Using a recent example from US politics as representative of contemporary liberal democracies, this chapter highlights how public opinion is shaped through the exploitation of our epistemic interdependence and partisan bias. Climate change was an important issue leading into the 2010 US mid-term elections. Public opinion on climate change was subject to a number of willfully disseminated distorting influences, having a significant impact on the election’s outcome and subsequent political discourse surrounding climate change policies. One impact (...) of this type of exploitation is that it has epistemically compromising effects on the electorate, which in turn undermines democratic legitimacy. In the interest of defending democratic legitimacy, this chapter suggests we re-evaluate and update those liberal institutions necessary for informed public opinion surrounding our current political epistemic needs. (shrink)

(1996). Public opinion and democratic culture: The French revolution. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 175-180.

(1996). Public opinion and democratic culture: The French revolution. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 175-180.

How should political theorists go about their work if they are democrats? Given their democratic commitments, should they develop theories that are responsive to the views and concerns of their fellow citizens at large? Is there a balance to be struck, within political theory, between truth seeking and democratic responsiveness? The article addresses this question about the relationship between political theory, public opinion and democracy. I criticize the way in which some political theorists have appealed to (...) the value of democratic legitimacy in an attempt to justify a more opinion-sensitive approach to their work. Specifically, I identify a problematic model in the existing literature, which I term ‘democratic restraint’: an approach on which the theorist moderates her normative principles in response to evidence about public attitudes in order to enhance the legitimacy of her account. This model renders the discipline newly vulnerable to an otherwise misguided objection that political theory seeks to pre-empt democratic politics. I trace the problem with the democratic restraint model to its flawed underlying conception of democratic legitimacy. The article then outlines a more appealing ‘democratic underlabourer’ view of the status of political theory and draws out the implications of this alternative account for the role of public opinion. (shrink)

Generally, public opinion is measured via polls or survey instruments, with a majority of responses in a particular direction taken to indicate the presence of a given ‘public opinion’. However, discursive psychological and related scholarship has shown that the ontological status of both individual opinion and public opinion is highly suspect. In the first part of this article I draw on this body of work to demonstrate that there is currently no meaningful theoretical (...) foundation for the construct of public opinion as it is typically measured in surveys, polls, or focus groups. I then argue that there is a particular sense in which the construct of public opinion does make sense. In deliberative democratic forums participants engage in dialogue with the aim of coming to collective positions on particular issues. Here I draw on examples of deliberative democratic forums conducted on the social and ethical implications of science and technology. Conversation between participants in deliberative democratic forums is ideally characterized by individuals becoming informed about the issues being discussed, respectful interactions between participants, individuals being open to changing their positions, and a convergence towards collective positions in the interest of formulating civic solutions. The end-product of deliberation on a given issue might thus be termed a deliberative public opinion. ‘Deliberative public opinion’ is neither a cognitive nor an aggregate construct, but rather a socio-historical product. Criteria for its legitimacy rely on the inclusiveness of diversity of perspectives and the degree to which collective positions are defensible to a larger society. (shrink)

In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency committed to an ambitious program of “public investment.” Yet the plan Clinton submitted to the Democrat-controlled Congress in early 1993 was sharply scaled back in favor of an emphasis on reducing the federal budget deficit. Congress then made further deep cuts in Clinton's plan. This Democratic retreat from public investment would continue throughout the remainder of Clinton's presidency. In this article, I argue that the fate of “Clintonomics” was due mainly (...) to public opinion and electoral politics. In an epilogue, I examine the implications of this episode for the new intra-Democratic debate over public investment. (shrink)

Commercial public opinion polling is an increasingly important element in practically all elections in democratic countries around the world. Poll results and pollsters are relatively new and autonomous voices in our human communities. Here I try to connect such polling directly to morality and democratic processes. Several arguments have been and might be used for and against banning such polling during elections, i.e., for and against effectively silencing these voices. I present the arguments on both sides (...) of this issue, and try to show that there are reasonable responses to all the arguments in favour of banning polls. Then I review some proposed Canadian legislation concerning banning polls and, alternatively, requiring disclosure of methodological features of polls. Finally, I offer a model set of disclosure standards for the publication of poll results during election campaigns. (shrink)

The Republic of Korea (Korea hereinafter) has been widely regarded as one of the most vigorous and analytically interesting third-wave democracies (Diamond and Shin, 2000: 1). During the first decade of democratic rule, Korea has successfully carried out a large number of electoral and other reforms to transform the institutions and procedures of military-authoritarian rule into those of a representative democracy. Unlike many of its counterparts in Latin America and elsewhere, Korea has fully restored civilian rule by extricating the (...) military from power. As is the case in established democracies of North America and Western Europe, free and competitive elections have been regularly held at all the different levels of the government. In the most recent presidential election, held in December 1997, Korea also established itself as a mature electoral democracy by elevating an opposition party to political power. In Korea today, there is general agreement that electoral politics has become the only possible political game in town. (shrink)

