Politics and the Life Cycle

doi:10.1126/science.1127891

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Perspective

Politics and the Life Cycle

Donald R. Kinder

The study of politics and the life cycle began with a rathersingle-minded focus on childhood and the family—on theidea, as Tocqueville famously put it, that the entire personcould be "seen in the cradle of the child." Politics does beginin childhood, and parents do influence their offspring, butchange takes place over the entire span of life. I take up theearly emergence of partisanship and essentialism, the formationof generations, politically consequential transitions in adulthood,and the rising of politics and its final decline.

Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, USA.

E-mail: drkinder{at}umich.edu

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