This chapter establishes the broader contours of politics, conceived as a discrete domain of ethical behaviour. It begins by detailing some paradigmatic instances of political action, organised into two categories: 'direct' and 'indirect'. Next, it examines the relationship between political action and violence, arguing that although individual violent acts might instantiate ethically valuable politics to some degree, truly endemic violence is inimical to politics. Having established this, it turns to the relationship between politics, equality, and inclusion, arguing that politics takes place primarily within geographically demarcated communities and that, as a result, we are justified in prioritising the participation of our compatriots. Finally, this chapter examines the role played by governance institutions within contemporary states, arguing that they fulfil an essential facilitating function. This grants them 'quasi-independent' value as political 'artefacts', 'focuses', and 'forums'. Taken together, these various arguments bridge the conceptual and normative gap between the analysis of the previous chapter and the account of state creation advanced later in the book.

Prosocial development is considered foundational for youth civic engagement, yet associations between these two developmental domains is more complex and dynamic than typically recognized. This chapter examines theory and evidence linking prosociality and two main dimensions of civic engagement: civic helping and political engagement. Most research separately examines helping versus political engagement, given that different correlates and developmental processes are often evident. Positive youth development theory posits that adolescents’ caring and connections lead to civic contributions, and evidence lends support for bidirectional associations between civic helping and prosocial competencies. Youth political engagement is not as commonly studied in relation to prosocial development, but empathy combined with critical social analysis may support socially just political attitudes and actions, whereas other political attitudes are rooted in exclusion and inequality and antithetical to prosociality. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are also discussed.

Elected representatives do not faithfully deliver policies desired by majorities of their constituents. While many blame special interests or failures by voters for frustrated majorities, I suggest these explanations incomplete. Voters can cause candidates for office to frustrate majorities because of differences in issue intensity. This chapter presents the controversy, the basic argument, connections to single-issue voters and issue publics, the main results, and the scope and outline of the book.

In this chapter I explore three extensions to the mathematical model presented in Chapter 4. First, I show that the results do not depend upon the balance of minority to majority assumed in Chapter 4. Instead, at any ratio of majority to minority size, candidates might side with an intense minority over a less-intense majority. Candidates do not, however, side with any intense minority, siding only with those of a sufficient combination of size and intensity. Second, I consider the free-rider problem in large electorates. I discuss a modification to the mathematical model where increasing the size of the electorate does not prevent some voters from choosing to incur costly political action. Finally, I consider the social welfare implications of intensity theory showing that utilitarian welfare can sometimes be higher with frustrated majorities and costly political action than under simple majority rule.

In this chapter I present results from a mathematical formalization of intensity theory. I apply tools from game theory to analyze the dynamics of electoral competition when voters vary in how much they care about policy and when candidates do not know which voters care more and less intensely. I show that candidates for office choose policy platforms as a function of the size and intensity of opposing policy coalitions. Candidates sometimes set policy with an intense minority even though they know that a less-intense majority wants the opposite policy. But they also sometimes choose not to frustrate majorities even with an intense minority.

Intensity theory provides numerous empirical implications. This chapter introduce the empirical analysis of the book and explains why the four empirical chapters presented offer fruitful evaluation of the theory.

This chapter provides an introduction to the meaning of issue intensity and frustrated majorities through review of the existing theory and evidence of political science. I suggest that while theories of trade politics, bureacracy, legislative behavior, and political parties have explicitly or implicitly considered the consequences of varying issue intensity, the political science of elections has given it short attention. I show how the political science of the electoral connection complicates many existing explanations for frustrated majorities and suggest that adding issue intensity to the electoral connection provides an improved explanation.

In this chapter I consider the consequences for political participation where an institutional change opens a new avenue of political action. In 2017 the City of Seattle, Washington implemented a program of Democracy Vouchers as publicly-funded campaign contributions for its citizens in city elections. I show that the institution of Democracy Vouchers has different empirical implications for three existing theories of political action than for intensity theory and present a research design and data to evaluate the different implications.

In this concluding chapter I summarize the theoretical and empirical results, provide a recipe to apply intensity theory in new settings, revisit and speculate about model assumptions, suggest five key implications for our understanding of representation, electoral competition, and political action, discuss the potential importance of issue intensity for the dynamics of policy change, and offer concluding thoughts.

In this chapter I walk through the how and why of a theory of issue intensity and electoral competition and build the basics of the mathematical model used to explore intensity theory. I lay out six foundational assumptions of the model drawn from existing theories of elections in political science or political economy. The assumptions rule out current explanations for frustrated majorities so that I can show that the combination of issue intensity and electoral competition alone can cause frustrated majorities. I show how costly political action becomes an important part of the story when candidates cannot perfectly observe the issue intensity of voters. I then present a simple mathematical model with numerical examples to provide intuition for analysis in subsequent chapters.

This chapter explores two case histories where American politicians appear to have sided with intense minorities over less-intense majorities. First, I present the case of federal funding for stem cell research in the early 2000s. I find evidence that majorities supported allocating federal health research funds toward research using embryonic stem cells yet federal policy remained stringent for most of the decade. Second, I present the case of firearm regulation following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Although large majorities indicated support for new regulation of firearms, no new regulations passed Congress. An intense minority appears to have used costly political action to communicate their strong opposition to new regulations.

In this chapter I consider the consequences for political participation where an institutional change closes one avenue of political action. Since the early 1990s, multiple American states have ended closed party primary elections, rules that restricted participation to voters previously registered with the political party. I show that if participating in closed primaries is costly to voters, reforms to liberalize access to primary elections have different empirical implications for existing theories of political action than for intensity theory. I present a difference-in-differences research design and data to evaluate the different implications.

What is public opinion, what factors cause it to form in particular ways, and why does it matter? In this chapter, we define public opinion as opinions on matters of public debate that have significant implications for society. Then, we provide an overview of key developments in three central topics in research on public opinion. First, we discuss research on opinionation, or when and why a person forms an opinion on a political topic. Second, we discuss directionality of opinion, or factors that shape whether a person forms a particular kind of opinion (e.g., favourable or unfavourable) on an issue. Finally, we discuss the consequences of public opinion, or how opinions shape action, with a focus how public opinion influences voting, civic activism, and government attention and action. We end by considering emerging research trends in the field of public opinion that can inspire future research on the topic.