Rationalist-idealist theories

The fifth category, the rationalist-idealist model of political opinion, was perhaps best formulated by A. L. Lowell and R. M. Maclver, who sought to identify the conditions necessary for individuals and groups to participate rationally in public affairs [SeeLowellandMaciver]. The specified conditions were (1) that the people be politically organized and act as a community rather than as a mass or crowd; (2) that the right of minorities to hold their opinions and to organize politically for peaceful opposition be recognized but that the minority submit to and obey majority decisions; (3) that majorities and minorities alike accept and abide by the structure and processes of governmental decision, including the rules for amendment and change; (4) that the members of the political community have access to the facts reasonably necessary to arrive at a rational decision on a given issue; (5) that they engage actively in discussion and participate in public affairs, so as to be capable of assessing political realities; and (6) that they explicitly adjust their votes and other political acts to their conception of the common good and public interest. Lowell’s criteria may raise doubt that any human government can be wholly democratic, but they perform the important task of clarifying the qualities of individual and group action needed if the members of a community are to act as a public.

Speculative versus empirical theories

The division between speculative and empirical theories is not precise, nor are the two mutually exclusive. Generally speaking, speculative models implicitly or explicitly incorporate the observer’s preferences into his conceptual system and attempt to describe and classify human behavior and institutions directly in terms of a priori, complex categories that defy quantitative expression. Empirical or analytical models extrapolate from individual behavior a minimum number of elemental, conceptual variables, supposedly identifiable by standard observational procedures independent of the observer’s or respondent’s preferences, and attempt to explain behavior indirectly by inferring (predicting or generalizing) the probable covariation between two or more such variables.

Certain obstacles confront all empirical theories of political opinion. One is the obvious methodological problem of systematically gaining access to persons in positions of public authority or private influence for purposes of observation. More important, conceptually, is the problem of variations in the setting in which the opinion-policy relation occurs. The two-way relation between opinion and policy formation, can be studied on the level of, and within, the individual personality; in the interactions of two or more persons in small groups; in leader-follower behavior within large groups, whether or not they possess formal structure and bureaucratic organization; and in the complex relationships between key individuals in the multi-group process of public, official policy making. Intensive studies of the conditions under which changes can be induced in individual opinion, personality, and behavior have great potential value for research in more inclusive contexts, but the variations of scale and setting often seem to reduce the applicability of concepts employed in personality and small-group studies to analogies and metaphors on the level of political and societal behavior.