Lapsed Memory? The Roots of American Public Opinion Research

Abstract

With the rise of the democratic state came a strong emphasis on "the public" or "public opinion" in the study of politics. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of important works examined the contours of public opinion within a democracy. The study of public opinion since this early period has only intensified. However, recent work on public opinion is problematic: the theoretical and normative concerns and the political / sociological focus of the early works on public opinion are largely missing. Most modern studies of public opinion are psychologically driven and often truncated from broad concerns of American politics and democratic theory. In this article, I explicate the history of public opinion research, paying particular attention to the "early" works and how their concerns and emphases have been neglected by many "later" studies of public opinion. Through this history I aim to highlight the differences between the early and later phases and to suggest that much was lost in neglecting the concerns of the early writers on public opinion. While some contemporary researchers are, in fact, harking back to the early work, I conclude that a more thorough re-acquaintance with the classics of public opinion is necessary.