Public Opinion W. Phillips Davison Avery Leiserson There is no generally accepted definition of “public opinion.” Nevertheless, the term has been employed with increasing frequency since it came into popular usage at the time of the French Revolution, when Louis xvi’s finance minister, Jacques Necker, referred to public opinion as governing the behavior of investors in the Paris money market. Later efforts to define the term precisely have led to such expressions of frustration as: “Public opinion is not the name of a something, but a classification of a number of somethings.” (See Childs 1965, pp.

12-28, for some fifty different definitions.) In spite of differences in definition, students of public opinion generally agree at least that it is a collection of individual opinions on an issue of public interest, and they usually note that these opinions can exercise influence over individual behavior, group behavior, and government policy. Because public opinion is acknowledged to play a role in several diverse areas, leading writers on the subject have included sociologists (Tonnies 1887; Lazarsfeld et al. 1944; Albig 1956), political theorists (Bryce 1888; Lasswell 1927; Lippmann 1922), social psychologists (Allport 1937; Cantril 1966), and historians (Bauer 1929). Those who are engaged in manipulating public opinion have also made important contributions: for example, politicians (Lenin 1929) and public-relations specialists (Bernays 1923). Differences in definition and approach can be accounted for largely by the differing interests of various categories of students and practitioners. The principal approaches to the study of public opinion may be divided into four partially overlapping categories: quantitative measurement of opinion distributions; investigation of the internal relationships among the individual opinions that make up public opinion on an issue; description or analysis of the political role of public opinion; and study both of the communication media that disseminate the ideas on which opinions are based and of the uses that propagandists and other manipulators make of these media. Some researchers have simultaneously contributed to knowledge in several of these categories.

Have an idea for us? We'd love to hear it. So many of our best stories come from experts and reporters, producers and show runners, movers and shakers outside of our.

An investigation in Erie County, Ohio, of the 1940 U.S. Presidential election campaign not only provided statistical measurements of voting intentions over time but also explored the influence of group membership on individual opinions and evaluated the impact of mass communications on the outcome of the election (Lazarsfeld et al. Another example may be taken from a study of Norwegian opinions on a number of foreign policy issues between 1959 and 1964 (Galtung 1964).

In this case the researcher was able to contribute to the body of theory regarding political behavior in a democracy by analyzing the relationship between foreign policy attitudes and social position while also taking into account the role of group affiliation and the communication structure of the society. Quantitative measurement of opinions A definition offered by a specialist in polling is suggestive of the approach to public-opinion research of those who are primarily interested in measurement: “Public opinion consists of people’s reactions to definitely worded statements and questions under interview conditions” (Warner 1939, p.

Those focusing on measurement usually investigate such questions as the following: How widely (and, sometimes, how intensely) is a given opinion held? In which geographic, religious, ethnic, or socioeconomic sectors is the opinion encountered most frequently?

With what other opinions is it most closely associated? Measurement of opinions based on polling representative samples of larger populations came into prominence in the United States following the presidential election of 1936. At that time George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Archibald Crossley, then the most prominent exponents of the sample-survey method, correctly predicted the outcome, while the Literary Digest, relying on nearly 2.5 million unrepresentative straw ballots, was off by nearly twenty percentage points. Use of the sample-survey method spread rapidly thereafter and was scarcely affected by the failure of the principal polling organizations to pick the winner in the presidential election of 1948. This failure did, however, lead to important improvements in polling methods. (For a succinct description of polling procedures in recent election surveys, see Perry 1960.) By 1965 public-opinion polling had spread throughout the world.

The World Association for Public Opinion Research had members from more than forty countries, and numerous polling organizations were reported to be working in communist and other countries that were not represented in the association’s membership. The New York-based International Research Associates, headed by Elmo C. Wilson, had branch offices or affiliates in 34 countries, and the Gallup poll counted 32 affiliates and conducted frequent polls in nearly fifty countries. In the United States several hundred survey organizations existed on a national, state, or local level, with university research bureaus accounting for a substantial number of these. Data gathered in the course of numerous surveys throughout the world are centralized in a number of “data banks,” the oldest of which is the Roper Public Opinion Research Center at Williams College.

The Council of Social Science Data Archives, a cooperative organization of American university and non-profit research groups, helps to promote the exchange of these basic data for purposes of secondary analysis. Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research serves as a secretariat for the council. A selection of poll results from the United States appears in each issue of the Public Opinion Quarterly, and selected results from throughout the world are carried in Polls, a magazine published by Systemen Keesing in Amsterdam. Quantitative studies have led to numerous generalizations about public opinion, most of which, however, do not hold for every time and place. One is that large numbers of people pay surprisingly little attention to political personalities and issues, even when these are featured by the mass media. For instance, in 1964 one out of four adult Americans did not know that there was a communist government on mainland China (Michigan, University of 1964). Polls taken since World War II in the United States have consistently shown that large proportions of the respondents were unaware of such crises as those of 1959 and 1961 in Berlin, or of 1955 in the Formosa Straits.

One For All Brand Nubian Rarity on this page. As of 1959, 22 per cent of adult Americans said that they had not heard or read anything about Fidel Castro (Erskine 1963, pp. Surveys conducted in western European countries have disclosed similar results: more people are familiar with the names of leading sports and entertainment figures than with all but the most prominent politicians. As of 1961, 95 per cent of rural Brazilians were unable to identify the president of the United States (Institute for International Social Research 1961, p. Stating the same proposition in another way, one can say that relatively small numbers of people regularly show a serious concern for public affairs.

This has led some students to distinguish between the “general public,” the “attentive public” (which is at least aware of important issues), and the “informed public,” which participates in discussion of the issues (Almond [1950] 1960, p. It has also led to the polling of “elites,” which are variously defined as being composed of those with a high degree of wealth, education, prominence, or influence. For example, numerous polls have been conducted using samples of legislators, businessmen, or those listed in Who’s Who. The other side of the coin is that people are likely to be most concerned with matters that they see as affecting them directly. A survey of the principal worries of adult Americans found that 80 per cent of the respondents answered solely in terms of personal and family problems; only 6 to 8 per cent mentioned national or world problems, including war, as being among the things they worried about most, in spite of the fact that the survey was conducted during a period when there was an active atomic-arms race with the Soviet Union (Stouffer 1955).

