ABSTRACT
In considering how public opinion influences policy, it is useful to distinguish among three broad possibilities: public opinion may merely constrain policy; it may impel, or exert strong pressure to alter, policy; or it may be ignored in policymaking. Some of the earliest empirical studies of policy responsiveness focused on representation in Congress. The general trend that when the public mood becomes more liberal, more liberal laws tend to pass, and other policies also tend to liberalize. As one might expect, states with higher levels of public support for abortion rights, those on the right side of the graph, on average have fewer abortion restrictions, as indicated by the downward-sloping best fit line. If one considers only mass public opinion, it appears to be a decent predictor of variations in state policy. Ultimately, as British public administration expert Marjorie Ogilvy-Webb put it, the public opinion apparatus's "recoil effect [was] greater than its blast".
