Public Opinion Research in Political Science

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, the tension generated by the lumping of subjective and personal opinion with objective and common public as a single concept is matter that urged scholars to provide a comprehensive definition of public opinion. This article is intended to trace the history of the modern study of public opinion in political science. It begins with a description of the early theoretical works and their attempts to investigate the mass public through systematic and normative analyses, and then focuses on the individual and psychological dimension examined by contemporary empirical works. The article draws some conclusions on both the main achievements and the most manifested limitations that this branch of political analysis must overcome in order to better understand the relationship between public opinion and democratic governance.