Bioethicists’ views diverge public opinion on various ethical issues, particularly in healthcare. For instance, bioethicists generally oppose payment for organs and advocate for preventing death at any age, whereas the public is more supportive of organ payment and prioritizing younger patients. I offer four arguments on how best to view this divergence. (a) Bioethicists’ specialized training, objectivity, and reliance on research often lead to views that differ from those of the public, which may be less informed (...) and more influenced by biases. (b) Further, divergence between expert and public opinion is a normal and sometimes necessary aspect of bioethics. Divergence can lead to more informed and progressive ethical practices. (c) While public input is valuable, achieving meaningful engagement is difficult due to varying values, risk perceptions, and socioeconomic circumstances. Effective bioethics would balance expert knowledge with public input, aiming for policies that are both scientifically sound and democratically legitimate. (d) Maintaining public trust in bioethics does not require full alignment with public opinion. Instead, bioethicists should focus on educating the public and incorporating informed public perspectives into their analysis and recommendations. (shrink)

This short note analyzes how the public in Japan evaluates the performance of the cabinet and the two major parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DP), and their impacts on the 2000 House of Representatives election held on 25 June.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is one of the most celebrated 19th-century explorations of the rise of democracy as a social condition. However, Tocqueville is not the only political thinker of his immediate era to raise questions about the costs and benefits of democracy. This article will consider Stendhal’s novel The Red and the Black as an immediate precursor to Tocqueville’s criticisms of tyrannical public opinion and other ambivalent features of democracy. Like Tocqueville, Stendhal ponders the breakdown (...) of aristocratic standards of politeness and the equally oppressive sway of democratic public opinion that replaces them. Despite their shared assumptions about the challenges of democracy, however, Stendhal’s vision of freedom seems decidedly bleaker than Tocqueville’s. (shrink)

Empirical research on public opinion has tended to misjudge the normative rationales for modern democracy. Although it is often presumed that citizens' policy preferences are the opinions of interest to democratic theorists, and that democracy requires a highly informed citizenry, neither of these premises represents a dominant position in mainstream democratic theory. Besides incorrect assumptions about major tenets of democratic theory, empirical research on civic engagement is running into dead ends that will require normative analysis (...) to overcome. Bringing political philosophy back in to the study of public opinion can not only remedy shortcomings in the empirical literature, but can also underscore how relevant that literature is for a wide range of problems in democratic practice. (shrink)

New settings for communication are being built, having, at one side, great corporations of television, radio, press and on line media, and at the other side the role of the independent / alternative press, understood as not bound to a private, public or state enterprise or to some economic group. It takes gradually shape the constitution of the opposition between the traditional media and the independent / alternative press, having as a material base the new technologies of information. How (...) can the new technology of information associated to the new settings of press freedom and the phenomenon of the contradiction of public opinion in the era of internet accomplish the mediation of the opinion in a globalized society? Or still, starting from the presupposition of the press freedom, how to guarantee that the society solves the contradiction of the public opinion? The phenomenon of the public opinion is contradicting because it has in itself, at the same time, the universality of constitutional principles of Law and Ethics, together with the peculiarity of the citizens’ rights and concerns. This contradiction finds its solution by means of the mediation of the freedom of the press itself within a frame of democratic legality. This is the power of the contradiction: to put into effect the dialectic tension between the opposed poles of the universal and the particular in the press freedom, avowing the right of every citizen to express publicly his opinion. This is Hegel’s theory of public opinion: the press freedom and the parliament, as a politic space, are privileged spheres of the mediation of the contradictory phenomenon of the public opinion. Keywords: Press freedom; public opinion; press; citizen journalists. (shrink)

The liberal democratic regimes rest on a well-developed public sphere accessible to all citizens that favors free discussions based on reason and critical debate and serves as a space where public opinion is formed through reasoned dialogue. The new digital technologies disrupted many parts of contemporary democratic societies and transformed their public sphere. Digital transformation alters industries and markets, changing the perceived subjective value, satisfaction, and usefulness of goods or services and displacing established companies (...) and products. Within the political realm, digital transformation creates a cleavage between the vulnerable populations who are ill-informed and lack digital fluency and politicians who tend to learn about peoples‟ problems not to deal with them but to weaponize new technologies to engineer elections and win power. The rise of misinformation and disinformation undermines public trust in democratic institutions and discourages or incapacitates citizens from engaging in debates within the public sphere. On the other hand, the digital transformation of the public sphere empowers ordinary people to aggregate in various publics and counteract the domination of the mainstream parties. Our paper aims to answer whether new technologies provide citizens with ways to counter the undemocratic tendencies caused by digital transformation and engage actively in the public sphere. (shrink)

