This study looks at a recurrent topic in Danish public debate - the sense of a confidence crisis between the population and the politicians. Lately, the problem acquired additional importance through the Danish failure to ratify the Maastricht Treaty in the first referendum in June 1992. The referendum resulted in a rejection of the treaty - despite the recommendations of a clear majority of parliamentarians, parties, professional, and industrial bodies and labour unions.;In 1989, the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit at the Central Danish Bureau of Statistics initiated a research project focused on the relationship between Danes and their politicians and, in a more general sense, their perception of the political system. In the first part of this book, the results of the project are summarized. In the second part, two politicians and a former leading civil servant present their views of the problem. Finally, the appendix presents some of the detailed empirical data used in the survey.

Recent decades have seen growing concern regarding problems of electoral integrity. The most overt malpractices used by rulers include imprisoning dissidents, harassing adversaries, coercing voters, vote-rigging counts, and even blatant disregard for the popular vote. Elsewhere minor irregularities are common, exemplified by inaccurate voter registers, maladministration of polling facilities, lack of security in absentee ballots, pro-government media bias, ballot miscounts, and gerrymandering. Serious violations of human rights that undermine electoral credibility are widely condemned by domestic observers and the international community. Recent protests about integrity have mobilized in countries as diverse as Russia, Mexico, and Egypt. However, long-standing democracies are far from immune to these ills; past problems include the notorious hanging chads in Florida in 2000 and more recent accusations of voter fraud and voter suppression during the Obama-Romney contest. When problems come to light, however, is anyone held to account and are effective remedies implemented? In response to these developments, there have been growing attempts to analyze flaws in electoral integrity and transparency using systematic data from cross-national time-series, forensic analysis, field experiments, case studies, and new instruments monitoring mass and elite perceptions of malpractices. This volume collects essays from international experts who evaluate the robustness, conceptual validity, and reliability of the growing body of evidence. The essays compare alternative approaches and apply these methods to evaluate the quality of elections in several areas, including the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Election Watchdogs:Transparency, Accountability and Integrity presents new insights into the importance of diverse actors who promote electoral transparency, accountability, and ultimately the integrity of electoral governance.

With particular emphasis on the emerging role of sentencing commissions, advisory councils or panels in a number of English speaking countries, this book brings together the theoretical perspectives on the role of the public in the development of sentencing policy. Freiberg and Gelb expand and develop the existing literature that looks at public attitudes to justice and the role that the "public" can play in influencing policy. It asks the critical questions: even if "public opinion", or preferably, "public judgment" can be ascertained in relation to a particular sentencing issue, should it be relevant to court decision-making, to institutional decision-making and to the political process? And if so, how? For the first time, descriptions and analyses of new and proposed sentencing advisory bodies in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Scotland and South Africa are outlined and provided. Further, it adds to the knowledge in the field of public opinion by presenting practical examples of ways in which the public has a role in sentencing -- illustrating the implementation of recommendations that have been made in existing research over the past few years. These recommendations have focussed on ways to improve public knowledge about the criminal justice system in order to counter political platforms and public outcries that are based on misinformation and misconceptions about the criminal justice system and in particular, about the nature of current sentencing practice. The book is structured in two parts. Part 1 deals with general matters relating to public opinion: our knowledge of what it is or purports to be, and how that influences or shapes sentencing policy. Part 2 deals with the development, and nature of, sentencing councils and their roles vis a vis the public, government and courts.

Did America s democratic convictions change forever after the terrorist attacks of September 11? In the wake of 9/11, many pundits predicted that Americans new and profound anxiety would usher in an era of political acquiescence. Fear, it was claimed, would drive the public to rally around the president and tolerate diminished civil liberties in exchange for security. Political scientist Darren Davis challenges this conventional wisdom in Negative Liberty, revealing a surprising story of how September 11 affected Americans views on civil liberties and security. Drawing on a unique series of original public opinion surveys conducted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and over the subsequent three years, Negative Liberty documents the rapid shifts in Americans opinions regarding the tradeoff between liberty and security, at a time when the threat of terrorism made the conflict between these values particularly stark. Theories on the psychology of threat predicted that people would cope with threats by focusing on survival and reaffirming their loyalty to their communities, and indeed, Davis found that Americans were initially supportive of government efforts to prevent terrorist attacks by rolling back certain civil liberties. Democrats and independents under a heightened sense of threat became more conservative after 9/11, and trust in government reached its highest level since the Kennedy administration. But while ideological divisions were initially muted, this silence did not represent capitulation on the part of civil libertarians. Subsequent surveys in the years after the attacks revealed that, while citizens perceptions of threat remained acute, trust in the government declined dramatically in response to the perceived failures of the administration s foreign and domestic security policies. Indeed, those Americans who reported the greatest anxiety about terrorism were the most likely to lose confidence in the government in the years after 2001. As a result, ideological unity proved short lived, and support for civil liberties revived among the public. Negative Liberty demonstrates that, in the absence of faith in government, even extreme threats to national security are not enough to persuade Americans to concede their civil liberties permanently. The September 11 attacks created an unprecedented conflict between liberty and security, testing Americans devotion to democratic norms. Through lucid analysis of concrete survey data, Negative Liberty sheds light on how citizens of a democracy balance these competing values in a time of crisis."

