The Phantom Public

by Walter Lippmann

In an era disgusted with politicians and the various instruments of "direct democracy," Walter Lippmann's The Phantom Public remains as relevant as ever. It reveals Lippmann at a time when he was most critical of the ills of American democracy. Antipopulist in sentiment, this volume defends elitism as a serious and distinctive intellectual option, one with considerable precursors in the American past. Lippmann's demythologized view of the American system of government resonates today.

The Phantom Public discusses the "disenchanted man" who has become disillusioned not only with democracy, but also with reform. According to Lippmann, the average voter is incapable of governance; what is called the public is merely a "phantom." In terms of policy-making, the distinction should not be experts versus amateurs, but insiders versus outsiders. Lippmann challenges the core assumption of Progressive politics as well as any theory that pretends to leave political decision making in the hands of the people as a whole.

In his biography Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Ronald Steel praised The Phantom Public as "one of Lippmann's most powerfully argued and revealing books. In it he came fully to terms with the inadequacy of traditional democratic theory." This volume is part of a continuing series on the major works of Walter Lippmann. As more and more Americans are inclined to become apathetic to the political system, this classic will be essential reading for students, teachers, and researchers of political science and history.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, History, Journalism

195 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator who gained notoriety for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War. Lippmann was twice awarded (1958 and 1962) a Pulitzer Prize for his syndicated newspaper column, "Today and Tomorrow."

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Lippmann argues that members of the public are but “spectators of action,” (93) not the omnicompetent, sovereign beings assumed in democratic theory; nor is it possible for them to be. This, Lippmann argues, is a false ideal. (28) There are simply too many things to know and too little time to come to know them for anyone — average citizen, empowered elite — to become expert in everything. (28, among others) The make-up of the public varies from issue to issue; a person might be an expert/participant on one issue, and a member of the public on another. (100) He dismantles various approaches that might improve the situation — science (eugenics), morals (ethics), education, populism, socialism. (25-28) The public assumed in theories of democratic governance is “a phantom.” (67) Lacking the necessary knowledge or expertise, they cannot intervene based on the merits of cases. They must judge externally, based on symbols and signs, and can act only by throwing their support behind one of the interests involved. (93) Lippmann relies on a construct and series of assumptions about the differences between “insiders” and “outsiders”, and firmly believes that only insiders are positioned to act. (140)

For the source of the “false ideal”, Lippmann points to the attempt to “ascribe organic unity and purpose to society.” (145-146)

The author provides a crystalline synopsis of his views on 134-135 and restates them on 162 and 187.

The public is tremendously limited in its abilities, energies, capacities, and capabilities. The public, unable to understand the merits of each and every case, must rely on readily inteligible signs and symbols to direct their alignments. (64-65)  “Since it acts by aligning itself, it personalizes whatever it considers, and is interested only when events have been melodramatize as a conflict. The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who the villain of the piece.” (55) The public only becomes involved in moments of crisis, and the purpose of its involvement is “to help allay the crisis.” (56) The most that public opinion can do is to come to the assistance of someone challenging arbitrary power. (60) “When power, however absolute and unaccountable, reigns without provoking a crisis, public opinion does not challenge it.” (60) “It is the function of public opinion to check the use of force in a crisis, so that men, driven to make terms, may live and let live.” (64) In the democratic process, citizens align themselves with or against proposals. They do not direct continuously political affairs; instead, they occasionally mobilize in majorities to support or oppose the people who actually govern. (50-52)

The public need address itself to only two questions, when a problem warranting its involvement emerges: 1) Is the rule [thing] defective? 2) How do I figure out who can fix it, thereby identifying to whom to give my support? (98) To determine whether a rule is defective, Lippmann proposes two tests: assent and conformity. Assent refers to an obvious lack of agreement among interested parties. Conformity follows logically — if an interested party feels it has not assented to a rule, its followers are likely not to conform to the rule. Evidence of nonconformity can therefore be indicative of a need for public involvement. (105-110) To determine which party to support, the public can apply the test of inquiry: the disputant willing to submit to a process of inquiry is likely in the right and deserves support. (122-125) In formulating new rules, Lippmann proposes another three tests: 1) does it provide for its own clarification? Amendment by consent? Due notice that amendment will be proposed? (128)

He concludes by saying that he sets “no great store on what can be done by public opinion and the action of the masses.” (189) For anyone skimming, this comment and several others throughout the text make Lippmann easier to dismiss as elite/conservative/condescending. The force of the ideas he develops make him not so easily dismissed. 

