hasnoted, connecting the concepts public andopinion represented an attempt by liberaldemocratic philosophy to unite the “one” andthe “many,” to devise ways of producingcoordinated, collective action out of disparateand conflicting individual choices. It did soby turning to the idea of democracy, that is,collective decision making through discussionand debate among members of the citizenry,under conditions of openness and fairness. Yetthe particular mechanisms of decision makingproposed by democratic theorists have alwaysvaried widely.DEMOCRACY AS COLLECTIVEDECISION MAKINGA useful matrix for conceptualizing thecomplex, temporally extended process ofcollective decision making was proposed byPrice and Neijens (1997). Their matrix servesour particular purposes here by illustrating andsummarizing a very wide range of possiblecollective decision-making processes, andmyriad roles the public might play.Price and Neijens note general similaritiesbetween traditional models of the stagesthrough which public opinion develops (e.g.,in the work of Bryce, 1888) and the phasesof decision making later adopted by decisionanalysts and policy researchers. Five mainphases of collective decision making canDonsbach: Public Opinion Research (SAGE Handbook)Page: 157–24

16THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCHbe distilled. First is the process of elicitingvalues, sometimes called the “problem”stage, which involves recognizing a matterof collective worry or concern, and thenarticulating various goals thought to beimportant in addressing the issue. Next isa phase that involves developing options orproposals for resolving the problem, andsifting these down into a small set ofpotentially viable alternatives. Once thesehave been developed, decision makers turnto estimating consequences of selecting oneover another option, a task that often fallsto technical and policy experts. The fourthstage involves evaluating the alternatives,with advocates of competing options activelyengaged in persuasive appeals aimed atgarnering both public and elite support, andthe issue typically receiving broad mediaattention through news coverage and opinionpolling. This public debate ultimately leadsto the making of a decision, either throughbureaucratic or governmental action or insome cases by electoral choice.The Price and Neijens decision matrixcrosses each of these five stages with six different groups of actors in a democratic societywho may be implicated to varying degrees atany particular phase of the process: politicalElicitation ofgoals/ valuesDevelopmentof optionsleaders, technical experts, interest groups, thejournalistic community, attentive publics andmuch larger mass audiences (see Figure 1.1).Political leaders, policy experts and interestgroups comprise the political “elites,” bothwithin and outside the sphere of formalgovernment, who play active roles throughoutall phases of decision making. Members of thepress serve as critical conduits for informationand opinion exchange between these elites,their followers in attentive publics, and muchlarger mass audiences.Large-scale, democratic choices are especially complicated—due not only to theinteractive engagements of each of thesemyriad groups, but also because the processdoes not necessarily unfold in any neatlylinear fashion. It is often a rather ambiguousand politically-charged affair, far less rationalthan the formal stage-model would imply.While the model suggests that the discovery ofproblems gives rise to solutions, for example,Price and Neijens (1997) note that the entireprocess can be turned on its head wheninterest groups or political leaders adhere toideologically favored political “solutions” andmerely lie in wait opportunistically for theright “problems” to which they can readily beapplied to appear on the scene. Despite theseEstimation ofconsequencesEvaluation nterestgroupsReportersand editorsAttentivepublicsMassaudiencesAu: Please checkif the credit line isOK as set.Figure 1.1 The collective decision-making process—matrix of phases and participants.Reproduced from Price and Neijens (1997, p. 342) with permission from Oxford UniversityPress and the World Association for Public Opinion Research[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex]Paper: a4Job No: 4984Donsbach: Public Opinion Research (SAGE Handbook)Page: 167–24

THE PUBLIC AND PUBLIC OPINION IN POLITICAL THEORIEScomplications, the matrix helps to summarizethe full range of possible interactions thatmight potentially feed into decisions made bydemocratic states. It also visually reinforcestwo main dimensions underlying differingconceptions of democratic decision making.Elite/mass relationshipsComparisons of activities across the verticaldimension of the matrix—from politicalleaders and technical policy experts at the topto mass audiences at the bottom—capture therelative degree to which the process is “topdown” or “bottom-up” in nature. At one endof the theoretical spectrum, elite models ofdemocracy propose that collective decisionmaking unfolds best when it is largelytechnocratic, with elected leaders and expertpolicy advisors deciding the relevant courseof collective action and then organizing publicopinion for the masses (a position embracedas noted above by Lippmann, 1922, in view ofwhat he considered irremediable deficienciesin both the public and the press, for whichhe saw little hope). At the other end of thespectrum are models of direct or participatorydemocracy. More communitarian in spirit, assuggested earlier, they advocate a strong andengaged role for ordinary citizens across allphases of the collective decision-making process (e.g., Pateman, 1970). All seek some sortof “linkage” from top to bottom (or bottomto top); but the degree of looseness of thelinkages desired and the preferred means bywhich they are to be achieved is quite variable.The nature of mass involvementComparisons of activities across the horizontal dimension of the matrix—from elicitationof goals and values, to developing options,estimating consequences, evaluating options,and finally deciding a course of action—capture the relative degree to which theprocess attempts to respond to general popularviews about desirable end states, on the onehand, or aims at soliciting far more focusedpublic evaluations of policy alternatives on[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex]Paper: a4Job No: 498417the other. A number of democratic theories—while placing most of the burden fordeveloping, debating, and evaluating policyoptions on elite political leaders, experts,and interest groups—nonetheless propose thatordinary citizens should play critical rolesin conveying, if not highly directive viewson specific policies, at least general signalsof popular values and desires. “Minimal”democratic models view periodic selectionand removal of political leaders as a sufficientmeans of public participation. Other theoriesargue for the more regular and substantialinvolvement of ordinary citizens, for instancethrough referenda on specific policy actions(a primary role advocated for public opinionpolls by Gallup & Rae, 1940). Differentpolitical theories, then, seize upon one orthe other of the two traditional senses ofopinion discussed above: Some seek citizens’knowledgeable contributions (their informedpreferences for particular policies), whileothers seek merely to ground elite decisionmaking in popular moral sensibilities or broadjudgments related to a governing regime’soverall success in meeting the citizens’ basicneeds. Some ask the public to think carefullyabout exactly what the government is doing;others are more concerned with leaders’legitimate public standing (“opinion” hereequated with popular regard or reputation).Various democratic theories, then, placea range of expectations and demands onthe shoulders of citizens. They range fromrelatively top-down or “weak” forms ofdemocracy to bottom-up, “strong” forms(Barber, 1984); and they range from models positing that ordinary citizens are bestconsulted by seeking diffuse judgments ofsatisfaction with elite performance to modelsthat seek much more direct and detailed publicinput on the substance of pressing policyquestions.Polls as policy referendaImplicit in contemporary understandings ofpublic opinion and opinion polling, Priceand Neijens (1997) and Althaus (2006)submit, is a particular decision-making model.Donsbach: Public Opinion Research (SAGE Handbook)Page: 177–24

18THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCHMass audiences enter the process at theevaluation phase, during which time theyfollow elite debate over a limited numberof options and are asked, via polling, toregister opinions as to which they prefer.However, this informal “policy referendum”model can be seen as problematic, evencontradictory (Althaus, 2006). If membersof the mass audience have no engagementin the process until they are asked theiropinions at the evaluation phase, then itplaces quite heavy and perhaps unreasonableburdens on the press to inform their previously(perhaps habitually) unengaged audiences atthis juncture. Even assuming these burdensare met, the capacity for sovereign citizenjudgments may be heavily circumscribed,both because they have at their disposallittle or no knowledge of alternatives thatwere considered and rejected (or indeednot considered) by elites, and because theyare unlikely to fathom the consequences ofvarious options (aside from whatever can begleaned from political contestants as theyattempt to recruit supporters for their side;Price & Neijens, 1997).The decision-making matrix suggests atleast two potential remedies to this problem, each consistent with a rather differentnormative-theoretical approach to democracy.Despairing of any expectation for intelligentmass contributions at the evaluation stage,one might shift the focus of mass engagementto the very first, problem-oriented phaseof decision making. Citizens may not becompetent to judge the intricacies of policy,this line of reasoning goes, but they maybe fully capable of telling elite decisionmakers what bothers them, what needs policyattention, and what they most desire interms of collective outputs. Such a modelemphasizes public agenda setting over themonitoring of policy alternatives. Alternatively, one might propose, as do deliberativetheorists, that ordinary citizens would be fullycapable of rendering intelligent judgments,if only they enjoyed a different communication apparatus for doing so and were nothamstrung by the conventional press and[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex]Paper: a4Job No: 4984polling model as presently institutionalized.Hence the “deliberative poll,” which seeks tounite the mass-representative capabilities ofprobability sampling with something very likethe Athenian assembly (Fishkin, 1991), alongwith related notions of citizen juries, shadowassemblies, and the like.The omnicompetent straw manA theme running throughout our discussiondeserves to be stated explicitly at thisjuncture. Empirical opinion research in thetwentieth century—though often framed asrebutting classical democratic theory—in factbore out the low expectations of most preempirical theorists, documenting the shallowdiffusion of political information across theelectorate, low levels of pop

[17:13 2/8/2007 4984-Donsbach-Ch01.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 4984 Donsbach: Public Opinion Research (SAGE Handbook) Page: 7 7–24 PART I History, Philosophy of Public