For most studies of political behavior, the unit of analysis is either an individual (a citizen or politician) or a single political institution (a party or congressional committee) or a policy (a tariff or tax law) or a moment in time (an historical case study). This is the study of micro politics. Individuals and institutions and policies and moments in time also comprise the data we have used for the present book. But there is a crucial difference. Our central focus is instead on the electorate, the class of politicians, the array of political institutions, the sum of many activities and policies, and the sweep of a half-century. This makes our inquiry the study of macro politics.

THE MACRO-POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Most of the patterns and relationships reported in this book become clear only upon examining macro-level data. Our unit of analysis is the American polity for a particular time segment – one month, quarter, year, or even biennium. We make no quarrel with micro-level survey research, and as individual authors have committed it ourselves many times. For the study of individual-level relationships involving political attitudes and behavior, ordinary modes of operation and clever strategy, the development of norms and small-group behavior, policy analysis, and many other things, micro-level analysis is the preferred mode of research. But to study the dynamics of political change at the national level, macrolevel analysis brings special power to bear.