Another study, using cross sections in more than twenty countries throughout the world—including several commun Jst countries and developing countries—found a similar pattern of concerns, although with important national variations (Cantril 1966). Nor is it a simple matter to raise the level of information about public issues (Hyman & Sheats-ley 1947). Repeated experiments and observations in several countries have indicated that people have a remarkable ability to ignore easily available facts when these facts are of little interest to them.

Merely increasing the amount of information available will not necessarily increase public knowledge, although this generalization probably will not hold true in developing areas where there is a strong unfulfilled demand for more mass media. What seems to be the case is that a proportion of each population, ranging from a very small group up to about two-thirds of the adults, experiences a need for at least some information on matters of public concern. Once the needs of these people have been satisfied, further information flows over the population like water over a saturated sponge. Opinion measurement has also disclosed strong correlations between educational, religious, geographic, socioeconomic, and ethnic factors, on the one hand, and the opinions that people hold on political subjects, on the other.

Indeed, in several areas of the United States it has been found that a person’s voting behavior can be predicted with considerable reliabihty if information is available about his socioeconomic status, his place of residence (urban or rural), and his religious or ethnic background (Lazarsfeld et al. In general, political interest and activity are greater among upper socioeconomic and educational levels, men, middle-aged groups, and urban residents than among lower socioeconomic and educational levels, women, older and younger adults, and rural residents (ibid., pp. A number of surveys have also found a relationship between political opinions and personality factors—although this relationship has usually been weaker and more difficult to document satisfactorily. A final example of the kind of generalization that can be developed through quantitative measurement is that people tend to adjust their opinions to conform to the situation in which they find themselves. During racial integration of schools in the United States, for instance, public opinion in the areas affected tended to become more favorable toward integration following, rather than before, the action of school authorities to admit Negroes to formerly all-white schools (Hyman & Sheatsley 1964). Similarly, the attitudes that the people of two nations have toward each other are likely to result from the state of relations between their governments, as well as being a cause of good or bad relations (Buchanan & Cantril 1953).

The use of public-opinion studies. The rapid spread of public-opinion measurement around the world is a reflection of the number of uses to which it can be put.

Governments have increasingly found surveys to be useful tools for guiding their public-information and propaganda programs and occasionally for helping in the formulation of other kinds of policies. Department of Agriculture was one of the first government agencies to sponsor systematic and large-scale surveys. It was followed by many other federal bodies, including the U.S. Information Agency, which has conducted opinion research in all parts of the world in which such activities are permitted.

Public-opinion studies made abroad following the orbiting of the first Soviet satellite contributed to the decision of the United States to speed up its own space program. Similarly, governments of many other countries now either commission polls on questions of domestic and foreign policy or pay close attention to surveys made under private auspices. France, West Germany, and Japan are among the most frequent users of this kind of research, and there are few major countries that have not commissioned one or more surveys for policy purposes. India and Indonesia are among the newer nations that have occasionally turned to opinion measurement (Free 1967). Individual politicians, as well as governments, have found polls useful.

Opinion surveys can give them a rough estimate of their chances of election and can also help them gauge the salience of various issues with the voters and evaluate the effectiveness of their campaign propaganda. Once in office they can use polls to keep in touch with opinion trends in their constituencies. As of 1953, 48 members of the U.S.

House of Representatives were known to be sponsoring opinion surveys, and 14 more said they intended to do so; significantly, most lawmakers in question were in the younger age groups, a fact that suggests that more congressmen may be using polls at the present time (Hawver 1954, p. Politicians and political parties in western European countries are known to have shown similar interests in survey research. Private businesses and associations have made even more frequent use of polling techniques. Most of the surveys done for business come under the heading of market rather than opinion research and are primarily concerned with product preferences, but large numbers are concerned with public issues, such as government regulation, the economic outlook, or community relations. There are also numerous studies of the public image of individual enterprises or whole industries. Such studies fall somewhere between market and opinion research, and many of them are commissioned by public-relations counsel working on behalf of the business or industry concerned.

Labor unions, churches, and professional bodies have also used polls on occasion; the medical profession has been especially active in this regard. Innumerable small polls (and some large ones) have been conducted by academic researchers working with students. Indeed, it has been said that more is known about the opinions of American college sophomores than about the opinions of any other group in the world. A very different but equally important use of measurement is made by those who are primarily interested in other approaches to public-opinion research. Quantitative studies have provided many of the building blocks for those who study the internal relationships among opinions on public issues, the political role of public opinion, and the impact of communications. Measurement techniques have thus contributed importantly to the formation of theories and hypotheses in all branches of public-opinion research.

Public opinion as a form of organization Long before techniques for systematically measuring opinions were developed, it was noted that public opinion seemed to have qualities that made it something more than the sum of individual opinions on an issue. It was presumed to have a force and vitality unconnected with any specific individual. The German poet Wieland (1799) spoke of it as “an opinion that without being noticed takes possession of most heads,” and the sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies ([1887] 1957, p. 256) observed that “whatever may come to be considered a public opinion, it confronts the individual with an opinion which is in part an extraneous power.” Some scholars postulated the existence of a “group mind” with a will of its own, and observation of crowd behavior seemed to confirm the existence of some psychic entity that could seize hold of many individuals at once and lead them to behave in ways that no one of them would have behaved under other circumstances [ See. The concept of a group mind was soon discarded, since no empirical referent for it could be found, but the search continued for an explanation of the way public opinion differed from a simple summation of individual opinions.

One explanation that has been advanced by a number of twentieth-century social scientists is that individual opinions are sometimes related to each other in such a way as to form a kind of organization. Charles Horton Cooley described public opinion as “no mere aggregate of separate individual judgments, but an organization, a cooperative product of communication and reciprocal influence” ([1909] 1956, p. Ideas such as these have resulted in the abandonment of the search for an entity or content labeled “public opinion” that can be discovered and then analyzed; emphasis has been placed instead on the study of multi-individual situations and of the relationships among the opinions held by various people in these situations (Allport 1937, p.

