Democratic Theory and Public Opinion: How Children Develop Their Political Knowledge

Public opinion Government is particularly important for democratic government, as it may affect various aspects of political leader's decision-making. In order for the democratic government to realize its full potential, citizens must accept the fundamental understanding of opinions and regulations, values ​​and goals, meaningful participation of citizens, and confidence in their peers and governments It will not. Political behavior is only effective and the government can respond to their interest only through public opinion to provide confidence to the American people.

Public opinion is a citizen's perception of politics and government behavior. There are three reasons for this: (1) citizen's political behavior is driven by their opinion; (2) public opinion helps to explain the behavior of candidates, political parties and other political actors. (3) Public opinion can also clarify the reasons for specific policy outcome. The vast majority of public opinion information is usually obtained from extensive research. Its purpose is to measure attitudes of people in a particular group or people in the group. Because it is often impossible to interview all members of a large group, investigations usually include samples between hundreds and thousands of people.

In spite of the philosophical debate about public opinion, social scientists (sociology, political science, economics, and social psychologists) believe that public opinion forms public policy and various empirical Policies perspective that presented persuasive theories explaining methods using research methods Further, researchers found that causality could range from opinion to policy and from policy to opinion. On the one hand, public opinion informs policymakers about public preferences and potential voting behavior. Under more stable democracy this impact should be even greater. As the people are strongly motivated by the potential goods and services from the state, it should be the largest in the field of social policy. On the other hand, social policy influences public opinion. Citizen's goods and services obtained through social policy have established normative expectations of forming public opinion.