Susan Davis Cantril Explores the paradox that what many Americans say about government in general is often at odds with what they say they want it to do in specific areas.
People think in more than one dimension.
This book takes a seeming contradiction and demonstrates there isconsiderable coherence to what others have dismissed as noise. This is the most ambitious attack ever on a long-standing puzzle in public opinion research. If you turn to the public for an answer to this question, you confront a paradox. What people say about government as a general matter is often at odds with what they actually want it to do. This is seen most often when people say government is doing too many things and at the same time want its activities in a host of areas continued, if not expanded.