Uncertainty in American Politics

This 2003 book represents an intellectual meeting of researchers to analyze how and why uncertainty affects American politics.

Barry C. Burden (Edited by)

9780521812733, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 July 2003

268 pages, 17 b/w illus. 20 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.57 kg

"Overall, the essays are evocative and well written and, even though they focus on American politics, they should be of interest to a broad audience of political scientists. Highly recommended." Choice

This 2003 book represents an exciting intellectual meeting of researchers from diverse subfields to analyze how and why uncertainty affects American politics. It seeks to reconnect research traditions that have seldom spoken to one another. Though used by formal theorists, empiricists, and historians in a parallel fashion for a number of years, the notion of uncertainty has often been introduced only to explain away anomalies, provide backing for a larger argument, or justify a particular methodology. Uncertainty has rarely been considered in its own right or as a concept that might connect researchers from different subfields. The authors demonstrate some of the many substantive effects that uncertainty has on the bureaucracy, voters, and elected officials. They also reveal the origins and consequences of uncertainty to remind researchers across the discipline how central the idea should be to any serious study of US politics.

Part I. Elite and Institutional Politics: 1. Explaining the growth of the presidential branch: a theory and test Matthew J. Dickinson
2. Political uncertainty and administrative procedures Richard G. Vanden Bergh and Rui J. P. de Figueiredo Jr.
3. Uncertainty, political institutions, and the administrative state reconsidered George A. Krause
4. Bureaucracy and uncertainty Laurence O'Toole and Kenneth J. Meier
5. Uncertainty and political debate: how the dimensionality of political issues gets reduced in the legislative process Bryan D. Jones, Jeffrey C. Talbert and Matthew Potoski
Part II. Citizen and Electoral Politics: 6. Declining uncertainty: presidents, public opinion, and polls John G. Geer and Prateek Goorha
7. Uncertainty in American public opinion R. Michael Alvarez, John Brehm and Catherine Wilson
8. Risk and uncertainty as sources of incumbent insecurity Cherie D. Maestas
9. Black candidates, white voters: how uncertainty and information shape the white vote Zoltan Hajnal.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Regional studies [GTB]