Politics Government Books

Very interesting content but very difficult to read. One better have all their wits and concentration available in order to wade through this. I can only read it in the morning when my concentration is in top form. As a result I'll probably never get through it, because I save most of my morning reading time for the Wall Street Journal.

I was dialing around cable at my parent's house one day a couple of years ago and ran across the most incredible power point presentation being given by a dude from the Naval War College on CSPAN about how the U.S. should think about security threats in the future. Basically his point was that those alienated from global capitalism are those we need to be most worried about and that places like Central Africa will soon join Afghanistan as geographical locations from which threats will arise. That presentation became this book and it is seriously worth reading. Barnett makes his living predicting bad stuff for the U.S. government (and now, I believe, also for big corporations) and he is very good at what he does. Obviously sites of threats to the U.S. are also sites for new modes of positive resistance (those these things are not interchangeable) and also sights for economic development, so this book struck really close to a lot of my interests.

Interesting ideas and an interesting book. It's a couple of years old now, but still worth picking up.

Dr Barnett is one of those true geniuses with the ability to explain a complex global environment in terms anyone can understand. He clearly describes the current role of the US in global politics and the path we must take to ensure the future for all the peoples with whom we co-inhabit this planet. This is a MUST-READ, particularly for those who question our current involvement in the Middle East. He's unabashedly critical of the Bush Administration and the Pentagon where appropriate. But he also gives credit to the President for his understanding and foresight in the face of the current global epoch.

This is no political manifesto, rather it is a blueprint by which a truly global economy can flourish.

I give this book 5 stars for educating me about how the Pentagon thinks, organizes and deals with Internation issues such as military conflicts.

The "New MAP" refers to the POST COLD WAR ERA. Measuring up possible future world powers vs. multiple smaller conflicts, and how "GLOBALIZATION" is steering countries like China towards becoming more Democractic over time.

Mr. Barnett describes his role at the Pentagon, and politics that steer decisions in war time or peace time (Defense Budget inter fighting).

I'm still reading this book, and I know the data is a bit outdated, but for someone newer to this subject, it's still informative and facinating to read, if this subject interests you.

This book is pure salesmanship for a person and a point of view. It is not fun to read, but it is probably important that it be read because it provides insight into the incredibly mundane world of selling military solutions to congress and the administration. What are touted as great ideas turn out to be simplistic interpretations of the world situation based upon a lack of understanding of culutral diversity and concern for human rights. Because it is important for the public to understand how the U.S. gets into stupid, counterproductive militeary adventrures it is imporant that this book be widely read, however it is tedious and tiresome to be continually barraged with the authors misguided and unsophisticated views.

This is a wise, thoughtful, deeply probing assessment of The United States current situation, with sensible prescriptions to address problems. Every American should read it.

I am sending my copy of "A LETTER TO AMERICA"A Letter to America by David Boren to the Arizona State Superintentent of Public Schools with the recomendation that he read it and mandate it to be required reading for all High School Junior Students. If I could afford it, I'd send a copy to every citizen in the United States!
My wife, Pegge, is ordering a copy to send to Opra.
Tom Downs, Scottsdale, AZ

This book is a must for every American to read. Finally, someone has expressed how I feel about various issues facing our country.

I wish this book was mandatory reading for all High School Seniors and all College Freshman and College Sophmores. Most of my colleagues and friends have long felt that over the past 2 decades our leadership has mis-guided us and short changed us on the quality of stewardship provided. This book uses plain talk to tell a compelling story about events and decisions that have put us where we are, and provides hopeful recommendations on how the future could be shaped.

This short book represents David Boren's current views of the problems facing the USA. I found his dispassionate discussion of the US's relation to the world, the destructiveness of partisanship, campaign corruption, economic health, the disappearing middle class, and the Urgency of Memory (best chapter in the book) to be good summaries of where the USA stands today. I did not see Boren saying "we are at a crossroads", however.

