THE OPINION-POLICY NEXUS IN GERMANY

This article analyzes the previously unresearched relationshipbetween mass public opinion and public policy in contemporaryWest Germany. By studying approximately 150 cases over the lastdecade, the nature of German democracy is revealed in relationto the overall consistency between majority preferences andgovernment action. The opinion-policy nexus is explored in regardto the impact of issue saliency, landslide majorities, differentcategories of issues (e.g., redistributive, foreign policy),and the partisan composition of the government (i.e., SocialD emocratic vs. Christian Democratic). In addition, there isa cross-national comparison of results for West Germany withthe author's previous research on opinion and policy in theUnited States, Britain, and France. The findings indicate that(like other nations studied) public opinion and public policyin Germany are inconsistent in a majority of instances and that(unlike Britain or France) the partisan composition of the governmentdoes not matter vis-à-vis the degree of policy-opinioncongruence.     

Neoconservative intellectuals and the limitations of governing The Reagan administration and the demise of the Cold War

Abstract

During the 1970s, the then-emerging 'neoconservatives' promoted a foreign policy of aggressive containment of the Soviet Union. Many of these neocons were subsequently appointed to the Reagan administration; however, despite the apparent ideological convergence between Reagan and the neoconservatives, his administration did not constitute an opportunity for them to fully implement their foreign policy vision. Their underlying principles were more rigid and absolutist than those of Reagan and rejected any kind of compromise. In contrast, Reagan's strategy had a pragmatic side to it, favouring agreements with Moscow on certain issues. This limited the contribution neoconservatives could make to policy and many of them became quickly disillusioned with Reagan.     

POLLING ON THE ISSUES PUBLIC OPINION AND THE NUCLEAR FREEZE

Throughout the first term of the Reagan administration, thenuclear freeze movement headlined the news and scored numerouspolitical victories. Hundreds of state and local governments,as well as the U.S. House of Representatives, passed resolutionsin support of the freeze. Public opinion polls played a majorrole in the debate, as the media and freeze advocates citednumerous polls indicating overwhelming public support for theinitiative. Yet a comprehensive and detailed examination ofnational polls reveals that public support for the freeze cameheavily qualified. While Americans expressed strong supportfor the basic concept of a freeze, they expressed doubts aboutthe possibility of a verifiable and balanced freeze agreement.Furthermore, the public doubted that the Soviet Union genuinelydesired such an agreement. Most surprisingly, the public didnot pay much attention to the debate. Few Americans claimedto know or care much about the freeze initiative, and fewerstill felt positively toward the political activists behindthe freeze.     

The Structure and Stability of Political Attitudes: Findings from the 1974-76 Dearborn Panel Study

This article examines the structure and stability of publicopinion between the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. Thedata consist of a four-wave panel study of 800 residents inDearborn, Michigan; interviews were conducted in the springof 1974, 1975, and 1976 and in the fall of 1976 immediatelyafter the presidential election. The paper focuses on the structureof political attitudes, the stability of attitudes, and theimpact of attitudes on the presidential votes. A central thesisis that public opinion can be disaggregated into two clusters—theDisintegration Cluster and the Alignment Cluster—one ofwhich disrupts and one of which reinforces partisan voting.On the basis of correlations between the seven factors makingup the clusters, we anticipate neither a rapid realignment nora disintegration of the party system, but instability, withelection outcomes affected by attitudinal factors salient toa specific campaign. We find signs of increased crystallizationof political attitudes compared to the 1956–1958–1960national panel. Finally, our voting studies indicate that theDisintegration Cluster had a significant effect on the 1972election, but that issues in general had little impact in 1976,once controls were introduced for party identification and candidateimage.     

A structural hermeneutics of The O’Reilly Factor

There has been a significant rise in opinion and talk-based programming on American cable news channels since the mid-1990s. These news analysis programs are often politically partisan in their interpretive approach. This article examines one of the most prominent and popular of these shows, The O’Reilly Factor using the theoretical tools of structural hermeneutics. The program produces a radically simple and partisan schema for interpreting the news, but to do so it relies on the constructed persona of the host, a complex underlying meaning structure formulated around binary oppositions, and a number of rhetorical techniques. The show simplifies, but is not itself simple. To simplify the news in a way that suggests partisan conclusions that still seem relevant rather than cartoonish, individual episodes and segments of the show frame issues in terms of a meaning structure that leads strongly to partisan conclusions, but affords an appearance of the reasonable consideration of diverse views. It is suggested that this kind of deep analysis of meaning structures is important for making sense of how news analysis programs and mediated partisanship function as a cultural system.     