If public opinion is viewed as a species of organization or as a bundle of relationships, questions arise as to what the nature of these relationships is, how they are formed, how they persist, and why they dissolve. The relationship most frequently examined is that between leaders and followers— that is, between political influentials and the mass of the people. A number of writers have analyzed the techniques by which politicians and statesmen are able to develop a common will among masses of disparate individuals by manipulating concepts and symbols (Lippmann 1922; Lasswell 1927; 1935). Woodrow Wilson, for instance, used his Fourteen Points to mobilize a common opinion out of the wide varieties of opinions churned up by World War I.

Later investigations have found that opinion leaders, or those who are influential in determining what others think about current issues, are not concentrated only at the top of the social and political pyramids but can be found throughout the population. Each socioeconomic group has its own opinion leaders, who play an important part in determining the attitudes of other members of their group. The same leaders are not necessarily influential in all subject areas, however; one may be considered an authority on political questions, another on economic questions, and so on (Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955). Studies of the way in which group membership influences individual opinions have contributed substantially to understanding the relationships involved in public opinion. For example, researchers have found that soldiers transferred from one unit to another during World War II adopted attitudes prevalent in the unit to which they had been transferred (M. Knowledge about the internal structure of public opinions, nevertheless, is still limited and lags far behind measurement.

This is largely because of the difficulties involved in this type of research, both in conducting experiments that enable the investigator to make systematic observations of the relationships among those holding individual opinions and in quantifying such observations as can be made about these relationships in real-life situations, outside the laboratory. Despite the relatively undeveloped state of our knowledge about the internal relationships among opinions, some of the implications of this approach have found recognition among practitioners engaged in trying to influence popular thinking.

It is common for public-relations specialists or propagandists to compile lists of “influentials,” often on the basis of sociological criteria, on the assumption that ideas reaching people on these lists will spread to a wider public. Some public-relations practitioners have spoken of their task as the “crystallization” of public opinion —that is, the transformation of individual attitudes into a collectivity that can exert influence (Bernays 1923). People concerned with building viable democratic polities in new nations may also find it useful to think of public opinion as a form of organization. Students of developing areas have noted that private citizens who take an interest in political questions in emerging nations are frequently out of touch with each other and unable to interact constructively (Shils 1963).

There is thus no infrastructure of private organizations and public opinion between the government and the population masses, and this lack tends to facilitate sudden and radical shifts in governments and policies. These shifts, it is hypothesized, would be less extreme if a way could be found to engage all those with political interests, both in and out of government, in a dialogue that would lead to an increasing degree of consensus on important national issues. The problem is thus to relate individual opinions to each other in such a way that fairly stable bodies of opinion, capable of exerting political influence on each other and on the government, will be formed. The political role of public opinion. Political scientists and historians have been most interested in the part that public opinion has played and is playing in political life.

Accordingly, they have looked upon it primarily as an expression of opinion from the public that reaches the government and that the government finds prudent to heed (Speier 1950; Key 1961, p. Some students have added the concept of latent public opinion, that is, public opinion that governmental officials expect will form if they do or do not do something and that thus influences their actions even though it has not yet taken shape (Truman 1951, pp. This approach may bypass such questions as how opinions are distributed and what kinds of relationships they have with each other, but it does not necessarily do so.

Numerous political thinkers have been interested in the measurement and organizational structure of public opinion. Although the term “public opinion” was not used prior to the eighteenth century, historians have identified phenomena very much like it in both ancient and medieval civilizations (Bauer 1929), and the relationship between government and mass opinion receives attention in the work of Plato, Aristotle, and other classical as well as medieval writers.

Following the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance in Europe, both of which resulted in more widespread and intensive discussion of competing beliefs and ideas, popular opinion was increasingly seen as playing a part in governmental decisions. Machiavelli believed that princes should take this opinion into account as one element in their calculations, and by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leading political philosophers were paying tribute to its power. Rousseau held that all laws were ultimately based on public opinion and regarded the free expression of it as a major safeguard against despotism. Bentham stressed that the legislator could not ignore it (Palmer 1936). By the nineteenth century the concept of public opinion had entered into the mainstream of political theory. In Europe it was frequently seen as a weapon of the middle class against the old order. Stahl, a Prussian conservative, described public opinion as the “will of the middle class” and believed that with the aid of the press the middle class would prevail over the crown.

Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, the Swiss legal scholar, wrote that public opinion was “predominantly the opinion of the middle classes, which form their own judgments and express these in unison” (Lenz 1956, p. James Bryce saw public opinion in western Europe as being substantially the opinion of the class that “wears black coats and lives in good houses” (1888, p. 260 in 1891 edition). Observers of the United States held that public opinion there rested on a far wider population base. Bryce, writing in the 1880s, described the American system as government by public opinion and believed that popular attitudes were expressed primarily by the press, political parties, and elections.

Half a century earlier Tocqueville had likewise considered the mass basis of American public opinion, and he saw in its influence a threat to independence of thought: “In America, the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion” (1835, p. 117 in 1956 edition); “I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million of men” (ibid., p. The current concerns of those who are primarily interested in the interplay between public opinion and government center on questions defined in the previous century, but the discussion of these questions customarily draws upon quantitative data from opinion polls, content analyses, or other sources. A large portion of this literature consists of arranging and analyzing poll data in order to disclose the content and characteristics of opinions with which governments are or should be concerned (Key 1961). Thus, one can find a substantial number of studies that deal with public opinion and foreign policy, public opinion and social legislation, or public opinion and economic issues. Many of these studies focus on population subgroups of presumed political significance. Closely related to analyses of public opinion on political issues are studies that are concerned with the ways in which public opinion influences government.

In addition to using poll data, these studies usually describe the activities of pressure groups and political parties and the techniques of individuals who attempt to affect government policy (for a selective bibliography, see Childs 1965, pp. Included in this group are analyses of mail reaching executive or legislative officials. Although most such treatments have dealt with the United States, there is a growing body of literature both on pressure groups in other countries and on efforts by individuals in other countries to participate in official decisions. A recent study compared citizens’ attitudes toward their own ability to influence governmental policy in West Germany, Italy, Mexico, and the United States (Almond & Verba 1963). The weakness of most studies dealing with the influence of public opinion on government policy is that they cannot trace the effectiveness of the attempts that are made to exert influence. The equation of activity with effectiveness is simply assumed.

