COMING TO PUBLIC JUDGMENT
MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK IN A COMPLEX WORLD
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991)

by Daniel Yankelovich

As a nation, we have learned a great deal about how to measure public opinion (and how to manipulate it), but not much about how to improve it and make sure that it counts. In his most important book to date, Daniel Yankelovich, the dean of American public opinion research, offers a prescription for strengthening the public's hand in its silent power struggle with the experts. With insight gained from over thirty years of research into how public opinion is formed, Yankelovich now focuses on an issue of rising concern to us all: the American public's eroding ability to influence its own future.

Yankelovich sees a growing chasm between the worlds of public opinion and expert policy making. Vital decisions that affect us all are shaped by economic experts, military experts, scientific experts, PR experts, and media experts. Less and less do they reflect the real values and concerns of the American people. This "creeping expertism," as Yankelovich calls it, undermines the country's ability to reach consensus on how to resolve crises such as homelessness and drug abuse, the threat to the environment, lagging educational prowess, and economic competitiveness.

Drawing on a massive empirical base, Coming to Public Judgment demonstrates that such crises cannot be resolved until the proper balance of power between the public and the nation's elites is restored. For Yankelovich, helping the public reach a higher level of judgment on these crisesand getting the nation's leaders to take the public's capacity for thought seriouslyis the key to making our democracy work again. His "Ten Rules for Resolution" offer leaders and the media hard-hitting, pragmatic suggestions for how to present the nation's problems to the American peopleand, equally important, for how to listen to what the people have to say.

Coming to Public Judgment offers a striking new theory for enhancing the quality of public opinion. This timely book is essential reading for leaders in both the public and the private sectors, for educators, for the media, and for all citizens concerned about the vitality of American democracy.