Economics, Public Opinion, and the Culture of Technical Control

Economics, Public Opinion, and the Culture of Technical ControlComing to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World by DanielYankelovichReview by: Rober M. TroubJournal of Economic Issues, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 240-256Published by: Association for Evolutionary EconomicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226798 .

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240 Review Articles

Economics, Public Opinion, and the Culture of Technical Control

Roger M. Troub

In democratic societies, public opinion obviously matters. It governs what are deemed to be important problems and opportunities and what, if anything, is to be done to address them. Al- though institutional economics accepts and emphasizes the importance of well-functioning democratic decision-making processes [Tilman 1988; Tool 1979], it has given little explicit attention to theory of how "responsible" democratic public judgments are reached.

Daniel Yankelovich, who Fortune has called "the dean of American pollsters," a past president of the Society for the Advan- cement of Socio-Economics, and president and a founder of The Public Agenda Foundation (which seeks higher quality in debates about public policy), has developed a stage theory of the development of responsible public judgments about major public issues (Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Com- plex World. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991). In this review essay, Yankelovich's major points and arguments are out- lined, and some broad contour implications for economics are presented.

The Yankelovich Thesis

Yankelovich's stage theory of the development of responsible public judgments derives from his larger, long-term inquiry into the nature and dynamics of public opinion about important public policy issues. The book's title is descriptive of both its concerns and content. Yankelovich has drawn on the scholarly literature, his own extensive research into and his several decades of experience

The author is Professor of Economics at Texas Tech University. This paper derives from one presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Thought, Corpus Christi, Texas, April 21-24, 1993.



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with analysis of public opinion about numerous major social, political, and economic matters, and, as he puts it, his "first intellectual love, philosophy" [p. xiii].

The General Thesis

Yankelovich's thesis "is that the Culture of Technical Control is undermining the country's ability to reach agreement between the public and experts on the serious problems that beset the society" [p. 9]. He argues that this process can be understood, and something can be done about it.

The "Culture of Technical Control" embodies the modern world view notion that there are currently or potentially knowable "technical" solutions to various human problems. Solutions are offered by various professional experts, economists included, and the elites who manage and direct the major organizations that use, direct, and create the various technologically complex "hardware and software" processes on which both public and private sector efforts to address problems and opportunities now rely. To Yankelovich, there is a paradox. Although the public is now asked their opinion about all sorts of things almost all of the time, and great mass media attention is given to the findings, the public's actual role in making public policy has deteriorated.

The argument can be put this way. The facts are well known. Under conditions of scientific and technological complexity, great diversity in economic products, and cultural pluralism, we must rely on information, analyses, and judgments from a wide variety of experts. One interest group's experts are often pitted against those of others, and various interest groups vie for public opinion favorable to their cause. Conflicting siren songs are sung to "the public," inconsistent and contradictory assertions abound, and cases of misinformation, disinformation, and obfuscation are not unknown. Confusion, mistrust, and avoidance ensue. Unfor- tunately, as Yankelovich notes, "in present-day America, few institutions are devoted to helping the public form considered judgments, and the public is discouraged from doing the necessary hard work because there is so little incentive to do so" [p. 4]. Under such circumstances, it is easy to understand why the general public may feel attended to but disenfranchised.

To Yankelovich, the central problem is not "creeping exper- tism," or increased complexity per se, or flaws in democratic



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ideals. It is instead poor understanding by "experts" and the general public alike of the nature and dynamics of public opinion itself in a modern democratic society. This results in "low-quality public opinion" and less desirable public policy than could otherwise exist.

