Experts, Activists, and Democratic Politics

T. K. Ahn is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seoul National University. His work has been published in a number of journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Public Economic Theory, and the Journal of Economy Psychology. He has received the Paul Lazarsfeld Award from the American Political Science Association for the best paper on political communication. He received his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington. Robert Huckfeldt is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the author or co-author of Politics in Context; Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics; Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication (Cambridge, 1995); Political Disagreement (Cambridge, 2004); Experts, Activists, and Interdependent Citizens; and a number of articles. He received the 1979 E. E. Schattschneider Award for outstanding dissertation in American politics from the American Political Science Association; the 2012 Doris Graber Outstanding Book Award from the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association; and outstanding conference-paper awards from the Political Communication Section and the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Section of the American Political Science Association. He received his PhD from Washington University, St Louis. John Barry Ryan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and Political Communication. He has received the Paul Lazarsfeld Award from the American Political Science Association for the best paper on political communication. He received his PhD from the University of California, Davis.

'This is a landmark book that definitively demonstrates that political opinion formation is critically dependent on informal networks. The combination of experiments and decades of survey data not only makes the book a model of multi-methodological rigor, but also allows the authors to isolate the roots of expertise and opinion bias. This is a must-read for anyone interested in how democracies operate.' Jamie Druckman, Northwestern University

• 1. Experts, activists, and self-educating electorates T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt and John Barry Ryan; 2. The imperatives of interdependence T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt and John Barry Ryan; 3. Experts, activists, and the social communication of political expertise T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt, Jeanette Mendez, Tracy Osborn and John Barry Ryan; 4. Unanimity, discord, and opportunities for opinion leadership T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt, Jeanette Mendez and John Barry Ryan; 5. Informational asymmetries among voters T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt and John Barry Ryan; 6. Expertise and bias in political communication networks T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt, Alexander K. Mayer and John Barry Ryan; 7. Interdependence, communication, and calculation T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt and John Barry Ryan; 8. Partisanship and the efficacy of social communication in constrained environments John Barry Ryan; 9. Noise, bias, and expertise: the dynamics of becoming informed Robert Huckfeldt, Matthew Pietryka and Jack Reilly; 10. Opinion leaders, expertise, and the complex dynamics of political communication Robert Huckfeldt, Matthew Pietryka and Jack Reilly; 11. Experts, activists, and democratic prospects T. K. Ahn, Robert Huckfeldt and John Barry Ryan.