Some people believe that in order to be effective, political leaders must yield to public opinion and abandon principle for the sake of compromise. Others believe that the most essential quality of an effective leader is the ability to remain consistently

It is fairly clear that public opinion must play some function in political sphere, and there is so much of it that political leaders often face such a dilemma of how to balance between public opinion and the principles and objectives they stick to. Arguments about whether they must submit to public opinion or hold firmly on particular principles and objectives. As far as I'm concerned, I closely align with the former but do not believe that this kind of compromise is suitable for any situation even in a democratic society, instead a highly efficient society requires politicians to steadfastly implement particular principles and objectives in some cases.

With the emergence of multimedia, there are various outlets like blogs and forums for average citizens to voice their views about social issues, and accordingly a great advance has been made both in the conversion of their views into political policy and in the performance of government agencies. Take China as an example, due to the influence of public opinion, livelihood issues have achieved a big move: nine-year free education, universal pension, farm subsidies, an increase of the minimum threshold for personal income tax, legal equity, convenient transportation; other aspects in the well-being of humans have been obtained high attention, such as poor access to health, unaffordable housing, unemployment, wealth inequality, environmental pollution; mostly importantly, the performance of political agencies has become the heated subject among citizens, resulting in universal anti-corruption and highly effective government in order to prevent political leaders from abusing their rights. Obviously, it is unavoidable that public opinion will exert far-reaching significance in future political sphere.

Convinced of the importance of public opinion, modern government takes it into account, follow it, even by abandoning principle for the sake of compromise, but this does not always happen. For instance, to fuel economic growth, some leaders in local government venturesomely authorizes public fierce opposition to factories in chemistry, in dye, in insecticide, and in other fields which are involved in environmental degradation, public health hazard. Another example is salient that in the process of urbanization local government substitutes modern buildings for ancient architectures with the value of art and culture, cherished by local people. For these politicians must make a concession: suspend these projects, or turn to alternative program beneficial to sustainable development among economy, nature, tradition and people. However, people being grown up in different contexts of education, family, wealth, belief, experience have divergent views about the same social issue——some of them agree, others oppose, the rest remains neutral, so leaders in government agencies must carefully analyze: vigilant to skewed viewpoints, not blindly compromise but keep to particular principles and objectives.

Particular principles and objectives——not swing for political leaders even faced with the conflict of vox populi——which matters to the long-run stability and development of a society. For example, reform and opening up started in 1978 and was regarded as the subversion of socialism, strongly opposed at the beginning, but Deng Xiaoping, the designer of the policy, persisted in the policy implementation, achieving a great rejuvenation of the whole society, especially in economy with the drastic growth of gross domestic production. Today, with the new round of economic reform, employees in some fields like resource-intensive industry, confronted with laid-off and work transformation, have organized various forms of strikes, while political leaders resolve to phase out facilities to produce steel, power, coal, cement, and so on, which have posed a huge risk of resource-depletion and environmental pollution. In the case of nuclear energy, its application, suffering the violent resistance of the public because of its radiation, safety, still stays on the top of alternative energies, the first echelon of energy development authorized by the authorities. Therefore, from the macro, strategic, long-run perspective, leaders in government must insist on these principles and objectives.

In short, based on impartiality, rationality, and objectiveness, a kind of positive interaction between citizens and politicians will be formed, so does a democratic and efficient society.