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Public Opinion and the New Social History: Some Lessons for the Study of Public Opinion and Democratic Policy-making

The study of mass public opinion has been an important area of social science research, and it has been of particular concern for political scientists, because the relationship between public opinion and government policy is central to theories about democracy and political power (e.g., see Dahl, 1956; Downs, 1957; Devine, 1970; Weissberg, 1976). Our main argument in this essay is that political scientists and others should be open to a variety of approaches in studying trends in public opinion and the relationship between public preferences and government policies, and that they should begin to pay attention to the findings and methods of recent historiography and, especially, the “new social history.”