Interesting Tidbits

Lippmann sees little real difference between competing political groups. (116-117) If there were actual, sharp differences, election loss might mean actual rebellion. (116-117)

“Nor does the public rouse itself normally at the existence of evil. It is aroused at evil made manifest by the interruption of a habitual process of life.” (57)

“When the public attempts to deal with the substance it merely becomes the dupe or unconscious ally of a special interest.” (96)

“…he would wish for a world in which he could fight perfectly, with enemies fleet enough to extend him and not too fleet to elude him. All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.” (161) [Clearly related to the idea of mastery, for example in the workplace; people find work satisfying when it is sufficiently challenging, but not impossible. See Daniel Pink, among others]

Historiography

This work forms part of the material that John Dewey responded to in The Public and Its Problems (1927). (xviii)

[Kara Naghoster · Rating 2 out of 5]

2✰

Well, that's time of my life that I'm never getting back.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a recurring theme with people who see the world as it is instead of viewing the world, or attempting to view the world as they would like it to be. That is the theme of elitism. For when people do not look through rose colored glasses at the world or have some ideal Utopia, they end up calling things by their rightful names. It is unfortunate that these people in love with a stigma about them. The author of this book repeatedly lumps himself in with the public in stating that it's simply not possible for everyone to know everything at all times and therefore it is impossible to get at anything resembling the will of the people in anything but the greatest crises that a nation faces. He admits that even though his main interest in life is public affairs and it is his job to know all that goes on in a given day he still knows very little about the outside world when you take into consideration the hole in its entirety. And despite his repeat it again and again he says again and again that he himself is part of this public that cannot possibly know all the details of all of these things and should not be asked to know and comment on all these details on various policies he is still charged with elitism. It is almost as though these people who want some ideal Utopia can't stomach the fact that most people simply do not pay attention to all things at all times. These people cannot stomach the fact that the vast majority of people simply do not have the time nor the inclination to pay attention to anything more than a few things that might interest them.

At any rate this is a great book and one that I am glad to see reprinted.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would advise people to read this, and read it slowly. Find out about the man, who he worked with and what he did in the early 1900's. I felt totally annoyed when I finished this book and I'm not sure I know why.

I read a lot but this book made me feel uneasy because I wasn't sure I was getting the intended message and for that I feel annoyed. At times his prose was brilliant, I agreed and yet I wasn't sure I was agreeing with what I would think was true, like he was a politician running for office and making his position sound good to get elected but it really was terrible for almost everyone.

I may have to get ambitious and reread it. Being linked with President Wilson as Lippman was draws immediate scorn. The ideas that came out of this era in America are dangerous to the America values we've had since the founding. However, I thinks its wise to read a view point other than your own.

[Margie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I learned about the bleak outlook with which Progressives view The People. The philosophies made me sick to my stomach because they are elitist and imply that The People don't have rights because they're too stupid to operate as a group. I found it interesting that in the movie "13 Days" that the President leaked disinformation to Lippmann because he knew Lippmann would blab it to the Russians. I thought Communism was dead in this country, but I have been brought back to the sickening reality that not only is it alive and shoving it's way into the mainstream, but that our corrupt Congress is rife with it fueled by the writings of Alinsky, Lippmann and other subversives.

[Imp · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main thrust of The Phantom Public is Lippman dispensing with romantic notions of Democracy, Nationalism, Socialism and other dominating ideologies of the time, substituting them instead with what in his view is a practical and realistic model.

And so, Democracy is not "rule by the people" any more than a Monarchy is rule by the soldiers who stood behind the victorious monarch. The outcome of an election is not the "will of the people" but merely a compromise substitute (ballots for bullets) of a physically violent civil war that might otherwise result.

