Politicians' Reading Of Public Opinion And Its Biases

Examining a central assumption widely accepted as being crucial in making democracy work - that politicians form a more or less accurate image of public opinion and take that perception into account when representing citizens - Politicians' Reading of Public Opinion and its Biases presents aparadox of representation. On the one hand, politicians invest enormously in reading public opinion. They are committed to finding out what the people want and public opinion is a key consideration in many of their undertakings. Yet, on the other hand, politicians' perceptions of public opinion aresurprisingly inaccurate. Politicians are hardly better at estimating public opinion than ordinary citizens are. Their perceptions are distorted by social projection, in the sense that politicians' own opinion affects their estimations, and on top of that, there seems to be a systematic right-wingbias in these perceptions. The findings imply that one of the main paths to responsive policy-making is flawed. Even though politicians do the best they can to learn about people's preferences, skewed perceptions put them on the wrong track. From a democratic perspective, the central findings of thebook are quite sobering. The high hopes that many authors had with regard to politicians' ability to adequately 'consult' or 'sense' public opinion appear to be vain. The book puts forward a plausible driver of the slippage between the public and politics. Politicians are less responsive to people'spreferences than they could be, not because they do not want to be responsive but because they base themselves on erroneous public opinion perceptions.

• | Author: Stefaan Walgrave, Walgrave
• | Publisher: Oxford University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 01, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 240 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0192866028
• | ISBN-13: 9780192866028