Overall, each of these problems have been discussed in the media in one form or another, so to me, it seem like a better than average repitition of what's out there. However, the CHapter on "The Urgency of Memory" caught my eye and should be restated as an "op Ed" column. It is by far the best chapter in the book, and it contained much in it that was new to me.

Boren quotes the following passage from an address entitled "The Urgency of Memory" in which the importance of Americans returning to humanistic studies was emphasized to understand themselves and their place in the world following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"A nation that does not know why it exists or what it stands for cannot be expected to long endure. We must recover from the amnesia that shrouds our history in darkness, our principles in confusion, and our future in uncertainty. We cannot expect that a nation which has lost its memory will keep its vision. We cannot hope that forgetting our past will enhance our focus for the future."

Boren then summarizes the demise of teaching of American History and Civics in US high schools, colleges, and other institutions of higher learning. He rightfully criticizes the demise of academic standards through out the American educational system because of political correctness and recommends that American history and Civics be required of all university graduates.

My own recollection is that the main purpose of the American primary and secondary school system was to teach American History and civics to immigrants so as to integrate them into American Society. If it is indeed true that American primary and secondary education has abdicated this reponsibility, we are in trouble.

The solution: Mandate that all immigrant and foreign students not only learn English, but also American History and Civics at ALL levels of the US educational system from kindergarten to the graduate school. Once implemented, make it mandatory for ALL students.

How can that be done?: By executive order, instruct the Department of Education to withold federal funding from primry and secondary school systems unless such a requirement is instituted. Second, by executive order, mandate the same requirement in all American Unviersities who receive federal funds for research, extension and other services or risk seeing their funds evaporate. That's at least a start.

As for Boren's other solutions, I found them weak. I felt that they represented a nostalgic trip to his younger days when life was 'simpler' or in the US Senate, where things at one time were more "collegial".
I saw no recommendations that would reinvent America along our traditional model in a new framework for the 21st century.

A Case Against Perfection, which I read in two sittings over 5 hours in one afternoon. I simply could not put the book down, Sandel proposes both sides in the debate of Cloning/Perfomance Enhancement/Gene Therapy etc... Sandel makes you guess and second guess, then triple guess your own beliefs on these issues. In the end, I felt well informed and satisfied with this book. I strongly recommend this book. Not lengthy, fast read, well written.

Enjoy.

The book is quite readable and clear to a reasonable extent. It is also very informative and well researched. The author is commended. However, the issue about research into possibilities about medicine and its technology cannot avoid the question of common sense, finality and the exclsuive nature of "human experience". Pure mechanics will be abnormal in matters that concern the human person. The fears of the author are quite shared. The questions one may asked could be: will the drive for recognition and mere scientific aggrandisement consume man or can man apply his creative imagination to promote the respect for and the dignity of the human person?

This book is quite interesting, it's written in a readable style, and it presents lots of "food for thought" if you read it carefully. The author attempts (fairly successfully) to be balanced although he does take a side (obviously, based on the title). It's probably one of the better presentations on "big ideas" relevant to the future of eugenics. The conclusion is somewhat perfunctory and there is (seemingly extraneous and unconvincing) preaching in favor of stem cell research, but otherwise it's definitely worth reading if you're interested in genethics.

Michael Sandel exhibits a valiant effort at rebuilding the cracking walls of society's dam of morality. His failure is inevitable, due to the materials he uses - he relies solely on nonreligious arguments.

Now, it is admittedly my own prior conviction that reason alone can never stem the tide of relativism - but Michael Sandel has failed to convince me otherwise.

Sandel lists the norms that he wants to maintain in society: unconditional love, openness to all human life, celebration of natural talents and gifts, humility, and social solidarity. He also believes that we should seek and express our freedom not by changing ourselves to fit the world, but the other way around.

Then he explains how we are to maintain these good things: we must view life as a "gift", rather than as something in our control. Of course, Sandel doesn't claim that life really IS a gift - just that we should think of it AS a gift. We should maintain a kind of respect for the near sacredness of the natural - sacredness without a religious basis, giftedness without a giver. He almost seems to be arguing for a kind of primeval respect for the cosmic forces of nature and chance.

