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 market- oriented following the trend in other charitable and not-for-profit sectors. Representative democracy requires market research techniques to systematically amass and analyze the opinions, attitudes and values of its citizenry, although political organizations need to take account of the nature of these elements prior to their collection and incorporation into public policy to avoid populistic measures from being drawn up. The authors believe that it is not market research that makes political organizations populistic but the inability of political organizations 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 paradoxical but representative democracy and populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]