The Comparative Study of Communications and Opinion Formation
In: The public opinion quarterly: POQ, Band 16, Heft 4, Special Issue on International Communications Research, S. 512
ISSN: 1537-5331
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In: The public opinion quarterly: POQ, Band 16, Heft 4, Special Issue on International Communications Research, S. 512
ISSN: 1537-5331
In: American political science review, Band 47, Heft 1, S. 171-177
ISSN: 1537-5943
The role of public opinion in the political process is more often justified than explained by political theorists. Insofar as contemporary theory offers an explanation, it replaces the primitive democratic notion of "The People as Legislator" with a neo-idealistic conception of public opinion as the "sense of the community" (A. D. Lindsay), an emergent product of the process of public discussion that enfolds the struggle of private group leaders, public administrators, and political representatives to influence the substance and direction of governmental policy.However, this is not the meaning of the term as used either by the man in the street or by the social scientist. In both popular and scientific language "public opinion" has come to refer to a sort of secular idol, and is a "god-term" to which citizens, scientists, and office-holders alike pay allegiance, partly as an act of faith, partly as a matter of observation, partly as a condition of sanity. The public opinion idol has its high priests, claiming to be expert translators of the oracles of the personified deity. The idol aIso has its heretics, divided like all protestants into many denominations. The least heretical sect, perhaps, consists of those who postulate a conceptual fiction somewhat resembling the legal relation of "principal-and-agent," except that they recognize that political representatives possess the power to act as trustees as well as agents of their amorphous principal.
In: American politics research, Band 47, Heft 1, S. 29-57
ISSN: 1552-3373
How does the extension of party conflict to a foreign policy issue affect the ability of Americans to form an opinion about the issue? We test this using elite references and longitudinal public opinion data about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a salient foreign policy issue in the United States that is increasingly characterized by partisan divisions. Our findings demonstrate that since the turn of the 21st century, the availability and clarity of party cues have increased, as well as the share of Americans who hold an opinion about the issue. Applying regression models to individual-level data, we reveal that the extension of party conflict to this issue has made it easier for more Americans to form an opinion.
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 35, Heft S1, S. 129-156
ISSN: 1467-9221
A key characteristic of democratic politics is competition between groups, first of all political parties. Yet, the unavoidably partisan nature of political conflict has had too little influence on scholarship on political psychology. Despite more than 50 years of research on political parties and citizens, we continue to lack a systematic understanding of when and how political parties influence public opinion. We suggest that alternative approaches to political parties and public opinion can be best reconciled and examined through a richer theoretical perspective grounded in motivated reasoning theory. Clearly, parties shape citizens' opinions by mobilizing, influencing, and structuring choices among political alternatives. But the answer to when and how parties influence citizens' reasoning and political opinions depends on an interaction between citizens' motivations, effort, and information generated from the political environment (particularly through competition between parties). The contribution of motivated reasoning, as we describe it, is to provide a coherent theoretical framework for understanding partisan influence on citizens' political opinions. We review recent empirical work consistent with this framework. We also point out puzzles ripe for future research and discuss how partisan‐motivated reasoning provides a useful point of departure for such work.
In: The public opinion quarterly: POQ, Band 74, Heft 3, S. 530-550
ISSN: 1537-5331
SSRN
Working paper
In: Voprosy istorii: VI = Studies in history, Band 2019, Heft 9, S. 159-166
In: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Band 67, Heft 1, S. 1-26
After Nazism and Communism new forms of totalitarianism fostered by religious fundamentalism have arisen at the turn of the present century. In view of this fact we present a parsimonious quantitative model designed to shed some light on the dynamics of the formation of totalitarian systems. The model is constructed according to the principles of "sociodynamics" that belongs to the broad field of nonlinear dynamic systems theory (NDS). It comprises two order parameters and four trend parameters. All of them are socio-politically interpreted. Stationary, stagnant and revolutionary system-phases are exhibited in 10 scenarios. The relation to catastrophe theory is discussed.
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 35, Heft 1, S. 129-156
ISSN: 0162-895X
In: APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper
SSRN
Working paper
In: Presidential studies quarterly: official publication of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Band 39, Heft 3, S. 619-635
ISSN: 1741-5705
The authors examine the dynamics of public opinion formation and change around a sitting president and their implications for reelection contests. Because of the biases inherent in information processing and the information environment, two distinct, but simultaneous, effects of citizen learning during a presidential term are expected. For those with prior opinions of the president, learning contributes to more polarized evaluations of the president. For those initially uncertain about the president, learning contributes to opinion formation about the president. Because the gap in uncertainty generally favors the incumbent over a lesser‐known challenger, races with an incumbent presidential candidate are typically marked, perhaps paradoxically, by both a polarization of public opinion and an incumbency advantage.
In: American political science review, Band 107, Heft 1, S. 57-79
ISSN: 0003-0554
World Affairs Online
In: Midway reprint