Examining Variance in Presidential Approval: The Case of FDR in World War II

Despite the substantive growth and increasing methodologicalsophistication of the presidential approval literature overthe last four decades, almost all analyses continue to focusexclusively on the mean of the approval distribution—thepercentage of Americans who approve of the president at a givenmoment. However, changes in the variance of popular supportfor the president may be as politically and substantively importantas shifts in the mean. To illustrate how a focus on variancecan enrich our understanding of changes in the president’spublic standing, this analysis examines the effects of the economyand World War II on the variance in popular support for FranklinD. Roosevelt. At the aggregate level, the study shows that highpeacetime unemployment and mounting casualties increased thevolatility of FDR’s standing among federal relief recipients,erstwhile his most consistent base of support. At the individuallevel, the analysis demonstrates that individuals with conflictingpartisan, economic, and war-related considerations for evaluatingthe president were more variable in their approval of Rooseveltthan were other respondents. Exporting a similar focus on varianceto other lines of research across the public opinion subfieldcould produce a richer understanding of the complex processesdriving opinion change over time.     

Voters and Values in the 2004 Election

A poorly devised exit poll question undermined meaningful analysisof voters’ concerns in the 2004 presidential election.Twenty-two percent of voters picked "moral values" from a listof "issues" describing what mattered most in their vote, morethan selected any other item. Various commentators have misinterpretedthis single data point to conclude that moral values are anascendant political issue and to credit conservative Christiangroups with turning George W. Bush’s popular vote defeatin 2000 into his three million–vote margin of victoryin 2004. We suggest, rather, that while morals and values arecritical in informing political judgments, they represent personalcharacteristics and ill-defined policy preferences far morethan any discrete political issue. First by conflating moralsand values and then by further conflating characteristics andissues, the exit poll’s "issues" list distorted our understandingof the 2004 election. In this article, we examine the flawsin the 2004 National Election Pool exit poll’s "most importantissue" question and explore the presumed rising electoral importanceof moral values and the conservative Christians who overwhelminglyselected this item. Using national exit poll data from 1980through 2004 and other national surveys, we find that the moralvalues item on the issues list cannot properly be viewed asa discrete issue or set of closely related issues; that itsimportance to voters has not grown over time; and that whencontrolled for other variables, it ranks low on the issues listin predicting 2004 vote choices. The aggregated exit poll dataalso show that the voting behavior of conservative Christiansis relatively stable over time, and these voters were not primarilyresponsible for Bush’s improvement in 2004 over 2000.     

DEMOCRATIC INCUMBENTS AND THE 1984 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: A CASE STUDY

This article examines the advantages a single Democratic incumbentutilized to win reelection in 1984 despite an overwhelming victoryby Ronald Reagan at the top of the ticket in the congressionaldistrict. The incumbent won reelection because of two typesof ticket splitting: Republican-inclined voters who voted forRepublican candidates for president and U.S. Senate and splitto vote for the Democratic incumbent for Congress, and Democraticvoters who supported Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate andCongress but split to vote for Ronald Reagan for president.Ticket splitting was found to be associated with basic politicalorientation—weak Republican and independent voters splitin favor of the Democratic incumbent and were far less likelyto vote a straight ticket for either party. Support for theDemocratic incumbent was explained in nonideological terms andwas based upon high recognition and favorability, constituentservice, voting record, and personal familiarity. For the Republicanchallenger, who never achieved a high level of recognition (despitesignificant campaign expenditure), support came almost solelyfrom the most partisan Republican members of the electorateand was based simply upon the party affiliation of the Republicanchallenger.     

"A Bastion of Sanity in a Crazy World": A Local Feminist Movement and the Reconstitution of Scale, Space, and Place in an Eastern German City

This article examines the development of the local women’smovement in one city in eastern Germany since German unificationin 1990. Utilizing a framework that attends to issues of scale,space, and place reveals how this women’s movement hasboth participated in and benefited from the downward scalingof women’s mobilizations in the immediate postunificationperiod. Feminist activists and organizations contributed tothe constitution of the city as a place defined by its emphasison egalitarian values and high degrees of state interventionin gender inequality and to the emergence of the city as partof a transnational space tied as much to Sweden as to Germany.Through this reimagination of the scale, space, and place ofthe city, the women’s movement was able to position itselfas a legitimate and important part of the life of the city andto successfully collaborate with local state offices and institutionsto secure funding for women’s organizations and pass legislationto protect women from discrimination and abuse.     

”Is public sociology such a good idea?”

Michael Burawoy’s call for a public sociology disciplined by professional and policy sociology, on the one side, and driven by critical sociology, on the other, exposes the ideological biases of sociology to publics. In so doing, public sociology will thwart non-ideological efforts for sociology to exert influence on broader publics and on political decision-makers. In order for sociology to be able to influence public opinion and the decisions of key players in the political and economic arenas, it will need to earn respect through a long evolutionary process of careful research and explanation without ideological fervor. To expose the ideological biases of sociology will thwart this evolutionary process. In contrast, sociology would be much better to develop an engineering mentality in addressing issues, problems, and concerns of publics in present-day societies.     