Mill contends that the fullest publicity and freedom of discussion is essential for all citizens to share in political freedom. Previous commentators have focused on Mill's strictures against censorship; they have paid little attention to his understanding of how freedom of discussion and political will formation are mediated in the public sphere by the distribution of social power in civil society, particularly control of the means of communication. This article shows that Mill's account of the sociology and political economy (...) of how public opinion forms is central to his understanding of freedom of discussion and democratic political freedom. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is simply to show that, in bioethics no less than in other areas of health care, policy in democracies is shaped not only by principles and values, but also — and to some extent independently — by the shape and history of particular political institutions and past policies. “Path dependency,” or what one scholar has called the “accidental logics” of already-existing institutions, condition and guide national policy choices. These institutional and historical pressures can even create (...) substantial policy divergences between quite likeminded nations. I shall illustrate the point using some comparative data about national policies regarding research on human embryonic stem cells. The fact that gaps can develop between values and policies is readily visible to anyone who compares national stemcell research policies to the expressed attitudes of the citizens of various democratic countries regarding human embryonic stem-cell research. The role of path dependency and the accidental logics of institutional structure in creating those gaps can be illustrated by tracking down the details of the development of human embryonic stem cell policies in a few different countries. (shrink)

El actual debate sobre el papel de la "esfera pública" en la política moderna no asume un concepto único de lo "público". La reconstrucción habermasiana de la esfera pública enfatiza la apertura inclusiva de la interacción discursiva a través de la sociedad civil, pero también sus efectos políticos al proveer legitimación reflexiva y una formación racional de la opinión. La esfera pública también se relaciona con el aparecer en común y actuar juntos; o es vinculada con la cultura política, con (...) los códigos sociales de expresión y los modos de presentación entre otros, con la opinión pública y con los múltiples públicos de la sociedad civil moderna. Tocqueville propone una interpretación matizada y multidimensional del espíritu público en la revolución democrática moderna. De ese modo, va más allá de las interpretaciones del espacio público racionalistas e idealizadas (como un ámbito comprehensivo de consenso discursivo); a través de la interpretación de Tocqueville de la sociedad y la cultura pública democráticas, se esboza la posibilidad de una esfera pública descentrada y asimétrica. Current debate over the role of "public sphere" in modern politics does not presuppose a single conception of the "public". Habermas' reconstruction of public sphere stresses the inclusive openness of discursive interaction through civil society, but also its political effects in providing reflexive legitimization and a rational formation of opinion. Public sphere is related also to appearing in common and acting together; or it is linked with public political culture, with social codes of expression and modes of presentation between others, with public opinion and with the multiple publics of modern civil society. Tocqueville proposes a qualified and multidimensional interpretation of the public spirit in modern democratic revolution. So, he goes beyond rationalist and idealized interpretations of public sphere (as a comprehensive realm of discursive consensus); through Tocqueville's interpretation of democratic society and political culture, the possibility of a de-centered and asymmetrical public sphere is outlined. (shrink)

This study analyzed public opinion data for the 45 societies from the latest World Values Survey and found that Internet use promotes democratic support in democratic countries but not in authoritarian countries. In advanced democracies, democratic ideas and thoughts are freely produced and disseminated in cyberspace, and Internet users tend to absorb them. On the other hand, this online content is highly controlled by authoritarian governments in non-democratic settings, and Internet users are likely to (...) be exposed to pro-government messages and entertainment, thereby nullifying the democratic utility of Internet use. These different social learning processes result in a global reinforcement effect of Internet use on democratic support. The results confirm that the Internet is a neutral technology and its effect depends on the political environment where it is used. (shrink)

John Zaller's finding that members of the public usually follow elites' cues may seem normatively disturbing. If true, it might be taken to obviate the need for democracy or to show that elites are manipulating the public. However, as long as the public sometimes fails to follow elites, we can judge cases of public followership according to independent criteria, such as whether the public's occasional rebellions against elite opinion further liberal-democratic or utilitarian purposes. (...) A review of some prominent cases of mass followership of and mass divergence from elite opinion suggests that public opinion that is independent of elite leadership is neither an unmitigated good nor an unmitigated problem for a well-ordered polity. (shrink)

