Reading Public Opinion: How Political Actors View the Democratic Process

The book is interesting and intriguing in that it provides a different look at how different people think public opinion. Some of the comments made by the previous online reviewer are contestable. She argues that "who cares about how political actors think." Obviously, everyone who is an interested in the relationship between public opinion and the democratic processes should care about how people occupying strategic positions in the political system - that is, political activists and journalists - think about public opinion. She says that if she asked her grandma about public opinion and the answer would be equally intriguing. Actually Prof Herbst will agree with this point since understanding how common people think about public opinion itself is an interesting and important question. It provides insights into the political culture of a society. Though Prof Herbst did not study common people's conception of public opinion in this book, she had done such research elsewhere. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that "public opinion does not exist," that is, the ideal version of public opinion - a single unified public providing their opinion as an autonomous force directing government policy - does not exist. However, public opinion remains a concept that people, politicians, and scholars in a democratic society talk about so often. Thus, it would be important for people to think about how different people in the society understand the term, and it is to this aspect that Prof Herbst recent work contributes.