Political Science 319
Public Opinion
Dr. Sellers
August 29, 2007

Paper #1

This first paper assignment requires you to discuss the interaction between political elites and public opinion in two ways: the elites' efforts to shape public opinion generally, and their actual strategies on your assigned issue.  

The first part of your paper should discuss the public opinion literature, focusing on how political elites attempt to frame policy issues generally.  What are their strategies?  Do they always succeed?  Does their success vary across types of issues or voters?  Why?  Your discussion of these more general insights and patterns should lead directly into the second part of your paper, in which you explain how policy elites have actually attempted to gain advantage on your assigned issue by framing or structuring how it is presented to the American public.  Your review of the relevant public opinion literature should take up more of your paper, while your discussion of the policy elites' efforts at framing should be relatively brief. In the second section, make sure that you explain how the details of your issue illustrate the broader concepts from the first part of your paper.  

In essence, you are using your assigned issue to investigate and illustrate broader patterns of public opinion.  As a result, you are unlikely to find many cites in the academic literature on political elites' efforts to frame, for example, the health care debate.  But, you will find numerous articles about elites' attempts to frame issues more generally.  In addition, your literature review will set the stage for the specific hypotheses and measures that you will develop in the next paper.  So as you write the literature review, keep in mind that you want it to lead to the questions and patterns that you hope to explore in our survey.  For relevant articles and books in the public opinion literature, a good starting point is the class syllabus (and the bibliographies of the readings).  You can also search the electronic site www.jstor.org .  Make sure that you search for broader topics (such as "framing") and not just narrow topics related to your assigned issue (such as "health care").  You need to to include at least eight academic sources.

Maneuvering to shape public opinion occurs on practically every national issue, including your own.  Learning how elites maneuver on your issue will help guide your writing of questions for the class survey.  The survey will present competing interpretations of issues (including your own) to different groups of respondents.  One half of the survey will hear one interpretation (such as that of the Democrats), while the second half will hear a competing alternative (such as that of the Republicans).  If these competing interpretations make a difference, we should find each half of the survey respondents offering different opinions on the issue.

In the second part of your paper, you need to describe how national political elites have fought to frame your particular issue during the past several years.  Much (but not necessarily all) of the maneuvering may have involved Congress and President George Bush, with Democrats and Republicans offering competing arguments and prescriptions on the issue.  When describing this competition, explain how each side attempted to frame the issue.  Make sure that you specify as clearly as possible how the two sides' interpretations differed.  In doing so, it is also a good idea to specify the major actors on the issue (party or committee leaders in Congress, President Bush, his assistants, etc.).

To find information for your issue, you can turn to a variety of sources.  The library subscribes to several printed publications which track policy developments in Washington, including CQ Weekly and the National Journal.  The library also subscribes to CQ Weekly's on-line site and the National Journal's on-line site. For more general stories on your issue, you can turn to the Lexis-Nexis database of newspapers.  Lexis-Nexis also maintains a database on policy developments in Congress (see "Hot Bills/Topics").  Finally, you can visit the web pages maintained by the House and Senate and their members.  There are undoubtedly other sources which can help your research; the list here is only a starting point.

You should type your paper, using 1-inch margins and Times-New Roman font no smaller than 10 point.  The first page of your paper should only contain identifying information (your name, etc.).  The text of your answers should begin on the second page (with no identifying information on this or later pages).  The paper can be either single- or double-spaced.  All the text of your answer should appear on the second page; when grading, I will not read any material past the second page (except notes or citation information in a bibliography).  The paper should contain appropriate in-text citations for any sources used.  The detailed information for each citation should then appear in a bibliography on a separate third page.  The paper is due at the start of class on September 14.  Papers turned in after 10 minutes after the scheduled start of class will be considered late.  Paper grades are lowered by ten points (out of 100 total points) for each 24-hour period (after the start of class) that they are late.  Finally, the Honor Code binds the assignment; make sure that you pledge your work.