Public Opinion, Political Representation, and Democratic Choice

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dc.contributor.advisorPacuit, Ericen_US
dc.contributor.advisorMorris, Christopher Wen_US
dc.contributor.authorZenz, Michaelen_US
dc.contributor.departmentPhilosophyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-06-26T05:39:39Z
dc.date.available2015-06-26T05:39:39Z
dc.date.issued2015en_US
dc.description.abstractIn this dissertation I argue that political representatives have duties to be responsive to public opinion in their policy decisions. The existence of this duty, I claim, is a basic requirement of a truly democratic system of government. In chapter 2, I show that several standard versions of democratic legitimacy require political representatives to ``respect'' public opinion. However, I argue that a particular version of political legitimacy, based upon popular sovereignty and the importance of self-governance, provides an especially useful background for understanding what this ``respect'' must mean. In chapter 3, I argue that respecting public opinion requires political representatives to integrate public opinion information into their policy decisions. According to one of the standard views of political representation, the liberal conception, representatives deciding between policy alternatives should balance what they believe to be in the interests of the public against public opinion. I argue that this is the only adequate theory of political representation. Although this view of political representation is often discussed in the literature, it is less often given a mathematically precise form. Therefore, I present a formal model of such a balancing procedure, and this reveals several important formal requirements that a conception of public opinion must satisfy; most importantly, it must account for instability in the expression of public opinion, individual differences in opinion strength, and it must be representable along a cardinal scale. Standard measures of public opinion do not satisfy these requirements. I argue that if such a model of public opinion cannot be formulated, then the liberal conception of political representation is incoherent. In chapters 4 and 5, I present a model of public opinion based upon Thurstonian scaling techniques that fulfills the necessary formal requirements. Finally, in chapter 6, I discuss several important implications this model has for the measurement of public opinion, the use of public opinion by political representatives in policy deliberation, and other problems in social choice theory.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M23K9V
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16634
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPhilosophyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPolitical Scienceen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPublic policyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledattitudeen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolleddemocracyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledinterpersonal comparisonsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpolitical philosophyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpublic opinionen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledrepresentationen_US
dc.titlePublic Opinion, Political Representation, and Democratic Choiceen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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