The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

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Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time

The course is focused on historical texts, most of them philosophical. Context for understanding the texts and the course of democratic development will be provided in lecture and discussions, and by some background readings (Dunn). We begin with the remarkable Athenian democracy, and its frequent enemy the Spartan oligarchy. In Athens legislation was passed directly by an assembly of all citizens, and executive officials were selected by lot rather than by competitive election. Athenian oligarchs such as Plato more admired Sparta, and their disdain for the democracy became the judgment of the ages, until well after the modern democratic revolutions. Marsilius of Padua in the early Middle Ages argued for popular sovereignty. The Italian citystates of the Middle Ages did without kings, and looked back to Rome and Greece for republican models. During the English Civil War republicans debated whether the few or the many should be full citizens of the regime. The English, French, and American revolutions struggled with justifying and establishing a representative democracy suitable for a large state, and relied on election rather than lot to select officials. The English established a constitutional monarchy, admired in Europe, and adapted by the Americans in their republican constitution. The American Revolution helped inspire the French, and the French inspired republican and democratic revolution throughout Europe during the 19 century.

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Democracy and Its Critics

Many scholars argue that citizens with higher levels of political trust are more likely to grant bureaucratic discretion to public administrators than citizens with lower levels of trust. Trust, therefore, can relieve the tension between managerial flexibility and political accountability in the modern administrative state. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence showing that trust is actually associated with citizens’ willingness to cede policy-making power to government. This article tests theories about political trust and citizen competence using the case of zoning. Trust in local government is found to be an important predictor of support for zoning, but trust in state government and trust in national government have no effect. These findings suggest that trust affects policy choice and helps determine how much power citizens grant to local administrators.

The Importance of Trust in Government for Public Administration: The Case of Zoning

In this paper, we argue that a stable set of characteristics—personality—can help explain mass political opinions and behavior. By analyzing data collected from over 750 people, we examine the influence of the Five-Factor Model of personality on ideology, partisanship, political efficacy, and two forms of political participation. After controlling for a host of demographic factors, we find that openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion help explain public opinion and political behavior. Neuroticism is the only factor that does not influence political life. We conclude by comparing these results to other findings in the field and suggest directions for future research.

The Big Five Personality Factors and Mass Politics

Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) provides researchers with public-domain, free-access personality measurement scales that are proxies of well-established published scales. One of the more commonly used IPIP sets employs 50 items to measure the 5 broad domains of the 5-factor model, with 10 items per factor. The M5-50 (McCord, 2002) is a specific ordering and presentation of this 50-item set. Using data from a sample of 760 faculty, staff, and students at a midsized university, the authors assessed the reliability and construct validity of the M5-50. Cronbach's alphas on the 5 scales ranged from acceptable to excellent. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated reasonably good model fit. Researchers who wish to measure personality would be well advised to consider using the M5-50.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the M5-50: an implementation of the International Personality Item Pool item set.

Definitions of the Appalachian region vary considerably. In this paper we develop a theoretically grounded and empirically based understanding of Appalachia by focusing on the social process of regional identity. Our measure of Appalachian identity is based on the relative number of businesses in a city that include the word "Appalachian" in their name. From this analysis, we find that the core area of Appalachian identity lies in Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, Southern West Virginia, and Southwestern Virginia. We also explore the predictors of Appalachian identity and determine that poverty level, percent Black, elevation, and population density predict Appalachian identity. This work should be of interest to social scientists concerned with the study of regional identity—both inside and outside of Appalachia. Abstract: Las definiciones sobre la region de los Apalaches varian considerablemente. En este trabajo desarrollamos un entendimiento teoricamente fundado y con bases empiricas de los Apalaches, centrandonos en el proceso social de la identidad regional. Nuestra medida de la identidad de los Apalaches se basa en el numero relativo de empresas en una ciudad que incluyen la palabra "Apalaches" en su nombre. A partir de este analisis, encontramos que la zona central de la identidad de los Apalaches se encuentra en el este de Tennessee, el oeste de Carolina del Norte, el este de Kentucky, el sur de West Virginia y el suroeste de Virginia. Tambien exploramos los factores predictivos de la identidad de los Apalaches y determinamos que el nivel de pobreza, porcentaje de Negros, elevacion, y la densidad de poblacion predicen la identidad de los Apalaches. Este trabajo debe ser de interes para los cientificos sociales interesados en el estudio de la identidad regional, tanto dentro como fuera de los Apalaches.

A Geography of Appalachian Identity

Organized interests employ a number of tactics to get what they want. One of the least understood of these tactics is running advertorials—issue advocacy advertisements that are designed to influence citizen opinion. Using a pretest-posttest control group experimental design, the authors examine the effects of advertorials on individual opinions. The authors find that advertorials have an effect on individual opinions but that their effects are different than those of traditional advertisements. Specifically, after examining the effects of an actual ExxonMobil advertorial that appeared on the pages of The New York Times, the authors find that advertorials substantially affect levels of individual issue salience but do not affect individual perceptions of the organized interests that run them. The authors also find that those with relatively high levels of trust in the media are more likely than those with lower levels of trust to be influenced by advertorials.

Christopher A. Cooper

Papers

The Importance of Trust in Government for Public Administration: The Case of Zoning

The Big Five Personality Factors and Mass Politics

Confirmatory factor analysis of the M5-50: an implementation of the International Personality Item Pool item set.

A Geography of Appalachian Identity

MONEY WELL SPENT? An Experimental Investigation of the Effects of Advertorials on Citizen Opinion