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The Rising Hegemony of Mass Opinion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Paul J. Quirk  and
Joseph Hinchliffe
Paul J. Quirk
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joseph Hinchliffe
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Extract

The Founding Fathers warned about the dangers of an “excess of democracy” and designed the Constitution in large part with a view toward preventing it. Judging from most commentary on American politics, with respect to most of the intervening two hundred years, they need't have worried: The mass public has only occasionally been a dominant force in national policy making. Elites, although often responding to broad public concerns, have usually defined the specific directions of policy change.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 10 , Special Issue 1: Loss of Confidence: Politics and Policy in the 1970s , January 1998 , pp. 19 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1998

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References

Notes

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12. On many issues, one or more of the sources of demand are relatively coherent: Mass opinion has a clear predominant tendency; most general-interest-oriented experts agree; or the most concerned interest groups are one side of a dispute. For example, the public favors the income-tax deduction for mortgage interest; so does the real estate industry; but most economists are critical of it. On other issues, such as abortion or the progressivity of the tax code, all of the sources are thoroughly divided.

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17. Ibid.

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38. Melnik, R. Shep, Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act (Washington, D.C., 1983), 26–27Google Scholar; Jones, Clean Air, 191–95; Corrigan, “Environment Report,” 1758.

39. Jones, Clean Air, 196.

40. “Senate Passes Stringent Anti-Pollution Bill, 73–0,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 28 (25 September 1970): 2315–20Google Scholar.

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43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 198.

45. Ibid., 201.

46. “Senate Passes Stringent Anti-Pollution Bill,” 2316.

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53. Ibid., 453.

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56. Ibid., 1612.

57. Ibid.

58. “First Congressional Reform,” 453.

59. Garay, Ronald, Congressional Television: A Legislative History (Westport, Conn., 1984), 35–65Google Scholar.

60. Ibid., 57–84, 87–94, 97–103.

61. Ibid., 64–69.

62. Ibid., 79.

63. “House Gets Set to Televise Sessions with Its Own Hand on the Camera,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 35 (17 December 1977): 2605–8Google Scholar.

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67. Ibid., 230.

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71. Derthick, Policymaking, 346.

72. Myers, Robert J., Social Security (Philadelphia, 1993), 388–89Google ScholarPubMed, 396–97, 432–33.

73. Derthick, Policymaking, 367.

74. Fenno, Richard F. Jr., Congressman in Committees (Boston, 1973), 54Google Scholar.

75. Derthick, Policymaking, 350.

76. Weaver, Carolyn L., The Crisis in Social Security, Economic and Political Origins (Durham, N.C., 1982), 166Google Scholar.

77. Derthick, Policymaking, 360; “Mills Proposes 20% Benefit Rise in Social Security,” Wall Street Journal, 24 February 1972, 2:2; “Nixon Aides, Others Puzzled by Mills Plan to Boost Social Security Benefits by 20%,” Wall Street Journal, 29 February 1972, 3:2.

78. Derthick, Policymaking, 367, 368.

79. Chester, Edward W., United States Oil Policy and Diplomacy: A Twentieth-Century Overview (Westport, Conn., 1983), 30–36Google Scholar.

80. Ibid., 45; “Oil Import Review Nears End; Substantial Changes May Ensue,” National Journal 1 (8 November 1969): 82–83Google Scholar; “Oil Import Policy,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 91st Congress, 2nd Session 1970, 26 (1971): 895–99Google Scholar.

81. Glasner, David, Politics, Prices, and Petroleum: The Political Economy of Energy (San Francisco, 1985), 93–103Google Scholar.

82. Corrigan, Richard, “Energy Report/Federal Energy Office Fuel Priorities Spell Trouble for American Motorists,” National Journal 5 (29 December 1973): 1950–51Google Scholar; “Mandatory Fuel Allocation Program Approved,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 93rd Congress, 1st Session 1973, 29 (1974): 523–631Google Scholar; Witt, Elder, “Energy and Environment,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 94th Congress, 1st Session, 1975, 31 (1976): 173–76Google Scholar.

