Significance

The significance of public opinion in a democracy is based on four assumptions – (i) that the public is interested in influencing decision-making; (ii) that the public has a considered view to communicate; (iii) that the public expects its representatives to heed and articulate its opinion, and (iv) that the public entertains the hope and the expectation that its opinion would count with the government and the legislators in the enactment of law.

But what is meant by ‘public’? The term ‘public’ is somewhat ambiguous. First, there’s no single ‘public’; in fact, there are several ‘publics’. The term ‘public’ means essentially a segment of society, sharing common interests and subscribing to similar views and opinions on matters of public policy. The entire people of the whole nation in totality do not constitute one single homogeneous public subscribing to one universal public opinion. This is a fallacy that should be discarded. What constitutes public is not fixed, it changes with the issue. So, public opinion is the ‘voice of the interested spectators of action’.

There is a different set of public expressing opinions on different issues and problems, and even on those there is no uniform opinion. Public opinion necessarily reflects plurality and diversity of opinions. On every major issue a wide range of public opinion can be expected, and as there are many ‘publics’, there are also many ‘opinions’. On different problems, different segments of public take interest and form their respective opinions.

Even among these interested groups, it’s quite possible that there’s variation due to ideological differences, or differences in other factors like age, vocation, class and tradition etc. On any given major issue, there can be a secular and rational public opinion, and a communal and sectarian public opinion; a national public opinion and a regionalist public opinion; a progressive public opinion and a reactionary public opinion. However, it is important to know that controversy is the very essence of public opinion in a democracy. It generates thinking, promotes wider awareness, and invites citizens to understand and examine the issue from different points of view.

If public opinion is to be recognized genuinely as both ‘public’ and ‘opinion’, then it should be differentiated from ‘propaganda’, ‘incantation’ of dogma and belief to conceal the lack of real content, ‘advertisement’ and ‘public relations exercise’. People are exposed to the information explosion with technological development of mass media and the phenomenal expansion of print and electronic media. In modern mass societies people read, listen, and see so much that it is not always easy for them to sift facts from fiction.