The legalization of cannabis in Canada instantiates principles of harm-reduction and safe supply. However, in-depth understanding of values at stake and attitudes toward legalization were not part of extensive democratic deliberation. Through a qualitative exploratory study, we undertook 48 semi-structured interviews with three Canadian stakeholder groups to explore opinions and values with respect to the legalization of cannabis: (1) members of the general public, (2) people with lived experience of addiction and (3) clinicians with experience treating patients with (...) addiction. Across all groups, participants tended to be in favor of legalization, but particular opinions rested on their viewpoint as stakeholders. Clinicians considered the way legalization would affect an individual’s health and its potential for increasing rates of addiction on a larger scale. People with lived experience of addiction cited personal autonomy more than other groups and stressed the need to have access to quality information to make truly informed decisions. Alternatively, members of the public considered legalization positive or negative in light of whether one’s addiction affected others. We elaborate on and discuss how scientific evidence about drug use impact values relates and how can different arguments play in democratic debates about legalization. (shrink)

Sociology, as conceived by Comte, was to put an end to the anarchy of opinions characteristic of liberal democracy by replacing opinion with the truths of sociology, imposed through indoctrination. Later sociologists backed away from this, making sociology acceptable to liberal democracy by being politically neutral. The critics of this solution asked 'whose side are we on?' Burawoy provides a novel justification for advocacy scholarship in sociology. Public sociology is intended to have political effects, but also to be (...) funded by the politically neutral state. He argues that public sociology is institutionally neutral, but that committing to an organic relation with a social movement is legitimate as a matter of the sociologist's personal value choice. Although this produces side-taking sociology, by improving the case for particular standpoints it serves to improve democratic discussion generally, which is an appropriately neutral public aim. (shrink)

‘Scientific advice to politics’, the ‘nature of expertise’, and the ‘relation between experts, policy makers, and the public’ are variations of a topic that currently attracts the attention of social scientists, philosophers of science as well as practitioners in the public sphere and the media. This renewed interest in a persistent theme is initiated by the call for a democratization of expertise that has become the order of the day in the legitimation of research funding. The new significance (...) of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’ has motivated scholars to take a new look at the science – politics interface and to probe questions such as "What is new in the arrangement of scientific expertise and political decision-making?", "How can reliable knowledge be made useful for politics and society at large, and how can epistemically and ethically sound decisions be achieved without losing democratic legitimacy?", "How can the objective of democratization of expertise be achieved without compromising the quality and reliability of knowledge?" Scientific knowledge and the ‘experts’ that represent it no longer command the unquestioned authority and public trust that was once bestowed upon them, and yet, policy makers are more dependent on them than ever before. This collection of essays explores the relations between science and politics with the instruments of the social studies of science, thereby providing new insights into their re-alignment under a new régime of governance. (shrink)

On February 13, 2020, the Toronto Police Services (TPS) issued a statement admitting that its members had used Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition technology (FRT). The controversy sparked widespread outcry by the media, civil society, and community groups, and put pressure on policy-makers to address FRTs. Public consultations presented a key tool to contain the scandal in Toronto and across Canada. Drawing on media reports, policy documents, and expert interviews, we investigate four consultations held by the Toronto Police Services (...) Board (TPSB), the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), and the parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) to understand how public opinion and outrage translate into policy. We find that public consultations became a powerful closure mechanism in the policy-making toolbox, inhibiting rather than furthering democratic debate. Our findings show that consultations do not advance public literacy; that opportunities for public input are narrow; that timeframes are short; and that mechanisms for inclusion are limited. Even in the best-case circumstances, consultations are merely one of many factors in AI governance and seldom impact concrete policy outcomes in the cases studied here. (shrink)

Each chapter of this dissertation develops a standard with which to evaluate and guide the improvement of a different node of a democratic system. In the first chapter, I consider the relationship between citizens, their environment, and the formal infrastructure of democracy. The standard for this node is democratic health, which is a feature of the social epistemic environment in which citizens operate. I argue that a democratically healthy environment is one that is conducive to the development of (...) citizens’ epistemic capacities to reason and communicate about their interests. I then demonstrate how political phenomena such as polarization pose social epistemic challenges to democratic health and argue that an epistemic conception of civic virtue can guide efforts to improve it. In the second chapter, I consider the relationship between representatives and their constituents under non-ideal conditions. The key standard for this node is systemic interest-responsiveness. I argue that observed public opinion and citizens’ values, commitments, and goals can stand in tension, and that representative democracies must be responsive to both factors. On this basis, I argue in favor of pairing independent administrative agencies with expanded forms of public input. In the third chapter, I consider how civic education can promote epistemic civic virtue. The key standard I develop here is the social epistemic public good. I argue that civic education can provide social epistemic benefits through its civic exchange function, which enables citizens to learn about the views and traditions of other citizens, and prepares them to effectively communicate with diverse others. Furthermore, I argue that this function can be pursued in the absence of widespread agreement about which values civic education should promote. (shrink)

