Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Democracy

Debates about the impact of public opinion on public policy are organized around a “should” and an “is.” Almost everyone agrees that in a democracy public policy should be strongly affected by public opinion. But there is a lot of disagreement about how strong the effect is. Is it as strong as it should be, meaning that the democratic political process is working well? Or is it much weaker, meaning that the democratic political process is working badly?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Buy Now

eBook EUR 160.49 Price includes VAT (France)

Softcover Book EUR 210.99 Price includes VAT (France)

Hardcover Book EUR 210.99 Price includes VAT (France)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Similar content being viewed by others

Conclusion: Public Policy Theory and Democracy: The Elephant in the Corner

Public Choice

The impact of public opinion on voting and policymaking

Notes

Public policy may be thought of in terms of implementation, rather than laws or even expenditures. Unfortunately, there are relatively few studies of the impact of public opinion on implementation. Those who study implementation are often not interested in public opinion, while those who study public opinion are seldom interested in implementation (Burstein 1998b: ch. 6).

It's easy to understand why researchers would focus only on a few variables. Particularly when a line of research is new, it can be difficult enough to theorize about relationships and collect data for a handful of variables, without taking on additional burdens; see Page and Shapiro (1983) on public opinion and Gamson (1975) on social movements.

Many of these studies are problematic in ways already discussed, in terms of measurement, for example; but they do provide the soundest findings available.

As Kollman (1998: 162) writes, some of our findings about public opinion and other forces influencing policy are “hard to evaluate using a well-accepted standard of democracy.”