Family leave legislation in the American states: Toward a model of state policy adoption

The issue of mandated family leave has drawn substantial attention in recent years. This article develops and tests empirically a model of adoption of family leave policies in the American states during the late 1980s. State family leave policies are seen as a function of three sets of variables: (a) institutional-elite variables such as partisan control of state government and the proportion of women in the state legislatures; (b) constituency disposition variables such as mass partisanship, mass ideology, and the likelihood of general support for “women's” issues; and (c) contextual-demand variables such as birth rates and women's participation in the workforce. The model provides impressive fit to the data, accurately predicting the family leave policies of 92% of the state cases. The results suggest the importance of partisan control of state government, proportion of women in the state legislature, urbanization, and feminism as a state policy as factors that affect the probability that states will adopt mandated family leave policies. His research interests include American politics, public policy, and domestic political economy. He is editor of theAmerican Politics Quarterly, and is former President of the State Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include family policy and women's labor force participation. She received her Ph.D. in Family Science from the University of Georgia.     

Parental Protest,Public Opinion,and War Termination: Israel's ‘Four Mothers’ Movement

Peace movements that challenge national security policies typically remain politically marginal. However, the unusual cases that evince causal linkages among grass-roots activism, public opinion shifts, and a government's decision to change policy suggest hypotheses about the sorts of organizational characteristics and political conditions that can increase movements' prospects for influence. This article considers the case of Israel's Four Mothers – Leaving Lebanon in Peace that in the late 1990s successfully sought to end Israel's war in southern Lebanon. The article adopts a political-mediation model of peace movement outcomes that draws on Giugni's (2004) model of movements' policy impact. It finds support for the idea that when grass-roots activists and their elite supporters among politicians and the media act jointly, they can exert influence on policy outcomes. Anti-war movements led by soldiers' family members may have particularly abilities to shift public opinion against the war so as to create political incentives for office-seekers to end it.     

The Polls-Trends: Arab and Muslim Americans and Islam in the aftermath of 9/11

The terrorist attacks against the United States on September11, 2001, fueled widespread concern and speculation about mountingIslamophobic sentiment among Americans in response to the events.To monitor developments in opinions about Muslims and Arabs(both living in the United States and abroad) and attitudestoward the Islamic faith, survey organizations began to assessmore regularly Americans’ attitudes on these topics. Ianalyze developments in public sentiment about Arab and MuslimAmericans and Islam in the age of the war on terror using availablepublic opinion data. The data analyses in this study suggestthat Americans possess lingering resentment and reservationsabout Arab and Muslim Americans. The evidence also reveals lowlevels of awareness about basic elements of Islam but growinganxiety about Islam’s (especially Islamic fundamentalism’s)compatibility with Western values of tolerance, acceptance,and civility. Some of the sharpest movement in opinion dynamicswe observe is in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks,but opinion levels stabilize shortly thereafter. Monitoringthese developments as the war on terror continues is crucial.     

IDEOLOGICAL THINKING AMONG MASS PUBLICS AND POLITICAL ELITES

Although the characterization of the general public's levelof attitudinal constraint and continuity as modest has restedin part on assumed contrasts with political elites, there arescarcely any systematic, parallel studies of the two populations.This article utilizes comparable measures from cross-sectionaland panel surveys included in the National Election Studiesand in the National Convention Delegate Studies. Overall, politicalparty elites have a vastly more constrained and stable set ofpolitical preferences—in terms of the traditional liberal-conservativedimension—than does the mass public, a conclusion thatapplies whether the test is a demanding one based on opinionsabout policy issues or a less stringent one based on appraisalsof sociopolitical groups and prominent political actors. Stratifyingthe mass public according to level of political activity generatesclear, steplike differences in constraint and continuity, butideological consistency among party elites substantially exceedsthat of even the most active stratum of the mass public. Theseresults demonstrate that, however flawed the standard surveyinstrument may be as a means of ascertaining ideological thinking,it performs exceedingly well in making the kind of distinctionsto be expected on a priori grounds. The contrasts between thetwo populations have strong implications for two-way flows ofcommunication.     