Here is how Yankelovich summarizes the major points of Public Judgment:

The key to successful self-governance in our Age of Informa- tion is to create a new balance between public and experts. Today the relationship is badly skewed toward experts at the expense of the public . . . [as a result ofl a deep-rooted cultural trend that elevates the specialized knowledge of the expert to a place of high honor while denigrating the value of the public's potentially most important contribution-a high level of thoughtful and responsible public judgment. This prejudice is rooted in the dominant Culture of Technical Control, which on its positive side has made science, the benefits of modern technology, political freedom, and democracy possible. Yet . . . a serious difficulty exists. The Culture of Technical Control saps the national will to confront the obstacles standing in the way of strengthening the quality of public judgment indispensable to self-governance and consensus-building. For democracy to flourish, it is not enough to get out the vote. We need better public judgment, and we need to know how to cultivate it. The public is not magically endowed with good judgment. Good judgment is something that must be worked at all the time and with great skill and effort. It does not exist automatically; it must be created [p. 11].

In order to demonstrate that the public side of the public/expert balance can be improved, Yankelovich identifies three tasks he must address:

The first task is to define quality as it applies to public opinion.... The second task is to show how the quality of public opinion improves as it moves along the bumpy road from mass opinion to public judgment.... The third task is to give intellectual respectability to the concept of public judgment by bulwarking its claim to represent a genuine form of knowledge (different, to be sure, from scientific knowledge) [p. 10].



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The Content of Public Opinion

Yankelovich defines public opinion according to "a usage cus- tomary in political science, . . . as the sum of all the public's opinions, attitudes, and values" [p. 120]. He has found that for purposes of public opinion analysis "opinions and attitudes can be discussed interchangeably" while values ("individual's ideals and goals") "should be distinguished from opinions and attitudes" [p. 123]. He has concluded that "most opinions and attitudes do not derive from values" [p. 124]. Culture is a designated source of all three. While information influences opinions and attitudes, it is not a source of values. Enculturation and socialization, in conjunction with individual experiences, are. They necessarily involve fil- ters regarding what information will be sought or otherwise admitted for consideration, and they determine the meanings ascribed to that which passes through.

The Quality of Public Opinion

Yankelovich points to a strange gap in our discussions of the nature and operations of American democracy: "The missing concept is a set of terms to describe the quality of public opinion and to distinguish 'good' pubic opinion from 'bad"' [p. 15]. He proposes three criteria for "good" public opinion. The first is that "the quality of public opinion be considered good when the public accepts responsibility for the consequences of its views and poor when the public, for whatever reason, is unprepared to do so" [p. 24. Italics in the original]. The second is "the firmness or volatility with which an opinion is held," and the third is "the extent to which the opinion contradicts other views the person holds" [p. 31]. A serious drawback associated with the ultra-individualist approach to social science is that "studying individuals and then aggregating their separate views does not accurately gauge social interaction and the influence that institutions exert on society" [p. 38]. Nevertheless, he views the benefits of his definition set as much greater than the costs in both "practical and theoretical" terms.

One advantage is that it offers an "objective method for ascer- taining quality." For example, if inconsistent responses are given



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to differently worded questions about essentially the same thing, the opinion is "bad" both for decisions based on how the public ac- tually "feels" about things and for inferences drawn from professional and scholarly analyses of the opinions given. The second "and more far-reaching advantage is that the definition enables us to understand how and why public opinion has distinctive value and is not merely a second-rate reflection of expert opinion" [p. 42].

From Mass Opinion to Public Judgment

Yankelovich goes to great pains to distinguish mass opinion from public judgment. Media opinion polls capture "snapshots" of mass opinion but only occasionally record public judgment on those issues about which the public has already gone through an intensive, demanding process. Findings from polls of public judgments are often not sought or not deemed "newsworthy." The issues are no longer new or exciting, and most people believe they already know what others think about them. But mass opinion of low quality (inconsistent, not firmly held, and with a lack of commitment to accepting responsibility for the consequences) is often reported.

Public judgments about public policy issues usually emerge from a multistage process. Yankelovich gives a straightforward summary statement of the process, one with more distinct stages than articulated in Public Judgment, in a 1992 Fortune article [1992b].

