Title
Campus Units
Political Science
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
6-2020
Journal or Book Title
British Journal of Political Science
First Page
1
Last Page
21
DOI
10.1017/S0007123420000356
Abstract
An interested and engaged electorate is widely believed to be an indicator of democratic health. As such, the aggregate level of political interest of an electorate – macrointerest – is an essential commodity in a democracy, and understanding the forces that change macrointerest is important for diagnosing the health of a democracy. Because being interested in politics requires time and effort, the article theorizes that the electorate’s level of political interest will be highest when the electorate believes the government cannot be trusted or is performing poorly. To test hypotheses derived from a proposed theory against rival explanations, the study develops a measure of macrointerest using a quarterly time series of aggregated survey items (1973–2014) of political interest. The authors find support for the theory that the electorate responds as reasonable agents when determining how closely to monitor elected officials: interest is positively related to decreases in trust in government.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright Owner
The Author(s)
Copyright Date
2020
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Peterson, David A. M.; Miller, Joanne M.; Saunders, Kyle L.; and McClurg, Scott D., "Macrointerest" (2020). Political Science Publications. 82.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/pols_pubs/82
Comments
This article is published as Peterson, D.A.M., Miller, J.M., Saunders, K.L., McClurg, S.D., Macrointerest. British Journal of Political Science (2020);1-21. doi:10.1017/S0007123420000356.