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Communicative Institutions: Public Opinion, Mass Media, Polls, Associations

Jeffrey C. Alexander

in The Civil Sphere

Civil society should be understood not merely in terms of contrasting symbolic categories but as structures of feeling, the diffusely sensed obligations and rights that represent, and are at the same ... More

Civil society should be understood not merely in terms of contrasting symbolic categories but as structures of feeling, the diffusely sensed obligations and rights that represent, and are at the same time evoked by, contrasting solidary ties. Collective representations of such social relationships are broadcast by civil society institutions specializing in communicative, not regulative tasks—by the mass media, public opinion polls, and voluntary organizations. The structures of feeling that such institutions produce must be conceptualized as influence rather than authoritative control, or power in a more structural sense. They institutionalize civil society by creating messages that translate general codes into situationally specific evaluations and descriptions. This chapter analyzes these organizations of influence. It begins by discussing the lifeworld of public opinion which anchors communicative and regulative institutions alike.Less

Assessing Opinion

Brian Harrison

in The Transformation of British Politics 1860–1995

Politicians in Britain are not alone in needing to assess public opinion, but they did not pioneer modern techniques for doing so. The pioneers were social investigators grappling with poverty, ... More

Politicians in Britain are not alone in needing to assess public opinion, but they did not pioneer modern techniques for doing so. The pioneers were social investigators grappling with poverty, businessmen trying to predict their markets, pressure groups seeking reinforcement, and media people seeking readers, listeners, and viewers. When politicians did need to discover public opinion, whether to follow or reject it, they had their own special source of information: parliamentary elections, which were steadily refined to cope with urbanisation and industrialisation. As late-Victorian opinion congealed into a single national political community, parliament became an arena where parties returned from combat in one election only to launch a national dialogue that continuously fed into the next. Four challenges emerged to politicians' authority as judges of opinion: pressure groups, the referendum, the media, and opinion polls.Less

Al‐Jazeerah and the Internet as Sites of Democratic Struggle

Larbi Sadiki

in Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy

What role do al-Jazeerah and the Internet play in strengthening ‘Arab opinion’ and democratic struggles in the Arab World? This chapter attempts to answer this question by placing emphasis, as in the ... More

What role do al-Jazeerah and the Internet play in strengthening ‘Arab opinion’ and democratic struggles in the Arab World? This chapter attempts to answer this question by placing emphasis, as in the preceding chapter, on the importance of the widening of anti-authoritarian struggles. It focuses on the role played by the new information and communication technologies in empowering vocalization of dissidence, and the implications of this for state-society relations. The chapter assesses the value of blogs and online opinion polling, looking at their roles in the rise of Arab public opinion and the framing of the moment of democratic struggles from below. It attempts to make a case for how the rise of blogs and online opinion polling has reinvigorated Arab societies' response to the stalled top-down or controlled democratization, and their contests to state authority.Less

The Changing Climate For Reform

Margaret Otlowski

in Voluntary Euthanasia and the Common Law

This chapter explores the changing climate for legal reform with regard to active voluntary euthanasia by considering a number of related issues: public opinion which appears to be increasingly in ... More

This chapter explores the changing climate for legal reform with regard to active voluntary euthanasia by considering a number of related issues: public opinion which appears to be increasingly in support of the legalization of active voluntary euthanasia performed by doctors for terminally ill or incurable patients; the development of voluntary euthanasia organizations campaigning for the legalization of active voluntary euthanasia; and developments within the medical profession indicating growing support for the concept of active voluntary euthanasia. This chapter divides the discussion into three ares: opinion polls, voluntary euthanasia movement, and changes within the medical profession in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia.Less

Educating Global Citizens in the Cold War

Christopher P. Loss

in Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century

This chapter depicts the challenges posed to higher education during the Cold War. Despite suffering a torrent of anticommunist attacks—and more than a few casualties—higher education also played a ... More

This chapter depicts the challenges posed to higher education during the Cold War. Despite suffering a torrent of anticommunist attacks—and more than a few casualties—higher education also played a leading role in the government's battle for hearts and minds in the 1950s. At home and abroad the American state deployed education in order to produce democratic citizens and then used public opinion polls to evaluate the integrity of the production process. Obsessively tracked during the Cold War, “public opinion” offered policymakers and educational elites access to the American people's collective psychological adjustment and mental health, to their intellectual fitness and their knowledge of the bipolar Cold War world in which they lived.Less

