Public Opinion and Opinion Polls in Cameroon

Abstract

What is currently termed Cameroonian “public opinion” is in fact the final stage of a long historical, social, and political process; retracing the use of this term in statements made by public figures back to its roots can help to put it into perspective. We shall briefly outline the “three stages” in the emergence of Cameroonian “public opinion”‐namely its reference points at the time of decolonisation, during the “monolithic” period and since the process of relative political liberalisation; the three stages continuously interact and are closely related to the successive structuring of Cameroon's political arenas. Thanks to them we can identify the shifting areas of public discourse and hence the participants in national politics, and consider the topography of those politics. I also highlight the ways in which the “polls” of that “public opinion” can shed light upon the various aspects of political discourse, of political “activity” (as opposed to the political “profession”) and of the conduct of politics in Cameroon since the “transitional” period began in the 1990s.