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While democratic states may manipulate public opinion and mobilize society to serve their interests, a focus on such active efforts may distract us from the passive, default condition of ignorance-based state autonomy. The electorate's ignorance ensures that most of what modern states do is unknown to “society,” and thus need not even acquire social approval, whether manipulated or spontaneous. Similarly, suggestions that democratic states may be “captured” by societal groups must take cognizance of the factors that enable elites to serve the interests of specific societal groups at the expense of the larger society. Bringing studies of voter ignorance into the analysis of state's autonomy from society provides a novel approach to the study of democratic states' autonomy, while also serving to explain how societal “capture” of state policies is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its origins in explorations of the political and institutional history that had become unfashionable in History departments, the Political Science subfield of American Political Development (A PD) has drifted toward the ‘history-from-below’ view against which it was originally a reaction. Perhaps this is a normal tendency in democratic cultures that ground their legitimacy on the will of the people. But it may also be due to a failure of APD scholars to appreciate that even in a (nominally) democratic country such as the United States, the state may acquire autonomy from the public will because of the vast scope of state activity, and the restricted ability of the people to monitor, understand, and control that activity Philip E. Converse's signal contribution to the public-opinion literature can thus be the starting point for a revision of American political history with an eye to the autonomy that political elites may gain from public ignorance of their actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]