IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v70y1976i01p41-49_26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Elections and Public Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Ginsberg, Benjamin

Abstract

In the absence of historical opinion survey data, studies of the linkage between popular voting and American public policy have been confined to relatively recent time periods. Questions about these linkages, however, necessarily have a temporal dimension—what is the relationship between voting and policy over time? This paper establishes criteria for citizen policy choice that do not depend on opinion surveys. Data drawn from national party platforms and U.S. statutes, and aggregate voting data are compared to determine the extent to which majority choices are translated into national policy over time. Analysis of these data suggests that whether or not voters are completely aware of all of the implications of their actions, over time, popular majorities appear to govern.

Suggested Citation

  • Ginsberg, Benjamin, 1976. "Elections and Public Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(1), pages 41-49, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:70:y:1976:i:01:p:41-49_26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400263971/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emily Clough, 2008. "Still Converging? a Downsian Party System Without Polls," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(4), pages 461-476, October.
    2. Francois Petry, 1988. "The Policy Impact of Canadian Party Programs: Public Expenditure Growth and Contagion from the Left," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 14(4), pages 376-389, December.
    3. Richard J. Stoll, 1984. "The Guns of November," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 28(2), pages 231-246, June.
    4. Paul Burstein, 1978. "A New Method for Measuring Legislative Content and Change," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 6(3), pages 337-364, February.
    5. Robert K. Fleck, 1999. "Electoral Incentives, Public Policy, and the New Deal Realignment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(3), pages 377-404, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:70:y:1976:i:01:p:41-49_26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.