The Ambivalent Partisan: How Critical Loyalty Promotes Democracy [Hardcover]

How do ordinary citizens form their political judgments, and how good are those judgments from a normative perspective? The central claim of this book is that high-quality political judgment hinges less on citizens' cognitive ability than on their willingness to temporarily suspend partisan habits and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Ambivalent partisans are those who experience a disjuncture between their political identities and their evaluations of party performance. Drawing on both experimental and survey methods -- as well as five decades of American political history -- the authors demonstrate that compared to other citizens, ambivalent partisans perceive the political world accurately, form their policy preferences in a principled manner, and communicate those preferences by making issues an important component of their electoral decisions.Over the past half century, two overarching questions have dominated the study of mass political behavior: How do ordinary citizens form their political judgments, and how good are those judgments from a normative perspective? The authors ofThe Ambivalent Partisanoffer a novel approach to these questions, one in which political reasoning is viewed as arising from trade-offs among three generally conflicting psychological goals: making decisions easily, getting them right, and maintaining cognitive consistency. Taking aim at decades of received wisdom, the central claim of this book is that high-quality political judgment hinges less on citizens' cognitive ability than on their willingness to temporarily suspend partisan habits and follow the evidence wherever it leads. This occurs most readily when citizens experience a disjuncture between their stable politicalidentitiesand their contemporaryevaluationsof party performance, a state the authors refer to aspartisan ambivalence. Drawing on both experimental and survey methods -- as well as five decades of American political historl£»