Nevertheless, there are some notable exceptions. For example, the West Coast fishing industry was found to play a major part in the negotiation of a settlement with Japan following World War II (Cohen 1957). The other side of the coin—government efforts to influence public opinion—has also been dealt with extensively. Tools most frequently used by governments for this purpose include publicity, propaganda, censorship, and a number of techniques of news management (Childs 1965, pp.

Although the manipulative attempts of government in the United States have received the lion’s share of the attention of scholars, the rulers of totalitarian states have been most active in trying to mold public opinion. Efforts of the Nazi government to control public attitudes in Germany were notorious, and Soviet domestic propaganda has also received fairly extensive attention (Inkeles 1950).

More recently, scholars have begun to focus on the activities of Communist China in this field (Yu 1964). As with studies of popular efforts to influence governments, treatments of governmental efforts to manipulate opinion have ordinarily been unable to show a clear connection between cause and effect.

A possible exception is the case of the Soviet Union, where even anticommunist citizens appear to have adopted many of the principal categories of thought prescribed for them by the government. Cutting across all these aspects of the relationship between government and public opinion are studies of voting behavior. These have registered the distribution of opinions on a wide variety of issues, have explored the impact of special interest groups on election outcomes, and have contributed to our knowledge about the effects of government propaganda and policy. Since voting is the method by which the largest numbers of citizens of any democracy participate in policy, analysis of the behavior of potential voters during and between election campaigns contributes fundamentally to an understanding of the democratic process.

Those who believe in democracy often find the results of such studies discouraging, in that they may show widespread prejudice and ignorance or little popular appreciation of important issues, but the results are rarely irrelevant. To generalize about the effects of the enormous amount of theorizing, philosophizing, and research that has been done on the relationship between public opinion and government is a difficult task. It seems safe to assume that the behavior of some political leaders has been influenced by political theories that are based in part on thinking about public opinion. It can also be argued that public-opinion research has enhanced the prospects for democratic government by helping to acquaint major groups in the population with each other’s attitudes and values. When, however, one looks for specific examples of ways in which the study of public opinion has affected the political process, the examples one finds are likely to be relatively minor and to involve measurement rather than theory. For instance, officials have sometimes been able to discount the importance of what they hear from pressure groups when they have learned about the distribution of the opinions of the population as a whole on the same issues.

It is also probable that both governmental manipulators of public opinion and private groups seeking to influence official policy have been able to conduct their activities with greater sophistication because of increased knowledge about the nature of the relationship between the government and the public. Communication research. The task of communication research has been defined by Lasswell as that of answering the question: who says what to whom through what channel and with what effect? ([1948] 1964, p. Thus, communication researchers who follow this formula have not focused their attention directly on opinions regarding public issues, but they have made a number of important indirect contributions to the understanding of public opinion.

In particular, studies of symbol manipulators (those who speak), audiences (those who are exposed to communications), the role of the mass media, and the effects of the ideas that are communicated are relevant to such questions as how opinions take hold among large numbers of people, why they are distributed as they are, how they are related to each other, and how they change. Those who are concerned with the ways in which ideas are spread have studied the activities of government spokesmen, private publicists, and propaganda and news organizations as well as the relationships between communications and policy.

Few adequate generalizations have been made about propagandists. One analysis found them to have abnormally strong cravings for power, highly extroverted personalities, unreasoning intolerance for rivals, and a gift for organization and management when these are related to self-aggrandizement (B.

This unflattering characterization was, however, based in large part on attention to Nazi, Fascist, and Communist spokesmen. Modern propaganda organizations are characterized by elaborate mechanisms for setting policy, operating media, studying audiences, and evaluating effectiveness (Davison 1965). The task of coordinating the output of such vast organizations with the policy of the sponsoring group (usually a government) has frequently led to clashes between propagandists and policy makers. Studies of news media have indicated that they, too, tend to structure opinions, even though usually unintentionally. One way this is done is by giving large numbers of people a common focus of attention.

An operating definition of news used by most journalists is that a subject is newsworthy if it is already in the headlines. Thus, there tends to be a circular reinforcing process, in that a subject is featured if it is already being given attention and it is given more attention because it is featured (Cohen 1963). News media also help to assure cohesion among members of major population groups. In many nations there is a “prestige paper” that is read by a large proportion of influential persons and that keeps members of this group of influentials informed about what others in the group are thinking. It also serves as a forum for exchange of ideas among them. In 1961, for example, a survey found that the New York Times was subscribed to by 60 per cent of American news editors, 46 per cent of utility executives, 30 per cent of college presidents, and 28 per cent of bank officers throughout the country (Kraft 1961). Newspapers such as he Monde, Pravda, and The Times of London may occupy an even more central position.

Propagandists and the mass media do not, however, have it all their own way. Audience studies have shown that people give their attention selectively to the communications that are available to them and that they frequently derive meanings from these that are quite different from the ones intended. Even very intensive publicity drives have failed to increase knowledge about given subjects when people have no interest in acquiring more information.

This was found to be the case in Cincinnati shortly after World War n, when civic organizations and mass media experimented with a campaign to stimulate interest in the UN; in spite of the fact that the entire population was deluged with information about the world body, those who were uninformed prior to the campaign remained uninformed (Star & Hughes 1950). Conversely, news of events that are not given extensive publicity can circulate with amazing rapidity by word of mouth. Attention seems to be governed primarily by two factors: habit, in that people grow accustomed to relying on certain sources for information, and interest, in that people tend to look for information that they think will help them satisfy their wants or needs [ See,, article on. As far as the effects of communications on opinions are concerned, a major finding of researchers has been that well-formed attitudes are highly resistant to change. Even the most skillful propaganda or advertising is unlikely to bring about shifts in attitudes that are firmly based on a person’s own experience or that are shared by those with whom he comes in frequent and close contact. On the other hand, casual attitudes can be changed fairly easily.

In nonpartisan local elections, where the candidates are not well known, even a small amount of information or an endorsement by a respected newspaper can sway a substantial number of votes. Similarly, the editorial stand of a newspaper can sometimes tip the scales for or against an issue in a community where opinions are fairly evenly divided and feelings do not run high. Communications can also reinforce existing attitudes and activate latent ones.

