7.1: Introduction

Tourists' images are distorted and reflected back at them by Cloud Gate, a sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park.

Democracy Tourists’ images are distorted and reflected back at them by Cloud Gate, a sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park. is meant to reflect the people. Popular sovereignty and majority rule obligate a government to pay attention to what its citizens want. By the same token, they obligate citizens to convey what they want to government. After all, the people cannot have a say in how they are ruled, nor can the majority’s preferred course of action be ascertained, unless the public somehow collectively expresses itself.

How effective is government based on public opinion? Are people capable of sending clear, accurate signals to policymakers about what they want? If so, should policymakers listen? We all like to get what we want, but we also recognize that sometimes what we want isn’t what we need. Sometimes we don’t even know what we want.

Before deciding how much government should rely on public opinion, we must answer two more fundamental questions. First, does the public actually have opinions about political issues that could, in principle, guide a democracy? Second, can those opinions be extracted and compiled in a way that gives the government a good sense of what the public wants it to do?

The answer to both of these questions is a qualified yes. People do have political views, though they are often less stable than is commonly assumed. And these views are discoverable through polling, though even the best polls are limited in their ability to accurately sum up how the populace thinks and feels. Behind every presidential approval rating or issue poll is a thorny thicket of human psychology and statistical methodology that is both challenging and fascinating to untangle.