This article focuses on contemporary work on public knowledge of, information about, and public images and judgments of law and courts. It begins with a brief digression on the nature of the scholarship on public opinion and the operation of courts and postulates that courts are political institutions. In order to highlight the importance of judicial knowledge, democratic theory is explained in the article. The theory of judicial influence is a theory of individual-level attitude change. (...) A great deal more research, however, must be conducted before the hypothesis of attitude change can be accepted. Legitimacy is one of the most highly valued forms of political capital. Available evidence indicates that national high courts differ greatly in the legitimacy they have acquired. Future research should focus on the processes through which courts become salient to ordinary people and how interactions with courts, especially judicial symbols, contribute to institutional legitimacy. (shrink)

Disrespect for the truth, the rise of conspiracy thinking, and a pervasive distrust in experts are widespread features of the post-truth condition in current politics and public opinion. Among the many good explanations of these phenomena there is one that is only rarely discussed: that something is wrong with our deeply entrenched intellectual standards of (i) using our own critical thinking without any restriction and (ii) respecting the judgment of every rational agent as epistemically relevant. In this paper, (...) I will argue that these two enlightenment principles—the Principle of Unrestricted Critical Thinking and the Principle of Democratic Reason—not only conflict with what is rationally required from a purely epistemic point of view, but also have bad cognitive consequences in furthering the spread of conspiracy theories and undermining trust in experts. I will then explain in more detail why we should typically defer to experts without using any of our own reasons regarding the subject matter. Moreover, I will show what place this leaves for critical thinking and why it does not have the crazy consequences that the critics expect. (shrink)

This article focuses on contemporary work on public knowledge of, information about, and public images and judgments of law and courts. It begins with a brief digression on the nature of the scholarship on public opinion and the operation of courts and postulates that courts are political institutions. In order to highlight the importance of judicial knowledge, democratic theory is explained in the article. The theory of judicial influence is a theory of individual-level attitude change. (...) A great deal more research, however, must be conducted before the hypothesis of attitude change can be accepted. Legitimacy is one of the most highly valued forms of political capital. Available evidence indicates that national high courts differ greatly in the legitimacy they have acquired. Future research should focus on the processes through which courts become salient to ordinary people and how interactions with courts, especially judicial symbols, contribute to institutional legitimacy. (shrink)

Despite its origins in explorations of the political and institutional history that had become unfashionable in History departments, the Political Science subfield of American Political Development has drifted toward the “history‐from‐below” view against which it was originally a reaction. Perhaps this is a normal tendency in democratic cultures that ground their legitimacy on the will of the people. But it may also be due to a failure of APD scholars to appreciate that even in a democratic country such (...) as the United States, the state may acquire autonomy from the public will because of the vast scope of state activity, and the restricted ability of the people to monitor, understand, and control that activity. Philip E. Converse's signal contribution to the public‐opinion literature can thus be the starting point for a revision of American political history with an eye to the autonomy that political elites may gain from public ignorance of their actions. (shrink)

Responsible public policy making in a technological society must rely on complex scientific reasoning. Given that ordinary citizens cannot directly assess such reasoning, does this call the democratic legitimacy of technical public policies in question? It does not, provided citizens can make reliable second-order assessments of the consensus of trustworthy scientific experts. I develop criteria for lay assessment of scientific testimony and demonstrate, in the case of claims about anthropogenic global warming, that applying such criteria is easy (...) for anyone of ordinary education with access to the Web. However, surveys show a gap between the scientific consensus and public opinion on global warming in the U.S. I explore some causes of this gap and argue that democratic reforms of our culture of political discourse may be able to address it. (shrink)

How democratic is contemporary Indonesia? While analysts differ, Indonesian citizens, when asked in systematic public opinion surveys conducted regularly by the authors since 1999, consistently express strong support for democratic principles and also believe that their country's democratic performance is high. Support for democratic performance is highly correlated with support for government performance, as measured by perceptions of the condition of the national economy and political system. At the same time, higher levels of education (...) and income, in Indonesia as in other countries, have created a considerable number of critical citizens, that is, citizens who value democracy but are critical of its performance. On our evidence for Indonesia, it is members of this group who are the most motivated and best prepared to demand a higher level of democratic performance from their elected officials. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship has attempted to restore the reputation of the American electorate, even though its level of political interest and information has not measurably increased. Scott Althaus’s Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics challenges this revisionist optimism, arguing that opinion polls misrepresent the interests of a large segment of society, and that they therefore get too much attention as a guide to policy makers, because those being polled are so ill informed. But Althaus overestimates the degree to which (...) respondent ignorance is responsible for the instability of survey responses; and he is perhaps too critical of polling as the vehicle for transmitting voter interests. His analysis of information effects on political attitudes, however, raises the important question of how public opinion would be different if it were well informed. The answer is, I believe: only minimally different. (shrink)