Agitators frequently make use of activating and reinforcing communications in order to whip up enthusiasm for an idea and bring people to the point where they are willing to vote, demonstrate, or take some other action. Such effects may also be achieved unintentionally. During 1955, when a number of West German newspapers started to publicize crimes committed by American military personnel in West Germany, largely as a circulation-building device, they whipped up latent emotions to a point where at least one town council requested the withdrawal of American forces from the area. It later turned out that the “crime wave” represented no more than the usual number of violations with which American and West German authorities were customarily plagued and that the press had not intended to stimulate political action. Insights from communication research are used in both the political and the commercial realms. Political uses are made most frequently by those concerned with propaganda and psychological warfare.

In democratic elections, for instance, the political propagandist frequently tries to find an issue that is favorable to his side or unfavorable to the opposition and about which there are widespread latent attitudes; he then tries to activate these attitudes by means of emphasizing the issue in the public media. The psychological-warfare specialist often seeks the “marginal man,” one who is in the opponent’s camp without being firmly dedicated to it, and makes him the principal target for propaganda. In the commercial world, communication research makes it possible for the advertiser to select media that are already being given attention by the audience he wishes to reach and also to test the effectiveness of varying advertising appeals. The same principles of selection and testing can be used by those who are merchandising political ideas. One of the most important applications of communication research is in connection with national development. The mass media play a critical role in turning traditional societies into modern ones by preparing people psychologically for life in an industrial society, by helping to build new political institutions engaging in mass education, and by providing information that is necessary for economic development (Lerner 1958; Conference on Communication 1963). Accordingly, modernizing nations have been advised to examine the channels for the flow of information within their borders and to plan for the growth of the mass media in phase with the growth in other sectors.

The mass media are necessary for development not only because they link people with government and disseminate information that is needed in educational and economic programs but also because they draw diverse people together around common national problems and interests and make it possible for them to participate in public affairs (Schramm 1964). Future prospects Although there is little agreement on a precise definition of “public opinion,” and many of its facets remain hazy, constantly increasing use of the term during the past two centuries testifies to its utility. As societies have become more complicated and ever larger masses of people have become involved in political and economic life, students have felt a growing need for some concept that refers to collectivities failing between the undifferentiated mass, on the one hand, and primary groups and formal organizations, on the other.

In modern society people do not behave like isolated individuals, but neither can their behavior be explained exclusively in terms of their organizational and group membership. This became abundantly apparent just prior to and during the French Revolution, when the middle class began acting much as though it were an organized force, even though no principle of organization was immediately apparent. True, the middle class had its salons and coffeehouses, where information and ideas were exchanged, and sometimes its newspapers, but were these communication facilities alone sufficient to threaten the stability of the ancien regime“? The ferment of the times could be explained only in terms of some greater force, and this force was labeled public opinion. As a result of increases in literacy and proliferation of communication media, public opinion soon ceased to be exclusively a middle-class phenomenon in the principal industrialized areas of the world.

Less-advantaged members of the community have also been able to achieve a consensus on some issues, although less frequently and intensely than those at higher socioeconomic levels. The civil rights movement in the United States has succeeded in mobilizing public opinion far beyond the middle class. It is probable that public opinion in the developing countries will evolve in similar fashion but will take less time to do so. Public opinion has played a smaller role in communist countries than in the democracies. The efforts of the state to control the principal channels of public communication and to prevent nonoffi-cial links among the citizenry have made it more difficult for individual opinions to become related and for consensuses to develop. Nevertheless, this has occurred in some instances, either because independent-minded artists and writers have given expression to widely shared ideas or because it has been made possible by word-of-mouth communication. Both rebellious writers and interpersonal channels seem to have played a role in the growth of public opinion that led to the antiregime uprising in Hungary in 1956.

Communist spokesmen occasionally assert that public opinion does exist in countries having a totalitarian-socialist form of government but that it is a common opinion in which the entire population shares and is adequately expressed in single-list elections and mass demonstrations. It is improbable that such asseverations are made seriously, especially since public-opinion studies that recognize important differences among individuals and population groups have been reported from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with increasing frequency. Our understanding of the role that public opinion plays in political, economic, cultural, and other areas can be expected to increase during the coming years as research and thinking at all levels is pursued throughout the world. Further comparisons of public-opinion processes in various societies would be especially helpful. Even more important would be empirical and theoretical studies linking together the four approaches described above, so that each would contribute to an interlocking and mutually reinforcing whole.

Only when this integration has been achieved will a coherent theory of public opinion be possible. Phillips Davison [ See also;;,,;, article on INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE; Mass Society; Propaganda; Public Relations; Reference Groups; and the biographies of Bryce; Cooley; Dicey; Machiavelli; Tocqueville]. Albig, William 1956 Modern Public Opinion. New York: McGraw-Hill. Allport, Floyd H.

1937 Toward a Science of Public Opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly 1:7-23. Almond, Gabriel A. (1950) 1960 The American People and Foreign Policy.

New York: Praeger. Almond, Gabriel A.; and Verba, Sidney 1963 The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton Univ. Bauer, Wilhelm 1929 Die bffentliche Meinung in der Weltgeschichte.

Potsdam (Germany): Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion. Bernays, Edward L. 1923 Crystallizing Public Opinion.

New York: Boni & Liveright. Bryce, James (1888) 1931-1933 The American Commonwealth. New York and London: Macmillan. → An abridged edition was published in 1959 by Putnam. Buchanan, William; and Cantril, Hadley 1953 How Nations See Each Other: A Study in Public Opinion. Urbana: Univ.

Of Illinois Press. Bureau Of Social Science Research, Washington, D.C.

1956 International Communication and Political Opinion: A Guide to the Literature, by Bruce L. Smith and Chitra M. Princeton Univ.

Cantril, Hadley 1966 The Pattern of Human Concerns. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Childs, Harwood L. 1965 Public Opinion: Nature, Formation and Role. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. Cohen, Bernard C.

1957 The Political Process and Foreign Policy: The Making of the Japanese Peace Settlement. Princeton Univ. Cohen, Bernard C. 1963 The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton Univ.

Conference On Communication And Political Development, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1961 1963 Communications and Political Development. Edited by Lucian W. Princeton Univ. Cooley, Charles H.