1. People begin to become aware of an issue. 2. They develop a sense of urgency about it. 3. They start to explore choices for dealing with the issue. 4. Resistance to facing costs and trade-offs kicks in, produc-

ing wishful thinking. 5. People weigh the pros and cons of alternatives. 6. They take a stand intellectually. 7. They make a responsible judgment morally and emotion-

ally.

This seven-stage process is encompassed in a three-stage ar- ticulation in Public Judgment: consciousness raising, "working through," and resolution. The consciousness raising stage includes the first, second, and part of the third stages in the seven-stage



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statement, the "working through" stage overlaps the third, includes the fourth and centers on the fifth. Resolution involves the sixth and seventh.

For some issues, such as the unacceptability of slavery, the process may take many decades. For others, ones without a wide spectrum of contradictory information, with a clear-cut issue, with no major value conflicts are involved, and so on, little time may be required. Yankelovich cites the strong public judgment of the wrongness of President Reagan's arms trade with Iran.

Usually, however, the process is neither a smooth one nor one with sharply distinct boundaries among stages with regular rela- tive durations. The fifth stage is often a long one for complex issues, and even longer if several basic values involved are in conflict. And, the process can be stalled rather easily by various obstacles. Since both the working through and resolution stages are difficult, it is easy for the public to procrastinate or otherwise avoid the work required.

People need help with working through and resolution from institutions and leaders just as they do with identification of major problems and opportunities in the consciousness raising stage. It is not that the public needs to be controlled, manipulated, or told what to believe and choose; it is that for complex problems laden with value conflicts, particularly in a pluralistic society, what is required for the public to play its role in socially responsible ways is much more than provision of information.

The Simple Two-Stage Model of Journalism

The Yankelovich model of coming to public judgment contrasts sharply with the two-stage model of the "fourth estate" (journalism) and the institutions (beliefs and behaviors) associated with it. In that model, the first stage is one in which the media's responsibilities include consciousness raising through reports on major problems (usually identified by others) and providing information about them.

In the second stage, it is presumed that leaders and politicians have the responsibility to present alternatives and "lead" to resolution of conflicts and solution of problems. The press then has the simple responsibility of reporting on what the leaders and politicians say and do. This deeply ingrained set of notions is both simple and simple-minded in light of the contemporary, pluralistic



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"democratic" society that faces issues of great complexity. It leaves out the role of the fourth estate and others, particularly the highly trained experts (economists prominently included), to assist with working out and resolution.

Improving Public Opinion at the 'Working Through Stage"

Yankelovich concludes that "consciousness raising is a process our society understands well and that our institutions perform well," but for the working through stage, "our society is not well equipped with the institutions or knowledge it needs to expedite [it]" [p. 63, 65]. "Our culture does not understand it very well and by and large does not do a good job with it" [p. 65]. But he believes that much can be done to reduce obstacles to working through and to accelerate its conclusion. He has concluded that leadership elites and the general public approach important public issues from "a different point of departure," which results in serious com- munication problems between the two and is "a source of endless misunderstanding" [p. 92]. Moreover, failure to recognize, understand, and make appropriate adjustments to the point-of-departure differences makes it the most "serious obstacle to strengthening the quality of public opinion in America" [p. 92].

In the case of "the water problem in the Western states," one on which Yankelovich worked in the 1980s, he found that the experts associated with efforts of the Western Governors Association ap- proached the problem in ways that "outraged the citizens." "The governors' experts perceived the problem as (1) regional, (2) imper- sonal, and (3) economic. If water is a scarce resource in the region, then it should be treated in the classic economic manner, using price to allocate it fairly and impersonally" [p. 96]. Citizens did not think in terms of the region but their locale in it. They thought of it as their "personal" water that would be diverted to others. And citizens did not think that pricing water would be a fair approach.

