1 See Gerald Pomper, Voters' Choice: Varieties of American Electoral Behavior (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
2.
2 See Everett C. Ladd, Where Have All the Voters Gone? (New York: Norton, 1978).
3.
3 See, for example, Steve Redburn, et al., "How Representative Are Mandated Citizen Participation Processes?"15Urban Affairs Quarterly (1980): 345-352.
4.
4 David H. Everson, Public Opinion and Interest Groups in American Politics (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982).
5.
5 See Lester W. Milbrath and M. L. Goel, Political Participation, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1977) for a literature review.
6.
Eric R. A. N. Smith
, "The Levels of Conceptualization: False Measures of Ideological Sophistication,"7American Political Science Review (1980): 685-696.
7.
William Riker
and Peter Ordeshook, An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973).
8.
9 See, especially, Stuart J. Thorson, "Axiomatic Theories of Preference-Based Choice Behavior,"20American Behavioral Scientist (1976): 65-91. The choice context refers to such things as choosing among outcomes which are certain (i.e., what is chosen will occur), risky (i.e., what is chosen will occur given a known probability), and uncertain (i.e., what is chosen will occur but with unknown probability); the number of alternatives presented to the chooser; the time frame in which choices are made; the mechanism of choice (i.e., pairwise choice, rank ordering, etc.); or the value or utility of choices relative to one another (e.g., dollar payoffs). The information context refers to the quantity and quality of information possessed by choosers. For example, a chooser who is familiar with local congressional candidate issue stances may choose differently from someone whose only knowledge is that there are Democrats and Republicans running for office.
9.
10 Transitivity refers to the mathematical property defined over three alternatives-a, b, and c, such that if a is preferred to b, and if b is preferred to c, then a must be preferred to c.
10.
See, also, Amos Tversky, "Elimination by Aspects: A Theory of Choice,"79Psychological Review (1972): 281-299, for an application of this method.
11.
12 To some extent, social scientists have begun to move in this direction. Studies in positive political theory, rational choice, individual and collective choice, game theory, cognitive dynamics, and others are all related to our proposal.
12.
13 See Footnote 7.
13.
14 See, for example, Herbert Asher, Presidential Elections and American Politics (Homewood, III.: Dorsey Press, 1976).
14.
15 See Footnote 11.
15.
16 The interactive cable system (CUBE) recently developed in Columbus, Ohio, by Warner Communications, forerunner of one possible adaptation of our proposal. At present, CUBE does allow for simple, interactive choice processes with learning. It could, in the future, be modified to allow for complex voting procedures.
16.
17 See Joseph Waldron, Carol Sutton, and Terry F. Buss, "Professional's Use of Microcomputers in a Court Setting,"45Federal Probation (December 1981): 29-35.
17.
18 We do not intend to suggest that new modes of political communication can, by themselves, overcome the profound disengagement from politics of the most alienated members of society or those with the least education and awareness.
