Shawn Rosenberg

Rethinking Democratic Deliberation: The Limits and Potential of Citizen Participation

At a time when the western democracies are plagued by increasing political alienation and social fragmentation, political theorists and practioners have embraced a more deliberative approach to democratic governance. The sense of this approach and the political practice it encourages depend on a number of key assumptions regarding the capacities and inclinations of individuals and how they will engage one another in a deliberative setting. Drawing on theory and research in social and developmental psychology, I argue that these assumptions are incorrect. The aim here is not to reject the deliberative view, but to reconstruct it. A more adequate view of cognition, emotion and communication, one that emphasizes the social dimension of individual capacities and orientations, is presented. This leads to a reconsideration of the democratic values of autonomy and equality, and how best to institutionalize deliberative practices.

The Structure of Political Thinking

The research on public opinion focuses on peoples preferences. Inferences are made regarding the political thinking that underlies these preferences, but political thinking itself has received relatively little attention. Here, an attempt is made to offer theory and research that directly address how people think about politics. Drawing on the theoretical insights and empirical research of developmental psychology, two hypotheses are examined: (1) that there is a single cognitive structure that underlies how a person thinks about both political and nonpolitical phenomena and (2) that different people may think about politics in structurally different ways. To characterize the differences in peoples political thinking, three structures of thinking-sequential, linear, and systematic-are described. The validity of the typology is then tested using a combination of open-ended interview and clinical experimental techniques. The results provide strong support for this developmental analysis of political thinking. Most research on political thinking adopts a belief systems approach and examines the political beliefs (the preferences regarding candidates, parties, and policies) people express. While mention is made of the potential contribution of logic and psychology, these beliefs are usually explained with reference to social and cultural forces. (For influential examples of this approach, see Converse, 1964, 1975; Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976.) Here, I suggest a complementary line of inquiry. Rather than focusing on peoples preferences, I offer theory and research that address the nature of the reasoning and understanding that underlie those preferences. Further, instead of concentrating solely on the sociocultural determinants of political thinking, I consider the subjective qualities of thinking which mediate the influence that these environmental forces exercise. The aim is not to suggest that preferences are unimportant or that the impact of environments on political thinking is not critical. Rather, it is to open the domain of inquiry on political thinking and ideology and to provide a broader frame of reference in which these issues may be considered. Among the most important contributions of the belief systems research is the evidence it offers on the general structure of peoples political thinking. This evidence suggests (1) that peoples policy preferences do not cohere along abstract or ideological lines, (2) that the lines along which these preferences do cohere may vary substantially from person to person, and (3) that in a manner presumed to be related to (2), different people prefer candidates and parties for different kinds of substantive reasons. All this naturally gives rise to two questions. How do people think about politics so that they express such seemingly incomprehensible configurations of preferences? To what extent do people really differ in the way they think about politics? These questions are critical and must be a central part of any future agenda for research on ideology and public opinion. Although these questions arise in response to research that adopts the belief

Unfit for Democracy? Irrational, Rationalizing, and Biologically Predisposed Citizens

ABSTRACT Decades of research demonstrate that most people have little knowledge or understanding of politics. Two recent works suggest that this reflects the limits of human cognitive capacity. Rather than being reasoned, political thinking is mostly preconscious, automatic, and recall driven. Consequently, it is vulnerable to contextual cueing, preexisting biases, and biological and genetic predispositions. However, this research is oriented by an inadequate understanding of cognition.

Opinion Formation, Theory of

This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 16, pp. 10876–10879,

Reason & Ideology: Interpreting People's Understanding of American Politics

The study of ideology is stalled for reasons, this article argues, that are more conceptual than empirical. The author reviews the premises that direct mainstream research on ideology and offers an alternative theoretical framework centered on political reasoning rather than belief systems. This alternative-a structural developmental conception of ideology-is then tested empirically with results that suggest it has promise as an approach to the study of ideology.