Resumen de Extreme voices

Ryan L. Claassen, Stephen P. Nicholson

• Studies of issue publics suggest that widespread political ignorance does not matter because those affected by specific issues are involved and well informed, and can meaningfully shape policy in their policy area. However, research on civic participation raises important questions about whether the opinions of the active are representative of the less active. To examine whether meaningful differences in policy attitudes exist between the politically active and inactive within issue publics, we compare the policy attitudes of interest group members to nonmembers. Across ten interest groups we find uniformly consistent evidence of policy distinctiveness among group members and show that party identification and ideology largely account for the difference. We also find that the policy differences between members and nonmembers vary according to the primary incentive offered by an interest group. Groups primarily offering expressive benefits exhibit the greatest opinion differences within an issue public, whereas opinion differences are muted for groups emphasizing solidary or material incentives. Finally, we find evidence of attitude extremism among group members. Taken together, our study suggests that the voices of non-active citizens are not well represented within issue publics.