Concepts of Public Opinion

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis G. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Human History ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Early Use ◽  
The Way

Public opinion in democracies should be the final element in political life which gives significance to the activity of the state and the fact of membership in it. The recognition of the force of opinion implies that in the overflowing of the individual's will to his neighbor's will, in the desire to administer the things common to wills, we have perhaps one of the most basic psychological foundations of the state. While one may contend that the problems of the nature of the state or of jurisprudence are more than adequately conceptualized, this certainly cannot be said of public opinion. Yet since the very early use of the term by John of Salisbury in 1159, its significance in human history has not been less than that of justice, liberty, or law. It is suggested that a statement of the elements which appear to be universal is the proper first step in the scientific study of public opinion. The method here proposed may seem barren of immediate results, but it is necessary to clarify reasoning on public opinion as force-ideas in political history. Commonly understood abstractions are necessary to pave the way for organized thinking and action.

The Role of Public Opinion in the “Jackson Era” in the USA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Татьяна Алентьева ◽  
Tat'yana Alent'eva
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The Usa ◽  
First Time

The monograph first explores American public opinion as the most important factor in social and political life in the "Jackson era." Of particular value is the study of the struggle of opinions within the bipartisan system, both in the South and in the North. Against the background of a broad canvas of socio-economic and political history, the first analysis of the state and development of public opinion in the USA is given, successively from the presidential election of 1824 to the defeat of the Democrats in the presidential election of 1840, when their opponents, the Whigs, came to power for the first time.

1. Introduction to Africa and its politics

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ian Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Core ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Impact

Africa is a continent of over a billion people, yet questions of underdevelopment, malgovernance, and a form of political life based upon patronage are characteristic of many African states. ‘Introduction to Africa and its politics’ explains that the core questions underpinning this VSI centre on how politics is typically practised on the continent; the nature of the state in Africa; and what accounts for Africa’s underdevelopment. This VSI aims to appraise sub-Saharan Africa’s recent political history, examining post-colonial political structures, the impact of colonialism, and the form and nature of post-colonial states. The type of politics practised in many African states continues to be hostile to genuine nation building and broad-based, sustainable development.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes—from the development of democracy to the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation—have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also posed problems for the historians who have researched and written about Britain’s past politics. This volume shows the ways in which political historians have responded, and provides a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays written by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself, and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain’s political past and a thought-provoking ‘long view’ for those interested in current political challenges.

Introduction

Iraq ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeed Dawisha
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Governing Institutions ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the political development of Iraq from the inception of the state in 1921 to the post-2003 years of political and societal turmoil. Its premise is that from the very beginning of the state the Iraqi project in fact devolved into three undertakings: the consolidation of the state and its governing institutions, the legitimization of the state through the framing of democratic structures, and the creation of an overarching, and thus unifying, national identity. The book is different from other studies of Iraq's political history, in that it traces the development of each of the three projects of governance, democracy, and national identity separately, while at the same time highlighting the way they impacted and shaped one another. The remainder of the chapter discusses the roots of the predicament of post-2003 Iraq.

scholarly journals Understanding the Role of Racism in Contemporary US Public Opinion

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-169
Author(s):  
Katherine Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Contemporary Context ◽  
The Way

In the contemporary context, it is inescapable that racism is a factor in US public opinion. When scholars take stock of the way we typically measure and conceptualize racism, we find reason to reconceptualize the racial resentment scale as a measure of perceptions of the reasons for political inequality. We also see reason to move beyond thinking of racism as an attitude, toward conceptualizing it as a perspective. In addition, we see reason to pay closer attention to the role of elites in creating and perpetuating a role for racism in the way people think about public affairs. The study of racism is evolving in parallel with the broader public discussion: toward a recognition of the complex and fundamental ways it is woven into US culture and political life.

The State and Practice of American Political History at the Millennium: The Nineteenth Century as a Test Case

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel H. Silbey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American History ◽  
Political History ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
Traditional Work

These are very hard times for students of American political history. Not so long ago they were a peppy and optimistic bunch and believed that they had every reason to be. For those scholars who focused their attention on nineteenth-century politics in particular, the avalanche of revisionist work from the quantitatively and behaviorally oriented “new” political historians, beginning in the late 1950s, as well as the constant outpouring of more traditional work in the genre, had expanded the reach, and deepened the understanding, of American political life after 1800. Much the same was true for politics in other chronological eras as well. The energy and example displayed by the generation of political historians active into the 1980s underscored their major, even dominant role in the study of American history. And there were few signs that anything would check the impressive growth and increasing sophistication of their contributions to historical knowledge.

scholarly journals Treason in an Era of Regime Change: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 124-149
Author(s):  
Mark Cornwall
Keyword(s):  
Regime Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Human History ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Judas Iscariot ◽  
Defense Lawyer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

