Content area
Full Text
This article considers the impact of public opinion on public policy, asking: (1) how much impact it has; (2) how much the impact increases as the salience of issues increases; (3) to what extent the impact of public opinion may be negated by interest groups, social movement organizations, political parties, and elites; (4) whether responsiveness of governments to public opinion has changed over time; and (5) the extent to which our conclusions can be generalized. The source of data is publications published in major journals and included in major literature reviews, systematically coded to record the impact of public opinion on policy. The major findings include: the impact of public opinion is substantial; salience enhances the impact of public opinion; the impact of opinion remains strong even when the activities of political organizations and elites are taken into account; responsiveness appears not to have changed significantly over time; and the extent to which the conclusions can be generalized is limited. Gaps in our knowledge made apparent by the review are addressed in proposals for an agenda for future research.
Most social scientists who study public opinion and public policy in democratic countries agree that (1) public opinion influences public policy; (2) the more salient an issue to the public, the stronger the relationship is likely to be; and (3) the relationship is threatened by the power of interest organizations,1 political parties, and economic elites (see, e.g., Aldrich 1995; Dahl 1989; Mueller 1999; Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995; Page and Shapiro 1983; Smith 2000).
There would be much less consensus, however, on the answers to five follow-up questions widely seen as important but seldom addressed directly:
1. How much impact does public opinion have on public policy?
2. How much does the impact of opinion on policy increase as the importance of an issue to the public increases?
3. To what extent do interest groups, social movement organizations, political parties, and elites influence policy even when opposed by public opinion?
4. Has government responsiveness to public opinion changed over time?
5. How generalizable are our findings about the impact of opinion on policy?
This article distills considerable research directed at these questions. It is not, however, a literature review in the usual sense. Rather than...