Designed to supplement texts on public opinion, PUBLIC OPINION: USING MICROCASE EXPLORIT gives students award-winning software that allows them to analyze and critically evaluate real data. This workbook includes a Windows version of MicroCase Student ExplorIt, a user-friendly program that makes it easy for students to manipulate and learn from real data without getting bogged down in complicated statistical software. Nine research-quality data files are included in this package, providing current information from the American National Election Study, the General Social Survey, and other sources.

Ethnocentrism--our tendency to partition the human world into in-groups and out-groups--pervades societies around the world. Surprisingly, though, few scholars have explored its role in political life. Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam fill this gap with "Us Against Them," their definitive explanation of how ethnocentrism shapes American public opinion.

Arguing that humans are broadly predisposed to ethnocentrism, Kinder and Kam explore its impact on our attitudes toward an array of issues, including the war on terror, humanitarian assistance, immigration, the sanctity of marriage, and the reform of social programs. The authors ground their study in previous theories from a wide range of disciplines, establishing a new framework for understanding what ethnocentrism is and how it becomes politically consequential. They also marshal a vast trove of survey evidence to identify the conditions under which ethnocentrism shapes public opinion. While ethnocentrism is widespread in the United States, the authors demonstrate that its political relevance depends on circumstance. Exploring the implications of these findings for political knowledge, cosmopolitanism, and societies outside the United States, Kinder and Kam add a new dimension to our understanding of how democracy functions.

The Reasoning Voter is an insider's look at campaigns, candidates, media, and voters that convincingly argues that voters make informed logical choices. Samuel L. Popkin analyzes three primary campaigns--Carter in 1976; Bush and Reagan in 1980; and Hart, Mondale, and Jackson in 1984--to arrive at a new model of the way voters sort through commercials and sound bites to choose a candidate. Drawing on insights from economics and cognitive psychology, he convincingly demonstrates that, as trivial as campaigns often appear, they provide voters with a surprising amount of information on a candidate's views and skills. For all their shortcomings, campaigns do matter.

What should the place of government be in the life of the nation? If you turn to the public for an answer to this question, you confront a paradox. What people say about government as a general matter is often at odds with what they actually want it to do. This is seen most often when people say government is doing too many things and at the same time want its activities in a host of areas continued, if not expanded.

Based on a specially-designed national public opinion survey, this book explores the paradox and the difference it makes. Ambivalence about government affects which voices get heard in our politics -- and which do not. It bears on the parties people support, whether they vote, and how they vote. Those who send mixed signals about government can tip the balance in elections and are key to coalitions of support on issues between elections.

The analyses presented here go beyond the give and take of the current scene to shed important light on the nature of public opinion itself. The authors show that ambivalence about government is an identifiable and enduring feature of American public opinion.

"This book takes a seeming contradiction as its starting point and demonstrates that there is considerable coherence to what others have dismissed as noise. It offers fresh insight into public opinion, as well as holding considerable implications for the effective conduct of government and successful political leadership." -- Arthur H. Miller, The University of Iowa

This book furnishes the first systematic examination of the highly important and widely misunderstood new methods of surveying public opinion. The studies reported were done by Princeton's Office of Public Opinion Research under the direction of Hadley Cantril, one of the leading social psychologists in the country. The book pioneers in stimulating fashion some of the many problems involved in the determination of public opinion by modern techniques. Originally published in 1944. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

What should the place of government be in the life of the nation? If you turn to the public for an answer to this question, you confront a paradox. What people say about government as a general matter is often at odds with what they actually want it to do. This is seen most often when people say government is doing too many things and at the same time want its activities in a host of areas continued, if not expanded.

