How Societies Learn

Daniel Yankelovich

Jan 2018 · Routledge

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The theme of Daniel Yankelovich's Zetterberg Lecture is timely and urgent: how do societies learn? We know that individuals can learn, but can collectivities do likewise? More specifically, how can complex political systems adapt to a changing world? Yankelovich focuses specifically on the severe problems of the different attempts to treat welfare in the United States and Sweden. What kind of strategies can be attempted to accommodate these systems to the economic forces of globalization? Yankelovich answers by citing a version of trial and error in human affairs, a process of "lurch and learn." Yankelovich suggests that future changes in welfare systems will have to rely on mechanisms of reciprocity, rather than the claims of specific interest groups. Sociologist and public opinion analyst, Daniel Yankelovich is co-founder with Cyrus Vance and current president of the Public Agenda, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and citizenship education organization based in New York City. He is a past chairman of the board of Transaction. This is the first of the Hans L. Zetterberg Lecture Series delivered at the City University of Stockholm in 1997.

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Daniel Yankelovich was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 29, 1924. During World War II, he served in the Army. He received a bachelor's degree in 1946 and a master's degree in 1950 from Harvard University. After two years in Paris studying at the Sorbonne, he returned without a doctorate and went to work for a market research firm. He spent six years learning the ropes. He was a pollster, author, and public opinion analyst who mirrored the perceptions of generations of Americans about politics, consumer products, and social changes. In 1958, he founded Daniel Yankelovich Inc. His studies of American youths became the basis for a 1969 CBS television news special entitled Generations Apart. The company became Yankelovich, Skelly and White in 1974. Even when Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising agency, later bought the company, Yankelovich remained chairman until 1986. He went on to form a new firm, Daniel Yankelovich Group. He wrote several books including New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down, Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World, The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation, and Profit with Honor: The New Shape of Market Capitalism. He and I. M. Destler edited a collection of essays entitled Beyond the Beltway: Engaging the Public in U.S. Foreign Policy. He died from kidney failure on September 22, 2017 at the age of 92.