With the water problem case (and issues such as international competitiveness, crime, air pollution, the quality of public education, immigration, how to produce and distribute health care and the burden of health costs, and so on), Yankelovich concludes that

if most of the experts think one way and most of the public think another, the result will be stalemate, divisiveness, and polarization. Leadership will be frustrated. Among the



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public, mass opinion will persist. The quality of our democracy will suffer. And all the while, consciousness raising will proceed as if it were an end in itself not simply a preparation for the next critical step of working through.

Yankelovich uses reform of social security to illustrate the need to address the aspects of an issue about which the public is preoccupied and quite worried if the public is to successfully work through it:

If political leadership wants to reform social security, for example, by taking something from older Americans so that younger people can have more, they must first address the concern of older Americans that if you take as much as a nickel away from them you are robbing them of money they personally invested in paying social security taxes, and you are threatening them with destitution: a nickel today, tomorrow the specter of homelessness. Never mind that these fears may be irrational and [the belief of having paid fully for the benefits] erroneous.... Older Americans will fiercely rebuff any proposed reforms, however reasonable and fair they may be, unless their fears of being robbed and made destitute are first addressed [p. 971.

The Competitiveness Illustration

Yankelovich devotes a chapter to international competitiveness to illustrate how coming to public judgment can be stalled and how the expert perspective and technical and other elites can create obstacles to the process. He also uses it to point to the creation of problems in working through an issue when experts claim exclusive ownership of the issue. This is viewed by members of the public as a rebuff to their participation, an insult to their com- petence, and a frustration to their pursuit of legitimate objectives. They know it is their lives, not the experts' lives, that will be im- pacted.

They experience confusion and consternation when experts identify different primary problem sources (the yen is too cheap, trade rules and regulations have not produced a "level playing field," the extent and nature of technical education is wrong, American managers focus on short- rather than long-term matters, and so on); when experts hold different values than the



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public (protecting jobs is a highly important "value" to the public but not to the experts, for example); and when experts provide conflicting information (savings rates are too low and people should save more versus more consumer spending is needed to avoid recession). And, again, since experts proceed from a different framework, they create a barrier to the "most fundamental precon- dition for working through the issue" [p. 110]).

Yankelovich believes "the solution to the competitiveness problem lies in the political will of the many rather than the technical cleverness of the few" [p. 111]. The public's point-of-departure view of the issue is one cast in terms of "human strivings and moral vir- tues (hard work, discipline, concern for quality), or the lack thereof' [p. 109, emphasis added]. He has concluded that "the alternative- to ignore the [restoration ofi moral fiber questions and to focus ex- clusively on the correct technical policies of exchange rates, trade negotiations, investment in technology, curriculum reform, and so on-is a formula for failure" [p. 111].

Moreover, he believes there has been a failure in the consciousness raising stage. The problems about which consciousness has been raised to a high level are symbolic ones, such as the trade deficit with Japan, and not the real ones.

The country must come to understand that the true sig- nificance of the trade deficit is not that the Japanese are selling us attractive products at attractive prices or buying up our real estate. Rather, the problem is that our faltering competitiveness is undermining the foundation of America's social stability: the ability of the society to offer genuine equality of opportunity through the mechanism of broadly based economic growth; . . . [something that is] not clear either to the experts or to the public [p. 111-112].

One possibility is that failure to put the competitiveness issue in its larger socioeconomic context has contributed to the failure in the consciousness raising stage. It would seem that the com- partmentalization of different types of experts, in conjunction with their view of the issue as their exclusive property, has contributed to the failure to correctly locate the issue in its larger setting.



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The Resolution Stage

The resolution stage involves cognitive resolution, emotional resolution, and moral resolution. Although interrelated, the three dimensions are "surprisingly independent," and resolution in each dimension is difficult.

