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• W2083724562 abstract "The of the people. the root meaning of public opinion, is old idea. Early political thinkers struggled to define the proper role of public in government. The confluence of developments in commercial polling and social psychological studies of attitudes in the 1930s gave the concept new meaning. An historical perspective is helpful in understanding how public has progressed; it also allows us to identify once vital but now neglected issues. A concern with professional standards in links modern researchers with the moral imperative contained in the earliest idea of public opinion. Albert E. Gollin. Vice-President and Associate Director of Research at the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, New York, was President of AAPOR in 1984-85. This is a slightly revised version of his presidential address at AAPOR's 40th Annual Conference. McAfee. New Jersey. May 16-19. 1985. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol 49:414-424 O-J by Ihc Trustees of Columbia University Published by Etsevier Science Publishing Co.. Inc. IKav.V>2X/X5/(KW9-4l4/$2.5O at A A PO R M em er A cess on M arch 7, 2016 http://poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from IN SEARCH OF A USEABLE PAST 415 Nor are those to be listened to who are accustomed to say, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' For the clamor of the crowd is very close to madness (quoted in Boas, 1969:9). Neither time nor talent permit me to trace the evolution of the concept of public from Alcuin's gruff Realpolitik formulation to our own time. But in the spirit of Charles Tilly's (1983) richly illustrated portrayal of public as embodied in repertoires of collective action, let me add a vignette from the eighteenth century. Everyone knows of Edmund Burke's famous Speech to the Electors of Bristol, given in 1774, with its classic statement that representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your (quoted in Wilson, 1962:62). What is less well known is that his actions in line with this principle cost him electoral support, and he eventually withdrew from the race for reelection in 1780. But episode early in the career of Charles Fox, in the same period, offers even more vivid example of how the popular will might be manifested. Fox claimed that the House of Commons was the only proper agency of public opinion, and stated: pay no regard whatever to the voice of the people: it is our duty to do what is proper, without considering what may be agreeable: their business is to chuse us; it is ours to act constitutionally, and to maintain the independency of (quoted in Emden, 1956:53). Burke ultimately lost his seat in Parliament for saying the same thing; Fox did not have to wait that long to find out how people felt about his theory of public opinion. As a result of this speech, Fox was attacked by a mob, as he drove down to the House, and was rolled in the mud (Emden, 1956:53). After a jump of a thousand years, from Alcuin to Burke and Fox, our next brief stop a mere hundred years or so later will seem like a hop-andskip. Yet, in terms of the history of public research, it is a giant step. brings us to the era of James Bryce and of others (such as A. Lawrence Lowell, Woodrow Wilson, Graham Wallas, and Arthur Bentley) whose theoretical and institutional studies made fundamental contributions to the emerging field of political science and through it to the shaping of contemporary traditions of research. In 1870 two British barristers and scholars in their early thirties, James Bryce and Albert Venn Dicey, set off for America. This was only the first of trips Bryce made, criss-crossing the continent then and again in 1881 and 1883, prior to the publication of The American Commonwealth in December 1888. Everywhere he went he gathered facts: It was said of him that to him all facts were born free and equal. He remembered them all alike (Murray, 1944:5). A man of penetrating intellect and great physical stamina, Bryce was also an alert observer and a persistent, and apparently ingratiating questioner (Coker, 1939:156). He at A A PO R M em er A cess on M arch 7, 2016 http://poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from 416 ALBERT E. GOLLIN once estimated that five-sixths of The American Commonwealth was the result of conversations with Americans in trains, carriages, coaches, on steamboats, in political clubs and conventions, in hotel lobbies, even on top of mountains and at outposts in the wilderness (Ions, 1968:43). Bryce's talent for observation and interviewing and his genius in synthesizing facts to support authoritative generalizations are nowhere better displayed than in his classic treatment of public (Bryce, 1890: II; IV). His achievements led Gallup and Lazarsfeld, among others, to claim for him the title of saint of modern public research (Lazarsfeld, 1950), and they have earned Bryce a prominent place as a seminal theorist in practically every collection of writings on public published in the past 40 years. One strand of his detailed analysis can be used as a springboard for comment on a number of problems confronting us. Bryce begins his discussion of by public by asserting that opinion has really been the chief and ultimate power in nearly all nations at nearly all times, and then outlines three stages in the evolution of opinion: from a passive and acquiescent public, then (through conflict between the ruler and a segment of the ruled) armed struggle for dominance, and finally, submission by the ruler to the popular will, expressed by balloting. Then, prophetically, he envisages a stage beyond these three. A fourth stage would be reached if the will of the majority. . . were to become ascertainable at all times . . . possibly even without the need of voting machinery at all. In such a state of things the sway of public would have become more complete, because more continuous, than it is in those. . . countries which. . . look chiefly to parliaments as exponents of national sentiment. . . . To such a condition of things the phrase rule of public might be most properly applied, for public would not only reign but govern (Bryce, II: 247—51). Bryce's analysis of public opinion, like those of others before him and since, moved easily among descriptive statements, conceptual issues, and normative concerns. What helped to earn him the title of our patron saint, however, was his glimpse of how alternative means of ascertaining public might affect the governmental process. took another 50 years before developments in the social sciences, especially in statistics and social psychology, were harnessed to our nation's expanding marketing, economic, and public policy requirements, and survey methods and public polling came to be recognized as the technological means of realizing, however partially and imperfectly, Bryce's earlier vision (Martin, 1984; Converse, 1985). If one seeks a more precise watershed for this recognition, I would nominate the two-month period between November 1936 and January 1937. The election of 1936 was, of course, distinguished by the successful at A A PO R M em er A cess on M arch 7, 2016 http://poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from IN SEARCH'OF A USEABLE PAST 7 forecasting of Roosevelt's reelection by Gallup, Crossley, and Roper, a feat that helped boost the scientific status of this infant technology. And two months later. Public Opinion Quarterly was launched, with a lead article by Floyd Allport (1937) that defined this new scientific approach to the study of public while firmly rejecting the fictions and blind alleys of the past. Uses and Criticisms of Public Opinion Research Signposts and markers in the history of theory and on public such as these have a certain antiquarian charm. But they can also help us appreciate how far we have come. Surveys and polls have by now been integrated into economic decision making and government and politics at all levels, practically around the world. Recall in this connection that exit poll conducted by Nancy Belden anointed President Duarte's party as the victor in the recent elections in El Salvador, weeks before the official count was concluded, and that this fact almost immediately caused political tremors and a realignment of factional" @default.
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• W2083724562 title "In Search of a Useable Past" @default.
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