Researching political markets: market-oriented or populistic?

Pollsters have had strong influences on the direction of public policy for many years, although parties and governments are becoming increasingly mark et-oriented following the trend in other charitable and not-for-profit sect ors. Representative democracy requires market research techniques to system atically amass and analyse the opinions, attitudes and values of its citize nry, although political organisations need to take account of the nature of these elements prior to their collection and incorporation into public pol icy to avoid populistic measures from being drawn up. The authors believe t hat it is not market research that makes political organisations populistic but the inability of political organisations to assimilate the information obtained from the citizenry with their own ideas for political leadership. It is not market research and representative democracy that are paradoxica l but representative democracy and populism.