(1909) 1956 Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. In Charles H. Cooley, Two Major Works: Social Organization and Human Nature and the Social Order. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. → Each title reprinted with individual title page and pagination.

Separate paperback editions were published in 1962 by Schocken. Phillips 1965 International Political Communication. Published for the Council on Foreign Relations. New York: Praeger. Erskine, Hazel G. 1963 The Polls: Exposure to International Information. Public Opinion Quarterly 27: 658-662.

Free, Lloyd A. 1967 The Role of Public Opinion in International Relations. Unpublished manuscript. Galtung, Johan 1964 Foreign Policy Opinion as a Function of Social Position. Journal of Peace Research 1:206-231. Hawver, Carl 1954 The Congressman and His Public Opinion Poll.

Public Opinion Quarterly 18:123-129. Hyman, Herbert H.; and Sheatsley, Paul B. 1947 Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail. Public Opinion Quarterly 11:412-423. Hyman, Herbert H.; and Sheatsley, Paul B. 1964 Attitudes Toward Desegregation.

Scientific American 211, July: 16-23. Inkeles, Alex (1950) 1958 Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion. 3d printing, enl. Russian Research Center Studies, No. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.

Institute For International Social Research 1961 Some International Implications of the Political Psychology of Brazilians. Princeton, N.J.: The Institute Katz, Elihu; and Lazarsfeld, Paul F.

1955 Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. 1961 Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York: Knopf. Klapper, Joseph T. 1960 The Effects of Mass Communication.

Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. Kraft, Joseph 1961 The Future of the New York Times. Esquire 55, no. Lasswell, Harold D. (1927) 1938 Propaganda Technique in the World War. New York: Smith. Lasswell, Harold D.

1935 World Politics and Personal Insecurity. New York and London: McGraw-Hill. → A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. Lasswell, Harold D. (1948) 1964 The Structure and Function of Communication in Society. Pages 37-51 in Institute for Religious and Social Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Communication of Ideas: A Series of Addresses. Edited by Lyman Bryson.

New York: Cooper Square. Lazarsfeld, Paul F.; Berelson, Bernard; and Gaudet, Hazel (1944) 1960 The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia Univ. 1929 Agitation und Propaganda. Berlin: Verlag fur Literatur und Politik. → Published posthumously. Contains a collection of Lenin’s earlier writings on the subject first published in Russian.

Lenz, Friedrich 1956 Werden und Wesen der bffent-lichen Meinung. Munich: Pohl. Lerner, Daniel 1958 The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press. → A paperback edition was published in 1964. Lippmann, Walter (1922) 1944 Public Opinion.

New York: Macmillan. -* A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. Maletzke, Gerhard 1963 Psychologie der Massenkom-munikation: Theorie und Systematik. Hamburg (Germany): Verlag Hans Bredow-Institut. Michigan, University Of, Survey Research Center 1964 The American Public’s View of U.S.

Policy Toward China: A Report. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Palmer, Paul A. 1936 The Concept of Public Opinion in Political Theory. Pages 230-257 in Essays in History and Political Theory in Honor of Charles Howard Mcllwain. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.

Perry, Paul 1960 Election Survey Procedures of the Gallup Poll. Public Opinion Quarterly 24:531-542.

Schkamm, Wilbur L. 1964 Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in the Developing Countries. Stanford Univ. Shils, Edward 1963 Demagogues and Cadres in the Political Development of the New States.

Pages 64-77 in Conference on Communication and Political Development, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1961, Communications and Political Development. Edited by Lucian W. Princeton Univ.

Smith, Bruce L.; Lasswell, Harold D.; and Casey, Ralph D. 1946 Propaganda, Communication and Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference Guide.

Princeton Univ. Brewster 1949 The Combat Replacement. Pages 242-289 in Samuel A. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier. Volume 2: Combat and Its Aftermath. Princeton Univ.

Speier, Hans (1950) 1952 The Historical Development of Public Opinion. Pages 323-338 in Hans Speier, Social Order and the Risks of War: Papers in Political Sociology. New York: Stewart. → First published in Volume 55 of the American Journal of Sociology. Star, Shirley A.; and Hughes, Helen Macgill 1950 Report on an Educational Campaign: The Cincinnati Plan for the United Nations. American Journal of Sociology 55:389-400.

Stouffer, Samuel A. (1955) 1963 Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties: A Cross-section of the Nation Speaks Its Mind. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. Tocqueville, Alexis De (1835) 1945 Democracy in America. New York: Knopf.

→ First published in French. Paperback editions were published in 1961 by Vintage and by Schocken. Tonnies, Ferdinand (1887) 1957 Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated and edited by Charles P. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. ->First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper.

Truman, David B. (1951) 1962 The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion. New York: Knopf. Warner, Lucien 1939 The Reliability of Public Opinion Surveys.

Public Opinion Quarterly 3:376-390. Wieland, Christoph Martin 1799 Gesprach unter vier Augen.

Leipzig: Goschen. Yu, Te-chi 1964 Mass Persuasion in Communist China. New York: Praeger. “Political opinion” is a convenient term for referring to the context of authoritative decision, governmental and nongovernmental, in which persons in petitions of discretionary authority anticipate or respond to estimates of the community’s demands, expectations, or requirements. As the sampie survey and other instruments of social science research add precision to the concept of public opinion—defined as the distribution of personal opinions on public objects in the population outside the government—it becomes increasingly apparent that the opinion process is not identical with or completely determinative of the judgments of persons in a position to formulate and shape public policy. The concept of political opinion is thus a shorthand expression for the relation or sets of relations between the opinion-forming and policy-making processes in society. In empirical terms, it leads to the following question: which opinions and views, held by which persons outside the government, are heeded by which persons who make authoritative policy decisions?

Philosophically, it also raises the question of meaning: what function does public opinion play in the political process? Public opinion is sometimes considered to be a sanction (legitimizing symbol), sometimes an instrument (data), and sometimes a generative force (directive and limit) in the policy process. Clearly, then, normative assertions about “government by public opinion” do not accurately describe the processes by which opinions are actually utilized by the makers of public policy.

