The Macro Polity (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: January 28, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 494
ISBN-13: 9780521563895
Subjects: Elections & referenda; Macroeconomics; Political science & theory; Psychology; Politics and government; Political Science; Politics / Current Events; United States; Politics/International Relations; North America; Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights; Political Science / General; Political participation--United States; Public Policy - General; Political participation; Public opinion
First sentence: This book is about politics in the United States.
Description: "The Macro Polity provides the first 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."--BOOK JACKET.