ABSTRACT
Milton Lodge has produced a body of work with dramatic consequences for our understanding of democratic politics. Indeed, he has encouraged us to reconsider the ways in which we understand a wide range of political phenomena. This paper focuses primarily on the consequences of his work for explanations of politics based on social communication, social networks, social influence, and interdependence among political actors. Citizens form judgments that are contingent on their own patterns of social interaction, but these judgments are seldom based on a careful assay of the evidence. Indeed much of the information transmitted is subtle, implicit, and barely recognized. Moreover, the process through which information is transmitted is highly dynamic, subject to processes of memory decay, and difficult to observe directly. Nevertheless, Lodge’s contributions to the study of social cognition help us unravel the sources of influence within the process.
