Some Relations between Events and Attitudes

Abstract

The assumption that the general public reacts rationally to its changing political and economic environment is basic to democratic theory; for if rational reaction to the complex of events having broad political significance is not general but is limited to a minority of the public, then the rational few must govern the irrational many. Yet this democratic assumption has been little explored empirically. Protagonists of government responsible to the general public assert it; antagonists deny it—both groups basing their judgment on the common sense of everyday observation or on the rigorous a priori requirements of their own political theories, values, and ideologies or of those of such theorists as Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson.The assumption cannot be examined indirectly and inferentially from analysis of reactions to nonpolitical stimuli. It is of no political consequence that an individual sensibly responds to a sharp object that touches his body by getting out of the way. It is of no political consequence as such that the hungry individual responds by seeking or fantasying food. It is of political consequence when individuals respond to high prices of food or to the threat of war or the prospect of peace by forming attitudes which are or may become the basis for political action.