Mobilizing Public Opinion

List of Tables and Figures Introduction 1. Elite Opinion Theory and Activated Mass Opinion 2. Black Insurgency and the Dynamics of Mass Opinion 3. The Sovereign Status of Survey Data 4. Constituency Mail as Public Opinion 5. The Racial, Regional, and Organizational Bases of Mass Activation 6. Contested Meanings and Movement Agency 7. Two Nations, Separate Grooves Appendix One: Question Wording, Scales, and Coding of Variables in Survey Analysis Appendix Two: Bibliographic Sources for Racial Attitude Items, 1937-1965 Appendix Three: Sampling and Coding of Constituency Mail Appendix Four: Typology of Interpretive Frames Notes References Acknowledgments Index.

This books analyses the role of public opinion for generating genuine citizen demand for accountability, providing case studies from around the world to illustrate how public opinion forces governments to be accountable.

When faced with injustice what can a concerned citizen do? In 1933, when Hitler tried to blame Communists for setting the German parliament on fire, a group of European and American lawyers responded by staging a countertrial, which proved them innocent and eventually led to their release. A new unofficial way of advancing human rights was thus launched. This groundbreaking study narrates the history of such 'citizens tribunals' from this first astonishing success to the mixed record of subsequent efforts-including tribunals on the Moscow show trials, the American war in Vietnam, Japanese sexual slavery, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the excesses of 'global capitalism'.

Public opinion is one of the most elusive and complex concepts in democratic theory, and we do not fully understand its role in the political process. Reading Public Opinion offers one provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. In fact, Susan Herbst finds that public opinion, surprisingly, has little to do with the mass public in many instances. Herbst draws on ideas from political science, sociology, and psychology to explore how three sets of political participants—legislative staffers, political activists, and journalists—actually evaluate and assess public opinion. She concludes that many political actors reject "the voice of the people" as uninformed and nebulous, relying instead on interest groups and the media for representations of public opinion. Her important and original book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the meaning and place of public opinion in the realm of contemporary democratic politics.

Describes the development of interest groups in the USA mainly from the 1960s to the 1990s. Using the results of two national surveys of all membership associations operating in Washington in 1980 and 1985, examines the ways in which different types of social groups develop the organizational structures necessary to represent themselves. Describes methods for financing these groups and investigates the strategies they use to influence American politics, including litigation strategies. Considers occupationally based groups in the profit sector and in the nonprofit sector and citizens groups which are open to all. Examines the extent of influence of different groups.

Do politicians listen to the public? When? How often? Or are the views of the public manipulated and used strategically by elites? In this text, leading scholars of American politics assess and debate the impact of public opinion on policy making. Central issues include the changing relationship between opinion and policy over time, how key actors use public opinion to formulate domestic and foriegn policy and how measurment techniques might improve our understanding of the results of polls and survey research.

Provides academics, journalists, and general readers with bird's-eye view of data-driven practices and their impact in politics and media.