References

• Agnone, Jon. 2007. “Amplifying Public Opinion: The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement.” Social Forces 85:1593–620. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Althaus, Scott L. 2003. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Amenta, Edwin, Chris Bonastia, and Neal Caren. 2001. “US Social Policy in Comparative and Historical Perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:213–34. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, Neal Caren, and Sheera Joy Olasky. 2005. “Age for Leisure? Political Mediation and the Impact of the Pension Movement on U.S. Old-Age Policy.” American Sociological Review 70:516–38. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Arceneaux, Kevin. 2005. “Does Federalism Weaken Democratic Representation in the United States?” Publius 35:297–311. Google Scholar
• Bachrach, Peter, and Morton S. Baratz. 1962. “Two Faces of Power.” American Political Science Review 56:947–52. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Bartels, Larry M. 1991. “Constituency Opinion and Congressional Policy Making: The Reagan Defense Buildup.” American Political Science Review 85:457–74. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• —— 2005. “Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind.” Perspectives on Politics 3:15–32. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• —— 2007. “Homer Gets a Warm Hug: A Note on Ignorance and Extenuation.” Perspectives on Politics 5:785–90. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• —— 2008. Unequal Democracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Google Scholar
• Baumgartner, Frank R., and Beth L. Leech. 2001. “Interest Niches and Policy Bandwagons: Patterns of Interest Group Involvement in National Politics.” Journal of Politics 63:1191–1213. Google Scholar
• Best, Samuel J., and Monika L. McDermott. 2007. “Measuring Opinions vs. Non-Opinions: the Case of the USA Patriot Act.” The Forum 5: issue 2, article 7. Google Scholar
• Blendon, Robert J., Mollyann Brodie, and John Benson. 1995. “What Happened to Americans' Support for the Clinton Health Plan?” Health Affairs 14 (issue 2):7–23. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Block, Fred. 2003. “Still a Scandal.” Contexts 2 (fall):4. Google Scholar
• Boli-Bennett, John, and John Meyer. 1978. “Ideology of Childhood and the State,” American Sociological Review 43:797–8127 ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Brace, Paul, Kellie Sims-Butler, Kevin Arceneaux, and Martin Johnson. 2002. “Public Opinion in the American States.” American Journal of Political Science 46:173–89. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Brettschneider, Frank. 1996. “Public Opinion and Parliamentary Action: Responsiveness of the German Bundestag in Comparative Perspective.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 8:292–311. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Brooks, Clem. 2006. “Voters, Satisficing, and Policymaking.” Annual Review of Sociology 32:191–211. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and Jeff Manza. 2007. Why Welfare States Persist: The Importance of Public Opinion in Democracies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• Burstein, Paul. 1998a. “Bringing the Public Back In: Should Sociologists Consider the Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy? Social Forces 77:27–62 Google Scholar
• ——. 1998b. Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• —— 2002. “Public Opinion and Congressional Action on Labor Market Opportunities, 1942–2000.” Pp. 86–105 in Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy, edited by Jeff Manza, Fay Lomax Cook, and Benjamin Page. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
• —— 2003a. “The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: a Review and an Agenda.” Political Research Quarterly 56:29–40. Google Scholar
• —— 2003b. “Still a Scandal.” Contexts 2 (fall):4–5. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• —— 2006. “Why Estimate of the Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy Are Too High.” Social Forces 94:2273–89. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, Shawn Bauldry, and Paul Froese. 2005. “Bill Sponsorship and Congressional Support for Policy Proposals, from Introduction to Enactment or Disappearance.” Political Research Quarterly 58:295–302. Google Scholar
• ——, and William Freudenburg. 1977. “Ending the Vietnam War: Components of Change in Senate Voting on Vietnam War Bills.” American Journal of Sociology 82:991–1006. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and William Freudenburg. 1978. “Changing Public Policy: The Impact of Public Opinion, War Costs, and Anti-war Demonstrations on Senate Voting on Vietnam War Motions, 1964–73.” American Journal of Sociology 84:99–122. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and C. Elizabeth Hirsh. 2007. “Interest Organizations, Information, and Policy Innovation in the U.S. Congress.” Sociological Forum 22:174–99. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Burstein, Paul, and April Linton. 2002. “The Impact of Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Social Movement Organizations on Public Policy.” Social Forces 81:380–408. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Carmines, Edward G. and James A. Stimson. 1989. Issue Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar
• Converse, Philip E. 2000. “Assessing the Capacity of Mass Electorates.” Annual Review of Political Science 3:331–53. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Google Scholar
• Devine, Joel E. 1985. “State and State Expenditure: Determinants of Social Investment and Social Consumption in the Postwar United States.” American Sociological Review 50:150–65. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Domhoff, G. William. 2002a. Who Rules America?. Fourth edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Google Scholar
• ——. 2002b. “The Power Elite, Public Policy, and Public Opinion.” Pp. 124–37 in Navigating Public Opinion, edited by Jeff Manza, Fay Lomax Cook, and Benjamin I. Page. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
• Enns, Peter K., and Paul M. Kellstedt. 2008. “Policy Mood and Political Sophistication.” British Journal of Political Science 38:433–54. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Erikson, Robert S. 1976. “The Relationship between Public Opinion and State Policy: A New Look Based on Some Forgotten Data.” American Journal of Political Science 20:25–36. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, Michael B. MacKuen, and James A. Stimson. 2002. The Macro Polity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
• ——, Gerald C. Wright, and John P. McIver. 1993. Statehouse Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
• Fording, Richard C. 1997. “The Conditional Effect of Violence as a Political Tactic: Mass Insurgency, Welfare Generosity, and Electoral Context in the American States.” American Journal of Political Science 41:1–29. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Gamson, William A. 1975. The Strategy of Social Protest. Homewood, IL: Dorsey. Google Scholar
• Gist, John R. 1982. “ ‘Stability’ and ‘Competition’ in Budgetary Theory.” American Political Science Review 76:859–72. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Glasberg, Davita Silfen, and Dan Skidmore. 1997. “The Dialectics of State Economic Intervention: Bank Deregulation and the Savings and Loan Bailout.” Sociological Quarterly 38:67–93. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Glynn, Carroll J., Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O'Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1999. Public Opinion. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (chapter 9 co-authored with Lawrence R. Jacobs). Google Scholar
• Grattet, Ryken, Valerie Jenness, and Theodore R. Curry. 1998. “The Homogenization and Differentiation of Hate Crime Law in the United States, 1978 to 1995.” American Sociological Review 63:286–307. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Gray, Virginia, David Lowery, Matthew Fellowes, and Andrea McAtee. 2004. “ Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Organized Interests in the American States. ” Political Research Quarterly 57:411–20. Google Scholar
• Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2005. “Abandoning the Middle: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Limits of Democratic Control.” Perspectives on Politics 3:33–54. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Hansen, John Mark. 1998. “Individuals, Institutions, and Public Preferences over Public Finance.” American Political Science Review 92:513–31. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Hartley, Thomas, and Bruce Russett. 1992. “Public Opinion and the Common Defense.” American Political Science Review 86:905–15. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Hays, Scott P., Michael Esler, and Carol E. Hays. 1996. “Environmental Commitment among the States.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 26:41–58. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Hill, Kim Quaile, Jan E. Leighley, and Angela Hinton-Anderson. 1995. “Lower-Class Mobilization and Policy Linkage in the U.S. States.” American Journal of Political Science 39:75–86. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Hyslop, Dean R., and Guido W. Imbens. 2001. “Bias from Classical and Other Forms of Measurement Error.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 19:475–81. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Jackson, John E., and David C. King. 1989. “Public Goods, Private Interests, and Representation.” American Political Science Review 83:1143–64. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Benjamin I. Page. 2005. “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?” American Political Science Review 99:107–23. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar
• Kollman, Ken. 1998. Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar
• Laumann, Edward O., and David Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Google Scholar
• Lowery, David, and Virginia Gray. 2004. “A Neopluralist Perspective on Research on Organized Interests.” Political Research Quarterly 57:163–73. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88:63–76. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, Adam Seth Levine, Jesse O. Menning, and Gisela Sin. 2007. “Were Bush Tax Cut Supporters ‘Simply Ignorant?’ ” Perspectives on Politics 5:773–84. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Manley, John. 1983. “Neopluralism: A Class Analysis of Pluralism I and Pluralism II.” American Political Science Review 77:368–83. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Matsusaka, John G. 2005. “Direct Democracy Works.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19:185–206. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: the Electoral Connection. New Haven: Yale University Press. Google Scholar
• ——. 1991. Divided We Govern. New Haven: Yale University Press. Google Scholar
• McAdam, Doug, and Yang Su. 2002. “The War at Home: Antiwar Protests and Congressional Voting, 1965 to 1973.” American Sociological Review 67:696–721. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• McFarland, Andrew S. 2007. “Neopluralism.” Annual Review of Political Science 10:45–66. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Monroe, Alan D. 1979. “Consistency Between Policy Preferences and National Policy Decisions.” American Politics Quarterly 7:3–18. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——. 1998. “Public Opinion and Public Policy, 1980–1993.” Public Opinion Quarterly 62:6–28. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Mooney, Christopher Z., and Mei-Hsien Lee. 2000. “The Influence of Values on Consensus and Contentious Morality Policy: U.S. Death Penalty Reform, 1956–1982.” Journal of Politics 62:223–39. Google Scholar
• Moskowitz, Adam N., and J. Craig Jenkins. 2004. “Structuring Political Opinions: Attitude Consistency and Democracy Comptence among the U.S. Mass Public.” Sociological Quarterly 45:395–419. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Neuman, W. Russell, Marion R. Just, and Ann N. Crigler. 1992. Common Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• Page, Benjamin I. 2002. “The Semi-Sovereign Public.” Pp. 325–44 in Navigating Public Opinion, edited by Jeff Manza, Fay Lomax Cook, and Benjamin I. Page. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
• ——, and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1983. “Effects of Public Opinion on Policy.” American Political Science Review 77:175–90. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1992. The Rational Public. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• Radcliff, Benjamin and Martin Saiz. 1998. “Labor Organization and Public Policy in the American States.” Journal of Politics 60:113–25. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism Against Populism. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Google Scholar
• Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Stanley Presser. 2003. “The Science of Asking Questions,” Annual Review of Sociology 29:65–88 ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Schattschneider, E.E. 1960. The Semisovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Google Scholar
• Smith, Mark A. 2000. American Business and Political Power: Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• Snyder, James M Jr., and Michael M. Ting. 2002. “An Informational Rationale for Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 46:90–110. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Soroka, Stuart N., and Elvin T. Lim. 2003. “Issue Definition and the Opinion-policy Link: Public Preferences and Health Care Spending in the US and UK.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5:576–93. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and Christopher Wlezien. 2005. “Opinion-Policy Dynamics: Public Preferences and Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom.” British Journal of Political Science 35:665–89. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Soule, Sarah A., and Olzak, Susan. 2004. “When Do Movements Matter? The Politics of Contingency and the Equal Rights Amendment.” American Sociological Review 69:473–97. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Steinberg, Ronnie. 1982. Wages and Hours: Labor and Reform in Twentieth- Century America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Google Scholar
• Stimson, James A. 1999. Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings. Second edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Google Scholar
• ——, Michael B. MacKuen, and Robert S. Erikson. 1995. “Dynamic Representation.” American Political Science Review 89:543–65. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Weakliem, David L. 2005. “Public Opinion, Political Attitudes, and Ideology.” Pp. 227–46 in The Handbook of Political Sociology, edited by Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks, and Mildred A. Schwartz. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
• Weissberg, Robert. 1976. Public Opinion and Popular Government. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Google Scholar
• Wetstein, Matthew E. 1996. Abortion Rates in the United States: The Influence of Public Policy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Google Scholar
• Wlezien, Christopher. 1995. “The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preference for Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 39:981–1000. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——. 1996. “Dynamics of Representation: The Case of US Spending on Defence.” British Journal of Political Science 26:81–103. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——. 2004. “Patterns of Representation: Dynamics of Public Preferences and Policy.” Journal of Politics 66:1–24. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• ——, and Stuart N. Soroka. 2007. “The Relationship Between Public Opinion and Policy.” Pp. 799–817 in The Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour, edited by Russell J. Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. New York: Oxford University Press. ChapterGoogle Scholar
• Wright, Gerald C., and Brian Schaffner. 2002. “The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 96:367–79. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• ——. 1994. “Strategic Politicians, Public Opinion, and the Gulf Crisis.” Pp. 250–74 in Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, edited by W. Lance Bennett and David Paletz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar
• ——. 1999. “Perversities in the Ideal of the Informed Citizenry.” Paper presented at a conference on “The Transformation of Civic Life,” Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro and Nashville, TN, November 12–13. Google Scholar

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Christopher Wlezien for his helpful advice and comments.