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A study of the 1976 televised Carter-Ford debates found that the debates produced a heightened political awareness in viewers in the critical days just prior to the election. Data came from the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan 1976 presidential election survey of 2,875 adults. Questions were designed to measure response to the debates, newspaper & television usage habits & political attitudes. Results indicated that information obtained by viewers from the debates focused largely on candidate competence, performance & personality attributes rather than on issues, but that some increase in information on issues & policies can be linked to the debates. The major impact of the debates may have been to reinforce partisan predispositions. 6 Tables, 3 Figures. Modified AA.

Résumé Nous examinons comment l'intérêt manifesté par les citoyens pour la chose publique façonne la politique présidentielle. Notre outil d'analyse consiste en un macro-modèle de la politique américaine fondé sur des données empiriques et des évaluations économétriques tirées de la deuxième moitié du 20 e siècle. Nous procédons à des simulations stochastiques pour déterminer dans quelle mesure une variation de l'attention du public influe sur la responsabilité des élus devant l'électorat et sur l'efficacité du système de représentation dynamique. D'un point de vue qualitatif, une plus grande réactivité du public génère une responsabilité et une efficacité accrues. Néanmoins, les résultats quantitatifs laissent à penser que l'impact d'une augmentation de la réactivité des citoyens pourrait être plus modeste que spectaculaire.

By incorporating emotionality, we propose to enrich information-processing models of citizens' behavior during election campaigns. We demonstrate that two distinct dynamic emotional responses play influential roles during election campaigns: anxiety and enthusiasm. Anxiety, responding to threat and novelty, stimulates attention toward the campaign and political learning and discourages reliance on habitual cues for voting. Enthusiasm powerfully influences candidate preferences and stimulates interest and involvement in the campaign. The findings support a theoretical perspective that regards cognitive and emotional processes as mutually engaged and mutually supportive rather than as antagonistic. We suggest that the democratic process may not be undermined by emotionality as is generally presupposed. Instead, we believe that people use emotions as tools for efficient information processing and thus enhance their abilities to engage in meaningful political deliberation.

We examine the politics of the strategic agenda. Abstracting a politics on the liberal-conservative dimension, we analyze Key Vote roll call data from the U.S. House of Representatives during the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations. The data suggest that politicians set the policy agenda in a strategic fashion. Because they consider such factors as long-term political goals, the changing institutional setting, and plebiscitary presidential politics, agenda-setters propose legislation that only imperfectly reflects their and the membership's wishes on the issue at hand. Thus, as the final stage in the political process, the strategic selection of an agenda provides a means by which factors other than policy preferences affect policy outcomes. The analyses affirm the strategic agenda as a core element in political life.

The Macro Polity, first published in 2002, provides a comprehensive model of American politics at the system level. Focusing on the interactions between citizen evaluations and preferences, government activity and policy, and how the combined acts of citizens and governments influence one another over time, it integrates understandings of matters such as economic outcomes, presidential approval, partisanship, elections, and government policy-making into a single model. Borrowing from the perspective of macroeconomics, it treats electorates, politicians, and governments as unitary actors, making decisions in response to the behavior of other actors. The macro and longitudinal focus makes it possible to directly connect the behaviors of electorate and government. The surprise of macro-level analysis, emerging anew in every chapter, is that order and rationality dominate explanations. This book argues that the electorates and governments that emerge from these analyses respond to one another in orderly and predictable ways