Luis Hestres, Ph.D.-2-be

Ever since the financial crisis hit the U.S. in late 2008, many political commentators (mostly on the Left) have wondered why public opinion hadn’t mobilized behind Wall Street reform in the U.S. as strongly and visibly as in other nations. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems like the embodiment of the sort of reaction to the crisis these observers thought missing, but still—why the delay?

A communication-centered explanation of the difficulty to reform Wall Street so far would depend largely on which view of public opinion and the nature of the public sphere (indeed, which view of democracy) you adopt.  University of Pennsylvania Provost and communication researcher Vincent Price (2008) usefully describes four models of the public sphere that could potentially apply to the U.S. at various points in the debate over financial reform and other issues:

The Competitive Elitism model: Under this model, the participation of citizens is limited to expressing their opinion through the ballot box. Otherwise, public opinion and decision-making is left to policy-makers, bureaucrats, experts and other elites. Public opinion becomes a matter of elites trying to convince each other of the rightness of their policy positions. As Walter Lippmann (1922) argued, the role of experts under this model is to explain complex issues to decision-makers and to manufacture consent from the public.

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