Public Opinion as a Factor in Public Policy Formation

1978 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan D. Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Formation

scholarly journals Mass Observation (1937-2017) and Life Writing: an Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. MO1-MO15
Author(s):  
T.G. Ashplant
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Research Project ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The University ◽  
Life Writings

Mass Observation (MO) was formed in Britain in 1937 as an innovative research project, to develop new methods for accurately gauging public opinion, thereby contributing to a more democratic form of politics and public policy formation. The archive of its first phase (1937-49) was transferred to the University of Sussex in 1970. In 1981 it was revived as the Mass Observation Project (MOP), which continues to the present. The documentation which MO and MOP together generated includes a significant body of life writings. The purpose of this cluster of articles is to introduce the ways in which the interaction between the aims and approaches of MO's founders and its later MOP refounders, and the responses of its contributors, produced specific forms of life writing; and to explore aspects of the 'afterlife' of these texts – their contextualisation, publication, and interpretation. This introduction situates the original, multifaceted and idiosyncratic, MO project within wider political and cultural trends of the 1930s, and then examines MO's methods, which aimed at 'the observation by everyone of everyone, including themselves'.

Career Guidance: Living on the Edge of Public Policy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McCarthy ◽  
Tibor Bors Borbély-Pecze
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Career Guidance ◽  
Evaluation Studies ◽  
National Level ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Education And Employment

Public policy formation and implementation for career guidance provision are complex issues, not least because in most countries career guidance is a peripheral part of legislation for education, employment, and social inclusion. Policy solutions are compromises by nature. Regulations and economic incentives are the main policy instruments for career guidance provision, but there is often incoherence between the intentions of the regulations and the economic incentives provided for policy implementation. The intermediary organizations that serve to implement policy add significant variability to policy effects. International bodies and organizations have shown significant interest in the role of career guidance in education and employment policies through the undertaking of policy reviews, the formulation of recommendations for career guidance, and, in some cases, providing economic incentives to support their implementation. However, there is a dearth of evaluation studies of policy formation and implementation at the national level.

Building the New Socialist Countryside: Tracking Public Policy and Public Opinion Changes in China

2016 ◽  
Vol 226 ◽  
pp. 456-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Stepan ◽  
Enze Han ◽  
Tim Reeskens
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social

AbstractEver since the introduction of the national political programme of “Building a new socialist countryside” (BNSC) in the early 2000s, renewed focus has been cast on how the Chinese government manages the gap between its rural and urban areas in the new millennium. Previous research has mostly studied the social and political consequences of the BNSC initiative without paying particular attention to its effects on public opinion. In this article, we present an analysis of the 2002 and 2008 waves of the mainland China subset of the Asian Barometer. Our results show a significant shift in the perceptions of the rural population in respect to how much impact government policies have on daily life. This shift brings rural perceptions more in line with those of the urban population in 2002. The paper concludes with the implications of our findings for the study of the relations between public opinion and public policy in China.

PUBLIC OPINION IN PERSPECTIVE: COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH AND PUBLIC POLICY: DISCUSSION

1972 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-405
Author(s):  
W. P. Davison ◽  
H. D. Lasswell ◽  
D. Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Discussion

Nonattitudes and American Public Opinion: The Examination of a Thesis

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 626-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Pierce ◽  
Douglas D. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Probability Model ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Random Fluctuation ◽  
Number Of Individuals

This paper utilizes the 1956–58–60 SRC panel study to examine the degree to which Americans hold attitudes on issues of public policy. The conclusions reject the thesis that only 20 to 30 per cent of the American public have true attitudes and that the remainder either refuse to take a position or respond randomly. The nonattitude thesis is rejected on the basis of: (1) a conceptualization of attitudes which allows for variation in responses through time without necessarily indicating the absence of attitudes or their random fluctuation; (2) an evaluation of the major statement of the nonattitude thesis; (3) a probability model for measuring attitudes in a panel study based on the assumption of twin samples, i.e., a sample of the population at one point in time, and a sample of the individual's attitude through time; and (4) the application of the probability model, leading to the conclusion that the number of individuals with attitudes has been severely underestimated. The implications of that finding are drawn for the relation of responses to attitudes and for democratic elitism.

Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)

1974 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Beer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Work Done

It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.

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