This present study tries to encircle the image of King Leopold III as it was fashioned by public opinion during the occupation. It excludes the collaborationist movements and the exiled Belgians in London. Different sources have been interrogated : reports on public opinion destinated to the Cabinet-in-exile in London, available diaries and most of all underground leafl,ets and newspapers.The public opinion underwent a strong evolution from 1940 till 1944 and changed according to social classes. (...) The author particularly describes some significant moments: the surrender of the army, the King's marriage, the forced labour. After a highly pronounced admiration during 1940, a very clear turn is already palpable at the end of 1941. This reverse is due to regained confidence in democracy. It translates the refusalof dictatorial projects formulated in certain circles, intending to invest the King with absolute power in a corporative society, which should be rid of parliament and political parties. The image of the Royal prisoner of war received a decisive blow by his marriage. This deconsacration was reinforced by the germanophile sentiments, imputed to His court,and by the royal silence kept about some methods of the occupational power.The Church however proved to be a resolute defender of the King. On the other hand, Flanders and Wallonia react differently. At Liège, the hostility even spreads among some christian-democratic circles.Gradually the Royal Question, which has agitated the opinion from 1940-1942, fades away, and the deportation of Leopold III took place in a climate of indifference.However, not a single authorized voice of the underground movement demands the retirement of the King at the moment of the liberation. For all groups and parties it remains an open question, their only wish being to obtain explanations.Thus, the Royal Question, based on the positions adopted during the occupation, can only be explained by the circumstances which happened after the war. (shrink)

This study uses data from Google Trends and Twitter to analyze how public interest and sentiment towards Universal Basic Income (UBI) changed across all 50 states and Washington D.C. between 2018 and 2021. We specifically selected this time period as it includes both Andrew Yang’s UBI campaign during the Democratic primaries in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when UBI gained attention due to the federal government’s unconditional cash payment to almost all citizens. To overcome the limitations (...) of sporadic opinion polls, we built on a recent development of the rescaling method to generate longitudinal Google Trends and conducted Twitter sentiment analysis. We observed a modest rise in public interest in UBI during Andrew Yang’s campaign, especially in blue states, and a significant increase across all states at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it quickly waned, the level of public attention became elevated compared to the pre-pandemic level. Contrary to previous studies, our analysis also reveals that overall sentiment became less positive after the peak interest during the pandemic, as more people engaged in online discussions. (shrink)

El propósito del presente artículo es el de reflexionar sobre la relación política y legitimación del Estado en las sociedades modernas liberales, a partir del enfrentamiento ideológico entre los promotores del “estado de opinión” y los defensores del Estado de Derecho en Colombia. Considero que la participación, la comunicación deliberativa, el uso público de la razón práctica, la autonomía ciudadana y el respeto a los derechos fundamentales son supuestos ético-políticos inevitables sí queremos construir una cultura política democrática y pluralista en (...) Colombia. Para justificar mi punto de vista, procederé del siguiente modo. En primer lugar, introduciré la idea de que en la democracia deliberativa se privilegia el concurso de la pluralidad política en pleno respeto tanto del derecho como de los procedimientos institucionalizados de comunicación entre los ciudadanos y las instituciones públicas. En segundo lugar, sostendré que la democracia deliberativa implica un proceso democrático sujeto a principios generales imparciales de justicia. (shrink)

Habermas claims that an inclusive public sphere is the only deliberative forum for generating public opinion that satisfies the epistemic and normative conditions underlying legitimate decision-making. He adds that digital technologies and other mass media need not undermine – but can extend – rational deliberation when properly instituted. This paper draws from social epistemology and technology studies to demonstrate the epistemic and normative limitations of this extension. We argue that current online communication structures fall short of satisfying (...) the required epistemic and normative conditions. Furthermore, the extent to which Internet-based communications contribute to legitimate democratic opinion and will formation depends on the design of the technologies in question. (shrink)

Democratically inspired critics identify a number of problems with the contemporaryidentification of survey research and public opinion. Surveys are said tonormalize or rationalize opinion, to promote state or corporate rather thandemocratic interests, to constrain authentic forms of participation, and to forcean individualized conception of public opinion. Some of these criticisms arerelatively easily answered by survey researchers. But the criticisms contain acomplaint that survey researchers have largely failed to address: that surveyresearch discourages the public, visible, (...) and face-to-face generation of opinion.Public opinion researchers who use surveys paradoxically seek the opinions ofcitizens in private, nonpolitical situations. But nothing inherent in the methodsof survey research requires this private focus. The author argues that by reframingthe survey's unit of analysis and considering alternatives to standard,national samples in political surveys, new democratic possibilities within surveyresearch may be found. (shrink)

