The Public Lives of Politicians: Election (or Ideology, or Party) Above All Else?

In the last chapter I argued that, generally speaking, politicians are guilty of neither pandering to public opinion nor manipulating it. They are simply responsive to groups of activists and voters that make up their party’s base. In fact, policy responsiveness on the part of politicians is largely a by-product of the fact that the parties are increasingly ideologically cohesive. It is not, as the pandering allegation would suggest, the result of politicians determining which positions are popular and then adopting them.