Without the experience of disagreement, political communication among citizens loses value and meaning. At the same time, political disagreement and diversity do not always or inevitably survive. This book, accordingly, considers the compelling issue of the circumstances that sustain political diversity, even in politically high stimulus environments where individuals are attentive to politics and the frequency of communication among citizens is correspondingly high.
Contents
1. Communication, influence, and the capacity of citizens to disagree; 2. New information, old information, and persistent disagreement; 3. Dyads, networks, and autoregressive influence; 4. Disagreement, heterogeneity, and the effectiveness of political communication; 5. Disagreement, heterogeneity, and persuasion: how does disagreement survive?; 6. Agent-based explanations, patterns of communication, and the inevitability of homogeneity; 7. Agent-based explanations, autoregressive influence, and the survival of disagreement; 8. Heterogeneous networks and citizen capacity: disagreement ambivalence, and engagement; 9. Summary, implications, and conclusion.
Reviews
"This book provides an interesting and informative account of Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague's reserach on disagreement about U.S. presidential candidates. It is worth reading for the computer simulations results (and information on how to download the program!) alone. The book is an excellent example of how empirical, theoretical, and simluation approaches can work together to inform science." PsycCritiques
"...a most welcome addition to our collective knowledge that is guaranteed to stimulate further discussion and disagreement in future years." - Public Opinion Quarterly, Lilach Nir, The Hebrew University
“This new study by Robert Huckfeldt, Paul Johnson and John Sprague addresses an important problem and does so with such innovative and well-executed theory and data that I have no doubt whatsoever that the book deserves such recognition; indeed, it is a must-read for all social scientists interested in how democracies can be sustained.” – Perspective on Politics, James L. Gibson, Washington University in St. Louis
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