Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics book cover

Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics

Author(s): Vincent L. Hutchings (Author)

Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 22 Aug. 2005
Edition: Revised ed.
Language: English
Print length: 192 pages
ISBN-10: 0691123799
ISBN-13: 9780691123790

Book Description

Much of public opinion research over the past several decades suggests that the American voters are woefully uninformed about politics and thus unable to fulfill their democratic obligations. Arguing that this perception is faulty, Vincent Hutchings shows that, under the right political conditions, voters are surprisingly well informed on the issues that they care about and use their knowledge to hold politicians accountable.

Though Hutchings is not the first political scientist to contend that the American public is more politically engaged than it is often given credit for, previous scholarship--which has typically examined individual and environmental factors in isolation--has produced only limited evidence of an attentive electorate. Analyzing broad survey data as well as the content of numerous Senate and gubernatorial campaigns involving such issues as race, labor, abortion, and defense, Hutchings demonstrates that voters are politically engaged when politicians and the media discuss the issues that the voters perceive as important. Hutchings finds that the media--while far from ideal--do provide the populace with information regarding the responsiveness of elected representatives and that groups of voters do monitor this information when "their" issues receive attention. Thus, while the electorate may be generally uninformed about and uninterested in public policy, a complex interaction of individual motivation, group identification, and political circumstance leads citizens concerned about particular issues to obtain knowledge about their political leaders and use that information at the ballot box.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[This book] will be widely read, and future research on democratic accountability will need to take both Hutchings' arguments and his empirical evidence into account. . . . [A] first-rate examination of one of the discipline's most fundamental concerns."---Martin Gilens, Perspectives on Politics

"[T]he innovative use of attitudinal and contextual data makes this a very useful starting point for future research in the fields of public opinion and electoral behaviour."---Pat Lyons, Political Studies Review

"This is a well argued and nicely written work that presents the findings in a nontechnical fashion, and it also offers technical appendices for interested readers."---Lawrence J. Grossback, Perspectives on Political Science

"Vincent Hutchings's Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability offers an insightful and clever contribution to our thinking about a persistent paradox. . . . [H]e provides an important supplement to existing scholarship that consists of two seemingly disparate components--and understanding of the general public as uninterested and uninformed about most political issues on the one hand, and research showing that politicians and candidates are remarkably responsive to public sentiment, on the other hand."---Michael Xenos, Public Opinion Quarterly

From the Back Cover

"This book makes original and creative use of different data sets to examine some key questions about the functioning of political representation and elite linkages."--Virginia Sapiro, University of Wisconsin

"A giant step forward in our understanding of citizen competence and democratic accountability."--Paul Freedman, University of Virginia

About the Author

Vincent L. Hutchings

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability

Name: Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics
Author: Vincent L. Hutchings (Author)
ISBN: 9780691123790

How Citizens Learn about PoliticsBy Vincent L. Hutchings

Princeton University Press

Chapter One

ISSUE IMPORTANCE, POLITICAL CONTEXT, AND DEMOCRATIC RESPONSIVENESS

ARGUABLY the most important issue facing the country in 1968 was the war in Vietnam. By the beginning of that year, almost 30 percent of Americans had friends or relatives among the approximately half a million troops stationed in Southeast Asia (Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978). Additionally, the war was costing taxpayers well over twenty billion dollars each year, and roughly one hundred U.S. soldiers-and an untold number of Vietnamese-were being killed per week (Page and Brody 1972). Americans had become accustomed to, as well as disgusted with, the nightly images of the conflict that were displayed in their homes via the network news. Public opinion was sharply divided between supporters of the war and an increasingly vocal peace movement. This movement did not yet represent majority sentiment in the country, but the prospect that it might eventually influence American foreign policy seemed very real. Still, when the leader of the antiwar movement in Congress, Senator Eugene McCarthy, emerged to challenge President Lyndon Johnson for the leadership of the Democratic Party, many observers thought his chances for success were remote. Nevertheless, McCarthy engaged in a determined effort to unseat the president, beginning with an intensive campaign in the New Hampshire primary. McCarthy garnered a surprising 42 percent of the vote in this contest, compared to 48 percent for President Johnson. Although technically a victory for the president, many interpreted this election as a moral victory for the antiwar movement and a resounding defeat for the administration's policies in Vietnam. Shortly after the New Hampshire primary, Johnson withdrew from the Democratic primary. His presidency was effectively over.