Public opinion and public policy in the Czech Republic

Paulína Tabery

in Policy Analysis in the Czech Republic

The chapter deals with the relationship between public opinion and public policy. The first part discusses the dominant role of opinion polls as a representation of public opinion, their strengths ... More

The chapter deals with the relationship between public opinion and public policy. The first part discusses the dominant role of opinion polls as a representation of public opinion, their strengths and weaknesses. Further, this part also deals with the question what policymakers consider as public opinion and what the role of interest groups in this context is. The conclusion of this section is devoted to the question of the impact of public opinion on public policy and problems in its measurement. The second part focuses on the Czech Republic. Firstly, it introduces the history of public opinion research in this country. Further, it focuses on interest in politics and public affairs and people's preferences in different areas of public life which might be addressed by public policies. Finally, the relationship between public opinion and public policy is demonstrated using the example of building an anti-missile radar base.Less

The Myths and Meaning of Public Opinion and World War II

in In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq

From December 31, 1944, until January 4, 1945, the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) conducted a survey asking, “If Hitler offered to make peace now and would give up all land he has ... More

From December 31, 1944, until January 4, 1945, the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO) conducted a survey asking, “If Hitler offered to make peace now and would give up all land he has conquered, should we try to work out a peace or should we go on fighting until the German army is completely defeated?” Seventy-two percent of the public expressed support for the stated U.S. policy of unconditional surrender; the American people wanted to continue fighting until victory was complete. Aside from the work of a handful of historians, public opinion during World War II has gone largely unexamined. As a result, modern treatments of public opinion and war have almost completely ignored World War II. This chapter discusses the myths and meaning of public opinion in connection with World War II. It first looks at opinion polls in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s and the birth of survey research, before turning to the myths of World War II.Less

The Gender of Public Opinion: Naomi Mitchison, Celia Fremlin, and the Women of Mass-Observation

Megan Faragher

in Public Opinion Polling in Mid-Century British Literature: The Psychographic Turn

As contributors to Mass-Observation, Naomi Mitchison and Celia Fremlin emphasize the important, and often undervalued, role of qualitative analysis in the assessment of public opinion throughout ... More

As contributors to Mass-Observation, Naomi Mitchison and Celia Fremlin emphasize the important, and often undervalued, role of qualitative analysis in the assessment of public opinion throughout their fiction. While the British Institute for Public Opinion often excluded women as both researchers and research subjects, Mass-Observation’s (M-O) structure was more open to input from women as both observers and subjects of observation. After she touted the political value of mathematics in her Greek-inspired short story collection The Delicate Fire, Mitchison uses her novel We Have Been Warned to imbue more skepticism about the egalitarian value of statistical analysis; the protagonist, Dione Galton, learns only too late that her own instincts about the rise of fascism in England, ventriloquized through the ghost Green Jean, were far more accurate than the polling cards she used to predict her husband’s eventual electoral defeat. Likewise, Celia Fremlin’s postwar novel, The Hours Before Dawn, validates the supposedly irrational fears of her protagonist, Louise Henderson, who must contend with patronizing experts in her effort to thwart the violent impulses of her new tenant Vera Brandon. Both novels, influenced by the authors’ experiences working for M-O, contend that quantitative analysis alone is insufficient to capture the complexity of women’s wartime experiences. This chapter argues that the contributions of M-O researchers and novelists like Fremlin and Mitchison present the possibility of a road untrodden in the history of social psychology research, as the fetishizaton of data over experience eventually drowned out the possibilities of more holistic and qualitative methods.Less

Perceptions of Disruption: Media Representations and Medical Staffs’ Perceptions of Undocumented Immigrants’ Impact on Healthcare Services in Post–SB 1070 Arizona

Jonathan Maupin

in Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations

Anti-immigrant discourses persistently construct images of undocumented immigrants as a disruptive force in almost every aspect of American society. Yet, the extent to which these discourses reflect ... More

Anti-immigrant discourses persistently construct images of undocumented immigrants as a disruptive force in almost every aspect of American society. Yet, the extent to which these discourses reflect measurable impacts as opposed to perceived threats is uncertain. This chapter analyzes the representation and perception of undocumented immigrants as a threat to the U.S. healthcare system, and the state of Arizona in particular. Focusing on popular media coverage of anti-immigrant senate proposals regarding healthcare in Arizona, this chapter first analyzes the ways in which arguments in support and against the bills construct undocumented immigrants as disruptive threats to specific domains of U.S. society. Second, this chapter compares national public opinion polls of immigrants’ disruptive threats on the U.S. healthcare system with those of medical professionals in Arizona. These analyses highlight the tenuous relationship between perceptions of disruption and measurable impacts, and how these differences may influence healthcare delivery.Less

