{"product_id":"invisible-sovereign-mark-g-schmeller-9781421418704","title":"Invisible Sovereign: Imagining Public Opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow has the idea of public opinion changed since the Revolutionary War--and how has it shaped the nation?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the early American republic, the concept of public opinion was a recent--and ambiguous--invention. While appearing to promise a new style and system of democratic and deliberative politics, the concept was also invoked to limit self-rule, cement traditional prejudices and hierarchies, forestall deliberation, and marginalize dissent. As Americans contested the meaning of this essentially contestable idea, they expanded and contracted the horizons of political possibility and renegotiated the terms of political legitimacy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTracing the notion of public opinion from its late eighteenth-century origins to the Gilded Age, Mark G. Schmeller's \u003ci\u003eInvisible Sovereign \u003c\/i\u003eargues that public opinion is a central catalyst in the history of American political thought. Schmeller treats it as a contagious idea that infected a broad range of discourses and practices in powerful, occasionally ironic, and increasingly contentious ways. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRanging across a wide variety of historical fields, \u003ci\u003eInvisible Sovereign\u003c\/i\u003e traces a shift over time from early \"political-constitutional\" concepts, which identified public opinion with a sovereign people and wrapped it in the language of constitutionalism, to more modern, \"social-psychological\" concepts, which defined public opinion as a product of social action and mass communication.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Mark G. Schmeller\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1421418703\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781421418704\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/15\/2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.20w x 0.80d","brand":"Mark G. Schmeller","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48449575125247,"sku":"9781421418704","price":52.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_2d24111e-184c-4ba6-8d78-70bdfb766c9f.jpg?v=1777263996","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/invisible-sovereign-mark-g-schmeller-9781421418704","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}