aspects of the topic. In view of that, the paper will begin by looking at the role of public opinion as expressed in polls as an influence on government. The paper will then turn to a brief look at public opinion and the media using case studies from the pre election primaries, as well as the role of the media in influencing public opinion of national figures. Finally, the paper will conclude by looking at the role of interest groups and lobbying efforts in the Judicial branch of the government, assessing the actual and perceived role of each within the political spectrum.
Since the 1960s, interest groups have become an important part of research in the social sciences, and in particular, their impact on the political spectrum of the United States. One way of establishing a normative discussion basis for interest groups was to define their interests and conflicts. This approach ties together various groupings from more standard sociological models, and looks for areas of commonality as well as differences in addressing the problems engendered by this type of study. In looking at this problem from the prospective of social theorist Arthur Bentley, author Mancur Olson commented:
By defining group interest in terms of their conflict with one another, thereby excluding the idea of an interest of society as a whole, Bentley was then able to say that the resultant of the group pressures was the one and only determinant of the course of government policy (Salisbury, ed., 1970, pp. 10 11).
Thus, the various pressures that impact on governmental behavior may be seen to be the primary driving force for that particular behavior. One of the most visible forces, public opinion, is difficult to accurately measure. Yet, the tools to measure it, public opinion polls, offer a great deal of insight into the ways and means of public attitudes about a variety of issues.
Opinion polls have been one of the most utilized tools in the areas...