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Rating: 
Summary: Not Overrated but Overpriced
Review: I agree with other reviewers that this book is as great as political science gets -- I grant you that such is faint praise. I also agree that, having read it, one should move on to later treatments....Please find it in a library and let it drip off your brain like fine wine down your tongue....
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, but move on
Review: I can only agree with the other reviewers. This is as good as political science gets. Pure brilliance. When you have read this book - you really should! - then you can move on to more current studies that uses Schattschneider's ideas and develops them much further. Rochefort & Cobb: "The Politics of Problem Definition", Baumgartner & Jones: "Agendas and Instability in American Politics", Cobb & Ross: "Cultural Strategies of Agenda Denial" and Jones: "Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics" should all interest you once you've fallen in love with the thoughts of Schattschneider. Your view of politics will never be the same again.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, simple and true.
Review: I first read this book in college and have never forgotten it. During careers in politics, business and the church I've found myself returning again and again to Schattschneider's key themes. From his discussion of conflict and its scope to his simple point that whomever controls the agenda controls the outcome, Schattschneider has captured the essence of human interaction. Nearly forty years old, this is still a superb book not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books in political science in this century
Review: Schattschneider discusses some very difficult topics -- why politicians organize the way they do, why political issues are presented in the ways they are, and how ordinary voters fit into a democratic government. His central argument is that the most important fact about democratic governments is that they are large, i.e., they try to involve very large numbers of people in a meaningful way. This book forever changed the way that I look at the political universe.
Rating:
Summary: A classic account of western democracy
Review: This often-quoted book is one of the most classic works of 20th century political science. Despite its age, published in the early 1960s, this brilliant little book is still astonishingly fresh. Schattschneider's account of the expansion and privatisation (contraction) of conflicts, and his description of the structural biases of modern western democracy, is eye-opening. The book is very accessible, yet scholary. This is one of the best, most important, and in a strange way morally refreshing, books on politics I have ever come across.
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