Invoking Public Opinion: Policy Elites and Social Security

Do policy elites invoke public opinion? When they do, are theirclaims based on evidence from public opinion surveys? To learnabout the claims that policy elites make, we examined statementsthe president and members of Congress, experts, and interestgroup leaders in congressional hearings made about Social Security.To learn about opinion data on Social Security, we conducteda Lexis-Nexis search of the archives of the Roper Center forPublic Opinion Research. Our analyses show that policy elitesdiscussing Social Security did invoke public opinion. Contraryto our expectations, however, few of the elite invocations ofpublic opinion cited specific surveys or concrete facts aboutthe distribution of opinion. Although claims directly contradictingsurvey evidence were relatively rare, only with the rather fewspecific claims by congressional elites did we find much clear-cutsupport in the available polling data. Relatively seldom couldwe find clear-cut support for the elites' general claims. Moreover,some of the most frequent claims about public opinion—couldhave been contested but seldom were. The highly visible andwell-polled case of Social Security suggests that specific,data-based elite invocations of public opinion may be even lesscommon on other, lower-visibility and less-polled issues. Italso suggests that survey research professionals might do wellto intensify their scrutiny of public discourse about publicopinion and to increase their efforts to bring scientific expertiseto bear upon such discourse.     

Breaking ground on the virtual frontier: Surveying civic life on the internet

The Internet provides a virtual frontier to expand our access to information and to increase our knowledge and understanding of public opinion, political behavior, social trends and lifestyles through survey research. Comparable to other technological advancements, such as the telephone and the computer, the Internet presents opportunities that will impact significantly on the process and quality of survey research now and in the twenty-first century. Cyberspace permits us to move beyond traditional face-to-face, mail and telephone surveys, yet still to examine basic issues regarding the quality of data collection: sampling, questionnaire design, survey distribution, means of response, and database creation. This surveys include those posted on LISTERV mailing lists, USENET newsgroups, and the World Wide Web. A survey on politics and civic life, conducted by the authors, is used as a case study. She is currently pursuing interests in methodological issues concerning surveying using the Internet, and in policy issues concerning student victimization on college and university campuses. His publications includeViable Democracy (1979);Manipulating Public Opinion (1989);Free Expression, Public Support and Censorship: Examining Government’s Role in the Arts in Canada and the United States (1994); and numerous articles in scholarly and popular journals. His current research interests are contemporary democratic theory and political participation, as well as the political thought of John Locke.     

Elite Revisionists and Popular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain?

According to revisionist historians and American Indian activists,Christopher Columbus deserves condemnation for having broughtslavery, disease, and death to America’s indigenous peoples.We ask whether the general public’s beliefs about Columbusshow signs of reflecting these critical accounts, which increasedmarkedly as the 1992 Quincentenary approached. Our nationalsurveys, using several different question wordings, indicatethat most Americans continue to admire Columbus because, astradition puts it, "he discovered America," though only a smallnumber of mainly older respondents speak of him in the heroicterms common in earlier years. At the same time, the percentageof Americans who reject traditional beliefs about Columbus isalso small and is divided between those who simply acknowledgethe priority of Indians as the "First Americans" and those whogo further to view Columbus as a villain. The latter group ofrespondents, we find, show a critical stance toward modal Americanbeliefs much more broadly. We also analyze American history school textbooks for evidenceof influence from revisionist writings, and we consider representationsof Columbus in the mass media as well. Revisionist history canbe seen as one consequence of the "minority rights revolution"that began after World War II and has achieved considerablesuccess, but the endurance of Columbus’s reputation—toa considerable extent even among the minorities who have theleast reason to respect him—raises important questionsabout the inertia of tradition, the politics of collective memory,and the difference between elite and popular beliefs.     

Paul K. Perry, 1910-2005

With the death of Paul K. Perry at the age of 95, the fieldof public opinion research has lost one of the prime moversof its founding generation, a colleague whose quest for reliabilityand validity in survey measurement has had few equals. Known as the indispensable architect and builder of the remarkableaccuracy record of the Gallup Poll’s preelection surveysfor nearly thirty years, Perry played a crucial role in establishingfor all of public opinion research a credibility that is enjoyedaround the world. Others have made important contributions to our understandingof the determinants and effects of public opinion and writtenof its role in the democratic process. But the assumption fromwhich they all take off is that the carefully designed and conductedpoll     

THE MISSING LINK: POLITICAL ACTIVISTS AND SUPPORT FOR SCHOOL PRAYER

Explanations for the wide gap between strong public supportfor school prayer and lack of support in Congress have focusedon the attributes of the public. Here another important explicandis investigated: the characteristics of political activists.We find that activist opinion more nearly matches congressionalbehavior on school prayer than does public opinion. While manyof the same demographic and religious variables explain supportfor school prayer among activists and the public, ideology appearsto be more important among activists.     

Privacy in the Information Age

In recent years, surveillance has become an increasingly salientpolitical issue in the United States. In this article we presentdata on public opinion about privacy invasions and surveillancetechniques since 1990. Generally speaking, the polls show thatconcern about threats to personal privacy has been growing inrecent years. Although the public was temporarily willing toexpand the government’s investigative powers in the aftermathof the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, support for mostforms of surveillance has declined.