Whatever we call “treason”—Hochverrat, trahison, velezrada, veleizdaja, felségsértés—it has been a constant phenomenon in human history. The “traitor,” the individual who breaks a major bond of trust, has emerged in every era and is usually treated as a pariah in society. At the most significant treason trial of the late Habsburg monarchy, that of fifty-three Serbs in Zagreb in 1909, the main defense lawyer Hinko Hinković began his concluding speech with a typical legal adage: that treason was “the most loathsome thing” imaginable. Down the centuries, he said, humanity had singled out two types of traitors. First, there were those who betrayed God, best personified in Judas Iscariot. Second, there were traitors to the nation such as the Spartan Ephialtes who, according to Herodotus, fatally betrayed his homeland to the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. While both types were “repulsive and terrible,” Hinković quickly opined that the latter—the national traitor—was really the most terrible. However, with an eye on the Serbs he was defending, he added that some national treasons were not actually directed against the nation. For where national aspirations did not mesh with state aspirations, or where the state was not the same as the homeland (otačbina)—there, a deed that the state might consider treasonous could be viewed as a heroic, patriotic act by the nation. In other words, treason could be interpreted as liberation from oppression, and numerous examples might be cited in this regard from recent Habsburg history, not least the way that the Magyars were now able to celebrate and memorialize the traitor-liberator Lajos Kossuth.

scholarly journals First experience of participation in post-Soviet parliamentary elections in Nizhny Novgorod region: pages of political history

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
Ya. S. Zanozina ◽  
◽  
V. M. Plitkina ◽  
A. A. Fomenkov ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Nizhny Novgorod Region

The article is devoted to an important event in the political history of post-Soviet Russia, namely the first parliamentary elections in its history. The aim of the work was to determine the specifics of the results of the first elections of deputies of the Russian Parliament after the collapse of the USSR in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The tasks of the work are related to the study of the elections of deputies of the State Duma (both by single-mandate districts and by party lists), and the Federation Council. A number of conclusions are drawn regarding the political sympathies of residents of different administrative-territorial units of the Nizhny Novgorod region in the first half of the last decade. A kind of Nizhny Novgorod «red belt» is defined geographically, consisting of the southern districts of the region, as well as several districts of the north and east of the region, where voters mostly supported the left. It is revealed that the level of political activity in the elections is quite high, which is not surprising in view of the intense political life during the perestroika period in Gorky, and then in Nizhny Novgorod

Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco during the Progressive Era

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Ethington
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Political History ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Goal ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Primary Base

Thanks to recent innovations in theories and methods of political history, an enormous task lies before those wishing to approach the social-scientific goal recently desribed as “total political history.” Research and theorizing on the subjects of political culture, the autonomy of the state, language and discourse, the public sphere, and the importance of gender to political life promise to displace a long-standing interest among political historians in locating the social groups that presumably composed the “base” of historical regime and policy formation. The understanding of past politics as the epiphenomenal superstructure to an ontologically primary base of past society has been radically revised by scholarship presenting evidence of the relative autonomy of the state and of cultural structures within which both society and politics operate (Kousser 1982,1990; Skocpol 1985; McDonald 1986; Tropea 1989; Hunt 1986; Reddy 1987; Palmer 1990).

Cosmopolitanism and kosmopolitizm in the political life of Soviet citizens

Focaal ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 2004 (44) ◽  
pp. 138-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Soviet People ◽  
Nation States ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Political Idea ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
The Way

In the rethinking of cosmopolitanism that has been under way in anthropology the emphasis in the European tradition of thought, pertaining to humanity in general and universal values, has been replaced by focus on specific and new cosmopolitan peoples and sites. Cosmopolitanism ceases to be only a political idea, or an ideal, and is conceptualized also in terms of practice or process. A vocabulary of 'rooted cosmopolitanism', 'vernacular cosmopolitanism' and 'actually existing cosmopolitanisms' has emerged from the characteristically anthropological acknowledgment of diversity and inevitable attachments to place. This article accepts such an approach, but argues that it has neglected the presence and intense salience of the ideas of cosmopolitanism held by nation states. Such ideologies, especially those promulgated by authoritarian states, penetrate deep into the lives and thoughts of citizens. The article draws attention to the binary and contradictory character of nation state discourse on cosmopolitanism, and to the way this creates structures of affect and desire. The Soviet concept of kosmopolitizm is analyzed. It is contextualized historically in relation to the state discourse on mobility and the practice of socialist internationalism. The article argues that although the Stalinist version of kosmopolitizm became a poisonous and anti-Semitic accusation, indeed an instrument of repression, it could not control the desire created by its own negativity. Indeed, it played a creative and integral part in the emergence of a distinctive everyday cosmopolitanism among Soviet people.

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