Opinion in the public context In order to understand the many ways in which public opinion actually functions in the political process, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of “opinion” and “public.” “Opinion” includes the whole range of personal and private sentiments, beliefs, and systematic views, felt and expressed, rational and nonrational, that both affect the legitimacy and stability of the social order and political system and condition the feasibility and acceptability of public policies. In a political setting, the relevant criterion is not the truth or falsity or the Tightness or wrongness of opinions but their significance for the electoral success or failure of officeholders and candidates, for the degree of popular support for existing and proposed policies aimed at the security and prosperity of the community, and ultimately for the viability of the constitutional and political system. Insofar as opinions are expressed, it is useful to distinguish two categories of opinion statements: (1) those of preference, which include expressions of individual feeling, conviction, and value; and (2) those of fact, which purport to describe transpersonal reality in objective terms of verifiable evidence. The important characteristic of opinion statements, as distinct from postulates of knowledge, mystical or religious faith, and matters of belief beyond discussion (e.g., incest), is that they are recognized as expressing controversial, conflicting ideas, capable of being accepted by rational minds, and hence are appropriate for discussion among individuals and groups.

Discussion can lead to agreement and can settle differences of opinion; only violence, authority, or an appeal to a metaphysical or a divine source can resolve differences in objects of faith and belief, which are literally nondebatable and thus fall outside the sphere of opinion. There is a notable tradition in the history of normative thought about the relation of the public and the private in matters of opinion. Milton’s Areopagitica, Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, and Mill’s On Liberty are classic statements of the moral and political problems posed by the personal freedoms of religious belief, thought, and expression; by a press that is not owned or controlled by the government; and by the respective rights of the majority and of minorities. Through most of the nineteenth century the dominant tradition assumed that the public sphere was defined by the legally coercive acts of government officials acting in the name of the monarch or representing the people organized as a political community. The work of Marx, James, and Freud, coupled with the rise of the “culture” concept in anthropology, shifted the focus of attention to the economic and social-psychological determinants of opinion, almost to the point of obliterating the distinction between “public” and “private.” Some writers treated the public and political aspects of opinion as logical derivatives of class or status ideologies; others, as by-products of the personality-forming processes by which individuals are adjusted to society. The term “public” was given the sense of “interpersonal relations.” For example, Charles Cooley saw public opinion as the product of social communication and reciprocal influence; John Dewey, as the consequences of interpersonal acts upon persons other than those directly involved in transactions. But these concepts turned out to be virtually identical with the notion “group,” measured by “the extent and complexity of interpersonal relations among the members of specified aggregates, which under specified conditions exhibit organization of varying kinds and degrees” (Lass-well & Kaplan 1950).

Hence “public” had to be differentiated by specifying the requirement of a more inclusive consensus, within which various opinion aggregates could coexist. These theoretical developments emphasized the roots of public opinion in private and group experience and demonstrated the futility of absolute differentiations between “individual,” “group,” and “public.” However, the conception of the public as a simple extension of interpersonal contact and communication remains unsatisfactory. First, it is not clear that an opinion consensus is a necessary or sufficient condition for a public to exist. Second, the problem of coercion is ignored. Finally, the linkages and adjustments connecting group opinions with the formulation of public policy are vaguely referred to under the heading “pressures” or “compromise.” Models of the political process that explicitly recognize the ambiguous relation between conflicting opinion preferences and actual policy decisions are still required. Theories of political opinion The range of individual and group opinions taken into account by political rulers, representatives, and public officials varies widely among political societies, historical and contemporary. In primitive communities and in feudal, caste, or closed-class social systems, the range of political communication seems to have been narrowly confined within limits set by ritual, custom, and social structure.

In fractionalized, transitional cultures the ruling group often restricts sharply the scope and subjects of public discussion and indeed controls more or less completely the channels of mass communication. Since World War i it has become fashionable for all governments to claim to be democratic, in the sense that a high degree of correspondence is imputed to exist between the acts of government officials and the majority opinion. However, we may draw a preliminary, fundamental distinction between “constitutional” and “people’s” democracies, in terms of the degree of nongovernmental control of the instruments of opinion formation and the relation that is asserted to exist between public opinion and governmental decision making. Under constitutional governments, public officials operate through prescribed, legal procedures for issuing and validating statements of public policy.

Nongovernmental institutions of public information and discussion are allowed ample opportunity, before, during, and after the official process, to formulate the issues and to develop a patterned distribution of individual responses from “the country.” All this goes on in an atmosphere free from military or private violence, and individuals and groups are free to criticize and respond to governmental programs of information and persuasion. In this context the acts of public officials are interpreted as symbolic, authoritative expressions of the public interest, legally enforceable until amended or rescinded by proper constitutional procedures after a period of public reaction, political agitation, and response. Contrariwise, in so-called people’s democracies it is held that the will of the “people,” the “masses,” the “nation,” or the Volk is known or available only to the ruler or the party; this “will” is embodied in the ruler’s or the party’s acts, and only such information and views as are found necessary or appropriate are legitimate matters for public knowledge and discussion.

To this end, the channels of public communication and conditions of group association are rigorously limited and controlled by governmental and party officials. Speculative theories of political opinion can be grouped into five classes; each has affinities to one of the two basic types above but may also resemble the other in some features. Elitist theories Perhaps the oldest theory of political opinion is that of the elite, or ruling class, according to which society is horizontally divided into leaders and followers and vertically divided into hierarchies of racial, functional, socioeconomic, or demographic groups. The ruling class is composed of the leaders of the several vertical-group hierarchies.

The consensual foundations of political community, according to elitist theorists, lie in ethnic ties, qualities of the people, ancient customs, glorious historical events, and symbolic documents embodying self-limiting agreements between the nominal ruler and the elite leaders. In the elitist conception of political opinion, the status and opinion leaders outside government are seen as occupying a hierarchical position above the points of official decision, so that the lower-status governmental officials, by definition, simply execute the decisions made by the ruling class. Representative of this approach is the work of Gaetano Mosca [ See. Absolute-sovereignty theories A second class of theories of political opinion includes those absolutist doctrines of sovereignty, both monarchic and popular, that view society as an abstract mass of individuals. In the absence of rulers, the people are able to act only chaotically or in compulsive unanimity, for example, as a mob. The abstract “people,” therefore, find it necessary to abdicate power to a no less abstract absolute ruler, monarch, leader, or party. These entities alone are capable of knowing and expressing the mystical, unifying will variously named volonte generate, Volksgeist, sovereign people, and mass proletariat.

