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Reading Public Opinion
Susan Herbst
其他書名
How Political Actors View the Democratic Process
出版University of Chicago Press, 1998-10
主題Biography & Autobiography / Editors, Journalists, PublishersPolitical Science / GeneralPolitical Science / American Government / Legislative BranchPolitical Science / Political Process / Political AdvocacySocial Science / GeneralSocial Science / Sociology / General
ISBN02263274699780226327464
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=s8DNhbcJwxAC&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBookSAMPLE
註釋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.