Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy

Extract

Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy. Edited by Michael A. Genovese and Matthew A. Streb. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 192p. $54.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Reading a book that germinated from conferences is a bit like eating at a recommended restaurant in an unfamiliar city. Tasting untried food [for thought] is heightened by the novelty of the locale. Chapters serve as courses; some are better than others, and in the end, one often is pleased by the experience, even if the parts of the experience were in need of refinement. Polls and Politics emanates from a 2002 Loyola Marymount University conference on the topic. The book unites leading scholars in the field, as they examine questions about the role of polls in American democracy, and it is entertaining, provocative, and at times flawed. The flaws, however, are not in a particular author's argument, but rather in what is omitted in the collected volume. It highlights the dilemmas associated with public opinion polling in the twenty-first century, but does little to aid the authors in seeking ways of measuring or mitigating those flaws.