"Cognitive resolution requires that people clarify fuzzy thinking, reconcile inconsistencies, break down the walls of the artifi- cial compartmentalizing that keeps them from recognizing related aspects of the same issue, take relevant facts and new realities into account, and grasp the consequences of various choices with which they are presented" [p. 65]. The emotional dimension (efforts to "reconcile deeply felt conflicting values") is the most difficult of the three. This process requires that people "confront their own ambivalent feelings, accommodate themselves to unwel- come realities, and overcome their urge to procrastinate and to avoid the issue" [p. 65].

The overall process of coming to responsible judgment in the resolution stage is one of more or less simultaneous address to all three dimensions with some bouncing back and forth among them. For example, work at reconciling conflicting values may require more work at decompartmentalization in the cognitive dimension and more work with ethical matters in the moral one.

The moral dimension is crucial. At first people respond to issues in a narrowly selfish fashion, as do the autonomous egoists posited as people in neoclassical economics. People at first give primacy to their perceptions of their own immediate interests (needs and desires). "But once [people have time, opportunity, and motivation] to reflect on their choices, the ethical dimension comes into play and people struggle to do the right things" [p. 65]. Yankelovich stresses the importance of moral resolution in coming to public judgment. He notes that "issues such as AIDS and homelessness and health care for those who cannot afford insurance cannot be resolved until the ethical dimension has been considered and dealt with, one way or another" [p. 65]. Policies toward them may be designed and implemented, but full public judgment about what should be done cannot. Consequently what is done with regard to those issues is inadequate and inefficient. Without public judgment, problems cannot be dealt with as effec- tively or extensively as they could be otherwise.



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Public Judgment as a Genuine Form of Knowledge

As Kenneth Boulding stressed many times, it is not enough to have know-how, we have to have know-what [1985]. Raising the quality of know-what is a crucial requirement for human betterment, and in democratic societies, high-quality public judgment calls for both high-quality know-what and high quality know-how to get it. What is not so obvious is that coming to high-quality public judgment is a crucial production process. It both produces the society's know-what and is part of it.

Yankelovich argues against that part of the modern world view that involves "an elevation-almost worship-of science, technology, and expertise at the expense of other values" [p. 184] and for an understanding of knowledge in terms of ideas more in accordance with the post-modern world view. That world view includes the idea that "human purpose governs knowledge"; this insight "can serve as an important corrective to our culture's lopsided attach- ment to objectivist knowledge" [p. 235]. "Room in the house of knowledge must be made for representative thinking and working through as the outcomes of democratic dialogue" [p. 244]. He cites and draws on Jurgen Habermas's [1968] Knowledge and Human Interests, where Habermas delineates three types of knowledge: the "empirical-analytic knowledge, as pursued in the natural scien- ces"; that of "'intersubjective understanding," which involves "insight into people's motives, character, values and world views" (or "in the American vernacular . . . 'intuitive understanding,"), the purpose of which is "to enhance human understanding and com- munication"; and "knowledge having an emancipatory purpose-to make people free, to emancipate them mentally from false forms of consciousness, ideology, prejudice, and mental coercion" [p. 213].

What Is to Be Done?

The final chapter of Public Judgment, "A Sketch for Action," provides Yankelovich's policy prescriptions. His plan for action has "four components: (1) a vision of what success would look like if the plan succeeds, (2) specific goals to pursue, (3) a strategy to achieve those goals, and (4) tactics to implement the strategy" [p. 239].



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Creation of greater capacity to create good public judgment knowledge requires institutional change. But "success requires not only changes in existing institutions, such as the media and the nation's elite professional training systems, but also the creation of new institutions and the stimulation of cultural change. Moreover changes need to occur on both sides of the expert-public gap; the public has to change as well as the experts" [p. 2451.

A prerequisite to the public doing the hard work involved is a prior moral commitment to the need to do so. This a priori requirement is instilled and imparted through enculturation and socialization. The extent to which it exists depends upon the nature of things in a society's larger institutional complex.

