Manipulating Democracy Democratic Theory, Political Psychology, and Mass Media [Hardcover]

Manipulation is a source of pervasive anxiety in contemporary American politics. Observers charge that manipulative practices in political advertising, media coverage, and public discourse have helped to produce an increasingly polarized political arena, an uninformed and apathetic electorate, election campaigns that exploit public fears and prejudices, a media that titillates rather than educates, and a policy process that too often focuses on the symbolic rather than substantive.

Manipulating Democracyoffers the first comprehensive dialogue between empirical political scientists and normative theorists on the definition and contemporary practice of democratic manipulation. This impressive array of distinguished scholarspolitical scientists, philosophers, cognitive psychologists, and communications scholarscollectively draw out the connections between competing definitions of manipulation, the psychology of manipulation, and the political institutions and practices through which manipulation is seen to produce a tightly-knit exploration of an issue at the heart of democratic politics.

Introduction:Manipulating Democracy: A Reappraisal (Wayne Le Cheminantand John M. Parrish) Part One: Democratic Theory1. Manipulation and Democratic Theory (James Fishkin) 2. Manipulation: As Old As Democracy Itself (and Sometimes Dangerous) (Terence Ball) 3. When Rhetoric Turns Manipulative: Disentangling Persuasion and Manipulation (Nathaniel Klemp) Part Two: Political Psychology4. Changing Brains: Lessons from the Living Wage Campaign (George Lakoff) 5. Emotional Manipulation of Political Identity (Rose McDermott) 6. Mimesis, Persuasion, and Manipulation in Platos Republic (Christina Tarnopolsky) Part Three: Mass Media