What is the role of the citizen in democratic politics?  Are citizens
capable of making informed choices, or do the demands of citizenship exceed
individual capacities?  How should we assess the political expertise of
citizens and electorates?  How are the answers to these questions
transformed, depending on whether citizens make their choices as independent
individuals or as interdependent actors who depend on one another for
information and guidance?
This seminar addresses the individual capacities and collective potential of
citizens to play meaningful roles in their own governance. These questions
have been addressed from a number of perspectives, but during the past 50
years there has been an explosion of efforts aimed at an empirical
understanding of the political behavior of democratic electorates.  Such
research has produced an immense impact, not only on our understanding of
political behavior, but also on our expectations of democratic politics and
democratic citizenship. The seminar focuses on recent theoretical
developments in the study of political behavior, with particular emphasis on
issues of interdependence among citizens and the implications of
interdependence for information, communication, and influence.
Several issues and themes continue to appear and reappear: the
availability, acquisition, and processing of political information; the
dynamics that underlie citizen decision-making; the relationship of
individuals to aggregates; alternative conceptions of citizen rationality.
Our goal is to examine the manner in which the various perspectives toward
political behavior shed light on these issues, as well as the ways in which
the perspectives encourage investigators to ask different questions and
engage in alternative conceptualizations of political processes and
phenomena.
Each student is required to write an empirically based research paper that
will serve as a major evaluative component of seminar performance. The
instructor will be happy to assist students in defining a topic,
constructing a research design, and carrying out the analysis.  Seminar
performance will also serve as a basis for student evaluation, and students
will submit a memorandum for each seminar meeting that responds to the
week's reading.