83. Nivola, Pietro S., The Politics of Energy Conservation (Washington, D.C., 1986), 23Google Scholar.

84. Corrigan, Richard, “Energy Report/‘Compromise’ Oil Bill Ends up Pleasing Few,” National Journal 7 (27 December 1975): 1735Google Scholar.

85. Corrigan, Richard, “Energy Report/Ford, Congress Struggle over Petroleum Policy.” National Journal 7 (1 March 1975): 318–23Google Scholar.

86. Corrigan, Richard, “Tower Seeks Bloc of Oil, Gas States,” National Journal 7 (15 March 1975): 402Google Scholar. The member quoted was Representative Silvio Conte (R-Mass.).

87. Farhar, Barbara C., “The Polls—Poll Trends: Public Opinion about Energy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 58 (Winter 1994): 603–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88. Wildavsky, Aaron and Tenenbaum, Ellen, The Politics of Mistrust: Estimating American Oil and Gas Reserves (Beverly Hills, 1981), 121–22Google Scholar. (Italics in original.)

89. Nivola argues, very differently, that public opinion was ambivalent toward energy regulation and did not fundamentally constrain policymakers. His interpretation, however, is based on responses to nuanced, conditional questions in opinion polls. He writes:

Polls revealed that majorities objected to deregulation if its main consequence was higher prices, but that they approved of it if the likely result was a larger oil supply. When samples were told that the probable outcome would be a little of both—fewer shortages but higher prices—opinion was fairly bifurcated between those who favored continued price controls and those who either disagreed or were undecided. (256)

This interpretation has two weaknesses: First, it finds ambivalence by grouping the undecided arbitrarily with the opponents of price controls. Second, and more important, it presumes that nuanced, conditional questions are the relevant predictors of citizens' responses at the next election. A more natural reading of the poll evidence would suggest that an elected official who supported decontrol of oil prices would have had much to fear in the voters' response.

90. Nivola, The Politics of Energy Conservation, 52–67.

91. Ibid., 57–60; Wildavsky and Tenenbaum, Politics of Mistrust.

92. Nivola, The Politics of Energy Conservation, 57, 63.

93. Ibid., 27.

94. Wildavsky and Tenenbaum, Politics of Mistrust, 9.

95. Derthick and Quirk, 46.

96. Ibid., 45–50.

97. Ibid., 100–101; 120–25; 164–74.

98. Ibid., n. 48.

99. Ibid., 131.

100. Ibid., 132 n. 66.

101. Ibid., 134.

102. Ibid., 132–33.

103. Campagna, Anthony C., The Economy in the Reagan Years: The Economic Consequences of the Reagan Administration (Westport, Conn., 1994), 32–34Google Scholar.

104. Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, 160, fig. 4.16: “Taxes, 1947–1990.”

105. During this period, the percentage of the public believing that “too little” was spent for defense rose from 22 percent to 51 percent. Mayer, William G., The Changing American Mind: How and Why American Public Opinion Changed between 1960 and 1988 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993), 414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. Ibid., 93, 454–57, 468. About half of the public felt that the country was spending “too little” on “improving and protecting the environment,” “improving and protecting the nation's health,” and “improving the nation's education system.” Somewhat smaller numbers of people felt that “too little” was being spent on “improving public transportation” (about 40–50 percent); “solving the problems of the big cities” (about 40 percent); and “improving the conditions of blacks” (about 25 percent).

107. Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, Tax Reductions: Economists' Comments on H.R. 8333 and S. 1860 (The Kemp-Roth Bills) Bills to Provide for Permanent Tax Rate Reductions for Individuals and Businesses (Washington, D.C., 1978), 17Google Scholar.

108. Ibid., 71.

109. Ibid., 92.

110. Ibid., 89.

111. Ibid., 86–91.

112. Stockman revealed his opinion a few months after the debate was over in a notorious magazine interview: Greider, William, “The Education of David Stockman,” The Atlantic Monthly 248, December 1981, 27–54Google Scholar.

113. Gregg, Gail, “'Let Us Act Together' Reagan Exhorts Congress,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 39 (21 February 1981): 331–37Google Scholar.

114. Ibid., 333.

115. Kernell, Going Public, 121–55.

116. Campagna, The Economy in the Reagan Years, 79.