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This chapter addresses the measurement of citizens' interest in politics. To make progress in understanding citizens' interest in politics, its causes, and its consequences, one must be equipped with an adequate measure of the underlying concept. The 2006 Pilot Study tested three new items that attempted to improve upon current ANES measures of interest in politics and attention to politics. The chapter compares these measures to determine whether the proposed items add anything distinctive to the study of political learning and participation, whether the magnitude of the differences are sizable, and whether they reflect prior hypotheses. Overall, the chapter concludes that the existing NES measures perform as well as the alternatives carried on the pilot, but nonetheless, it suggests how we might improve upon the current measures.

Chapter 3 presents cross-national statistical analyses that assess the effect of institutions and outcomes on political engagement across a wide range of democracies. Widely varying gender gaps exist across countries along several dimensions of political engagement. Electoral institutions and the outcomes they produce explain to some extent varying gender gaps in political interest, political discussion, attention to political news, and political knowledge. However, they do so to different degrees for different forms of engagement. Electoral proportionality offers the most consistent and prominent explanation for gender gaps in nearly all forms of political engagement.

One of the most common assumptions about American business associations is that they are simply political interest groups. This chapter discusses sociological arguments for this assumption and shows how the evidence of political orientations and activities in the association census and the focal groups challenges these arguments as partial and unrepresentative. Then, focusing on that minority of associations that are indeed active in conventional politics, it examines what exactly they do and the terms in which they understand their political action. The chapter argues that they are mostly involved in routine policy monitoring as peripheral players in policy domains. Then, extending recent arguments about American political discourse, it shows how they express their political interests in terms of a democratic code stressing technical reason and the stewardship of the common good. These arguments are demonstrated with illustrations drawn from the focal sample and an extended case analysis of the political work of the Irrigation Association.

This chapter reviews representation of health risks in the ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, reflecting on whether they distort and mislead rather than inform the public. The social amplification of risk and framing models are critically assessed. Studies of newsprint, television, film, and the Internet illustrate the common use of templates, frames, anchors, and stereotypes, which construct selective representations of health risks. The difficulties of assessing the influence of media messages and the growing interest in interactive rather than passive models of audience participation are examined. Increasing interest in trust as a central, if complex, process in media influence is considered. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the varied interests and multi-layered processes that underpin the production of media messages on health risks.

A healthy representative democracy requires that citizens be politically involved, and it is especially important to consider the political involvement of groups that are marginalized, such as African Americans. Building on the political empowerment hypothesis, the chapter argues that an increased black seat share and black representation ratio should be associated with increased black political involvement. Using 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data, the chapter describes how in states with an increased black seat share in the legislature blacks are more likely to be highly interested in politics and are more likely to vote. In states with a higher black representation ratio, blacks are more inclined to persuade others to vote. Black representation in the US House does not increase black political involvement, despite being the focus of many scholarly works of political empowerment.

This chapter examines the political and economic interests underlying the beliefs held by ruling elites and their allies in noncommunist countries of Southeast Asia regarding American hegemony. In each country, the political groups that emerged as winners in domestic conflicts in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were those that benefited—in political and material terms—from the U.S. role in the region. Their defeated opponents, conversely, had strong reasons to see the United States in a very different light. This chapter also considers the political economy of alignment with the United States in the noncommunist Southeast Asian states. It suggests that a different distribution of domestic political power would have produced a different regional orientation toward the United States.

This chapter examines the relationship between social position and political alienation, the latter of which is a combination of low political interest and low political trust, considering whether this relationship differs across welfare states and whether it is affected by different degrees of welfare state retrenchment. Specifically, it asks whether differences between social groups regarding political alienation are larger in countries that have experienced more substantial cutbacks of welfare policies, or in more generous welfare states where there are high expectations of the welfare state. The chapter compares policies on income redistribution and the degree of retrenchment in social insurance systems in six European countries: Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. It demonstrates that social risk exposure is a strong factor behind political alienation in all of the countries, but is more pronounced in countries that have experienced substantial cutbacks.

This chapter examines the core evaluative beliefs about the United States held by members of the foreign policy community in Southeast Asia and argues that they are driven by the political and economic interests of ruling elites and their key constituencies, mediated by the career interests of foreign policy professionals. It contends that regime interests can acquire the status of more encompassing “national” interests in the eyes of powerholders and foreign policy practitioners, without the process necessarily involving duplicity. It explains how perceptions of external threat are tied to assessments of what they mean for particular domestic actors. Evaluative beliefs about American hegemony in Southeast Asia cannot be divorced from the interests, position, and perceptions of the believer.