Indeed, the Public is not a monolithic ruler.
It does not lead. The member of the Public arrives long after the interested insider parties in any dispute already lined up against each other without outsider input, and stays only long enough to take the side of one or the other pre-existing parties in this dispute. The actual governing is then continued to be carried out by the victorious insiders.
It is not a monolith. Not only is the Public composed of different individuals with different purposes, but who is included in the Public changes depending on the dispute at hand. This is because the fundamental difference between the disputants and the Public is not "the enlightened few vs. the ignorant many", but rather then insiders to an issue vs. the interested outsiders. Whoever belongs to the outsiders in a given issue belongs to the Public with regards to that issue.

Lippmann also spends significant time critiquing the Monoisitic theory of Nationalism and Socialism, a similarly romantic notion to the Democratic "will of the people" at odds with reality. Here he explains the innumerable problems caused by the maintained illusion that the members of a society constitute an organic whole, with one will and purpose (which, of course, is determined by the ruling class). He points out that doing away with this illusion all the dilemmas and complications he so far introduced become soluble if we at once recognize that it is the individual who acts, and not the nation, and that any conflict is between individuals, and not nations.

His overall goal with the book then is to offer an alternative for the place of the Public, disabused of romantic notions that led only to catastrophe in practice. In this he lays out the following points:

Not for the Public:
1. Executive action
2. Merits of a question
3. Analysis of the solution
4. Criteria for handling the question

This is because as outsiders, they cannot be expected to fully know the merits of the question or have the expertise to evaluate a solution or put it into practice.

For the Public:
5. Judge if actors are following settled rule of behavior
6. Criteria suitable to nature of Public opinion for #5
7. Reasonable behavior follows settled course in handling a rule

Since the public is only interested in having a settled, workable rule that everyone can agree to, and are not interested in the particulars of that rule, it is this lens through which they should judge whether to take one side or the other in a dispute.

[Jesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this because Dewey argues against it in The Public and its Problems
It is unfortunate that Lippmann is a more engaging writer than Dewey, because he is also incredibly anti-social and engages in terrible sophistry.

It is very funny to me that other reviewers here have tried to call Lippmann a communist, via his connection to Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century. In my eyes, this is a profoundly anti-communist book. This book is cynical, anti-utopian, anti-populist, anti-labor, and distrustful of all political parties claiming to act in the interest of society as being secretly controlled by selfish private interests. The confusion, I guess, is because Lippmann is a proponent of a society run by a technocratic elite, and would have been basically fine with Soviet Russia if only it had two parties instead of one and stopped claiming to believe in its ideals.

Let me outline some of Lippmann's arguments.
On Government:
1. Society is built upon a balance of power and forces (populations, productivity, regional power). However, these forces can strengthen or weaken, become larger and smaller, over time.
2. The role of government is to act as enlightened managers, helping to create rules and systems which keep the forces of society in balance and prevent disruption.
3. Political parties get slowly intwined with special interests and thereby become unable to prevent disruption and crisis. The main role of the public is to vote for the other party when this happens.

On knowledge and public action:
1. Any issue is best, and to a large extent only, understandable by the people and organizations directly involved.
2. The "public" is defined to be the people not directly involved in a conflict. The public, by definition, cannot understand the conflict.
3. Ideally, conflicts should be submitted to rules-based arbitration. Any private interest which is disruptive, and refuses to submit to a rule-based order, is inherently suspect.
4. However, sometimes the public must judge between private interests in a conflict. The public, lacking knowledge, has no way of judging the merits of the arguments made. It must therefore judge mainly based on which interest is most willing to submit to rules and bring the material forces which caused the crisis into balance.

