The roles of public opinion research in Canadian government / Christopher Page.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Roles of Public Opinion Research in Canadian Government demonstrates that opinion research has a greater variety of roles than is often recognized, and that, despite conventional wisdom, its foremost impact is to help governments determine how to communicate with citizens.

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Page (Carleton Univ., Canada) contends that the "assumption that governments use public opinion research primarily to help them make popular decisions about major policy issues" survives only because "few scholars have ever looked beyond this assumption to investigate its veracity." In this volume, Page contends that the aforementioned assumption is not the case. Rather, he contends, governments use public opinion research to help them develop plans for "selling" policies that they have already decided to implement. Page uses three cases to demonstrate his thesis: the Trudeau government's patriation of the constitution and the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax by Brian Mulroney; and the introduction of the Gun Registry by the Chretien government. In all three cases, Page finds that survey research did not shape policy. Instead, it was used to develop strategies for winning public support or, in the case of supportive polls, used to demonstrate public support in the face of provincial opposition. Page's book will be of interest to those interested in Canadian politics, political communication, and the uses of public opinion research. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through practitioners. J. F. Kraus Wagner College