Few, if any, would deny that political parties are integral to representative democracy as we know it. And yet since the 1960s it has become increasingly commonplace to encounter references in academic literature, journalistic comment, and polemical assertion alike to the `decline of party', a contention usually predicated on the view that parties are `failing' in a variety of respects. We have...

As the experience of Russia and some Eastern European countries has demonstrated, economic reform is difficult to carry out when the rank-and-file officials or bureaucrats to whom authorities must turn to implement change resist the reforms in order to protect their vested interests. Drawing on an unusual longitudinal survey data set for a representative rural county in northern China, we show ...

Although Americans generally hold science in high regard and respect its findings, for some contested issues, such as the existence of anthropogenic climate change, public opinion is polarized along religious and political lines. We ask whether individuals with more general education and greater science knowledge, measured in terms of science education and science literacy, display more (or les...

This article critically examines Justice McHugh’s use of the idea of representative government, an idea that has been crucial to the development of the implied freedom of political communication in the High Court. According to Justice McHugh, the Court ought to limit itself to what he calls the ‘constitutionally prescribed system of representative government’, a conception ostensibly grounded u...

As social scientists have investigated the political and social factors influencing public opinion in science-related policy debates, there has been growing interest in the implications of this research for public communication and outreach. Given the level of political polarization in the United States, much of the focus has been on partisan differences in public opinion, the strategies employ...

Political scientists traditionally have analyzed the effect of politics on subjective well-being (SWB) at the collective level, finding that more liberal countries report greater SWB. Conversely, psychologists have focused primarily on SWB at the individual level and shown that being more conservative corresponds in greater SWB. We integrate the theoretical foundations of these 2 literatures (e...

Over the past 30 years, the economy of China has sustained rapid growth. However, the extensive development pattern severely deteriorates the ecological environment, which has been recognized as adverse effects on citizens’ physical and mental health. Simultaneously, the political trust in China has been in decline after staying at a high level for a long time. In this paper, we state that, in ...

This article focuses on people’s beliefs about how other people’s political attitudes are shaped and examines how the hypothesis of a third-person effect is related to non-mediated sources of information such as personal experience and interpersonal communication. Also presented are results on the perceived impact of different media such as television, newspapers and political advertising. A re...

Widespread misperceptions undermine citizens' decision-making ability. Conclusions based on falsehoods and conspiracy theories are by definition flawed. This article demonstrates that individuals' epistemic beliefs-beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how one comes to know-have important implications for perception accuracy. The present study uses a series of large, nationally representati...

Introduction Both Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be grouped among the key thinkers of the eighteenth century. They are widely understood to be quite different from one another, and their outlooks—especially their political-philosophical views—are often contrasted by scholars. Among those who have profitably contrasted Burke with Rousseau is the early twentieth century literary schol...