On people and partisans:
1. People don't like reading, don't like knowing, and want to be left alone to their "private pursuits".
2. However, private interest groups use demagoguery to convince people to support these private interests above others.
3. Therefore, all organizations of people which claim to have opinions on larger societal questions on which their members do not have direct stakes are inherently suspect.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I downloaded the 1922 version of this book from Project Gutenberg, I didn't know it was about politics (their descriptions can be pretty sparse sometimes) or I probably wouldn't have bothered. And I would have missed out. This description of the myth of what (representative) democracy is supposed to be and what it actually is and the various ways people tried to solve the lack of voter engagement back in the 20's was very informative and still relevant today.

In a nutshell, it's the modern problem of too much information and not enough time, and as it turns out, the idea that the public has any real say in government is pretty much an illusion. The cynical side of me is inclined to agree. Now I feel I need to rewatch Yes, Minister.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being written in 1925 -- well before the advent of mass media and fascism -- this book has some provocative and uncomfortable questions about democracy and public opinion. On one hand, you do need the public to hold the elite accountable. On the other hand, if they are being manipulated by the very people they vote for and they lack the knowledge to understand the policies or the issues they vote for, then are they truly living up to their end of the bargain? That Lippmann lays out a lot of these points decades before they became major talking points in political classes and media studies says a lot about how important and prescient he was as a thinker.

[Anna Snader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The public” is merely an abstraction. Wild stuff.

[Luis Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The everyday working person is so bogged down by adult obligations that he barely understands the decisions being made in his name.

[Amy Haven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important, fascinating read, even for this Socialist Democrat. I imagine this is where Reagan had his magnificent failure of intellect, imagination, and humanity.

[Sam White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling and readable diatribe against liberal democracy and the idea of a self-governing public. While Lippmann's oversimplification of many things (for example, he separates "public" from "private" life absolutely, causing him to swerve into hyper-individualistic views that ignore community, etc) keeps me from being fully convinced of his main argument, I still think he raised criticisms worth addressing. The fact that this book is ~100 years old and still relevant today is impressive alone.

[Nita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read Walter "Cranky Pants" Lippmann my freshman year in college ("Drift and Mastery"); my nocturnal adolescent self particularly cherished his line about how societal norms force intelligent people to conform to sheep-scripts in order to maintain the respect of their peers -- sweet sweet nectar to the brain of someone from a Midwestern nerd-school newly adrift on the Gothic campus of an upper-crusty liberal arts college.

In "The Phantom Public", our favorite grouch directs his ire towards, basically, everyone, stating that our bozo citizenry is too dim-witted to be entrusted with voting, that the notion of an educated populace is hogwash, and that any hope of a political process approaching anything other than dog-pooh is at best the dreaming of someone on shrooms and at worst the fast track towards a society knocking on the doors of hell.

(These are my words of course (were shrooms around in Lippman's day?) Anyway that's the gist.)

Comforting: there's always someone who is certain that the current moment in society is the worst it has ever been.
Comforting: there's always someone who feels that the knowledge base of Median Joe is substandard.
Not comforting: my lesser, more shadow-y side found myself agreeing in many ways with El Curmudgeon.

Skimworthy at the very least for anyone who often dreams of architecting a different kind of society.

[Eric G.]

I believe this quote from the text sums up the general framework:

“The fundamental difference which matters is that between insiders and outsiders. Their relations to a problem are radically different. Only the insiders can make decisions, not because he is inherently a better man but because he is so placed that he can understand and can act. The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land. – In short, like the democratic theorists, they miss the essence of the matter, which is, that competence exists only in relation to function; that men are not good, but good for something.; that men cannot be educated, but only educated for something” P.140.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to read this some years ago after reading Noam Chomsky reference the book numerous times. This is a more entertaining read than Public Opinion, both more clearly cynical and also written in a much more chummy style. It's at times thought provoking.

[Manda Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oldie, but a goodie.

[Mg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Référence indispensable pour les réflexions sur la notion de "public"; à lire en dialogue avec Dewey, Le public et ses problèmes.

[Martha]

I would like this in the Kindle Edition, when it comes available.

[Heather Bielecki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat pessimistic about democracy without really any concrete solutions for alternatives except to leave it to the 'insiders'. However, it is classic poli sci literature.

[Kevinch417 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super pessimistic about the average person. I loved every word of it.