With Spanish the third most widely spoken language in the world, one would expect more Spanish translations of important texts in American philosophy. Given the recent publication of a Spanish translation of The Public and Its Problems (1927), more people have access to John Dewey’s ideas about democracy than ever before. A broader readership might bring greater inclusivity to the existing debate over the significance of Dewey’s legacy for democratic theory. For the past few years, this debate has (...) raged almost exclusively between English-speaking scholars. Many have responded to the arguments of Richard Posner, the law professor and Circuit Court judge who delivered a scathing critique of Dewey’s legacy in his book Law, Pragmatism and Democracy (2003). Even if new readers of The Public and Its Problems fail to join the debate, they will at least be better equipped to evaluate Posner’s arguments with some appreciation for the object of his criticism. Hopefully they will come to acknowledge Dewey’s contribution as a vital thread in the tapestry of thought making up contemporary currents in democratic theory—currents that University of Toronto professor Frank Cunningham collectively labels “democratic pragmatism.” See his Theories of Democracy (Routledge, 2002). Ramon Del Castillo’s introduction to the translation captures the rich context of Dewey’s work on democratic theory. It places the book in the proper historical milieu, 1920s America at the time of the height and decline of American Progressivism. It also juxtaposes The Public and Its Problems against Lippmann’s two earlier works, Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925). (shrink)

This is Jürgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

ABSTRACT While democratic states may manipulate public opinion and mobilize society to serve their interests, a focus on such active efforts may distract us from the passive, default condition of ignorance‐based state autonomy. The electorate’s ignorance ensures that most of what modern states do is unknown to “society,” and thus need not even acquire social approval, whether manipulated or spontaneous. Similarly, suggestions that democratic states may be “captured” by societal groups must take cognizance of the factors (...) that enable elites to serve the interests of specific societal groups at the expense of the larger society. Bringing studies of voter ignorance into the analysis of state’s autonomy from society provides a novel approach to the study of democratic states’ autonomy, while also serving to explain how societal “capture” of state policies is possible. (shrink)

Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon a functioning arena for the formation of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy-making thus requires a reliable connection to processes of ‘public’ will formation. These processes formed the focus for Habermas’s influential study on the public sphere. This contribution presents a look at more recent ‘structural transformation’, the causes of which are by no means limited to social media communication, and examines its consequences. It (...) proceeds in three steps: 1) in some proximity to Habermas, but also by means of the theory of resonance, it seeks to determine the kind of public sphere that a democratic polity requires; 2) an analysis of problems within the contemporary public sphere will feed into 3) a discussion of the conditions for the restoration of a ‘functioning political public sphere’. These include changes in the realms of participation, representation and spaces of encounter. (shrink)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is a key contribution to political philosophy, media history, democratic theory and political economy – published almost 60 years ago – that left a deep imprint on the process of democratic consolidation of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, the Habermasian model of the public sphere was used to test out the possibilities of democratisation beyond the nation-state. The theory of the public sphere was, however, (...) mainly discussed as a contribution to normative political theory and, as such, the applicability of its normative standards remained contested. In this article, I focus instead on a second sociological reading of Habermas’ theory of the public sphere as an exploration of the cognitive foundations of modern society. The relevance of this approach can be shown in an exemplary way by discussing the functioning of publicity, which, by creating social visibility and facilitating public opinion formation, on the one hand, provides the knowledge base of a shared social world and, on the other hand, becomes the main driver of social change through critical self-reflection. The article goes on to take a look at recent public sphere transformations in the context of digitalisation and globalisation, and argues that public sphere principles are both undermined and gain new relevance when facing the challenges of new and digital media. (shrink)

If public self-expression is a crucial feature of democracy, how might it work on the democratic – or at least, mass – medium par excellence, television? Television talk shows often allow ‘ordinary’ participants the opportunity to express themselves, i.e. deploy identities, feelings and opinions, presumably to further their own ends. This article uses speech act theory and Bakhtinian genre theory to analyze the talk on Jan Publiek, a Flemish talk show. This close reading helps to determine how two (...) of the 20 ‘ordinary’ participants co-created shifting and even contradictory identities with other participants, the host, the producers, the conventions of television talk shows and larger discourses such as those of gender and class. In these two cases, the participants seem mostly to fail in employing the medium of Jan Publiekto achieve their stated aims. The authors claim that while discourses may never be completely transparent, their means of functioning can still be better understood. All participants of television – producers, actors, viewers, media scholars – can benefit from the kind of media literacy to which this article contributes. (shrink)

