The Meaning and Measure of Policy Metaphors.

The apparent ability of the American public to form coherent assessments of policy options--while being largely ignorant of political institutions, actors, and ideology--remains a persistent puzzle for political science. We develop a theory of political decision making that helps resolve this puzzle.

We postulate that both the public and political elites comprehend complex policies in part through "reasoning by policy metaphor," which involves comparisons between proposed alternative policies and more readily understood social institutions. Using data from 169 intensive ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.