Based on a specially-designed national public opinion survey, this book explores the paradox and the difference it makes. Ambivalence about government affects which voices get heard in our politics -- and which do not. It bears on the parties people support, whether they vote, and how they vote. Those who send mixed signals about government can tip the balance in elections and are key to coalitions of support on issues between elections.

The analyses presented here go beyond the give and take of the current scene to shed important light on the nature of public opinion itself. The authors show that ambivalence about government is an identifiable and enduring feature of American public opinion.

"This book takes a seeming contradiction as its starting point and demonstrates that there is considerable coherence to what others have dismissed as noise. It offers fresh insight into public opinion, as well as holding considerable implications for the effective conduct of government and successful political leadership." -- Arthur H. Miller, The University of Iowa

Public opinion is one of the most elusive and complex concepts in democratic theory, and we do not fully understand its role in the political process. "Reading Public Opinion" offers one provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. In fact, Susan Herbst finds that public opinion, surprisingly, has little to do with the mass public in many instances.
Herbst draws on ideas from political science, sociology, and psychology to explore how three sets of political participants--legislative staffers, political activists, and journalists--actually evaluate and assess public opinion. She concludes that many political actors reject "the voice of the people" as uninformed and nebulous, relying instead on interest groups and the media for representations of public opinion. Her important and original book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the meaning and place of public opinion in the realm of contemporary democratic politics.

This work examines the development of popular politics in four representative English towns between 1761 and 1802. The book addresses hitherto unanswered yet fundamental questions about the electorate and the electoral system of later eighteenth-century England. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Public opinion polls are everywhere. Journalists report their results without hesitation, and political activists of all kinds spend millions of dollars on them, fueling the widespread assumption that elected officials "pander" to public opinion--that they tailor their policy decisions to the results of polls.
In this provocative and engagingly written book, the authors argue that the reality is quite the opposite. In fact, when not facing election, contemporary presidents and members of Congress routinely ignore the public's policy preferences and follow their own political philosophies, as well as those of their party's activists, their contributors, and their interest group allies. Politicians devote substantial time, effort, and money to tracking public opinion, not for the purposes of policymaking, but to change public opinion--to determine how to craft their public statements and actions to win support for the policies they and their supporters want.
Taking two recent, dramatic episodes--President Clinton's failed health care reform campaign, and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America"--as examples, the authors show how both used public opinion research and the media to change the public's mind. Such orchestrated displays help explain the media's preoccupation with political conflict and strategy and, the authors argue, have propelled levels of public distrust and fear of government to record highs.
Revisiting the fundamental premises of representative democracy, this accessible book asks us to reexamine whether our government really responds to the broad public or to the narrower interests and values of certain groups. And with the 2000 campaign season heating up, "Politicians Don't Pander" could not be more timely.
"'Polling has turned leaders into followers, ' laments columnist Marueen Dowd of "The New York Times." Well, that's news definitely not fit to print say two academics who have examined the polls and the legislative records of recent presidents to see just how responsive chief executives are to the polls. Their conclusion: not much. . . . In fact, their review and analyses found that public opinion polls on policy appear to have increasingly less, not more, influence on government policies."--Richard Morin, "The Washington Post"

Most models of political decision-making maintain that individual preferences remain relatively constant. Why, then, are there often abrupt changes in public opinion on political issues? Or total reversals in congressional support for specific legislation, as recently happened with the voting on the Superconducting Supercollider? Bryan D. Jones answers these questions by innovatively connecting insights from cognitive science and rational choice theory to political life. Individuals and political systems alike, Jones argues, tend to be attentive to only one issue at a time. Using numerous examples from elections, public opinion polls, congressional deliberations, and bureaucratic decision-making, he shows how shifting attentiveness can and does alter choices and political outcomes - even when underlying preferences remain relatively fixed. An individual, for example, may initially decide to vote for a candidate because of her stand on spending but change his vote when he learns of her position on abortion, never really balancing the two options. Equally applicable to policy-making and agenda-building processes on the national level, Jones's new model of decision-making represents a significant advance in our understanding of political behavior.