Campaign advocacy is a common but rarely researched practice in British tabloid journalism. Newspaper campaigns give an account of ‘public opinion’ to politicians, make explicit claims to speak for ‘the public’ and authentically represent them, and also address readers in an unconventional way in order to recruit their support. This article therefore examines the effect to which agency is attributed to readers and other publics in two such campaigns, and argues that publics were portrayed as active only (...) in relation to the newspaper’s activity, and primarily as reacting emotionally to the problem. The campaigning press promote themselves commercially and politically as quasi-representatives who challenge distant and ‘out of touch’ political representatives with the populist impulses of ‘public’ demands, but without enhancing the democratic process, or publics’ position within it. (shrink)

: As the fifth national bioethics commission has concluded its work and a sixth is currently underway, it is time to step back and consider appropriate measures of success. This paper argues that standard measures of commissions' influence fail to fully assess their role as public forums. From the perspective of democratic theory, a critical dimension of this role is public engagement: the ability of a commission to address the concerns of the general public, to learn (...) how average citizens resolve moral issues in healthcare, and to monitor public opinion on the topics addressed in the commission. Such a public forum role is supported by the critical literature within bioethics, which has deemed some commissions successful, supported more generally by the history of bioethics as a reform discourse that has brought socially important values into the medical domain, and supported more generally still by the example of the great social issues commissions of the 1960s. (shrink)

"Eighty-one per cent say when making 'an important decision' government leaders 'should pay attention to public opinion polls because this will help them get a sense of the public's views,"' reports the Program on International Policy Attitudes, in Washington.

본 연구의 목적은 현대 민주주의의 공론에서 유학이 가지는 의미를 규명하기 위해 유학의 다양한 스펙트럼 중 성리학의 특징을 분석하고, 성리학의 성론(性論)과 덕론(德論)에 대한 다산 정약용의 비판과 그 비판의 원리를 중심으로 그의 공사론을 규정하는 단초를 마련하는 것이다. 다산 성론과 덕론의 핵심은 덕을 성으로 정의하는 성리학과는 달리, 성을 하늘의 원리가 아니라 선하는 것을 좋아하는 경향으로 규정하고 덕을 도덕적 실천을 통해 나타나는 결과라는 것이다. 이는 성기호설을 바탕으로 하는 그의 공사론이 성리학의 도덕 형이상학적 공사론과 어떻게 다른지 규명하는 데 출발점이 된다.

Punishment and democracy appear to exacerbate each other’s worst features. The institutions and moral intuitions used to punish those that break the law can hollow out civic participation, distort the electorate, and undermine core democratic values. Likewise, many have argued the decentralized character of democracy is a key, albeit indirect, cause of increasingly punitive public policies that are divorced from any reasonable penological purpose. Given the effects of electoral politics, many have called for the separation, or general insulation, (...) of state punishment from public influence. However, recent empirical work on punitive attitudes and institutional design has begun to chip away at this common sense. This article contextualizes and qualifies the various mechanisms of policy feedback and public opinion formation thought by political theorists to undermine democratic participation in penal institutions and makes a normative case that insulating the public from penal law actively sustains injustice. (shrink)

There is little doubt in the current comparative politics literature about the importance of political parties in modern democracies, nor is there any doubt about the centrality of political parties in the democratic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. This holds true for the Czech Republic as well. However, the three most recent general elections in the Czech Republic have shaken the country. Electoral earthquakes are becoming common in the region, and it seems that (...) the Czech Republic is being affected by what has been described in the literature as the decline of political parties. The main aim of the article is to explore sources of public anti-party sentiment in the Czech Republic. The analysis of data from a public opinion survey shows that public anti-partyism can be explained by a perceived lack of political representation that stems from both economic conditions and a feeling of low political efficacy. (shrink)

How should politicians act? When should they try to lead public opinion and when should they follow it? Should politicians see themselves as experts, whose opinions have greater authority than other people's, or as participants in a common dialogue with ordinary citizens? When do virtues like toleration and willingness to compromise deteriorate into moral weakness? In this innovative work, Andrew Sabl answers these questions by exploring what a democratic polity needs from its leaders. He concludes that there (...) are systematic, principled reasons for the holders of divergent political offices or roles to act differently. Sabl argues that the morally committed civil rights activist, the elected representative pursuing legislative results, and the grassroots organizer determined to empower ordinary citizens all have crucial democratic functions. But they are different functions, calling for different practices and different qualities of political character. To make this case, he draws on political theory, moral philosophy, leadership studies, and biographical examples ranging from Everett Dirksen to Ella Baker, Frances Willard to Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. to Joe McCarthy. Ruling Passions asks democratic theorists to pay more attention to the "governing pluralism" that characterizes a diverse, complex democracy. It challenges moral philosophy to adapt its prescriptions to the real requirements of democratic life, to pay more attention to the virtues of political compromise and the varieties of human character. And it calls on all democratic citizens to appreciate "democratic constancy": the limited yet serious standard of ethical character to which imperfect democratic citizens may rightly hold their leaders--and themselves. (shrink)