Political Eras and Representation

有人认为，美国政治是美国舆论力量的代表。随着时间的推移，政治家和其他政策参与者意识到国民情绪的变化，并对此做出反应，这种代表性就会出现。公众情绪被认为是对公共政策的一种模糊和普遍的倾向。它不支持或反对特定政策，也不反对特定政策的特定变化，它被认为是如此普遍，以至于在特定时期的每次国内政策辩论中都能看到它的影响。这种情绪的系统运动产生了政治时代，即公众愿意赞同特定类型的政策变化，但限制其他政策变化的时代。例如，20世纪60年代被广泛认为是公众对各种各样的自由主义政策实验持宽容态度的时期，而（早期）80年代则是相反的情况。这些观点在政治评论中有着广泛的、几乎是普遍的流通，以至于许多人认为它们的真理太明显了，不值得研究。但在政治科学中，情绪和时代在公众舆论的主流观念中根本没有任何作用。在那里，人们通常认为，对政策细节的态度源于政策辩论本身，是对具体问题的具体反应。或者在政治心理学中，它们的出现是因为它们满足了观点持有者的需要。如果情绪和时代确实存在，那么由于这类信息丰富而廉价，政策制定者很可能会感觉到它们。实际的政策选择也有可能受到影响，例如，那些感受到支持自己立场的情绪的人会采取更强硬的立场。这将产生一种非常直接和有意义的长期表现。公众偏好的变化会导致政策的变化。这是一个很适合民主理论的“代表制”概念，但与我们通常关注的地理概念——地区和代表——大不相同。“情绪”作为一种纯粹的群体现象，在过去被这位研究者成功地测量过。关键是分析政策偏好的“边际”——对一个问题选择一种或另一种回答的百分比——随时间和议题的变化。该措施利用大量问题和时间点的杠杆作用来克服边缘作为数据的固有缺点和高度选择性测量和报告所产生的偏见。开发了一种方法来测量这些偏好的时间序列的集中趋势。该项目将继续进行手头的情绪表征研究的下一个任务，(1)探索情绪是否可能有多个维度（如“经济”和“社会”成分——普遍认为是这样，但没有支持证据），(2)发展公共政策结果的衡量标准，随着时间的推移，为了(3)检查统计联系，如果它确实存在的话。在公众偏好的变化和公共政策的变化之间。

American politics, it is argued, is representative of the forces of American public opinion. That representation emerges over time as politicians and other policy actors sense change in national mood, and respond to it. Public mood is considered to be a vague and general set of orientations toward public policy. Not support or opposition for particular policies, or particular variations in particular policies, it is considered so general that its effects are seen in each of the domestic policy debates of a particular period. Systematic movement of such moods produces political eras, times when the public is willing to go along with particular kinds of policy changes, but to restrict others. The 1960s, for example, is widely considered a time when the public was tolerant toward liberal sorts of policy experimentation across the board, while the (early) 1980s is the reverse case. These ideas have wide, almost universal, currency in political commentary, so much so that many would think their truth too obvious for research. But in political science there is no role at all for moods and eras in prevailing conceptions of public opinion. There it is usually thought that attitudes toward policy particulars arise from the policy debate itself, are specific reactions to specific questions. Or in political psychological approaches they arise because they meet needs of the opinion holder. If moods and eras exist, then because information of this sort is abundant and cheap, it is likely that policy actors would sense them. It is likely also that acutal policy choices would be affected, that for example, those who sensed supportive moods for their positions would take stronger positions. This would produce a kind of over-time representation of a quite direct and meaningful sort. Changes in public preference would lead to changes in policy. This is a conception of "representation" that is a good fit to democratic theory, but quite different from our usual focus on the concept in geographical terms - - districts and representatives. "Mood" as a purely mass phenomenon has been successfully measured in the past by this investigator. The key is the analysis of policy preference "marginals" - - the percent who chose one or another response to a question - - over time and issues. The measure uses the leverage of very large numbers of issues and time points to overcome the inherent shortcomings of the marginals as data and the biases arising from highly selective measurement and reporting. A methodology is developed for measuring the central tendency of time series of such preferences. This project moves on to the next tasks at hand for the study of mood representation, (1) exploring whether mood might have more than one dimension (such as "economic" and "social" components - - widely believed to be the case but without supporting evidence), (2) developing measures of public policy outcomes on a left-right scale over time, in order to (3) examine the statistical link, if indeed it exists, between changes over time in public preferences and changes in public policy.