Belief Systems Today

In: Critical review: an interdisciplinary journal of politics and society, Band 18, Heft 1-3, S. 197-216

Abstract

My purpose is to offer an assessment of the scientific legacy of Converse's "Belief Systems" by reviewing five productive lines of research stimulated by his authoritative analysis & unsettling conclusions. First I recount the later life history of Converse's notion of "nonattitudes," & suggest that as important as nonattitudes are, we should be paying at least as much attention to their opposite: attitudes held with conviction. Second, I argue that the problem of insufficient information that resides at the center of Converse's analysis has not gone away, & that newly fashioned models of information processing offer only partial remedies. Third, I suggest that the concept of the "average voter" is a malicious action, as it blinds us to the enormous variation in political attention, interest, & knowledge that characterizes mass publics, in Converse's time as in our own. Fourth, I develop an affirmative aspect of Converse's analysis that has mostly been overlooked: namely, that if ideological reasoning is beyond most citizens' capacity & interest, they might fall back on a simple & reasonable alternative, which I will call "group-centrism." And fifth, I consider the possibility that while the majority of individual citizens falls short of democratic standards, the public as a whole might do rather well. Adapted from the source document.