Empirical research

On the macroscopic level of political society, studies of public opinion and policy formation do not agree about the analytical terminology for the different aspects of the opinion-policy relation, nor have they integrated the conceptual tools available. Past approaches to the study of political opinion can be grouped into four categories with respect to the focus of analytical attention: (1) the formal sanctions that justify and limit the exercise of power within the process of public opinion and policy formation; (2) the initiating sources and the environmental conditions that galvanize or inhibit the process in action; (3) the critical decision-making components in policy determination; (4) the total opinion-policy process or system, through which opinions are transmitted, policy decisions reached, and behavioral adjustments effected on the part of the members of the political society. Among the social sciences political science has been largely preoccupied with (1) and (3), sociology with (2) and (4), psychology and economics with (3) and (4), and cultural anthropology with (1) and (4). Since 1945, however, interdisciplinary communication, especially in the United States, has been steadily breaking through such conceptual jurisdictions.

Political opinion—role as sanction

The location, organization, and exercise of formal, legal sanctions over the process of public opinion and policy formation has long been a central concern of conventional political theory, comparative government, and constitutional law and history. Not until the distinction between legal and political sovereignty was recognized, however, could public opinion become a respectable subject of academic research, and then new methods, concepts, and even disciplines became necessary.

Evidence of the role of political opinion as sanction has been found in (1) the demonstration of widely held faith among the population in the legitimacy of the structures and processes by which public policy decisions are reached; (2) the measurement of divisions of the electorate into organized parties and groups which provide support for, criticism of, or opposition to official government policies; (3) the estimates of the degree of popular satisfaction with the performance of the regime or party in power in promoting the security and prosperity of the political community; (4) the discovery of norms of behavior and procedure expected from public officials in promulgating and enforcing public policies; and (5) the analysis of the moods and qualities of opinion to which policy makers have to adjust their thinking and public behavior.

The concept of political opinion has stimulated inquiries into the distinctive calling (vocation) of the politician—the specialist in organizing political controversy, in formulating and discussing issues, in making decisions and taking protective policy positions in public, in return for which he obtains influence over or access to elective office. Opinion research has provided objective data on the variability of popular moods, demands, expectations; on the scope for choice, error, and misjudgment in policy making; and on career opportunities and the rewards and dangers involved in estimating opinion distributions and trends. Finally, research has documented the conception of government by public opinion as a process of identifying, investigating, and adjusting the differences between mass, interest-group, professionally political, and technically expert conceptions of the public interest, as opposed to the old-fashioned method of elaborating the distinction between the “partial” interests of groups and the “common” interests of the public or community as a whole.