Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States.

In this article, we present data showing that national legislators are more tolerant than the public in Britain, Israel, New Zealand and the United States. Two explanations for this phenomenon are presented and assessed. The first is the selective recruitment of Members of Parliament, Knesset and Congress from among those in the electorate whose demographic, ideological and personality characteristics predispose them to be tolerant. Although this process does operate in all four countries, it is insufficient to explain all of the differences in tolerance between elites and the public in at least three countries. The second explanation relies on a process of explicitly political socialization, leading to differences in tolerance between elites and their public that transcend individual-level, personal characteristics. Relying on our analysis of political tolerance among legislators in the four countries, we suggest how this process of political socialization may be operating.

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Digital Transformations of the Public Arena

10.1017/9781009064484 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Andreas Jungherr ◽

Ralph Schroeder

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Structural Changes ◽

Digital Technologies ◽

The United States ◽

Political Elites ◽

The Public ◽

Public Arena ◽

Digital Era ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

New Framework

Digital technologies have changed the public arena, but there is little scholarly consensus about how they have done so. This Element lays out a new framework for the digitally mediated public arena by identifying structural changes and continuities with the pre-digital era. It examines three country cases – the United States, Germany, and China. In these countries and elsewhere, the emergence of new infrastructures such as search engines and social media platforms increasingly mediate and govern the visibility and reach of information, and thus reconfigure the transmission belt between citizens and political elites. This shift requires a rethinking of the workings and dysfunctions of the contemporary public arena and ways to improve it.

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A Rare Moment of Cross-Partisan Consensus: Elite and Public Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada

Canadian Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0008423920000311 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 311-318 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Eric Merkley ◽

Aengus Bridgman ◽

Peter John Loewen ◽

Taylor Owen ◽

Derek Ruths ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Public Opinion ◽

Social Activity ◽

The United States ◽

Recent History ◽

Political Elites ◽

Social Distancing ◽

Public Response ◽

The Public ◽

Multimethod Approach

The COVID-19 pandemic requires an effort to coordinate the actions of government and society in a way unmatched in recent history. Individual citizens need to voluntarily sacrifice economic and social activity for an indefinite period of time to protect others. At the same time, we know that public opinion tends to become polarized on highly salient issues, except when political elites are in consensus (Berinsky, 2009; Zaller, 1992). Avoiding elite and public polarization is thus essential for an effective societal response to the pandemic. In the United States, there appears to be elite and public polarization on the severity of the pandemic (Gadarian et al., 2020). Other evidence suggests that polarization is undermining compliance with social distancing (Cornelson and Miloucheva, 2020). Using a multimethod approach, we show that Canadian political elites and the public are in a unique period of cross-partisan consensus on important questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as its seriousness and the necessity of social distancing.

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The Fallacy of Democratic Elitism: Elite Competition and Commitment to Civil Liberties

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123400006190 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 349-370 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

Paul M. Sniderman ◽

Joseph F. Fletcher ◽

Peter H. Russell ◽

Philip E. Tetlock ◽

Brian J. Gaines

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Large Scale ◽

Political Power ◽

Electoral Competition ◽

Civil Liberties ◽

The United States ◽

Political Elites ◽

Democratic Values ◽

The Public ◽

Mass Public

Since the seminal studies of Stouffer and McClosky it has become accepted that political elites are markedly more committed to civil liberties and democratic values than is the public at large; so much so that political elites should be recognized, in McClosky's words, as ‘the major repositories of the public conscience and as carriers of the Creed’. The argument of this article is that previous analyses have erred by focusing on the contrast between elites taken as a whole and the mass public. The crucial contrast is not between elites and citizens, but rather between groups of elites that are competing one with another for political power.Drawing on large-scale surveys of two modern democracies, Canada and the United States, this article demonstrates that differences among elites in support for civil liberties eclipse, both in size and political significance, differences between elites and citizens. The fallacy of democratic elitism, as this study shows, is its indifference to which elites prevail in the electoral competition for power.

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