Yankelovich makes these points:

It is premature to focus on money and organization. Prior strategic needs must be addressed. At the present stage of development, the main levers of action are cultural change and technique. If the culture can be stimulated to change in the desired direction and if techniques do exist to do what needs to be done, the money and organization will follow. Strategically, technique comes first, for once technique is available, cultural change can be more productive [p. 246].

Techniques available are divided into three categories: those that create "choiceworks," those that engage the media, and those that combat resistances. We need not only "networks," but also "choiceworks"-institutions designed to facilitate and accelerate all of the stages required to come to good public judgment and individuals and organizations with incentives to participate in and to provision the needed choiceworks. Such institutions could con- tribute to our knowledge and well-being in ways not currently recognized. But they are antithetical to the Culture of Technical Control and undesired by those with vested interests in maintain- ing it.

Techniques to engage the media involve raising awareness of the need to help with the working through process. Yankelovich finds that "for the more thoughtful media professionals who ac- knowledge the complexity of the issues the country faces and who take pride in promoting honest debate, there is considerable dis- comfort with 'business as usual'," and that "growing numbers of media professionals are showing an unexpected receptivity to the concept of working through" [p. 253].



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With regard to combating resistances, techniques must center on both the media and the experts. He identifies three major sources of resistances. One is the belief that consciousness raising and reports of experts' findings and opinions are sufficient. Another is perception by experts of the threat of devaluation of their status and expertise. "The third [resistance] . . . is deeply rooted in the Culture of Technical Control. It is the tinge of epistemological anxiety experts feel when anyone suggests that their habitual cognitive style-the information-driven modes of knowing on which they rely day in and day out-are less authoritative, narrower, and more inadequate than they have assumed" [p. 253-54]. Epis- temological anxiety arises from largely unconscious acceptance of the views and values of "objectivism," a set of notions now defunct in the philosophy of science but which yet have great power (particularly in economics) and which support the Culture of Technical Control.

Implications for Economics

Yankelovich's arguments are instructive about efforts to better understand such things as conflict resolution and individual, social, and societal choosing, judging, and learning [Troub 1991]. Here discussion is limited to some broad implications for economics, the consistency of the general thrusts of Yankelovich's findings and ideas with those of institutional economics [see also Tilman 1988], and their inconsistency with neoclassical economics.

"Normative" Matters Matter

In economics and social science generally, morals, ethics, and social responsibility cannot be treated as matters of metaphysics or theology that are beyond the boundaries of science. Neither should economics ignore the nature, role, and requirements for "social responsibility" as it affects economic phenomena and economic welfare. Failure by economics to adequately address the roles played by moral and ethical matters in the determination of economic phenomena was one of the concerns which led to organization of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Socioeconomics seeks to provide analyses and information missing in public debates by providing "'scientific" consideration of normative socioeconomic matters [Stern 1993].



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Assistance versus Advocacy of a priori Prescription

Institutional economics has long had the goal of assisting with ongoing institutional change. This orientation guides the responses to the questions of what should be researched, what areas of conceptual development are needed, what issues and questions should be probed through "discussions" among economists and others, what policies might be appropriate, and how policy formation should be addressed. Institutional economics views public policy formation in a democratic society as a matter of basic importance. Well-functioning democratic-communitarian and collective-decisions should be fostered and assisted rather than viewed as public choice theorists do-as the outcome of individual choice [Atkinson 1983].

The role of the professional economist should not be to specify a priori what ought to be or will be, but to inquire into and to assist with understanding what is and what could be done to make human welfare greater than it would otherwise be.

Assistance versus the "Culture of Technical Control"

The perspectives, approaches, and methods of institutional economics contrast with the Culture of Technical Control. From his research and experience over the decades, Yankelovich has identified several assumptions involved in the Culture of Techni- cal Control that are simply wrong. He highlights these:

* Policy decisions depend essentially on a high degree of specialized knowledge and skills.

* Only experts possess this knowledge. * The American people lack the relevant knowledge, are con-

cerned largely with their own pocketbook interests, and are likely to be apathetic to issues not directly related to these interests.

