A Theory of Public Opinion

Francis Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351534420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book traces the emergence of the ideas and institutions that evolved to give people mastery over their own destiny through the force of public opinion. The Greek belief in citizen participation is shown as the ground upon which the idea of public opinion began and grew. For Wilson, public opinion is an "orderly force, " contributing to social and political life. Wilson appraises the influence of modern psychology and the slow appearance of methodologies that would enable people not only to measure the opinions of others, but to mold them as well. He examines the relation of the theory of public opinion to the intellectuals, the middle class, and the various revolutionary and proletarian movements of the modern era. The circumstances in which the individual may refuse to follow the opinions of the experts are succinctly and movingly analyzed. This book is a historical and philosophical evaluation of a concept that has played a decisive part in history, and whose overwhelming force is underestimated. The author's insight brings an understanding that is invaluable at a time when public opinion, the force developed to enable the ruled to restrain their rulers, has become controllable. Attempts to manipulate it are made by those who would impose their will upon their fellow men.

PART I

The Historical Inquiry

Chapter 1

In Quest of a Public

I

The central ideas of a theory of public opinion seem already old wherever one encounters them in the history of thought. Even if the intensive cultivation of public opinion as a field of study has appeared only in the last hundred years, the materials for such study are present in all social systems. The arrangement of ideas, the focus of emphasis, and the techniques of authority may shift. Yet if we say that the relation of mass-thinking to the exercise of authority is the core of public opinion theory, such theory is present in all literate cultures. Public opinion has an evolutionary history, just as do the major concepts of legal systems, or the persistent issues of technical philosophy.

On the other hand, and like other problems in intellectual history, diverse ideas of public opinion have developed, especially as its intensive consideration emerged in the last century. Some of these conflicting ideas are very old, while others arise directly from the restatement of social issues in recent times. It is, of course, the more recent conflicting views which must occupy the present-day student of public opinion, though it is also necessary in a more complete interpretation to keep in mind the ancient formulations of the problem of generalized thinking in relation to the exercise of authority in society. If, by the early years of the nineteenth century public opinion had entered the main currents of political theory, what issues did its emergence raise? ^*

With various subdivisions, the focal issues in the theory of public opinion may be grouped into three classes. First, what is the historical, legal, and social nature of the public or of publics? Second, what is the nature of opinion? Is it something new or is it old? Is it permanent or changing? Is it associated with particular social developments, such as the middle class, mass communication, or urban society? May it be approached through legal, political, and philosophical study, or must it be considered wholly under psychological and sociological theory? Third, what is the quality of opinion? Under what conditions is it effective? What psychological forces govern its formation, and what is its relation to the means of social communication? How does public opinion express value judgments, and is a theory of correct value judgments necessarily a part of the theory of public opinion?

Obviously, these questions, and others which might be listed at this point, raise most of the ultimate issues in social theory. For us, as believers and practitioners of democracy, for example, must we say the public opinion is "real" only in a democratic movement? Since we accept the principle of majority rule in large areas of public decision, must we also say that the only proper political value judgments arise from the determinations of the majority, however we may decide who may belong in the majority? At the middle of the twentieth century we are in the midst of one of the great crises of the human spirit, and we have been forced to say that the opinions of our communist and fascist enemies have been completely erroneous and misled, while in turn we assert the justice of the predominant opinions of our own people. Can we say that there is here anything more than a decision of those who have been the more powerful in a universal conflict? Or, can we assert with any safety that whole areas of opinion have been entirely false, and that, on a basis of a proper principle of right, our own opinion and social symbolism are valid in science or philosophy?

II

The formal means of participation of the masses in making political decisions is one of the fundamental interests in the study of public opinion. Unless the formal means of participation reach to the center of power, democracy must remain institutionally incomplete.^* Yet this institutional imperfection is just what we must assume, and we must interpret the development of participation as an effort to bring the shared symbolism of individuals and groups into closer and closer relationship with the formal means of making decisions for a whole society. The expansion of the idea of the "people," the growth of the idea of "popular sovereignty," the principle of majority rule, and the formality of constitutional procedures all fit into this general scheme. It is an age-long effort to make the individual personality mean more in the slow and often clumsy operation of the larger community. However, the evolution of participation, that is, the growth of the idea of the people, must be distinguished from the parallel but differential growth of the concept of freedom of opinion. Historically, formal participation has run far ahead of the idea of free opinion, and free opinion is logically perfect only when there is no mechanism of political censorship or coercion. Probably only the anarchists can say that they really believe in a completely free opinion, while believers in government and its attendant coercion can be forceful supporters of mass participation in decision-making.†