I don't disagree with Sandel's list of desirable social norms, or with his view that bioengineering would dull our sense of life as a gift. However, I am entirely unconvinced by his suggested cure. Why should we cling to the view that life is a "gift" if this view is in fact mistaken, if it is merely a useful verbal mirage that keeps us well-behaved? If there is no giver, then life cannot truly be a gift; rather, it is a random, chance occurrence that means nothing. And if that is the case, then why should certain social norms be privileged over others? Regardless of how seemingly good Sandel's norms appear to be, there will always be those who disagree - and who says they can't be right? Why can't we change our social norms and courageously progress into a braver, newer society?

Sandel's prescribed cure falls flat because people aren't too tempted to delude themselves, even for the common good. In a world without a giver, only we can assign true meaning and value. And so, we can't really believe that life has meaning or value other than what we choose to assign to it. We tend to sink into utilitarianism and a struggle for power - not to mention individualism and relativism.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the book was Michael Sandel's last chapter, which is a defense of embryonic stem cell research. In a book that attempts to convince the reader to respect human beings, this is a disillusioning finish that rather spoils the appetite.

Sandel is a gifted, lucid writer, which is why I wish I could give this book more stars. But if I restrict myself just to its substance, I have to confess that more than once I felt like throwing this book across the room or shoving it into my garbage disposal. What an irritating and profoundly misguided book!

Sandel seems to think that using biotechnology, especially genetic engineering, to enhance human life inevitably means encroaching on, and perhaps even destroying, our ability to appreciate the "gifted" character of life itself. The assumption is that appreciating what is "given" (whether by God or nature) requires holding back from enhancing our offspring and ourselves and accepting as normative the abilities and limitations of modern human beings. If we do proceed with genetic enhancements, then, according to Sandel, we are corrupted by a hubristic ethic of "mastery" over what is naturally given. This is wrongheaded--and for two main reasons.

First, Sandel offers very little by way of defense of the normativity of the natural. Although he concedes that not everything that is natural is good (and rightly gives cancer as an example), he tells us almost nothing in this book, beyond appealing to a naïve, static, Aristotelian-style natural law theory, about why the fact that something is naturally given is in any way even relevant to its goodness, let alone why it ought not be improved. If he is going to be any kind of naturalist, he needs to go back and rethink the implications of Darwinian evolution for attempts to identify and enshrine an immutable human essence. (The prospects aren't good.) Beyond that, he needs a response to a long line of critics of Aristotelian naturalism, from Hume to Moore, who with good reason have attacked the idea that one could straightforwardly infer what "ought" to be from what "is." Sandel's Aristotelian naturalism is highly doubtful, and since the rest of his evaluations seem to depend upon it, they would appear to be highly doubtful as well.

Second, Sandel treats the sense of reverence, awe, and mystery that we feel towards nature, including our own current way of being, as if it were a kind of non-renewable resource--as if it were like, say, a finite, exhaustible quantity of petroleum lying under the earth's surface. This is ludicrous. It is much more probable that no matter how much human beings enhance themselves--no matter how tall they can grow themselves, how big they make their muscles, how much more powerful they make their memories, or how much they can genetically enhance the powers of their offspring--they will always be limited both by their environment and by their competition with each other (and possibly other beings). As a result, we will never reach the sort of smug self-satisfaction to which Sandel refers near the end of his book: we will never entirely "banish our appreciation of life as a gift" nor ever find ourselves with "nothing to affirm or behold outside our own will" (p. 100). No doubt there are people (and have for a long time been people) who failed to appreciate what is given them, but this has to do with the lack of a certain kind of sensibility, a kind of imaginative obtuseness. It has nothing directly to do with whether we can make ourselves live somewhat longer, grow somewhat taller, remember more, think somewhat more quickly, and the like. No matter how much we enhance ourselves, there will always be what is "given" relative to that stage of advancement and over which we have no control. We will never become masters of the universe, and, if we really do have enhanced mental abilities, we will not fall into the delusion of thinking that we are.

On the other hand, suppose Sandel is right, and suppose that we actually do have the power to erase the "given" and make ourselves true masters of the universe. I for one have trouble even understanding this possibility. But suppose (probably per impossibile) that it makes sense. Well, in that case, we would have become gods. And, if we really were gods, the accusation against us of hubris would be quite misplaced, wouldn't it?

An earlier reviewer mentioned a similarity between Sandel and Heidegger. Despite my more negative assessment of Sandel's book, that comment seemed to me to be close to the mark, since Heidegger too was a thinker who tended to mistake his own subjective preferences and concerns for deep ontological structures. Sandel doesn't like genetic manipulation and enhancement, and he projects this dislike, ironically in a rather hubristic manner, on a cosmic screen, as if it were deeply revealing of the nature of reality, life, and humanity. But it isn't. If my criticisms are correct, then an ethic of "giftedness," in which we appreciate the naturally given, can coexist with a determination to enhance our abilities and those of our children so as to make all of our lives as good (in our own eyes) as possible.

Don't worry. The universe will take care of reminding us that we have limits.

I feel that everyone in this country should get and read this book so that when you want to understand why this country is important you will understand and believe.

The book is more than i thought it would be. It has some great writing and good background information with it.

Every school and home library should have a copy of this on their shelf

I never received this book. I'm hoping it was overlooked and will be sent soon.

One can take two opposing approaches to this kind of volume. One can celebrate the treasures that are in it, or one can lament all the treasures it lacks. I prefer the first approach. For any volume which contains , The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington's First Inaugural and Farewell Speeches, Lincoln's First and Second Inaugurals and the Gettysburg Address contains the very heart of America's political thought and creed.
These documents are valuable not only politically, and historically they are also very great Literature.
There is much to be inspired by in the documents that are in this volume .Those seeking more important documents relating to American political life and democracy can find other volumes, whole libraries if they wish.
For what it is, this is just right.

Tired of trying to keep up with the pace in public policy research? Ta-da! Theories of the Policy Process offers some nice introductory essays on current public policy research, with a focus on (guess what...) theoretical developments. Each major theory is given a chapter of its own, written by distinguished scholars, often the actual parents of the theories. Among the theories covered are Institutional Rational Choice (by Ostrom), Multiple Streams and Garbage Can (by Zahariadis - not Kingdon), Advocacy Coalitions (by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith) and Punctuated Equilibrium (by True, Baumgartner and Jones). The collection ends with a very good synthesizing chapter by Schlager, where the theories are compared and essential diffrences are higlighted.

This collection is extremely useful to get updated on the latest developments in Public Policy. Lots of good, fresh references, and very accessible and authoritative introductions to the field. Yet, since the collection does not offer anything substantially new, a fifth star is not motivated. Still a very good buy.

I would not recommend it for use in introductory public policy-courses, though. Too abstract and theoretical for that. This is for people already familiar with the field.

This edited work is now in its second edition. In that, it has updated its summary of theories to cover new approaches and deleted a couple chapters from the first edition that are no longer as useful for the analyst and student of public policy.

Interested in how an evolutionary theory of change among species, punctuated equilibrium, has any relevance for our understanding of policy? Then read the chapter by True, Baumgartner and Jones. What about the impact of chance and contingency on what issues gain access to the political agenda versus those that might not gain governmental discussion and consideration? Read the chapter on Kingdon's "multiple streams" theory, written in this volume by Zahariadis.

Ingram and Schneider (with deLeon) have added a chapter to this edition not in the prior one. Their theory of social construction and its effect on policy has become widely recognized in recent years and is included in this edition. Network organizations are increasingly viewed as critical structures in the delivery of services. The private sector, nonprofits, and the public sector collaborate within networks to achieve public goals. The chapter by Adam and Kriesi is new to this edition and a welcome addition.

And so on.

The work ends with a comparison of different theories (by Schlager) and a reflection on how to enhance development of policy theory (by the editor, Sabatier).

Any edited volume like this can be questioned for why certain items were included and others excluded. Edited volumes often end up lacking cohesion. However, this edited work does its subject justice and is a useful book for those with some background in policy.

A classic harpooning of America's biggest idiot by the "usual gang of idiots". No one in the administration was spared. Georgie, Dicki, Condi, Rummi, and even the Bush daughters got it right where they deserved it. You CAN judge this book by the cover. Classic MAD. You won't be disappointed.

Heaven knows, I am no supporter of the present administration, but this publication was a little too rough for my taste.

The content reflects the subject; stupid and idiotic with a twinge of patriotic embarrassment. But this is a compliment for the delinquents at MAD! It was hard to tell where the joke starts and reality ends!

Not always the articles I would have chosen, but overall funny and on target. One of my favorites is the campaign ad if he were running against Jesus. It really lampoons political ads in general.

As a kid I used to collect and read Mad Magazine avidly even after Sister Miriam Lucille warned me that "they [MAD] were pink around the edges" because they made fun of our American heritage. Sister Lucille, I'm sure, never could see the humor that caused us to laugh and chuckle our way through grade school. And it wasn't until now, forty-plus years later that I could appreciate how sophisticated their humor and satire really was and still is.

Seeing the silly face of Alfred E. Newman wearing a tee shirt that reads "I'M WITH STUPID" with a red arrow pointing to the man he is standing next to, namely George Weasel Bush, was an irresistible impulse to turn back the clock toward my youth to see if the magazine could tickle my funny bone as it had so many years earlier. It did.

First, there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into a publication of such detail and volume. I will bet that these Mad writers and cartoonists go through at least a couple of cases of beer before they come out with the finished product.

You can appreciate its level of sophistication with its "Pirates of the Constitution" with cartoons of Bush, Cheney and Rice in Johnny Depp style dress, the play on the Gap commercials with Fi(red) and Disappea(red), or the comparison of George W. to each president in American history. This requires a phenomenal amount of work and knowledge. And Cheney with a sadistic look in hunting garb, was an especially creative cartoon. My favorite: $9.99 US (Cheap) $11.99 CAN (Cheap, eh?)

As we find truth in humor, we also find truth that is not so humorous, but should not be forgotten. Seeing a caricature of George Bush, on a stage, in a tux, saying: "Hmm ....No Weapons of Mass Destruction here..." and then thinking: "Hoo Whee! What a tough crowd!" is not funny when the audience consists of rows of flag-draped coffins. Nevertheless the reader cannot miss the message of a president who has cost the lives of so many over missed or cherry-picked intelligence, and then, makes light of it. That is an accurate portrayal of sick humor that is Bush's and not MAD's. The writers also remind of us of certain utterances such as "I'm not going to change, see? I'm not trying to accommodate. I won't change my philosophy or my point of view. GWB: Feb. 7, 2004. And we certainly have paid a high price for such a train of thought.

So, with another one year plus left with George W. Bush as president, I have to parody Alfred E. Newman and ask: "What, me worry?"

Well, yeah, I really do.

But, I wouldn't worry about buying this issue. It's destined to be a classic.

Happy New Year!

I had to read this book for a class at school and its very well written. This book is very informative and a recommend reading.

The effectiveness and accuracy of public opinion polls was always assumed, until this important and enlightening book. Zaller consolidates previous doubts about the very definitions of public opinion and how to measure it, and shows the shaky foundations of public opinion polls. In the fascinating early chapters of this book, we find that people's political opinions and poll responses are often distressingly inconsistent; with destabilizing effects from poll design, the ordering and language of questions, whether or not the person recently heard about the issues, and each person's level of ideology and receptiveness to ideas.

But this does not prove that people are uninformed, but that standard polling is woefully inadequate in measuring all of the idiosyncrasies of the human mind, and one's opinions on complicated political matters. This book gets off to a great start by illuminating such fallacies. The first few chapters are strong enough to earn this book accolades as a poli-sci landmark. But after proving that public opinion is perhaps unmeasurable (at least accurately), Zaller then spends the rest of the book measuring it himself anyway, with self-designed statistical models. However, it becomes difficult to tell whether he is using the results of his measurements to gain insight into actual public opinion, or merely to prove the viability of his own statistics.

By the middle of the book Zaller has embarked on a tedious and uninspiring academic exercise in statistical modeling that adds little to the points that were already made convincingly early on. Unnecessarily complex statistical equations are piled on mundanely, along with unenlightening charts and graphs. Like many other political science writers, Zaller has focused on pleasing his colleagues who are more likely to be impressed by repetitive evidence and windy statistics, while forgetting about the informed general reader who may just find the big-picture conclusions fascinating. That makes the majority of this book somewhat disappointing, rather like standing on a mountaintop on a cloudy day. You know the view (i.e. insights into the political knowledge of the masses) could be tremendous, if it wasn't obscured by clouds (i.e. academic tedium). True knowledge can be gained by disregarding the dusty science of this book and concentrating on the greater insights that lie beneath. [~doomsdayer520~]

Zaller's argues public opinion on issues is unreliable, primarily because elite sources of information provide competing or multiple considerations causing public opinon polls to measure whatever recent elite message an individual has stored in thier short term memory. A classic and important text. Zaller is not a straightforeward read, but lays out an important theory. The theory lacks focus on the use of core values and partisanship on public opinion; two important variables. Other than that it has held up to criticism for over a decade

An interesting, and occasionally vexing, topic of study in political science is public opinion. In his book The American Democracy Thomas Patterson touches upon myriad issues that surround this topic: the difficulties in accurately measuring public opinion, the inconsistencies and fluidity of public opinion, and political socialization are just a few of the factors of interest to political scientists that Patterson examines. However, no introductory text can examine such a multifaceted topic in great depth, and as a result on page two-hundred eleven of his book Patterson recommends John R. Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion as a good source for more in-depth information about public opinion formation and measurement. Indeed, Patterson characterizes Zaller's work as "[a] superb analysis of the nature of public opinion" (211). Zaller examines many, if not all, of the factors that influence public opinion, spending a great deal of time examining the affect of information on political opinions and election choices, and the impact of "elite domination of public opinion" (310). But Zaller's work is perhaps best known for its thoughtful examination of public opinion instability, an examination that challenges traditional thinking on the topic. And, while not perfect, it is easily one of the most important and influential works written on this subject.

As Zaller highlights, variances in survey results has traditionally been attributed to "measurement error" which is built into a survey or the presence of "nonattitudes"
(i.e. respondents answer questions about which they have no strong opinion) (31). In the broadest sense, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion strives to refute these explanations; and instead posits that a combination of factors, including the degree of ambivalence an individual has related to a specific topic, the general level of interest a person has in a topic, and what information has been encountered and how recently, more accurately explain response instability. Zaller does an excellent job of building his case for this perspective; in particular the use of literature from disciplines other than political science is especially compelling. Supported by this literature, and compelling in its own right, are the axioms that comprise his "Receive-Accept-Sample (RAS) model" (58). The author painstakingly examines each of his axioms and examines each in relationship to real world data which serves to further strengthen his arguments. As a result it seems clear that his contentions that individuals who are more aware of the political process are also more likely to perceive political messages, while at the same time resisting messages that run counter to their own political biases, have great validity. Further, Zaller's argument that there is a high degree of ambivalence on many issues is well supported by the analysis of the findings from the 1987 pilot study that is cited (63). Finally, even though the author acknowledges the inherent challenges in proving the validity of axiom four, he makes a compelling case by utilizing literature from the field of psychology (62). The result is an intriguing model that, rather than assuming that "response error is simply so much noise . . . [or] signifies nothing of interest" instead argues that "response variation is rooted in an important substantive phenomena, namely the common existence of ambivalence in people's reactions to issues" (75). Of further importance and interest are the series of deductions that the author forms through the application of his model to real world circumstances.

