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686 Stein Rokkan
first volume was published in 1969 by the International Committee for Social
Sciences Documentation in cooperation with the International Social Science
Council. In the USA, the Social Science Research Council has supported an exploratory
study by Walter D. BURNHAM on the possibilities of assembling a central file
of historical election data by country for computer processing. The Inter-University
Consortium for Political Research at Ann Arbor, Michigan, is currently
following up this effort and is building up a large file of census and election data
by county to allow ecological trend analyses. For a general discussion of the potentialities
of such approaches to the comparative study of political ecology see S.
ROKKAN, ‘Electoral Mobilization, Party Competition and Territorial Integration’,
in: J. LaPALomAu and M. WEINER (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1966, and his Introduction to S.
ROKKAN and J. MEYRIAT (eds.), International Guide to Electoral Statistics, Vol. I:
National Elections in W. Europe, Paris, Mouton, 1969; cf. also M. DOG AN^^^
S. ROKKAN (eds.), Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the SocialSciences, Cambridge
(Mass.), MIT Press, 1969.
40. The sizeable body of literature generated by these developments has never been
systematically analyzed. Among the hundreds of articles and chapters produced in
the course of the controversy, these have perhaps proved the more significant: T.
HARRISON, ‘What is Public Opinion?’, Political Quarterly 2, 1940. pp. 368-383; H.
BLUMER, ‘Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling’, American Sociological
Review 13, 1948, pp. 542-565; H. ARBUTHNOT, ‘Democracy by Snap Judgment’,
Listener, March 4,1948, pp. 367-368; L. ROGERS, The Pollsters, New York, Knopf,
1949; H. SPEIER, ‘The Historical Development of Public Opinion’, in his: Social
Order and the Risk of War, New York, Steward, 1952; H. HYMAN, Survey Design
anddnalysis, Glencoe, Free Press, 1955, Chap. VIU; P. LAZARSFELD, ‘Public Opinion
and the Classical Tradition’, Public Opinion Quarterly 21, 1957, pp. 39-53.
41. The plebiscitarian assumptions of commercial polling have been analysed with
great critical skill by the German philosopher Wilhelm HENNIS in Meinungsforschung
und reprasentative Demokratie, Tubingen, Mohr, 1957. This work is of particular
interest as an attempt to bridge the gap between the political theory of representation
and democracy and the current controversies about the assumptions underlying
the practice of mass interviews. This theme is discussed in a broader perspective
of historical sociology in 3. HABERMAS, Strukturwandel der dfentlichkeit,
Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1961. The position of the ‘pollsters’ has been ably defended
by G. SCHMIDTCHEN, Die befragte Nation, Freiburg, Rombach, 1959, and M.
KOHN, Umfragen und Demokratie, Allensbach, Verlag fiir Demoskopie, 1999.
42. For a bibliography of these developments see S. ROKKAN et al., Comparative
Survey Analysis, op. cit.
43. W. BUCHANAN and H. CANTRIL, How Nations See Each Other, Urbana, Univ. of
Illinois Press, 1953.
44. H. CANTRIL, M. STRUNK (eds.), Public Opinion 1935-46, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1951. The Public Opinion Quarterly listed ‘poll’ results from I940
to 1951 and again from 1961, but thecoverage ofthese listingswasnotverysystematic.
The Steinmetz Institute at the University of Amsterdam has collected an important
archive af releases and reports from polling organizations, and from 1965
to 1969 published a journal, Polls, for the registration of questions and total
response distributions from studies carried out all over the world.
45. The first systematic report was by Y. LUCCI and S. ROKKAN, A Library Center for
Survey Research Data, New York, Columbia Univ. School of Library Services,
1957; cf. the further reports in the special issue on ‘Data in Comparative Research’,
International Social Science Journal 16 (I), 1964 and m: S. ROKKAN (ed.), Data
Archives for the Social Sciences, Paris, Mouton, 1968.
46. D. LERNER, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, Free Press, 1958.
47. H. CANTRIL, The Pattern of Human Concerns, New Brunswick, Rutgers Univ.
Press, 1965.