The controlling idea for this study, and a major theme in classical and modern social analysis, is the distinction between public and private sectors in liberal societies. Professor Rusciano's purpose is to consider how the common ground defined by the use of the notion public in public opinion and public choice can lead to a revitalization of the term in modern social analysis. In Chapter 1, the author shows that no public choice procedure may distinguish consistently between public and private issues, public and private goods, and public and private decision rules. He also shows that no procedure may consistently define the public realm implied by the term public choice. To illustrate this problem, the author scrutinizes three paradoxes of public choice: ArroW's General Possibility theorem, Olson's logic of collective action, and Barry's problem of legitimizing responsive choice procedures. Succeeding chapters discuss the definition of public advanced in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence theory of public opinion; elaborate on the notion of public and the Arrow problem; and apply the theorems derived from Noelle-Neumann's theory to the three paradoxes of public choice. Chapter 5 theoretically applies the argument developed in previous chapters to economic behavior through a critique of Fred Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth and to the problem of collective action. The chapter concludes with a formal model and three hypotheses which are tested in Chapters 6 and 7 through empirical analyses of classic problems in collective action and choice, and as models of a revised notion of social preference. Finally, the revised notion is illustrated by observations about consumer behavior, conventions of language, and the definitions and functions of social and state institutions. Isolation and Paradox evolved from lectures and seminars delivered while Professor Rusciano was Visiting Professor at the Institut fur Publizistik at the University of Mainz, the German Federal Republic. Political and social scientists, as well as students in political theory, contemporary political analysis, comparative politics, public opinion, and political methodology will find this careful, logical study and its full complement of tables and charts necessary and informative reading.

This is the first systematic book-length examination of the meaning and influence of world opinion. Using media content analyses, survey data, documentary evidence, and comparative theory, it analyzes how world opinion influences the construction of national identity, the growth of global markets, and the emergence of an imagined international community to rival the influence of the nation-state. Using newspaper content analyses, survey research data, documentary evidence, and comparative theory, this book examines the meaning, influence, and structure of world opinion in the emerging international order. It begins by analyzing the construction of individual identity in the presence of the Other and then describes the influence of opinion processes upon this construction at all levels, including familial, religious, national, and ethnic. Subsequent chapters deal with the effects of a global public on the construction of individual identity and the role of world opinion in this process; the definition of world opinion and its component parts; the effects of world opinion on nations' behavior in times of crisis; the role world opinion plays in the construction of national identity and the manner in which this prompts a resurgence of nationalism in the post-Cold War era; the relationship between world opinion and the global market; the search for an attentive public to link elites and mass publics in world opinion; and the appearance of an imagined international community in the post-Cold War era based around the concept of world opinion. The final chapter discusses the effects of world opinion on our vision of history and evaluates the significance of the nation-state in an international environment increasingly governed by global forces and world public opinion. A major study for researchers, scholars, and students involved with international relations, public opinion, and international communications.