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Do politicians listen to the public? How often and when? Or are the views of the public manipulated or used strategically by political and economic elites? Navigating Public Opinion brings together leading scholars of American politics to assess and debate these questions. It describes how the relationship between opinion and policy has changed over time; how key political actors use public opinion to formulate domestic and foreign policy; and how new measurement techniques might improve our understanding of public opinion in contemporary polling and survey research. The distinguished contributors shed new light on several long-standing controversies over policy responsiveness to public opinion. Featuring a new analysis by Robert Erikson, Michael MacKuen, and James Stimson that builds from their pathbreaking work on how public mood moves policy in a macro-model of policymaking, the volume also includes several critiques of this model by Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro, another critique by G. William Domhoff, and a rejoinder by Erikson and his coauthors. Other highlights include discussions of how political elites, including state-level policymakers, presidents, and makers of foreign policy, use (or shape) public opinion; and analyses of new methods for measuring public opinion such as survey-based experiments, probabilistic polling methods, non-survey-based measures of public opinion, and the potential and limitations of Internet polls and surveys. Introductory and concluding essays provide useful background context and offer an authoritative summary of what is known about how public opinion influences public policy. A must-have for all students of American politics, public opinion, and polling, this state-of-the-art collection addresses issues that lie at the heart of democratic governance today.
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NAVIGATING PUBLIC OPINION This page intentionally left blank NAVIGATING PUBLIC OPINION Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy Edited by JEFF MANZA FAY LOMAX COOK BENJAMIN I. PAGE OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 20O2 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Navigating public opinion : polls, policy, and the future of American democracy / edited by Jeff Manza, Fay Lomax Cook, and Benjamin I. Page. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-514933-5; ISBN 0-19-514934-3 (pbk.) I. Public opinion—United States. 2. Public opinion polls. 1. Manza, Jeff. II. Cook, Fay Lomax. III. Page, Benjamin I. HN90.P8 N385 2002 303.3'8'o973—dc21 2002020128 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper PREFACE At the tail end of the Clinton administration, on the late-night television show Politically Incorrect (a show that brings together a random group of celebrities nightly to talk about the news), a discussion began about Bill Clinton's allegedly excessive reliance on polls in making policy decisions. Toward the end of the segment, the host of the show, comedian Bill Maher, cynically remarked that maybe we shouldn't think of this as such a bad thin