• DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1992.tb01758.x
• Corpus ID: 144394578

Public Opinion, Public Policy and the Welfare State

@article{Papadakis1992PublicOP,
  title={Public Opinion, Public Policy and the Welfare State},
  author={Elim Papadakis},
  journal={Political Studies},
  year={1992},
  volume={40},
  pages={21 - 37}
}

• E. Papadakis
• Published 1 March 1992
• Political Science
• Political Studies

A recurring problem in political analysis is to link public opinion to public policy. Public opinion has often come to mean the replies to structured questions in representative surveys. The task of connecting opinion and policy is complicated by the difficulty in interpreting replies to these surveys. The burgeoning literature on public opinion and the crisis of the welfare state has failed to provide a consistent account of what aspects of policy might be driven by public demand or vice versa. The interpretations of survey data are either misleading or highly selective. This applies to two crucial areas, attitudes towards poor minorities and opinions about state and private welfare. In order to provide a better understanding of the problems of linking policy and opinion and to offer some guiding principles for research in this area, this paper attempts to clarify some of these difficulties. The discussion of public opinion becomes murky when meticulous scholars try to define their conceptions and to form distinctions that enable them to make statements that seem to fit the observable realities of the interaction of public opinion and government. This murkiness by no means flows solely from the incomprehensibility of men of learning. To speak with precision of public opinion is not unlike coming to grips with the Holy Ghost (V. O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy).