Summary Of Tides Of Consent By Stimson
The United States preamble of the constitution strives to display that the public has the power to elect representatives who in return, will embody the public’s opinion. The government should be administered in a manner to promote democracy, equality, and justice. Democracy does not imply that it is a form of government that gives all initial power to the people. Instead it is a system where the public sets limits and boundaries on the government, it creates more of a dialogue between the people and the representatives. As our democratic government enables a platform of a two-way communication process between the governed and the government. In the book “Tides of Consent”, Stimson discusses about how the public opinion is shaped, and the ways
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They may not have a great depth of knowledge about politics or a great interest in government, however even these nonattitudes and sentiments matter. The public’s individual viewpoints are aggregated into a large group, into what is considered the aggregate. Opinions can change and shift in a very consistent, meaningful way which is why each individual’s viewpoint are collected into this aggregate opinion. Therefore, the fact that there are some people with nonattiudes or individuals who do not have firm beliefs and ideologies, does not affect the public opinion as a whole. In fact, it is vital that there isn’t too many attitudes or passionate people amongst the public. A government in which everyone was paying attention and offering their alleged views— would be impractical given the complexity of laws that national government is expected to enact, it’s unrealistic and would only lead to an even less cohesive form of government that would make implementing and carrying out laws even harder. This demonstrates why Stimson theory of “working at the margin” is important, because it allows the government to “observe the aggregate responsiveness mood of only some citizens” (152). Which suggests that the macro-perspective or aggregate, generates the reliability and legitimacy so the average opinion will be that from people who actually pay attention to politics. This makes public opinion significant by thus cancelling out the “noise” or ignorance of most citizens who know almost nothing about
They may not have a great depth of knowledge about politics or a great interest in government, however even these nonattitudes and sentiments matter. The public’s individual viewpoints are aggregated into a large group, into what is considered the aggregate. Opinions can change and shift in a very consistent, meaningful way which is why each individual’s viewpoint are collected into this aggregate opinion. Therefore, the fact that there are some people with nonattiudes or individuals who do not have firm beliefs and ideologies, does not affect the public opinion as a whole. In fact, it is vital that there isn’t too many attitudes or passionate people amongst the public. A government in which everyone was paying attention and offering their alleged views— would be impractical given the complexity of laws that national government is expected to enact, it’s unrealistic and would only lead to an even less cohesive form of government that would make implementing and carrying out laws even harder. This demonstrates why Stimson theory of “working at the margin” is important, because it allows the government to “observe the aggregate responsiveness mood of only some citizens” (152). Which suggests that the macro-perspective or aggregate, generates the reliability and legitimacy so the average opinion will be that from people who actually pay attention to politics. This makes public opinion significant by thus cancelling out the “noise” or ignorance of most citizens who know almost nothing about