On its face, the preceding account appears to be an excellent example of the significant role that voters play in our representative form of democracy. However, scholars of public opinion recognize that there is one important point missing from this story. Public opinion polls would later reveal that most of McCarthy's supporters in the New Hampshire primary actually favored an escalation of hostilities in the war rather than withdrawal (Converse 1975). Moreover, most of these voters mistakenly thought that McCarthy also favored a more "hawkish" stance. In short, one of the most glaring examples of the influence of public opinion in recent American history highlights the deficiencies of the electorate more so than its strengths.

Decades of public opinion research have provided voluminous support for this conclusion. For example, less than half of respondents in national surveys know both the name and party affiliation of their representative in Congress (Jacobson 1992). Further, barely a majority can provide this information for the senator seeking reelection in their home state. Typically, these percentages are even lower for congressional challengers. A skeptic might counter that this information is relatively unimportant as long as voters have a fairly accurate sense about where politicians stand on the issues. Unfortunately, even this information is unknown to much of the public. For example, over 40 percent of Americans either had no idea, or an inaccurate perception, of how their senators voted on the high-profile decision to go to war in the Persian Gulf or the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. When one considers that roughly half would accurately identify their senators' vote based purely on chance, this figure seems particularly low. Moreover, at least this many citizens are also unaware of the traditional differences between the Republican and Democratic parties on issues such as social welfare spending, social security, defense spending, and taxes (Bennett 1995).

All of this might suggest that politicians can safely ignore the opinions of their constituents. Strangely enough, this is not the case. An equally large literature indicates that politicians are often quite concerned with how their constituents will react to their policy positions. For instance, as explored in more detail in chapter 3, many senators publicly agonized over their vote on the Thomas confirmation because of concerns about constituent reaction. More than a few senators also declared that it was the toughest vote they ever had to cast.

The well-known political ignorance of the American voter juxtaposed with the genuine concern politicians express about faithfully representing their constituents begs the following question. Why do politicians worry about their voting record if voters are only dimly aware of this information? The aim of this book is to provide an answer to this question through an examination of survey data drawn from both Senate and gubernatorial elections. In brief, I argue that the perception of the American public as generally uninformed on political matters, although strictly accurate, is also misleading. In fact, under the right circumstances, voters are surprisingly well informed on the issues that they care about.

It is true that most citizens are often only vaguely aware of the issue positions of major political candidates (Bennett 1995; Smith 1989). This ignorance becomes more pronounced as one moves from presidential elections down to the less visible campaigns in Congress (Jacobson 1992; Mann and Wolfinger 1980; Stokes and Miller 1962). There are a number of reasons why this is so. Chief among these, ironically, is the generally high level of policy responsiveness. For example, presidential candidates, particularly the successful ones, generally agree with most voters on the issues (Page 1978). Additionally, members of Congress frequently share the same views and values as their constituents and thus need only follow their own preferences in order to successfully represent their state or district (Miller and Stokes 1963). In summary, voters often do not pay attention to politics because politicians see to it that they do not have to.

This is not to say that politicians never vote against their constituents' interests. I will argue, however, that this is not as common as many expect in large part because of the specter of constituent vigilance. This general tendency toward responsiveness makes it difficult for challengers to exploit an incumbent's record, and, consequently, voters are not regularly confronted with issue-laden campaigns. Only infrequently do incumbents fail to anticipate what some scholars refer to as the "potential preferences" of voters. I will show that when politicians do misread the public, however, interested voters learn about it, provided the media or political challengers convey this information to them. In short, voters are generally as informed about their incumbent's performance in office as they ought to be, given the relatively high levels of responsiveness, and they are about as informed as they can be, given the information made available.

This study provides a broad description and theoretical assessment of how voters observe and evaluate political actors. As indicated above, this book focuses entirely on state-level contests, but there is no reason why its conclusions cannot also be applied to national or local elections. The latter part of the book...

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