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A Democratic Polity? Three Views of Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion in the United States

Northwestern University

Fay Lomax Cook

Northwestern University

The capacity of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratictheory and practice. Research and theory about the impact of public opinion on policymaking in the United States, however, have produced decidedly mixed views. A number of analystsfind a strong and persisting impact of public opinion on public policy. Others reject the ideathat the public has consistent views at all or, even if it does, that those views exercise much influenceover policy making. In this article, we evaluate the state of the art in the debates over theopinion-policy link in the rapidly growing body of research on public opinion and policy making.After an extensive review and critique of the theoretical and empirical research developing"strong" and "weak" effect views of the impact of opinion on policy, we conclude that a third"contingent" view, highlighting the historical, institutional, and political contingencies, providesthe best understanding of the impact of opinion on policy.

Key Words: public opinion • responsiveness • public policy

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