Interpreters of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel can point to paragraphs and sections showing that these thinkers were aware that the social structure and opinion processes of society are more complex than the simple dichotomy of people and ruler; nonetheless, in answer to the question of where the source of supreme power in the political community is located, each postulated an unlimited governing authority, either in the mass-majoritarian consensus of the people or in the moral and political responsibilities of the state-ruler. None of the Leninist-Stalinist theories (or their adaptations by Mao Tse-tung) about the relations of the party to the masses overcomes the difficulty of the people-state dilemma. Manipulative theories Closely associated historically with the concept of popular sovereignty is the idea that people have to be educated, guided, induced, or persuaded. In practical terms, this has led to the notion that issues can be created and that new cleavages and changes in the mass distribution of opinion can be brought about by events and adroit acts of opinion leaders, politicians, prestige figures, or persons who control the content of the mass media. War propaganda during World War i, the tremendous increase in commercial advertising and public relations activities thereafter, the deliberate use of propaganda and agitation by totalitarian and revolutionary mass movements, and the conscious development of psychological warfare in World War n, all highlighted what may be called the mass-manipulation theory of political opinion.

During the interwar period there was a tendency to overstate the degree to which modern “mass society” can be controlled without legal and political monopolies over the press and other mass media. However, there was also a clear realization that social forces and public opinion are not independent, exogenous variables in the opinion-policy process but are affected by, and indeed are sometimes produced by, leaders and events. [See, for example. Constitutional-democratic theories The fourth category of political opinion models contains those theories of representative democracy which postulate the idea of a covenant or agreement among people who, by giving up their prepolitical freedom of action, are enabled to establish a government of limited powers in order to secure certain values (union and independence, security of life and property, justice and liberty, the common welfare) that individuals without government cannot obtain by themselves. [See The Federalist; see also;.

The metaphorical notion of an “agency” contract allows the imposition of substantive and procedural restraints upon the legitimacy of discretionary acts by elective representatives and public officials. It also provides guarantees of personal and private rights, requirements for insuring conformity between governmental acts and majority opinion (free elections, freedom of speech and of the press, and the right of assembly and of petition), and a prescribed procedure for amending and revising governmental structures, procedures, and powers. Such widely varying theories of political organization as monarchy, minority or restricted majority rule, and populist democracy have been reconciled with representative-democratic forms, when they admitted prior legitimacy and loyalty to a political order based on the principles of limited powers and the consent of the governed [ See. Rationalist-idealist theories The fifth category, the rationalist-idealist model of political opinion, was perhaps best formulated by A. Lowell and R. Maclver, who sought to identify the conditions necessary for individuals and groups to participate rationally in public affairs [ See and. Public Opinion Melvin Small The public's role in the American foreign policy process is a controversial subject.

Generations of diplomats, political theorists, and historians have argued about the nature of the elusive opinion policy relationship. They have been concerned about the abilities of American leaders to operate according to democratic precepts in a pluralistic international system often dominated by autocratic powers. In arguing for greater authority in foreign affairs for the proposed new Senate in the Federalist Papers, saw the senior house of the U.S. Congress as serving as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. Striking a similar theme almost a half-century later, that perceptive observer of the American scene Alexis de Tocqueville was not very sanguine about the prospects for a democratic foreign policy. Writing during a period when the diplomatic activities of the were relatively unimportant, he explained: Foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which a democracy possesses; and they require, on the contrary, the perfect use of almost all of those faculties in which it is deficient. [A] democracy is unable to regulate the details of an important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out its execution in the presence of serious obstacles.

It cannot combine measures with secrecy, and it will not await their consequences with patience. [D]emocracies obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence and abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice. According to Tocqueville and other so-called realists, diplomacy should be the province of a small group of cosmopolitan professionals who perform their duties in secret and with dispatch. Leaders must not encourage their constituents to mix in heady matters of state because the uninformed and unsophisticated mass public is unable to comprehend the subtle rules of the game of nations. Democratic leaders are severely handicapped in diplomatic jousts with authoritarian rulers who are able to contain the foreign policy process within chancellery walls.

Defenders of popular participation in international politics maintain that despite the clumsiness and inefficiency inherent in open diplomacy, the alternative is worse. Leaders who employ devious means to defend a democratic system will, in the long run, pervert or transform that system.

At the least, the public and its representatives must have as much influence in the making and execution of foreign policy as they have in domestic policy. A foreign policy constructed and controlled by the people is stronger than one that rests upon a narrow popular base. The victory of the United States in the can be offered to support that contention. Historians are just as contentious as political theorists. Despite an enormous amount of rhetoric, speculation, and research, very little is known about the actual relationship between public opinion and foreign policy. Since the late 1940s, survey researchers have explored the dimensions of public opinion while political scientists have considered the ways in which decision makers perceive opinion.

Nevertheless, a broad consensus about the nature of the opinion-policy nexus has yet to emerge. Many studies describe the power of the public and how it has forced presidents into wars and crises against their better judgments. The journalist Walter Lippmann, among others, felt that Tocqueville's prophecies have been fulfilled: The people have imposed a veto upon the judgements of informed and responsible officials. They have compelled the governments, which usually knew what would have been wiser, or was necessary, or was more expedient, to be too late with too little, or too long with too much, too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiation or too intransigent. Mass opinion has acquired mounting power in this century.

It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decisions when the stakes are life and death. Lippmann's position is supported by a host of historical legends: that congressional war hawks, responding to popular jingoism, compelled to ask for war in 1812, during a period of improving British-American relations; that a spirit of manifest destiny swept James K. Polk along in its wake into the Mexican War of 1846; that expansionist fervor and humanitarian impulses created by an irresponsible yellow press propelled into war against hapless in 1898; that myopic popular isolationism restrained Franklin D.

Roosevelt's realistic anti-Axis program in the late 1930s; that antiwar protesters humbled the once-omnipotent Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and forced both his withdrawal from public life and his de-escalation of the war in; and that the bitter memories of that war made it difficult for presidents to intervene militarily in the Third World during the last quarter of the twentieth century. All of these examples lend credence to the principle that the public is sovereign in the United States, even when it comes to matters of weltpolitik.