1. Mitchell 1996: 49, 77. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago conducts the General Social Survey. [BACK]

2. The survey data are from Harris polls and a survey conducted by the Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University (Blendon et al. 1997: 206–9). [BACK]

3. Kay 1998: 2. For a wide range of explanations for the recent drop in public confidence in government, see Nye, Zelikow, and King 1997. I do not argue that misrepresentation, per se, is the cause of a decline in public trust. Quite the contrary, in chapters 2, 3, and 5, I offer a critique of American politics that goes beyond the distinctive features of its present practice. There may be a greater public awareness of the inadequacy of the existing system, but the quality of representation has probably not declined so much as it has remained low. In this book, I suggest reforms that, if successful, would provide a reason for the public to place greater trust in government. [BACK]

4. Herrera, Herrera, and Smith 1992. The validity of this study’s findings is limited by a low response rate among members of Congress, though the sample the authors obtained did resemble the larger legislative population in some respects. Another approach would be to compare ideological ratings of elected officials with citizen voting in a high-intensity (and presumably more ideologically driven) election. Using this approach, Erikson and Wright 1993 found a significant correlation between the percentage of congressional districts' votes for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election and their House members' voting-record ratings, as calculated by the American Conservative Union and Americans for Democratic Action. To some extent, this approach simply measures partisanship twice—once as presidential vote and once as roll-call

5. Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993: 247–53. As these authors write in their summary, "At the ballot box, state electorates hold a strong control over the ideological direction of policies in their states. In anticipation of this electoral monitoring, state legislatures and other policymakers take public opinion into account when enacting state policy." In the authors' view, individual voters routinely evaluate candidates and parties inaccurately, but their errors tend to cancel one another out. The net result is an aggregate voting pattern that represents the larger public. The same argument with regard to collective versus individual public opinion is made by Page and Shapiro 1992: individuals may give erratic and uninformed survey responses, but the average view shows stability, rationality, and responsiveness to changing external realities. [BACK]

6. Robert Dahl considers this issue so important that he made the "Criterion of Enlightened Understanding" one of only five basic features of his democratic ideal (Dahl 1989: 127). [BACK]

7. On the distinction between preference and judgment, see Fishkin 1991, 1995, Mathews 1994, and Yankelovich 1991. Daniel Yankelovich argues that the public has reached a solid "public judgment" on some issues, such as abortion, but remains uninformed and undecided on most issues. In chapter 3, I use John Zaller’s model of public opinion to describe how the general public views issues and makes judgments. Zaller views his model as a source of optimism (Zaller 1992: 313–14), but I concur with Patricia Hurley’s more pessimistic conclusion: "By the very logic of [Zaller’s ] model, those with limited political awareness will not be able to distinguish between" the "sublime and the ridiculous." Consequently, "the model could also be interpreted as suggesting that any observed correspondence of public opinion and policy is indirect at best and spurious at worst" (Hurley 1994: 531). [BACK]

8. This is part of Robert Bernstein’s critique of the "myth of constituency control." After analyzing the correspondence between congressional and constituent ideology, Bernstein concludes: "Elections serve to promote limited constituency influence, but that limited influence may not make government policy more responsive to the wishes of the people as a whole. Only to the extent that interested minorities are representative of the public as a whole does the limited influence exerted by those minorities encourage government responsiveness to the policy preferences (good or bad) of the public" (Bernstein 1989: 102). Bennett and Resnick 1990 finds just such differences between the views of voters and nonvoters; the gap between frequent voters and nonvoters is probably even larger. If one is concerned about enlightened preferences, then the problem is the lack of correspondence between likely voters' unreflective views and the larger public’s deliberative judgments. [BACK]

9. Erikson and Wright 1993: 113. [BACK]

10. Dodd 1992: 425. For example, Douglas Arnold’s model of legislators as "controlled agents" is designed to demonstrate how an inattentive public gets sound representation; instead, the model highlights how legislators' fears of

11. Dodd 1992: 426. [BACK]

13. Dodd 1992: 426. [BACK]

14. Thanks to Randy Nielsen at the Kettering Foundation for reminding me of this truism. In a survey of North Carolina residents, 61 percent directly labeled themselves "cynics" by agreeing with the statement, "I consider myself to be cynical or pessimistic about politicians." Only 22 percent disagreed with the statement, with 17 percent giving DK/NA responses. See Jim Morrill, "Politics a Turn-Off for Most Carolinians," Charlotte Observer, August 18, 1997, A1. [BACK]

15. Hetherington 1998 finds such a causal connection between general system distrust and cynicism toward individual leaders. [BACK]

16. Tolchin 1995 makes these connections in examining how distrust in elected officials grows into anger and rage toward political institutions. The Los Angeles riots that erupted after the verdict in the Rodney King case had a more immediate cause, but anger toward government may also have fueled the hostility displayed. [BACK]

17. See Page 1996; Popkin 1994: 225; and Zaller 1992. "The choices of voters can be approximately rational because of, not merely despite, their shortfalls in information" (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991: 178). [BACK]

18. Crimmins 1995: xv, xvii. [BACK]

19. Barber 1998b: 65. "Both government and the private sector can and should be humbled by the growth of civil society, for it absorbs some of the public aspirations of the government (its commitment to public work) without being coercive, and it maintains liberty without yielding to the jungle anarchy of commercial markets" (ibid.). Earlier, Barber 1984 had described electoral reforms as integral to transforming weak liberal democracy into a stronger, more participatory form of democracy. [BACK]

20. Bell 1995 points out that most residents in these communities do not even become very active in their own residential associations. [BACK]

21. For examples of prominent writings on deliberation and civil society that all but ignore elections, see Bohman and Rehg 1997; Boyte 1989; Dionne 1998; Elster 1998; Mathews 1994; and Gutmann and Thompson 1996. [BACK]

22. See Putnam 1993 and Boyte 1989. I provide examples of such community-based action in chapter 6. [BACK]

23. Walzer 1991: 301. The clearest exception is the work of James Fishkin (1991, 1995), who stresses the importance of elections and addresses them in depth. He connects deliberation and elections through a national debate, but I suggest making a much stronger link from the public’s deliberative voice to the election of public officials. As Christiane Olivio argues, the point is not to create an autonomous civil society but to create one that "provides a rational, critical, and influential discourse influencing the state’s policies and actions" (Olivio 1998: 248). Barber 1984 also tries to link deliberative democracy and electoral reform. [BACK]

24. On the National Issues Convention, see Fishkin 1995; McCombs and Reynolds 1999. On the citizen juries, see Crosby 1995. For a review of a wide range of public participation programs, see Webler and Renn 1995. [BACK]

25. On participant effects, see Tom W. Smith 1999. On viewer effects, see Rasinski, Bradburn, and Lauen 1999. [BACK]

26. Ryfe 1998: 13. [BACK]