* Where the public does have a view, it is accurately reflected in public opinion polls.

* America's elected officials know what the views of the elec- torate are and, by and large, represent them well.



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* On issues where public understanding and support are man- datory, they can be achieved through "public education" where knowledgeable experts share some of their information with the voters.

* The media, through vigorous consciousness raising, impart to the American public the information and understanding it needs to develop responsible judgments on the key issues facing the nation [1991, 9, slightly edited].

Unfortunately, the dominant neoclassical perspective and philosophy predisposes it to be part of the Culture of Technical Control. The participation of people in the operation and design of the economic system is limited to the individual design of individual lives in one or more of the roles of consumer, producer, and resource supplier and as largely autonomous egoists in the for- mulation of governmental policies. Since "properly trained" economists are experts who know the already discovered "natural laws" that dictate that the only economic efficiencies which truly matter, there is no need for the economic scientist to be a "par- ticipant-observer" (a status that would also compromise their "scientific-ness" according to the prescribed methodology and epis- temology). After all, the true and correct nature of economic reality has already been discovered by economic science.

In the neoclassical world view, proper economists are trained technical experts with the capacity to issue general directions about the best ways to address the general public's economic problems. The professional role of correct economists is simply to educate the public about the already discovered nature and policy implications of economic reality and, when asked, provide others with analyses of the costs and benefits of alternative ways to achieve what they want, consistent with the "proven" correct nature of reality. The "they" can be in the "private sector," the "public sector," or the "general public." In cases of matters about which nobody asks, it is presumed that society in general is the profession's "client," and that it follows that further research to ex- pand the profession's expertness is "socially" called for, either im- plicitly or explicitly, as part of its participation in and contribution to scientific discovery.

It is not that the mainstream economics profession is unaware of the need for increased effectiveness in its contribution to public policy formation. For example, the Summer 1992 issue of the



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American Economic Association's Journal of Economic Perspec- tives contained a three-paper "symposium" on the matter [Aaron 1992; Hamilton 1992; Eizenstat 1992; Weinstein 1992]. The three pieces are interesting, informative, and they offer criticisms and suggestions for improvement. But, unfortunately, they also provide powerful examples of points made in Yankelovich's arguments about expert obstacles to coming to public judgment, about problems generated by the media's notions of its role and responsibilities, and about the Culture of Technical Control.

Conclusions

Powerful technology to assess the quality of both quantitative and qualitative knowledge is needed. Both are required for beneficial "know what" and "know how." Qualitative knowledge, however, is prerequisite to beneficial quantitative knowledge. Quantitative knowledge alone is powerless and purposeless.

For quantitative knowledge, we have developed scientific technology and have incorporated further development of that technology as part of science itself. And it is powerful. It can produce consensus judgments, at least among scientists, about whether quantitative knowledge is as of now warrantably "good," "bad," or "indeterminate." The major social technology for assessing the quality of qualitative knowledge is application of good public judgment from a well-functioning democracy in which the expert- public gap is minimized, in which experts provide both good quantitative and qualitative knowledge (and judgments), in which the media and the experts assist the public in playing its role, and in which citizens are socially responsible in carrying out the tasks good citizenship requires.

Good processes of coming to public judgment can incorporate and accommodate multiple sources of knowledge for assessment in the same fashion that a well-functioning market system can incorporate and accommodate cultural diversity and a wide variety of "tastes and preferences." A single source "good for all times and all places" is neither required nor warranted. The general "methodology" of gaining knowledge through good processes of coming to public judgment is, of course, that of good public in- strumental valuing.



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.o "A Widening Expert/Public Opinion Gap." (an interview by Richard D. Bartel) Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs 35 (May/June 1992a): 20-27.

. "How Public Opinion Really Works." Fortune (October 5, 1992b): 102-108.



Documents

Economics, Public Opinion, and the Culture of Technical Control