American Public Opinion, Advocacy, and Policy in Congress
What the Public Wants and What It Gets

This book is the first to examine what influences Congress across the hundreds of issues it deals with, and produces some surprising conclusions.

Paul Burstein (Author)

9781107684256, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 January 2014

248 pages, 1 b/w illus. 22 tables
21.3 x 14 x 4.3 cm, 0.29 kg

'If the big findings of the book are the absence of large effects for opinion and advocacy, there are still a host of interesting nuggets along the way … Throughout the book the reader is reminded of both how much work went into designing the study and collecting the appropriate data, and why so few scholars have gone this route.' Marc Dixon, Mobilization

Between one election and the next, members of Congress introduce thousands of bills. What determines which become law? Is it the public? Do we have government 'of the people, by the people, for the people?' Or is it those who have the resources to organize and pressure government who get what they want? In the first study ever of a random sample of policy proposals, Paul Burstein finds that the public can get what it wants - but mainly on the few issues that attract its attention. Does this mean organized interests get what they want? Not necessarily - on most issues there is so little political activity that it hardly matters. Politics may be less of a battle between the public and organized interests than a struggle for attention. American society is so much more complex than it was when the Constitution was written that we may need to reconsider what it means, in fact, to be a democracy.

1. Introduction
2. Policy change
3. Public opinion
4. Advocacy: how Americans try to influence Congress
5. The impact of advocacy on congressional action
6. Advocacy, information, and policy innovation
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Politics & government [JP]