Democratic theory and electoral reality
| Autor: | Philip E. Converse |
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| Rok vydání: | 2006 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Critical Review. 18:297-329 |
| ISSN: | 1933-8007 0891-3811 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/08913810608443662 |
| Popis: | In response to the dozen essays published here, which relate my 1964 paper on “The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Publics” to normative requirements of democratic theory, I note, inter alia, a major misinterpretation of my old argument, as well as needed revisions of that argument in the light of intervening data. Then I address the degree to which there may be some long‐term secular change in the parameters that I originally laid out. In the final section, I provide a case study of public understanding of factual trends in federal tax policy in recent decades which seems commendably veridical on average. The preferences of the public thereon add up to a remarkably clear popular mandate. But this mandate seems to disappear rather magically in the voting booth, probably due to a combination of limited contextual information on the public side, and considerable skill on the elite side in manipulating apparent political realities. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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