Similar distinctions should be made in connection with majority rule. Majority rule theory goes back to classical times, but even today it is not coupled with the completely free expression of any opinion. In support of public decisions, the majority is ready to deny the right of expression to certain opinions, especially when it is believed they contradict the principle of the continued existence of the community itself. But majority rule has always been an incomplete and formal means of reaching decisions in accordance with generally held opinions. In the early ideas of popular sovereignty, "the people" referred to limited groups such as the secular nobility, or the action of the people had to be taken through their magistrates, as in sixteenth and seventeenth century Calvinistic thought. Sometime during the eighteenth century the people began to mean the mass of human beings, to whom the classical doctrine of majority rule was applied. The political individual came to be clearly defined along with the definition of the modern territorial state. The absolute state and the absolute individual, argued Ward, emerged together.^* But the medieval defense of majority rule through Church institutions and natural law philosophy became in the eighteenth century the foundation on which arithmetical utilitarianism was built. Aside from intellectual discussion in which numbers had no bearing, it became possible with James Mill and Jeremy Bentham to defend public decision through the formalities of political parties and electoral procedures.†

To construct a "model" of the citizen which measures the influences that are effective in decision, is to depict the power process. It implies no justification of participation, consent, or democracy in general, since the same method might be applied in any form of political grouping. Ultimately, political theory must demand some justification of the structure of participation, or the justification of some reformed or altered society. The formal definitions of public opinion may simply state facts, and they may not be in any case a defense of a right of general popular participation either in private or public groups. Participation is, clearly, the proper avenue of approach to the study of public opinion, for, in various senses, public opinion is participating opinion. But the legitimation of participation rests on the older, broader, and more philosophical proposition that just governments are governments to which, in some sense, the subjects have given their consent. Like participation, consent is never perfect, and like it also there are variations in forms of consent. Since we can hardly say that non-existent opinion can be public opinion, we can hardly say that a primitive and inarticulate acceptance of a governing order is really consent. But the conscious consent of the subject, validated in some formal manner, either tacitly through custom or through some more formal system of ratification of a form of government and of public policy, has long been an ideal of Western tradition. Just as some have insisted that public opinion implies a degree of uniformity or unanimity, so consent at the fundamental levels of social organization must imply some degree of consensus.

The uniformity implied must extend at least to the continued existence of the community, and, short of revolution, it seems to involve the formal continuity of the political system, or of the constitution whether written or unwritten. In this sense, consent suggests an agreement on the essential symbols of political integration, such as the common social institutions, the constitution, established practices in the use of power, the support of the nation, the ethnic group, the language, religion, or the outward trappings of loyalty. These might be regarded as the deeper reaches of the general will. Hearnshaw, thus, concludes that "public opinion and communal conscience find their outlet into action by means of the general will." ^* The organicity of a society, if any, can be found only in the areas of general agreement on what is proper, true, or suitable to the common good. Here, at the deeper level of public opinion, as the level of consent in a legitimate society, we can find unanimity, and there, then, we may find, perhaps, the public opinion of the general will.

In the discussion of public opinion there is a distinction of profound importance to be remembered. Participating opinion, reflecting as it does uniformity in consent to some things about the community, is, nevertheless, outside of the government; the public is never the government, although the public does influence, approach, or even control the government, or the makers of decision. But however close the opinion of the influencing groups may come to controlling the government, it is still not the government. Opinion as a process operating within the public is by definition to be distinguished from those who rule. The importance of this proposition may easily be perceived, and it is as significant in modern as in ancient societies. And when it is forgotten in the revolutionary assumption that the general mass of the people are the government—and that there is no distinction between the rulers and the national sovereignty of the people —then both freedom and democracy, and both consent and participation can be destroyed, in any meaningful sense.

In the French Revolution, the people and government were identified in a common national sovereignty. But this was a denial of the older principle that the people are not the government, though they may share in it and control it. It was this idea of the French Revolution which so profoundly aroused men like Burke, and which served as a prime cause in awakening the conscious political conservatism of modern times. It became understood that to regard the people—and in turn public opinion—as identical with the government eliminates as enemies of the people the individual or group—together with individual and group rights against authority. In other words, this false identification results inevitably in suppression at home and aggressive imperialism abroad; it becomes a "democratic tyranny." Ever since the French Revolution, some such process has been at the base of totalitarian regimes, whether Italian fascism, German National Socialism, or communism. Such regimes consider that there can be no rights against the "unanimity" of the "people" either at home or abroad.

Therefore, a theory of public opinion in any true democratic sense must respect the fact that the people and their governors are distinct, that the governors do indeed draw their power from a basic level of consent to social structure and institutions but that, beyond the area of common agreement or general will, the governors must also seek consent by respecting the group and individual rights which form the effective pattern of opinion in any free society.^*

It is a central proposition in Western political philosophy that a just government arises from the consent of the community.† This idea has been intermingled, however, with opposing principles which minimize the importance of popular participation. For aside from minor religious or proletarian movements, it has not been assumed that the people could decide there is to be no government at all. Thus, while the form of government arises legitimately from the consent of the community, it is inconceivable that the people should refuse to be governed or that they should consent to be governed by tyranny or a despotism, i.e., without regard to the recognized principles of justice or law.‡ It is between these antithetical impossibilities of consent to tyranny and consent to the chaos of anarchy, that the true theory of functioning public opinion must be found.

The notion that legitimate government arises from a community consent does not of itself imply democracy, since consent may be given to any of a number of forms of government. The consent of which we speak is clearly popular sovereignty, but this means that popular sovereignty and democracy must be distinguished, otherwise any government however lacking in immediate political participation might be called a democracy. Tyranny itself might slip in under democratic coverage. To say that ultimately all just governments are validated by community consent, without asserting that participation must be continuous, is to make a distinction between constituent and governing activity. In the first case, the opinion of the community (however organized) has a range of choice limited to the forms and ends of government. Such a consent could not imply consent to any government—such as totalitarian regimes—whose policy is inherently contrary to the moral order or to the social nature of man.

The historic distinction between the community as a constituent force and a governing force is a logical starting point for any theory of public opinion, whether in a democracy or in some other form of government. Under this distinction, public opinion must be in action at least once: namely, at the founding of the state or at the beginning of each major change or new regime; but the theory also implies that men may not consent to have no organized society, and they may not consent to moral slavery. In theory the form of the participation in constitution-making is not important; it must, however, be effective. Historically, this consent may be through coronation oaths—i.e., a governmental contract between the ruler and the people through tacit or customary consent—or through the more modern formality of the constitutional convention and constitutional referendum. In theory, likewise, it may arise through individuals alone or through groups. It may be modern individualism, Rousseau-like, or it may be corporate as through medieval estates, as emergent parliamentary institutions would show. Such a view remains valid whether Catholic or seventeenth-century Protestant theory (as represented, for example, by Althusius) is considered.^*

Alternatively, under this conception it is said that all government comes from the community, that the ruler or the governing order is representative of the community, and that government itself must be for the common good. Within such a range, which includes both procedural and substantive limitations, the opinion of the community has a right and even a duty to function. Western political theory has illustrations to offer of thinkers who would ignore the moral principles associated with the common good, but it does not offer us examples of thinkers who, in order to increase the power of the people, would have the common good ignored. Machiavelli spoke to the prince and urged that morality might be ignored for the common good; Nietzsche ignored both the historic conceptions of morality and the common good—but in Nietzschean thinking the people were the rabble.

Another historical point may be urged. Medieval theory assumed there was no choice as to the existence of the organized community. It was this belief which in part made possible the scholastic integration of Aristotle with Christian thought. God ordained the state—though in Christian thought it might have been from the fall, as St. Augustine suggested, or in addition from the social nature of man as St. Thomas insisted. The modern doctrine of social contract, as distinguished from the ancient theory of governmental contract, implied at least that there was some choice as to whether the state should be created. Yet one does not assume that Hooker, Althusius, Pufendorf, Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau really meant that men might agree not to have an organized ...