Formal political settings can profoundly influence how individuals collectively make decisions. Such settings are the product of (1) the emotional and political commitments of the participants (including their interpersonal relationships and authority hierarchies), (2) the formal rituals that determine how decisions are to be made and what is to be decided (these formal rituals, in fact, are the most important constitutive feature of such settings), and (3) the physical architecture within which the participants are arrayed as these rituals unfold. It is the combination and interaction of these elements that make the configuration of any formal political setting unique. However, within these unique configurations there are common elements such that there also exists the potential for the intentional manipulation of the passions of the participants. Manipulation of those passions, in turn, can reshape the preferences of the participants in such a way as to change the collective decisions that would otherwise have been made. This book suggests a framework for interpreting these settings, utilizing events in the 1896 Democratic National Convention as examples.

I show that formal political settings shape, among other things, the emotions felt and displayed by the participants as they deliberate. That passion is often, in fact, an artifact of the ritual order of deliberative proceedings and of the material sites in which decisions are made. To see why this is so, we should first distinguish between passion and preferences. In many instances, passion merely reflects the intensity with which an individual holds a preference.