Political opinion as articulation of interests

Of all research into political opinion, studies of social structure and mobility, group organization and activity, and processes of interpersonal and mass communication and their effects upon opinion formation and change have made the greatest advances in precision and sophistication since 1925. However, even in these areas such research has contributed more to an understanding of the sources of public policy formation and of society’s responses to the policy than to an understanding of the operation of the whole process.

Major contributions have been made toward

(1) discriminating the different kinds of opinion aggregates that arouse political controversy (the mass-attention group, the reference group, the attentive public, the opinion-making public, etc.);

(2) isolating and measuring the determinants of opinion by correlating self-identified group opinions with those classified by objective measures of sociopolitical stratification (multivariate analysis);

(3) extending our cognitive “maps” of policy making in organizations that recruit opinion makers who articulate group interests throughout the whole field of cultural, economic, and political activity; (4) specifying the conditions under which individual and mass attitudes and behavior can be modified, distorted, or transformed by organization, leadership, and manipulation; (5) measuring the content and audience exposure of communications; and (6) analyzing the behavior of voters, consumers, buyers, and members of other functional groups in the making up and changing of their minds as the result of exposure to various forms of communication.

The sample survey has been a major vehicle of this progress, but for studying the personal transmission of opinions, the impersonal processes of organizational communication, and the relations between opinion leaders and policy makers, technicians have found it necessary to supplement the sample survey with sociometric, intensive-interview, and other observational methods. The sample survey technique has not yet enabled social scientists to construct a satisfactory general model of how social structure and group organization activate, permeate, and respond to the policy process. It has, however, enormously enhanced their ability to verify, at points of time before, during, and after the process of public decision, the extent to which information, attention, and other attributes of opinion distributions conform to hypothesized statements, however derived. It may be conjectured that the next major advance in our knowledge of the opinion-policy relation will emerge from developments in the fields of organizational theory and decision-making behavior, where sharper concepts of interaction analysis are being developed.

Dimension of decision makers’ behavior

Another large body of empirical inquiry into the opinion-policy process centers upon the behavior of persons in positions to make authoritative decisions that bind or control the acts of others. The study of leadership and organizational behavior falls partially into this category, as do case studies of policy formation, analyses of voting behavior of legislative, administrative, and judicial officials, and studies of the personal contacts and the quantity and content of communication coming to decision makers’ attention. No more than in the previous categories has one single, unifying conceptual framework emerged. It is, therefore, necessary to resort to a paradigmatic presentation of the significant factors which affect decision makers’ judgments and acts.

Decision-making theory does not specifically utilize the concept of public opinion but incorporates data on public opinions and policy communications into indexes of perceptual and informational influences upon the perspective of the decision maker. In decision-making vocabulary, “public opinion” means those links or channels of communication with the external setting of the system that are available to the policy maker and the effective rules which define the source and content of communications that are authoritative for him.

“Basic” techniques for analyzing communications linkages and rules (networks) for policy makers are still rudimentary, and to describe the role of public opinion in decision making, we still resort to common-sense terms derived from the “applied” skills of intelligence, propaganda, and public relations. Studies of the impact of public opinion on public policy makers have been focused on the following: (1) policy makers’ perceptions of whether a policy proposal or issue would be regarded by the public as necessary, would be tolerated, would be controversial, or would be overwhelmingly unpopular, and the extent to which awareness of such attitudes leads to modifications of policies; (2) policy makers’ estimates or anticipations of shifts or changes in public opinion that might result if certain “engineered” events took place, if issues and decisions were presented in certain ways at a certain time, if they were presented by certain prestige or authority figures in ways and by means recommended by the opinion specialist or public relations consultant (the first category is generally regarded as the specialty of the researcher, the second of the policy adviser on planned programs of “opinion preparation”); and (3) policy makers’ acceptance or sharing of the legal and ethical norms held by the majority or at least by substantial numbers of the public.

Policy makers’ perceptions of their opinion climate may be rendered more objective by sample surveys. Their estimates of public reactions may be refined by intelligence operations (military, commercial, or political) and employment of the skills of advertising and public relations agencies. Political biographers, journalists, literary artists, and psychological experts have explored the internalized conflicts produced by motivational drives embodying strong compulsions to violate or to conform to societal norms. Whether the context of application be literary, scientific, or practical, empirical analysis supports the assumption of normative theory that public opinion is not a single source of authoritative command; rather, it has at least three different functions: (1) it provides generalized support for the authority and policy-making system; (2) it articulates group interests; and (3) it is a factor in the judgment of individual policy makers.