Search

It is a fundamental ideal of liberal democracy that all citizens should enjoy fully equal citizenship. Yet many minorities are still routinely ignored, excluded, patronized, and not regarded as full members of the political community. This denial of equal standing undermines their equal citizenship. Liberalism and Cultural Pluralism each advocate strategies to improve this situation. Their arguments build upon expectations about how citizens should, can, and do understand membership in the political community. Our survey and focus group data from six matched communities in the United States and Great Britain show how citizens' understandings of membership in the political community incorporate communitarian attitudes that impede the liberal and cultural pluralist projects.

In the Post-world War II era, American women have been consistently less militaristic more opposed to war than American men. Theorists, both feminist. Drawing on the attributed such differences to gender itself, maternalism, and feminism. Drawing on the American National Election Study 1991 Pilot Study, we explore these hypotheses and discover no support for the maternalist explanation, some evidence in favor of the feminist accounting, and substantial support for the gender explanation. We also probe into the structure of political thinking in these areas and discover that the roots of women's and men's thinking usually differ even when they basically agree on the 'bottom line.' In particular, men's attitudes are much more partisan in their origins than are women's.

This symposium features three critiques of the argument about schema theory profferred by Kuklinski, Luskin, and Bolland. First, Milton Lodge and Kathleen M. McGraw, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, respond from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Then Pamela J. Conover, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Stanley Feldman (also of Stony Brook) consider schema conceptualization mainly in terms of problems of measurement. Finally, Arthur H. Miller, of the University of Iowa, offers an information-processing approach to political schemas.

An investigation is made, to expand the scope of research on citizenship in political behavior and political psychology. Attempt is also made to expand the range of the methodologies that are used to examine these subjects.

Most conceptual research on equality revolves around theoretical texts or legal theory and decisions, thus reflecting the thought of legal, political, or cultural elites. But in a democratic polity, we must attend to the political thought not just of politicos and academics, but ordinary citizens as well. In terms of its political significance, 'What does equality mean' requires answering the question: what does equality mean to the mass public? We thus probe the meanings of 'gender equality' in the public mind, using a unique set of questions included in the National Election Studies 1991 Pilot Study, and contextualized within the literatures of feminist and legal theory and political psychology and public opinion. Most importantly, we distinguish among 'empirical' and 'normative' equality and discontent and among the domains of the polity, economy, and family; feature the problem of 'equality' versus 'sameness'; and consider the relationship of these orientations to people's own structural circumstances and their other policy and political attitudes. Among the key findings, empirical and normative equality and discontent are functionally different and grounded differently in people's everyday experiences; they distinguish among different domains of life and, especially, between public and private; and there are generational differences in the relationship of 'equality' to 'sameness.' We discuss substantive and methodological implications. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: ]

Much theory and research shows that information about candidates' issue positions is often difficult for members of the public to obtain: candidates typically do not go out of their way to make their positions clear; the media devote little time to covering candidates' stands on the issues; and many voters have little interest or motivation to search out information about the candidates' positions. Despite this, by election day a substantial number of voters are willing to identify the issue positions of the candidates, and these perceived positions are often good predictors of vote choice. In this paper we consider the question of how voters perceive candidates' issue positions given limited information and high information costs. Our model posits that voters use previously acquired information to infer where candidates stand on the issues. In addition, characteristics of the candidates serve as cues that allow voters to make inferences from specific categories of people and politicians. Our analysis of panel data from the 1976 presidential election demonstrates the influence of these cues in the perception of the candidates and the role of the campaign in structuring the cues that voters use.