<P> The political climate is the aggregate mood and opinions of a political society at a particular time . It is generally used to describe when the state of mood and opinion is changing or unstable rather than in a state of equilibrium . The phrase has origins from both ancient Greece and medieval - era France . </P> <P> While the concept of a political climate has been used historically to describe both politics and public reactions to political actions in various forms, the naming of the concept by the addition of the modifier "political" to the base "climate" has been fairly recent . Public opinion is also widely used incorrectly as a synonym for political climate . </P> <P> As for judging what the climate is at any given time, there is no way to know an entire country's views on certain subjects . So, polls are used to estimate what the political climate "feels" like on a regular basis . However, this only works to some degree as polls cannot involve the entire population at once . </P> <P> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the base climate comes from the Middle French climat, which was first used to describe a region's prevailing weather conditions around 1314 . One of the first recorded uses of climate as a description of prevailing political attitudes was in The Vanity of Dogmatizing by Joseph Glanvill in 1661 where he mentions "divers Climates of Opinions". </P>

What is the relationship between the country political climate