A Figurine Filled With Void: Is Public Opinion A Solid Basis On Which To Develop Public Policy?
“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.”
The following lines, written by Tennessee Williams (1996, xviii) in the play “The Glass Menagerie”, allude to the fragility of an individual’s perception of reality, where the paradigm of the cognitive process embodying one’s belief system can easily be shattered by an external force. Through such a framework, Williams focuses on critiquing the degrading society possessed by the demon of an American dream. Nonetheless, can Williams’ moral of the play be applied in the different to the literature sphere, such as politics?
Public opinion, or as Shepard (1909, p.35) defines, “opinion to which the members of a public agree… in full cognizance that this opinion constitutes a bond of union between the individuals holding it”, is not just a categorically essential component of democracy, but a channel of communication between the masses and the authorities. It is one of the most effective civil society tools, with which the people can express their trust or distrust of the authorities and thereby establish the measure of its legitimacy during the electoral cycles. This circumstance was recognised by politicians and public in the past, with de Tocqueville (1889, p.272) claiming that public opinion is the “political authority of the mass of the citizens”, and further maintained by the discourse of the classical school of political science, with Lasswell (1941, p.15) stressing that “the open interplay of opinion and policy is the distinguishing mark of popular rule”. At the same time, the interaction of public opinion with the authorities is not unidirectional. The authorities themselves try not only to take public opinion into account but also tend to shape it in the direction they need. Hence, likewise the “delicately spun glass” of Williams, public opinion can be broken, in other words, altered due to its apparent susceptibility to manipulation by the external forces with the political edifice initiating the shattering process through the different prisms (such as newspapers, television, and the Internet).
Upon the whole, the narrative of this essay, initially, intertwines the agenda building models with the ‘two-pathways’ framework (arguing that mobilisation model most adequately represents the relationship between public opinion and policy), before shining a favouring spotlight on the sceptical view of ‘manufactured’ public opinion supported by empirical examples. The main argument encompasses the notion that public opinion should not be interpreted as a solid basis for public policy due to its malleability.
Illusory Truth
“[Stage magician] gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth.
I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” (Williams, 1996, p.2)
The question of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled is central to political science. How close is public administration to a theoretical model, according to which the people or representatives acting on their behalf determine government activities? In countries striving to implement a democratic model of government, there is a widespread belief that such a relationship must be strong, with academics such as Manza & Cook (2002, p.630) suggesting that “the capacity of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratic theory and practice”. Conducting any state policy also presupposes a certain level of recognition by citizens. Only decisions that are recognised as legally governed can be accepted and successfully implemented. Therefore, the questions about the legitimacy of state power and state policy’s effectiveness are directly related. A prerequisite for a political course’s effectiveness is a reliance on public opinion in democratic forms of political organisation. Indeed, the emergence of the phenomenon of the public as a subject of the modern political process, possessing a specific position and the right to express it, took place simultaneously and in direct connection with the genesis of democratic institutions. The idea of mass and equal participation of citizens in public decision-making, born of the European Enlightenment, posed the problem of conformity of state policy to public sentiments for regimes claiming to be democratic (La Vopa, 1991). Hence, the search for mechanisms for revealing and translating public opinion into institutions of power has continuously been the focus of political theory.
In this vein, Cobb et al. (1976, p.126) suggest that “the process by which demands of various groups are translated into items vying for the serious attention of public officials can appropriately be called agenda-setting”. In other words, it is a process by which the issues encapsulating the high-level visibility and corresponding public interest — public agenda — are being transferred onto the list of specific items for public officials’ consideration — formal agenda. Moreover, elaborating on Manza & Cook’s (2002) logic, the democratic government should be accompanied by an element of unequivocal representation of public opinion by the elected officials, acting as citizenry’s mouthpieces during the process of public policy formation. Therefore, the ideal drawing of democracy is painted on the canvas of ‘dynamic representation’, such that, as Stimson et al. (1995, p.543) argue, “if public opinion changes… then public policy responds”. Here, the ‘two-pathways’ framework outlines the importance of public opinion in public policy formation. The public officials have two choices — either to respond to the changes in public opinion leading to politicians revising not only their “beliefs” but also “expedient positions” if they are interested in remaining in the office, thus engaging in the process of rational anticipation, or pursue their own goals leading to the accumulation of the public discontent, ultimately signifying the inevitable downfall in the form of the electoral turnover, characterised by “new political composition, which is then reflected in new policy” (Stimson et al., 1995, p.543).