What motivates us to rethink and act on our opinions during times of political and social unrest? To investigate this question, Taeku Lee's smartly argued book looks to the critical struggle over the moral principles, group interests, and racial animosities that defined public support for racial policies during the civil rights movement, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Challenging the conventional view that public opinion is shaped by elites, Lee crafts an alternate account of the geographic, institutional, historical, and issue-specific contexts that inform our political views. He finds that grassroots organizations and local protests of ordinary people pushed demands for social change into the consciousness of the general public. From there, Lee argues, these demands entered the policy agendas of political elites. Evidence from multiple sources, including survey data, media coverage, historical accounts, and presidential archives, animates his argument.
Ultimately, "Mobilizing Public Opinion" is a timely, cautionary tale about how we view public opinion and a compelling testament to the potential power of ordinary citizens.

When Barack Obama won the presidency, many posited that we were entering into a post-racial period in American politics. Regrettably, the reality hasn't lived up to that expectation. Instead, Americans' political beliefs have become significantly more polarized by racial considerations than they had been before Obama's presidency--in spite of his administration's considerable efforts to neutralize the political impact of race. Michael Tesler shows how, in the years that followed the 2008 election--a presidential election more polarized by racial attitudes than any other in modern times--racial considerations have come increasingly to influence many aspects of political decision making. These range from people's evaluations of prominent politicians and the parties to issues seemingly unrelated to race like assessments of public policy or objective economic conditions. Some people even displayed more positive feelings toward Obama's dog, Bo, when they were told he belonged to Ted Kennedy. More broadly, Tesler argues that the rapidly intensifying influence of race in American politics is driving the polarizing partisan divide and the vitriolic atmosphere that has come to characterize American politics. One of the most important books on American racial politics in recent years, Post-Racial or Most-Racial? is required reading for anyone wishing to understand what has happened in the United States during Obama's presidency and how it might shape the country long after he leaves office.

The petition histories in volume VIII throw light on the public's expectations of its new federal government and illustrate how the broad national concerns Americans brought before Congress in its first years of operation continue to resonate in the national political dialogue. The second part of this volume provides a wealth of new source materials on many issues of congressional protocol and procedures, such as rules, printing, staffing, a library for Congress, journal and record keeping, and other precedent-setting matters.

Welfare reform has played a prominent role in recent presidential and congressional elections. For conservatives and liberals, welfare is a fundamental issue, representative of either all that is wrong with the American welfare state or one of the fundamental responsibilities of government. Welfare policy is intertwined with many pressing public issues, ranging from poverty, racism, and urban decline to the status of women, children, and the family.

How are numbers generated by public opinion surveys used to describe the national mood? Why have they gained such widespread respect and power in American life? Do polls enhance democracy, or simply accelerate the erosion of public discourse? Quantifying the American mood through opinion polls has come to seem an unbiased means for assessing what people want. But in Numbered Voices Susan Herbst demonstrates that how public opinion is measured affects the ways that voters, legislators, and journalists conceive of it. Exploring the history of public opinion in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, Herbst analyzes how quantitative descriptions of public opinion became so authoritative. She shows how numbers served instrumental functions, but symbolic ones as well: public opinion figures convey authority and not only neutral information. Case studies and numerous examples illustrate how and why quantitative public opinion data have been so critical during and between American elections. Herbst then addresses how the quantification of public opinion has affected contemporary politics, and its implications for the democratic process. She shows that opinion polling is attractive because of its scientific aura, but that surveys do not necessarily enhance public debate. On the contrary, Herbst argues, polling often causes us to ignore certain dimensions of public problems by narrowing the bounds of public debate. By scrutinizing the role of opinion polling in the United States, Numbered Voices forces us to ask difficult but fundamental questions about American politics - questions with important implications for the democratic process.

In 1939, George Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion published a pamphlet optimistically titled "The New Science of Public Opinion Measurement". At the time, though, survey research was in its infancy, and only now, six decades later, can public opinion measurement be appropriately called a science, based in part on the development of the total survey error approach. Herbert F. Weisberg's handbook presents a unified method for conducting good survey research centered on the various types of errors that can occur in surveys - from measurement and nonresponse error to coverage and sampling error. Each chapter is built on theoretical elements drawn from specific disciplines, such as social psychology and statistics, and follows through with detailed treatments of the specific types of errors and their potential solutions. Throughout, Weisberg is attentive to survey constraints, including time and ethical considerations, as well as controversies within the field and the effects of new technology on the survey process - from Internet surveys to those completed by phone, by mail, and in person. Practitioners and students will find this comprehensive guide particularly useful now that survey research has assumed a primary place in both public and academic circles.