Book Review
Essential Reading on Public Opinion
Glynn, Carroll J., Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O'Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro. Public Opinion. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999. 496 pages, 6 x 9. $75 (cloth), ISBN 0813329167; $35 (paper), ISBN 0-8133-2917-5.
Public opinion, as the foundation of democratic power, does not belong under anyone's exclusive control. The voice of the people should not be the monopoly of any group in democratic societies, and even less so in the academy. For that reason it is of enormous pedagogical significance that academics from different fields have united to produce this textbook.
Conscious of the limitations of most previous manuals, the authors join forces to analyze rigorously the opinions of the citizenry from the perspectives of political science, mass communication, and practical journalism. The facets of public opinion they address are many, and they offer a united view that is quite complete. Even more important, the contents range in perspective from the macro-historical to micro-psychological. Their complete theoretical review is accompanied by historical examples and by case studies that closely fit the intended audience.
The first part of the book defines the concept, history, and methodologies of the public opinion. It proposes the very suggestive idea that the reader also adopt an interdisciplinary, rather than reductionist or dogmatic, perspective. Nevertheless, the rest of the book reveals that the investigators focused (and continue to focus) on analyzing the public opinion expressed through the ballot box and through surveys. This leaves out the ample repertoire of nonconventional political expressions (such as new social movements) and other processes of collective deliberation only rarely included by so-called professionals of public opinion: politicians, pollsters, and media people.
The second part of the book deals with the psychological and sociological theories of public opinion. Social psychology, in its cognitive and political orientations, occupies most of these pages. This historical overview is thorough, including as it does novel approaches to the processes of public opinion formation and incorporating as well the debate on the responsiveness of professional politicians to U.S. American voters. Nevertheless, what is missing is a theoretical review of the effects on public opinion which would fit within classical theory, both social and humanistic. This is the perspective adopted in the handbooks of some European authors, such as Dennis McQuail and Mauro Wolf, which frame recent investigations within a few questions common to all the social sciences.
The last part of the book holds extraordinary interest for U.S. American citizens. It discusses their political capacities and competencies, the rationality of their collective opinions, their influence on the work of government, and the effects of election campaigns on them as voters. The epigraph on the media, especially "The Effects of Mass Media on Public Opinion," brings to fruition an enormous effort that summarizes in few pages the long history of this field of investigation. As previously noted, however, greater and more integrated attention should perhaps be devoted to the social and psychological theories upon which the field has sustained itself.
In summary, teachers, students, and the general public now have at their disposal an essential textbook that is an accessible and insightful teaching tool for understanding themselves as political subjects. Never before have so many perspectives and elements of reflection been gathered as systematically as they are in this textbook. The book reflects the complexity of the material, the persistent issues of the people's competence and political relevance, as well as the vital importance of this area of investigation for the future of our democracies.
Víctor
Sampedro Blanco
Associate Professor of Public Opinion
University of Salamanca, Spain