Nevertheless, such an idealistic view of public opinion embodying the Atlas on whose shoulders public policy blossoms can be pulverised based on the agenda-building models, suggesting the various levels of public opinion’s significance. Cobb et al. (1976) delineate three models — outside initiative, inside access, and mobilisation. The first model “applies to the situation in which a group outside the government structure articulates a grievance” with the further attempts “to expand interest… to gain a place on the public agenda”, thus creating “sufficient pressure on decision-makers to force the issue onto the formal agenda” (ibid., pp. 128–132). Hence, such a grass-root model represents a desirable postulate in the illusory perfect form of democratic governing, as it promotes the essence of the dynamic representation. Here, public opinion is interpreted as an essential clay connecting the bricks of a public policy monument, constructed by the decision-makers who sense the mood of the moment and anticipate the consequence of their compliance with public opinion. However, such a model can be materialised only in the highly egalitarian society with high social cohesion rates, arguably not present in the modern world. The second model of inside access, which Cobb et al. (1976, p.136) describe as “the pattern of agenda building and policy formulation which attempts to exclude the participation of the public”, appears to prevail only in the societies characterised by the presence of an omnipotent elite, which tries to monopolise the power. However, given the modern world’s norms, such a process seems implausible due to the potential conflict between the ruling and the ruled. Hence, the more realistic view is depicted by the mobilisation model, which portrays the process “where political leaders initiate a policy, but require the support of the mass public for its implementation” (Cobb et al., p. 135). Therefore, decision-makers try to expand the issue already put on the formal agenda to a public agenda. Unlike the inside access model, the mobilisation model implies public opinion’s importance in legitimising public policy. However, unlike the outside initiative model, it abstracts away from viewing public opinion as the basis for public policy but instead suggests that it is employed as a decoration by the politicians.
In their attempt to expand the formal agenda to the public agenda, decision-makers can influence the citizenry’s perceptions, pouring the manipulative information into the void within the figurine of public opinion. Therefore, these decision-makers furnish the ‘truth’ of public opinion’s significance to public policy in the disguise of an ‘illusion’ that squeezes such an opinion to fit the boundaries beneficial for the decision-makers themselves.
Manufactured Opinion
“People go to the movies instead of moving!” (Williams, 1996, p.47)
There is a clear differentiation between the idealistic perception of public opinion as an accumulation of the prevalent views amongst the citizenry based on every individual’s considerations and the more dismal but simultaneously veritable view of its artificiality. Lippmann (1922, p.1) adheres to the latter by accentuating the dichotomy between “the world outside and the pictures in our heads”. From his perspective, “the world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind”, suchwise “it has to be explored, reported, and imagined” (ibid., 29). Thus, the individuals engage with the “pictures inside the heads”, representing their public opinion (ibid., 29). In turn, the decision-makers incarnate the artists who paint such pictures with specific colours before framing them in the desired shape.
Notably, the decision-makers exploit the various channels of one-sided communication in their attempts to indirectly ‘manufacture’ public opinion to create an illusion of dynamic representation. These channels include — newspapers, television, and the Internet — empirical examples of which may be found worldwide. The infamous ‘Chapel Hill’ study conducted by McCombs & Shaw (1972, p.176) stresses that “in choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality”, as the “readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue”. In this case, the candidates outline particular problems that are being picked up by the newspapers, subsequently affecting public opinion. Moreover, with the development of telecommunication technologies, the tailoring of public opinion became considerably more plausible. Valenzuela & Arriagada (2011, p.357) find that, in Chile of 2000–2005, “policy preferences are ‘negotiated’ between the president and the news media, with no noticeable input from the public”. Therefore, there is an apparent top-down pattern of agenda adoption, where the news media selects the ingredients from the presidential speeches and further cooks the soup of issues, some of which are flavoured by an increased salience, shifting public opinion in the needed direction. Lastly, Feezell (2018, p.482) discovers that “participants in the treatment group exposed to political information on Facebook exhibit increased levels of issue salience consistent with the issues shared compared with participants who were not shown political information”. These examples allude to the inference that decision-makers initially plant the seed of an issue in the population’s mind through the intermediaries and further nurture the development of the plant of public opinion before extrapolating it to legitimise their decisions, thus creating an illusion of responsiveness.
All-in-All
Based on the discussed ideas, it can be concluded that public opinion cannot serve as a solid foundation of public policy, as it is shown to be susceptible to ‘manufacturing’. However, it is important to highlight that the studies’ results showcase the greatest malleability effect within the groups with low political engagement levels. Hence, the opinion of the people who can counter-argue and provide their ‘unmanufactured’ view should be valued during public policy development, signifying that portions of public opinion can possess a degree of utility. Therefore, public opinion should be viewed only as one of the pillars materialising public policy development, thus adhering to the Multiple Streams Framework, where such an opinion is encapsulated within the problem stream.
Ultimately, in the world of continuous technological advancement that eases the burden of decisions, the people become highly reluctant to employ their critical thinking, thus resembling the hollow figurines, whose void is filled with the manipulative information. To demolish the wall of ignorance, which blocks the torrent of ‘unmanufactured’ opinion, every individual needs to engage with the different perspectives and self-analysis of the given information, therefore -
“Attempting to find in motion what was lost in space” (Williams, 1996, p.75).