This chapter pushes further on the question of initial emergence. It analyzes the conditions under which parts of the administrative state obtain sufficient protection from neopatrimonial pressures to inculcate a highly effective niche within the administrative state. The conceptual focus on protection from neopatrimonial pressures broadens a theoretical discussion that has been too strongly focused on elite interests while reconciling seemingly discrepant arguments about whether highly effective niches require autonomy from political elites or, conversely, the active sponsorship of political elites. The chapter develops a four-part typology of political elite interest-alignment with organizational goals, which includes the elite sponsorship that has captured prior attention but also draws attention to two typically overlooked conditions that are also capable of fostering effective niches: merely interested elites and inattentive elites. The framework engages a larger pantheon of work on state capacity, including work by Charles Tilly and Daniel Carpenter.

This chapter considers political interest, political knowledge, and democratic values (belief in a duty to vote). It confirms that those who migrated to Britain as adults show higher levels of duty to vote than the white British and quite high levels of interest in the politics of their homeland, but their interest in and knowledge of British politics is rather lower than that of the British majority group. Interest in homeland and British politics often go together, and bonding social capital within ethnic groups often goes with increased interest in politics generally. There is a major decline across generations in levels of interest in homeland politics, and a convergence towards British levels of interest, knowledge, and duty. There is no sign that particular minorities, for example Muslim groups, are more resistant to change than others.

This chapter investigates justifications for the electoral college. It focuses in particular on the protection of significant interests which would be overlooked or harmed under a system of direct election of the president. Advocates argue that allocation of electoral votes by states that then cast their votes as units ensures that presidential candidates will be attentive to and protective of state-based interests, especially the interests of states with small populations. As such, the chapter considers the question from several angles. It asks how much additional protection states—especially small states—require. The chapter also considers whether or not presidential candidates appeal directly to state interests and give disproportionate attention to small states in their campaigns and if the electoral college gives minorities special influence in the selection of the president.

This chapter focuses on political attitudes and policy preferences of Turkish citizens in various salient policy domains. The chapter makes use of several public opinion surveys conducted in Turkey during the period between 1990 and 2015. Firstly, the chapter is concerned with levels of political interest among the Turkish public, and across different subpopulations. The chapter then goes on to consider the public policy issues which have been salient to the Turkish public over the last ten years and the policy preferences of Turkish citizens regarding these salient public policy issues. The current analysis of the policy preferences of the Turkish public points at probable causes of discontent with certain public policies in Turkey as well as the potential areas for policy change where substantial public support can be consolidated.

This chapter discusses the efforts of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to control corruption and political manipulation. It describes the types of corruption involved with relief during the New Deal and presents a brief overview of the New Deal programs. This chapter traces how political influences shaped the administration of relief programs and documents how relief administered by the national government differed from relief administered by states. It concludes that the transformation of public relief in the United States occurred because of the political interests of President Roosevelt and his administration.

This chapter examines how professional expertise is produced and consumed by members of the foreign policy community in Southeast Asia. Foreign policymakers in Southeast Asia explain their beliefs about American power by drawing on their professional expertise as a source of evidence and interpretive schema. Professional expertise can thus be interpreted as a set of cues that influence beliefs. Foreign policy professionals have good reasons to attend to such cues, reasons that go beyond self-interest or political expedience. This chapter argues that foreign policy expertise, although rooted in the political interests of powerholders, is not reproduced in obviously political or coercive ways. It shows that members of the foreign policy community rarely engage in probabilistic reasoning or effortful knowledge-testing strategies. It also discusses the affective biases prevailing in foreign policy circles, particularly in terms of the social relations and diffuse cultural consumption that can be expected to make positive beliefs about the United States more likely.

This chapter discusses the lowest point and darkest period in Atlanta politics. During the period from 1909 to the New Deal, Atlanta politics, and black political interest and influence plummeted to their lowest point. In 1908, the Georgia legislature passed a statewide act that disfranchised blacks except in general, open, and special elections. With little or no interference from the Republican Party or the federal government, the black Atlantans faced a new period of political helplessness. This nadir of black politics had been foreshadowed by the disastrous race riot of 1906, which, while it eventually led to at least a temporary improvement in race relations in Atlanta, did little in itself to change the rabid negrophobia that was now prevailing in Georgia politics. In this chapter, the moves to disfranchise and segregate blacks from the social, economical, and political opportunities accorded to the whites are discussed and examined. After the riot of 1906, blacks suffered a racist move that marginalized and restrained them from political involvement and from enjoying public facilities such as educational facilities, housing facilities, and transportation. In the years before the Great Depression, Atlanta blacks waged persistent moves for more and better schools for their children and equality for black teachers; resistance against Jim Crownism in public transportation and in housing; and moves for more living space. Yet almost all of these issues were fought outside of the realm of electoral politics. This period can be correctly seen as a nadir only in the sense of the legal exclusion of the blacks, and the resulting political lethargy, based upon all-important white primaries in the city. The continued political agitation away from the polls, and the flexing of muscles in an occasional special or general election, was an important portent for the future of black politics and black life in the city.