Books in the Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology series

In the chapters of this edited volume, first published in 2001, the various authors report research designed to help readers understand why so many Americans do not like, trust, approve of, or support their government. Readers with interests in current affairs, American politics, American government, and American opinion should like this book.

How do citizens faced with a complex variety of considerations decide whether or not to tolerate extremist groups? Relying on several survey-experiments, the authors identify and compare the impact on decision making of contemporary information, long-standing predispositions, and enduring values and beliefs.

This timely book describes and explains the American people's alleged hatred of the US Congress and political institutions, in general. Focus group sessions and a national survey indicate that much of the negativity is generated by popular perceptions of the processes of governing visible in Congress.

Democratic politics is a collective enterprise, not simply because individual votes are counted to determine winners, but more fundamentally because the individual exercise of citizenship is an interdependent undertaking. Citizens argue with one another and they generally arrive at political decisions through processes of social interaction and deliberation.

'In sum this is a didactically, theoretically and methodologically impressive report on an important research project, scrupulously conducted over a number of years by a powerful group of scholars with a wide range of skills. It is now required reading for all who work on voting behaviour and/or political attitudes.' Michael Laver, Political Studies

Americans often complain about the operation of their government, but scholars have never developed a complete picture of people's preferred type of government. In this provocative and timely book, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, employing an original national survey and focus groups, report the governmental procedures Americans desire. Contrary to the prevailing view that people want greater involvement in politics, most citizens do not care about most policies and therefore are content to turn over decision-making authority to someone else. People's wish for the political system is that decision makers be empathetic and, especially, non-self-interested, not that they be responsive and accountable to the people's largely nonexistent policy preferences or, even worse, that the people be obligated to participate directly in decision making. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse conclude by cautioning communitarians, direct democrats, social capitalists, deliberation theorists, and all those who think that greater citizen involvement is the solution to society's problems.

The Macro Polity, first published in 2002, provides a comprehensive model of American politics at the system level. Focusing on interactions between citizen preferences, government activity and policy, and the coinfluence of actions between citizens and governments, it integrates understandings of matters such as partisanship, elections, and government policy-making into a single model.

Some of the leading scholars in political psychology discuss and debate some of the major issues in the field. Scholars define the boundaries of the field, debate its relevance, consider whether the field is, methodologically, too individualistic and consider whether the field can help scholars to understand collective public opinion.

This book is about how people are affected by their perceptions of the collective opinions of others.

In Elements of Reason, scholars from across the social sciences use recent advances in the social sciences to uncover the cognitive foundations of social decision making. They answer tough questions about how people see and process information and provide new explanations of how basic human needs affect human choices.