Private Opinion and Public Policy
The most pervasive issue dividing theories of the opinion-policy relation bears a striking resemblance to the problem of monism-pluralism in the history of philosophy. The controversy deals with the question of whether the structure of socio-political action should be viewed as a more or less centralized process of acts and decisions by a class of key leaders, representing integrated hierarchies of influence in society or whether it is more accurately envisaged as several sets of relatively autonomous opinion and influence groups, interacting with representative decision makers in an official structure of differentiated governmental authority. The former assumption interprets individual, group and official action as part of a single system and reduces politics and governmental policies to a derivative of three basic analytical terms: society, culture and personality. Public opinion it enables the organisation to expand internally and externally through public introspection.
Read more about this topic: Public Opinion
Famous quotes containing the words private, opinion, public and/or policy:
“He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)