Introduction: From the Era of the Crowd to the Psychographic Turn

Megan Faragher

in Public Opinion Polling in Mid-Century British Literature: The Psychographic Turn

After staging the stakes of the mid-century turn towards psychography in W.H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen,” the Introduction provides a pre-history of “psychography,” a term coined in the Victorian ... More

After staging the stakes of the mid-century turn towards psychography in W.H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen,” the Introduction provides a pre-history of “psychography,” a term coined in the Victorian Era to describe a series of disparate practices of recording and materializing individual psychology. These practices—including telepathic communication, automatic writing, and the literary methods of Stracheyan psychobiography—demonstrate “mind-writing” as an emergent literary concern long before the invention of modern polling. Even in this protean stage of psychography, writers worried these new practices might empower malignant actors to weaponize psychographic power against the nation. Invoking Bram Stoker’s Dracula as an exemplar of this phenomenon, I highlight that the vampire frightens not only because he will feed on London’s “teeming millions,” but also because his infectious power will “create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons.” In effect, Dracula weaponizes his telepathic power to execute psychological control over the masses. At the time Stoker was writing his novel, the science of public opinion was understood by sociologists only through such tropes of spiritualism, disease, and contagion. The chapter traces the transformation of this early modernist vision of psychographics to its reprisal in the mid-century institutionalization of public opinion polling, using Auden as a touchstone to demonstrate the radical and rapid institutionalization of group psychology into everyday discourse and institutions.Less

“Vodka Is Our Enemy, but Who Said We’re Afraid of Enemies?”

Anna L. Bailey

in Politics under the Influence: Vodka and Public Policy in Putin's Russia

Addresses the surprisingly difficult matter of establishing how much alcohol Russians actually drink, and details the problems with the various statistical measures available. The chapter then ... More

Addresses the surprisingly difficult matter of establishing how much alcohol Russians actually drink, and details the problems with the various statistical measures available. The chapter then proceeds to explore the elusive meaning of the term “populist” when used in connection with alcohol policy. I describe the existence of an “alcohol doublethink” in public opinion, whereby people consider other people’s consumption a problem, but not their own. I use this notion to explain the apparent paradox of why are anti-alcohol policy measures are popular in theory but not in practice.Less

Public Ambivalence about Government

Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain

in Achieving Democracy: The Future of Progressive Regulation

Chapter 3 further develops the theme discussed in Chapter 2 that the United States has experienced alternating periods of pro- and antigovernment sentiment. The ambivalence between favorable and ... More

Chapter 3 further develops the theme discussed in Chapter 2 that the United States has experienced alternating periods of pro- and antigovernment sentiment. The ambivalence between favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward government is repeatedly shown in public opinion polling. Public opinion polling reveals that even when Americans tell pollsters that government does more harm than good, they simultaneously tell pollsters that they favor retaining specific levels of social and economic regulation such as government support for social security, education, health care, and environmental protection. This polling also reveals a deeper truth. Americans are committed to core, and sometimes conflicting, values. Americans believe that capitalism is an important method for social ordering, and they believe that democracy reflects our historic values and must be secured even in the face of free-market advocacy.Less

Introduction

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

in The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War

This chapter introduces readers to the key players who shaped the Iraq war policy. It identifies these individuals through the specific role each played in selling the war. It notes that they ... More

This chapter introduces readers to the key players who shaped the Iraq war policy. It identifies these individuals through the specific role each played in selling the war. It notes that they constitute a network with social ties, ideological coherence and institutional linkages. The chapter argues that the war was not inevitable and public opinion had to be manufactured in support of the war. It also shows that opinion polling might have overstated the true magnitude of support for the war.Less

Conservative Hegemony?: Elections, 1983–92

David Denver and Mark Garnett

in British General Elections Since 1964: Diversity, Dealignment, and Disillusion

This chapter concerns the British general elections of 1983, 1987, and 1992. All three were won by the Conservatives. In 1983, the party was returned with a majority of 144 seats, despite having been ... More

