Political Elites Think like John Zaller: Evidence from Criminal Justice Policy

• In Event: Crime, Corruption, and Elite Behavior

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that when presented with closed-ended survey questions, politicians over-estimate the conservativeness of their electorates. This article re-examines these findings using a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews with British politicians and political advisers, together with quantitative text analysis of British parliamentary debates. I focus on policy towards criminal justice and imprisonment, an area where politicians appear to be especially fearful of angering a punitive public. I find that in private, politicians and their advisers do not conceive of public opinion as a fixed entity. Instead their mental model of public opinion is akin to John Zaller’s model of it. They believe that the public holds various, sometimes contradictory, ideas about crime policy and that expressed public opinion is dependent on the arguments made by politicians and the media. This suggests that studies using closed-ended questions may over-state the certainty with which politicians over-estimate their electorate’s conservativeness. However, quantitative text analysis of references to ‘the public’ in British parliamentary speeches about crime policy indicate that in public, politicians talk about public opinion as if it is fixed, despite believing otherwise in private. I argue that this divergence is suggestive of ‘public opinion’ being wielded by politicians strategically, to justify positions that they support or believe will be electorally advantageous, as opposed to being a sincere revelation of their private beliefs. Ultimately, therefore, politicians’ perceptions of the possibilities of shaping public opinion may be more important than closed-ended responses to survey questions about what the public believes.

Author

• Tom O'Grady, University College London