Democratic Responsiveness? Untangling the Links Between Public Opinion and Policy

Abstract

Abundant evidence has been produced to demonstrate substantial empirical relationships between public opinion (in the sense of survey-measured collective policy preferences) and public policy in the United States and elsewhere. Policy outputs—what governments do—tend to correspond fairly closely with what surveys say their citizens want them to do. In my view, however, a number of important research questions remain largely open. Answers to some of them are crucial to deciding what, if anything, opinion-policy congruence has to do with democratic theory.Open Questions1. How much impact does public opinion actually have on policy making? In particular, how much of the observed relationship is causal rather than spurious, and how much causal impact proceeds from opinion to policy rather than the reverse? If public opinion simply tends to swing into line behind whatever policies decision makers come up with, or if some third force drives both opinion and policy, the implications for democratic theory are rather different from what they would be if public opinion exerted a powerful influence on government action.2. Under what circumstances is this impact larger or smaller? What kinds of political systems are most responsive to their citizens? How much difference do free elections make? High levels of economic development, education, and communications? Vigorous party competition? Parliamentary versus presidential systems? Federalism?