This chapter concerns the British general elections of 1983, 1987, and 1992. All three were won by the Conservatives. In 1983, the party was returned with a majority of 144 seats, despite having been deeply unpopular for much of its term of office thanks to economic recession and an unprecedented post-war level of unemployment. The scale of the victory was partly due to the 1982 Falklands conflict, in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had seemingly fulfilled her promise to restore British pride and prestige. However, the Conservatives also benefited from a divided opposition, with Labour and the newly formed Liberal/SDP Alliance winning a plurality of votes between them. In 1987 the situation was similar, although by this time the economic outlook had improved and the Conservatives benefited from a ‘feel-good factor’. By 1990 Mrs Thatcher had once again become deeply unpopular, and was replaced by the less controversial (but uncharismatic) John Major. Under his leadership the Conservatives secured a record tally of votes in the 1992 election, but their overall parliamentary majority was greatly reduced thanks to the operation of the electoral system. In each case, relevant developments in the preceding inter-election period are described (including trends in party popularity) and an account of the campaign provided. In addition, the election results themselves—patterns of party support and of turnout—are extensively analysed. The chapter also discusses the academic controversy over the extent of class voting in Britain, which emerged at the time, as well as the growing North–South regional divide in party support. Finally, the suggestion that this period was one of ‘Conservative hegemony’ is considered.Less

The Way Things Were: Elections, 1964–70

David Denver and Mark Garnett

in British General Elections Since 1964: Diversity, Dealignment, and Disillusion

This chapter concerns the British general elections of 1964, 1966, and 1970. The first contest ended thirteen years of Conservative government, although Labour secured an overall majority of just ... More

This chapter concerns the British general elections of 1964, 1966, and 1970. The first contest ended thirteen years of Conservative government, although Labour secured an overall majority of just four seats. The 1966 election resulted in a comfortable victory for Labour, which was expected to win again in 1970. Instead, the Conservatives confounded the opinion polls and returned to office. In each case relevant developments in the preceding inter-election period are described (including trends in party popularity) and an account of the campaign provided. In addition, the election results themselves—patterns of party support and of turnout—are extensively analysed. The chapter also sets out the contemporary explanation of party choice in Britain offered by the influential work of Butler and Stokes which stressed the primary roles of class and party identification.Less

‘Decade of Dealignment’: Elections, 1974–9

David Denver and Mark Garnett

in British General Elections Since 1964: Diversity, Dealignment, and Disillusion

This chapter concerns the British general elections of February 1974, October 1974, and 1979 during what came to be known as the ‘Decade of Dealignment’. The first two contests were closely fought, ... More

This chapter concerns the British general elections of February 1974, October 1974, and 1979 during what came to be known as the ‘Decade of Dealignment’. The first two contests were closely fought, resulting in no overall majority (February 1974) and a slender Labour majority (October 1974). However, the resulting Labour governments were beset by severe economic problems, leading some commentators to claim that Britain had become ‘ungovernable’. In the 1979 general election the Conservatives returned to office under a leader (Margaret Thatcher) who was determined to reverse the country’s post-war decline. In each case, relevant developments in the preceding inter-election period are described (including trends in party popularity) and an account of the campaign provided. In addition, the election results themselves—patterns of party support and of turnout—are extensively analysed. The chapter also focuses on three areas investigated by researchers at the time—explanations for non-voting, the sources of support for the Liberal Party, and the rise of ‘issue voting’.Less

Method

James Hinton

in The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949

Away from the narrative, this chapter reviews Mass-Observation’s research methods, discussing the techniques employed by the fieldworkers: observation of behaviour, overheard conversion, informal and ... More

Away from the narrative, this chapter reviews Mass-Observation’s research methods, discussing the techniques employed by the fieldworkers: observation of behaviour, overheard conversion, informal and formal interviewing, verbatim transcription, etc. The social and political composition of the volunteer panel is analyzed, and the ways in which their questionnaire responses and war diaries were used by Mass-Observation are discussed. Comparison is made between the Mass-Observation panel and the panel developed during the war by Stephen Taylor, Mary Adams’s successor at Home Intelligence. Finally, the chapter analyzes John Ferraby’s methodological writings, which set out to justify Mass-Observation’s qualitative methods against the opinion pollster’s insistence that only quantitative methods based on representative sampling were appropriate for the assessment of public opinion.Less