Winner of the Doris Graber Award, American Political Science Association, 2013Democracy is, by its very nature, often rude. But there are limits to how uncivil we should be. In the 2010 edition of Rude Democracy, Susan Herbst explored the ways we discuss public policy, how we treat each other as we do, and how we can create a more civil national culture. She used the examples of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama to illustrate her case. She also exa...
This book explores how a variety of social groups-women, African-Americans and political radicals-create their own 'public spheres, ' parallel to the mainstream public arena.
READING PUBLIC OPINION offers a provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. Scholar Susan Herbst reveals that how public opinion is actually assessed has little to do with the mass public. Her original and important book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the place of public opinion in contemporary politics.
Preface Introduction 1: Quantification and Rationality 2: Numbers and Symbolic Politics 3: Techniques of Opinion Expression and Measurement 4: Partisan Politics and the Symbolic Use of Straw Polls, 1856-1936 5: Congressmen, Journalists, and Opinion Assessment, 1930-1950 6: Contemporary Public Opinion Research 7: Crowd Estimation and Public Opinion 8: Opinion Quantification and Democracy Notes BibliographyIndex
Susan Herbst is Professor of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, and Chief Academic Officer of The University System of Georgia.¿ She is author of many books and articles on American politics including Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics, Politics at the Margin, and Reading Public Opinion: Political Actors View the Democratic Process.¿ Previously, she was acting president and Provost of the State University of New York...
