3
POLICY SUBSTANCE IN THE PUBLIC MIND:
The Issue Structure of Mass Politics
in the United States during the Postwar Era
Challenges in addressing the substantive conflict in American politics as it
actually moved the mass public across the postwar years are everywhere. They are also
frequently misconceived. Too often, the analysis proceeds as if the presence of
substantive conflicts that actually did characterize politics is itself at issue, with the result
that candidate personalities and campaign dynamics get pride of place. Too often, such
analysis moves on to concentrate on how—indeed, whether—the general public
recognized existing conflicts at all. Yet if one proceeded the other way around,
beginning with postwar political history, where major substantive conflicts are
inescapable, and moving on to ask which of these conflicts did actually move the voting
public (and when they did so), the central problems would immediately shift.
Considered this way, the challenge is not just to elicit comparable measures
across the entire postwar era, a sufficiently demanding standard all by itself. (Zaller
1992) The challenge is also to isolate a comprehensive issue structure for the period, that
is, the full array of substantive issues (and their measures) that were available to the
general public at these points in time. (Carmines & Stimson 1986) Otherwise, even with
a single consistent measure for an extended period of time, as with, for example, public
attitudes on civil rights across the postwar years, it is quite possible for apparent
relationships with mass behavior to be, in fact, artifacts of some other, more dominant
issue cluster that is not in the analysis.
This reformulation of the essential challenge does not make it easier. But it does
change the focus in a fundamental way. Rather than wonder whether American politics
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