Public morality, public opinion and policymaking

In a 2007 paper titled ‘How Policymakers View Public Opinion’, Prof Francois Petry, a political scientist,
presumed that in a democracy ‘there ought to be a high degree of harmony or congruence between government
policy and public opinion’. He examined whether this presumption was backed by empirical evidence and
concluded that there was a significant reliance on election manifestos to assess public opinion.