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POLICY SUBSTANCE IN THE PUBLIC MIND: The Issue Structure of Mass Politics
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POLICY SUBSTANCE IN THE PUBLIC MIND
Abstract
The challenges in isolating the substantive conflict in American politics as it
actually moves the mass public are truly daunting. Two such challenges dominate all others, however. First, it is necessary to have consistent measures of the main domains of policy conflict across the postwar years, itself a demanding challenge. But second, it is necessary to combine these into a consistent issue structure across that same period, else good individual measures will mislead as much as they help, by masking and distorting the mix of available policy concerns.
This paper builds on previous APSA papers aimed at eliciting this issue structure,
and moves on to its impact on voting behavior from 1952 through 2000. A set of measures for the policy domains of social welfare, foreign affairs, civil rights, and cultural values are developed, with much confirmation of an existing literature specialized to these domains, plus some twists that arrive with the ability to address them in an extended time-frame. These individual measures are then combined into a more comprehensive picture, an ‘issue structure’, so that their influence within a richer issue context can be examined.
What results is a picture of postwar American politics at the mass level,
confirmed in many familiar ways but, we hope, nuanced in many others and actually disconfirmed in a few. Said differently, what results is a picture of social welfare as the dominating issue concern in this politics among the general public, with foreign affairs as an important—and frequently cross-cutting—secondary concern. Civil rights changes its partisan direction as the postwar years pass. And cultural values does the same, while exploding to prominence in recent years.
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| | Authors: Claggett, William. and Shafer, Byron. |
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2
POLICY SUBSTANCE IN THE PUBLIC MIND
Abstract
The challenges in isolating the substantive conflict in American politics as it
actually moves the mass public are truly daunting. Two such challenges dominate all
others, however. First, it is necessary to have consistent measures of the main domains of
policy conflict across the postwar years, itself a demanding challenge. But second, it is
necessary to combine these into a consistent issue structure across that same period, else
good individual measures will mislead as much as they help, by masking and distorting
the mix of available policy concerns.
This paper builds on previous APSA papers aimed at eliciting this issue structure,
and moves on to its impact on voting behavior from 1952 through 2000. A set of
measures for the policy domains of social welfare, foreign affairs, civil rights, and
cultural values are developed, with much confirmation of an existing literature
specialized to these domains, plus some twists that arrive with the ability to address them
in an extended time-frame. These individual measures are then combined into a more
comprehensive picture, an ‘issue structure’, so that their influence within a richer issue
context can be examined.
What results is a picture of postwar American politics at the mass level,
confirmed in many familiar ways but, we hope, nuanced in many others and actually
disconfirmed in a few. Said differently, what results is a picture of social welfare as the
dominating issue concern in this politics among the general public, with foreign affairs as
an important—and frequently cross-cutting—secondary concern. Civil rights changes its
partisan direction as the postwar years pass. And cultural values does the same, while
exploding to prominence in recent years.
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