Public opinion research has sometimes been neglectful of both the political content of its data and the extent to which it could vitalize the theory of democratic politics. In this, his Presidential Address before the seventh annual convention of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Bernard Berelson restates the fundamental requirements of a democratic politic and points out how opinion research can help a democracy to know itself, evaluate its achievements, and bring its practices more nearly in accord with its own fundamental ideals. Mr. Berelson's interest in this topic has developed out of, and is expressed in, the Elmira study of opinion formation during the Presidential campaign of 1948. In the preparation of this paper, he has benefited from discussions with Edward Shils, his former colleague at the University of Chicago, and from his reading of Mr. Shils' manuscript on Consensus and Liberty: The Social and Psychological Conditions of Political Democracy. At present, Mr. Berelson is Director of the Behavioral Sciences Division of the Ford Foundation.
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