Navigating Public Opinion Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy

by Manza, Jeff; Cook, Fay Lomax; Page, Benjamin I.

• ISBN13: 9780195149340
• ISBN10: 0195149343
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-05
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Do politicians listen to the public? How often and when? Or are the views of the public manipulated or used strategically by political and economic elites? Navigating Public Opinion brings together leading scholars of American politics to assess and debate these questions. It describes how therelationship between opinion and policy has changed over time; how key political actors use public opinion to formulate domestic and foreign policy; and how new measurement techniques might improve our understanding of public opinion in contemporary polling and survey research. The distinguished contributors shed new light on several long-standing controversies over policy responsiveness to public opinion. Featuring a new analysis by Robert Erikson, Michael MacKuen, and James Stimson that builds from their pathbreaking work on how public mood moves policy in amacro-model of policymaking, the volume also includes several critiques of this model by Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro, another critique by G. William Domhoff, and a rejoinder by Erikson and his coauthors. Other highlights include discussions of how political elites, including state-levelpolicymakers, presidents, and makers of foreign policy, use (or shape) public opinion; and analyses of new methods for measuring public opinion such as survey-based experiments, probabilistic polling methods, non-survey-based measures of public opinion, and the potential and limitations of Internetpolls and surveys. Introductory and concluding essays provide useful background context and offer an authoritative summary of what is known about how public opinion influences public policy. A must-have for all students of American politics, public opinion, and polling, this state-of-the-art collection addresses issues that lie at the heart of democratic governance today.

Author Biography

Jeff Manza is Associate Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is the coauthor of Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (OUP) and Locking Up the Vote: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (forthcoming from OUP). Fay Lomax Cook is Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Who Should Be Helped? Public Support for Social Services and Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public. Benjamin I. Page is Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the author or coauthor of eight books, including Who Gets What from Government, Who Deliberates, The Rational Public, and What Government Can Do.

Table of Contents

Contributors	xi
Navigating Public Opinion: An Introduction	3	(14)
Jeff Manza
Fay Lomax Cook
Benjamin I. Page
PART I. DOES POLICY RESPONSIVENESS EXIST?
The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: The State of the Debate	17	(16)
Jeff Manza
Fay Lomax Cook
Public Opinion and Policy: Causal Flow in a Macro System Model	33	(21)
Robert S. Erikson
Michael B. Mackuen
James A. Stimson
Politics and Policymaking in the Real World: Crafted Talk and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness	54	(22)
Lawrence R. Jacobs
Robert Y. Shapiro
Panderers or Shirkers? Politicians and Public Opinion	76	(10)
Robert S. Erikson
Michael B. Mackuen
James A. Stimson
Public Opinion and Congressional Action on Labor Market Opportunities, 1942-2000	86	(20)
Paul Burstein
Polls, Priming, and the Politics of Welfare Reform	106	(18)
R. Kent Weaver
The Power Elite, Public Policy, and Public Opinion	124	(17)
G. William Domhoff
PART II. HOW POLITICAL ELITES USE PUBLIC OPINION
Policy Elites Invoke Public Opinion: Polls, Policy Debates, and the Future of Social Security	141	(30)
Fay Lomax Cook
Jason Barabas
Benjamin I. Page
How State-Level Policy Managers ``Read'' Public Opinion	171	(13)
Susan Herbst
Public Opinion, Foreign Policy, and Democracy: How Presidents Use Public Opinion	184	(17)
Robert Y. Shapiro
Lawrence R. Jacobs
How Policymakers Misperceive U.S. Public Opinion on Foreign Policy	201	(20)
Steven Kull
Clay Ramsay
PART III. MEASURING PUBLIC OPINION
The Authority and Limitations of Polls	221	(11)
Peter V. Miller
An Anatomy of Survey-Based Experiments	232	(19)
Martin Gilens
Probabilistic Polling	251	(21)
Charles F. Manski
The Future of Polling: Relational Inference and the Development of Internet Survey Instruments	272	(18)
James Witte
Philip E. N. Howard
The Sovereign Status of Survey Data	290	(25)
Taeku Lee
PART IV. CONCLUSION
The Value of Polls in Promoting Good Government and Democracy	315	(10)
Humphrey Taylor
The Semi-Sovereign Public	325	(20)
Benjamin I. Page
References	345	(28)
Index	373