Yesterday was the first meeting of my "Public Opinion" seminar, a highly anticipated event. I'm a first year graduate student in Political Science who is interested in, among other things, how public opinion is formed and to what degree (if any) it has an effect on how our guys and gals on Capitol Hill make their decisions. So you can imagine I was eager to dig in, first by figuring out what exactly "Public Opinion" is.
That, fortunately, was the first question on our seminar's agenda. Unfortunately, there was no clear definition to be had.
There's one aspect of Public Opinion where there is broad consensus: the "public" is generally understood to mean at least all citizens (I won't complicate things with whether to include residents, visitors, etc), who - in the math of calculating aggregate opinion - each get one vote. This might seem obvious, but it was not always so. Early theorists of Public Opinion - Herbert Blumer in particular - thought researchers should be concerned with "functional" or "effective" Public Opinion. While it might be all nice and democratic to think we each get an equal voice in setting Public Opinion, according to Blumer, we all know that some voices (those with megaphones or hefty wallets) have greater weight in influencing lawmakers. Blumer recommended tracing back from decisions in Congress to see whose opinions held greater sway - and then creating a weighted formula to get a more accurate measure of Public Opinion. A neat idea, it had its faults (chiefly the risk of tautology in defining public opinion as any opinion that results in congressional action) - and ultimately the more democratic notion of "public" won out.
The far hazier half of Public Opinion is the "opinion" part. We're all pretty comfortable using this term, but it of course can mean lots of things: your position on specific policies (eg. what kinds of semi-automatic guns should be legal for sale); your broad preferences (whether safety should trump the 2nd amendment when considering gun laws); or your deepest values (eg the US is founded on liberty). When we talk about Public Opinion it's not always clear what level we have in mind. Earliest notions of Public Opinion - going back to Rousseau who kind of invented the term - had the sense that Public Opinion was of a profound, unified nature - an organic force to be reckoned with. If you didn't pay heed to it you might end up at the guillotine.
Getting specific about what kind of "opinions" we're talking about is not of idle interest. In the background of discussing Public Opinion is - I believe - the accepted notion that Public Opinion matters somehow. Most of us democratic minded folk imagine that lawmakers should pay attention to Public Opinion - but perhaps only the opinions that matter - that is, those we deeply hold. Some call these deeper opinions values, social norms or public culture. Ironically, much of the opinions asked about in Public Opinion polls are of the policy detail sort - the kinds that we probably hold least dearly. There's another paradox when we discuss Public Opinion; the ones publicly debated are those where there is not broad consensus - or, at least where there is a vocal passionate minority. But some of our Public Opinions are not publicly debated - precisely because those opinions are so broadly held (like "democracy is good"). Should we count those widely held views part of "Public Opinion" - or should they be set aside as their own category? Hopefully by the end of the semester I'll have a clue...
