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The Citizen as Respondent: Sample Surveys and American Democracy Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1995

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Sidney Verba
Sidney Verba*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

Citizen participation is the main way in which the public communicates its needs and preferences to the government and induces the government to be responsive. Since participation depends on resources and resources are unequally distributed, the resulting communication is a biased representation of the public. Thus, the democratic ideal of equal consideration is violated. Sample surveys provide the closest approximation to an unbiased representation of the public because participation in a survey requires no resources and because surveys eliminate the selection bias inherent in the fact that participants in politics are self-selected. The contrast between the participatory process and the sample survey is used to highlight the nature of the bias in the former. Surveys, however, are not seen as a practical way of providing more equal representation.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 90 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 1 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1996

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