Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

2 Political Science Essays

Qu.1 In the 1956 election campaign, equal numbers of the people surveyed were very interested and not interested at all interested, and one third moderately interested (Nie, Verba and Petrocik 16-17). Most paid some attention to the campaign in newspapers and one television, but only three in ten read anything in magazines. Most people limited their political activity to the vote. The American public had an unsophisticated view of political matters and an inability to consider such matters in abstract terms (18). They did not conceptualize politics in the terminology you would expect of a citizenry who had a clear political ideology. Most Americans had strong and long-term commitments to a major political party and this guided their political behavior. People, on the whole, felt satisfied with the political system and viewed the government with a mix of trust and skepticism (35). The result of all this was that the government was pretty free to govern without any disturbance from the people. The lack of concern by the citizens allowed them flexibility to go about their business, and the voting freedom gave them the great freedom in framing the politics of government (39).

From the 1950s to the 1970s, things began to change. Partisanship began to change and from 1964 through 1974, the proportion of strong identifiers with particular parties dropped while the proportion of independents rose (Nie, Verba and Petrocik 49). While party identification was the key to the vote in the 1950s, a large number of Democrats crossed the floor to vote for Eisenhower, but still 83 percent of Americans voted along with their party affiliation. The defection rate from their party of voters in 1968 was quite high, and stayed high through 1972. In 1872, 51 percent of the voters were not guided by any party affiliation. During the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were less likely to identify with a particular political party, less likely to feel ...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on 2 Political Science Essays...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
2 Political Science Essays. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 18:13, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704190.html