Public Opinion and Democracy in an Age of Crisis

The aim of this paper is to show how most of the criticism against the condition of public opinion, as voiced in our representative democracies by social scientists, intellectuals and political movements, concerns the fact that democracies have lost their very substance and efficacy. They have become culturally impoverished in substance; they have lost efficacy, in the sense that their ability to control and convey their will has been annulled. Consequently, public opinion has fallen prey to populism and to ‘plebiscitary control’.