While it is impractical to examine each of Zaller's deductions there are two that are especially significant. The author's third deduction is representative of the very essence of his RAS model and its implications: If people form conflicting considerations on most issues, and if they base their survey
responses on whichever of these considerations happen to be at the top of the head atthe moment of response, one should expect a fair amount of variability in people's responses to survey questions. (64).

This "top of the head" argument is fundamental to the author's perspective, and Zaller offers numerous citations in support of this deduction. The result is a sea change in the way that response instability is perceived. A second deduction that is quite compelling examines the relationship between political attitudes and the political messages of the powerful and elite:

[T]he population as a whole should be able to develop more stable attitudes for issues on which partisan elites divide sharply and clearly, thereby providing clearer message cues for everyone. Conversely, attitude stability should be weaker for issues on which partisan divisions are hazy or nonexistent, because in such cases the public gets few message cues. (67).

The validity of this deduction has been proven out over the past thirty years. On a whole series of issues, including reproductive health and immigration, the messages espoused by the major political parties have become increasingly polarized and that polarization has increasingly been reflected in attitudes amongst the electorate. The RAS model, and the deductions that flow from it, represent a significant addition to the body of literature in political science. However, though Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion is an invaluable work, it is not without its faults.

One small criticism that can be made is the relatively sparse discussion of the survey instrument from which much of the data used to test the RAS model. More to the point, it would be helpful to have the instrument included as an appendix to the book. Zaller does identify the pilot study used, and it is currently available online (after registering with the online host, and assuming that one has access to the statistical software necessary to open the documents), however, in order to test, and adequately assess, Zaller's conclusions the raw data must be readily accessible. A more significant criticism of the RAS model itself is an important assumption upon which it is built - that of the type of information individuals receive and process:

The Receive-Accept-Sample Model is . . . a set of claims about how citizens acquire "information" and convert it into attitude statements . . . [O]ne cannot test the model without making definite assumptions about the information environment that sustains citizens' attitudes on a given issue. For purposes of this chapter, I make the following simple assumption about this environment: that it consists of moderately intense,
temporally stable information flows favoring both the liberal and
conservative side of each issue. By moderately intense I refer to information flows that involve neither dominating headline stories . . . nor obscure or esoteric stories. (58)

The definition suffers from vagueness that is difficult to overstate, and ignores the fact that what a researcher might define as "esoteric" could be perceived as most significant to a member of the public. Given that the RAS model is what Zaller defines as an "information processing model" (58), the imprecise manner in which information environment and information flow are defied is a serious flaw.

For many decades there has been an assumption amongst political scientists that variations in survey responses stemmed from flaws inherent to the survey instrument itself. In The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, John Zaller exposes the flaws inherent in such thinking. Despite some non-fatal shortcomings the author builds a persuasive case that, where survey instruments are free of bias, response instability is the expression of the uncertainty that many people feel on a wide array of issues.

Zaller's book presents an interesting elite-driven model of public opinion, which essentially concludes that opinion polls are less than reliable and we should be skeptical of attempts to measure the public's attitudes. However, it is very dense, is chock-full of advanced statistics above the head of most political science graduate students, and therefore at the end of the day is somewhat unsatisfying.

If you need a primer on public opinion research, this isn't it. But if you want to read cutting-edge work, and you have a good grasp of statistics, dive in.

Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy (Research Navigator Edition, with Themes of the Times for Social Welfare Policy) (6th Edition)

This is the textbook our brilliant professor selected for our social welfare policy class. However, one has to be a dedicated reader of social welfare policy to continue reading it because this textbook is densely written, or it may just be the subject matter. One chapter was exceedingly long; it was 119 pages! Nevertheless, it was up-to-date, as it included the policies of the current presidential administration. Contemporaneous history I've lived through was factual and accurate. It has detailed bibliography and reference sections.