Public Opinion and Austerity Policies in Europe : towards a New Research Framework

The multiple and contested social uses that are commonly made of ‘public opinion’ draw from a number of historically competing perspectives on this concept. However, each of these perspectives captures only some facets of such a complex construct, which should be empirically seized through a more systematic theoretical framework. Moreover, these meanings are constantly and openly invoked by all sorts of social and political actors involved in the formation and/or in the analysis of public opinion processes. Given the impossibility of an exclusive definition of ‘public opinion’, this paper presents a conceptual re-definition of the ‘real’ contemporary forms of public opinion. The theoretical and research-oriented framework that we will be presenting in this paper is based on a ‘multifaceted’, or ‘polymorphic’, perspective that incorporates, importing and merging them into a limited variety of combinations, the main elements from all the afore-mentioned traditions. Having outlined a new framework for the analysis of public opinion processes, this paper will sketch, in its final part, a practical application to a specific case: the European public opinion(s) concerning austerity plans and measures in the context of the current financial and economic crisis.