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Reading Public Opinion

Reading Public Opinion

How Political Actors View the Democratic Process

by Susan Herbst
Paperback
Publication Date: 11/10/1998

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$61.95
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.
ISBN:
9780226327471
9780226327471
Category:
Public opinion & polls
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
11-10-1998
Language:
English
Publisher:
The University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:
United States
Pages:
266
Dimensions (mm):
23x17x2mm
Weight:
0.45kg

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