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Political Ambitions, Volunteerism, and Electoral Accountability*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Kenneth Prewitt
Kenneth Prewitt*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

A generally accepted interpretation of American politics today is associated with the “theory of electoral accountability.” The salient features of this theory are well known. The thesis was initially shaped in Schumpeter's classic work on democracy, and since has been elaborated by a generation of scholars. The elaboration, especially where grounded in empirical studies, has established (1) that the public, being largely apathetic about political matters and in any case ill-informed regarding public issues, cannot provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the maintenance of democratic procedures; (2) that a liberal political and social elite are committed to the preservation of democratic forms, at least more committed than the average citizen; therefore, (3) what maintains the democratic tradition is not extensive public participation in political policy-making, but, instead, competition among elites whose behavior is regulated by periodic review procedures. Competition among elites and review by citizens of political leaders are provided by elections. Thus elections hold political leaders accountable to non-leaders.

Writers associated with this general position have recently come under scholarly attack. The critique, directed at the first two assertions, can be reviewed briefly: although true that the public is not well-informed politically and is not actively engaged in political life, this is not to be attributed to the inherent traits of citizens so much as to the structure of political opportunities in the United States. Moreover, although true that research has detected among political leaders a greater commitment to democratic procedures than is the case for the ordinary citizen, this commitment is to procedures in which only the leaders participate.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1970

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Footnotes

*

The larger project of which this analysis is a part, the City Council Research Project, is sponsored by the Institute of Political Studies, Stanford University, and is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants GS 496 and GS 1898. I am indebted to several colleagues who read and sharply criticized an earlier version of this paper. I leave them unnamed for it is very possible they would prefer not to be associated with even this version.

References

1 Schumperter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1947)Google Scholar.

2 Relevant studies are Bernard Berelson, et al., Voting (Chicago: University Press, 1954)Google Scholar, especially chapter 14; Dahl, Robert A., Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar and Dahl, , Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Key, V. O., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961)Google Scholar, especially chapter 21; Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960, Anchor Books edition, 1963)Google Scholar; Truman, David, “The American System in Crisis,” Political Science Quarterly, 73 (12, 1959, pp. 481–97)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Important statements are to be found in Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1967)Google Scholar; and Walker, Jack L., “A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy,” this Review, Vol. LX (06, 1966), 285–95Google Scholar. A data article consistent with the thesis is Burnham's, Walter Dean “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” this Review, 59 (03, 1965), 7–28Google Scholar. A book which anticipates much of this critical literature is Bottomore's, T. B.Elites and Society (London: Penguin Books, 1964)Google Scholar, especially ch. VI.

4 It has been the substantial accomplishment of Geraint Parry to explicate this point. He writes that although elites may be disagreed on policy, “they may share similar views as to the appropriate decision-making process, namely negotiation between elites.” Political Elites (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1969), p. 90Google Scholar. The complete implications of Parry's point cannot be developed at this time. It is evident, though, that elites can simultaneously be committed to democratic norms and to a process of decision-making in which only they participate. It should be remembered that the data base for arguing that political leaders are committed to democracy is primarily survey items on civil liberties and not items on the wisdom of the participation of the “average” critizens in the decision processes.

5 I do not mean to imply that the scholars listed in footnotes three and four necessarily associate themselves with this critique of the political science discipline.

6 An exception to this is Murray Edelman who has very creatively called into question some of our assumptions about what elections do and do not do. See in particular the first chapter of The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

7 Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 269.

8 S. M. Lipset, op. cit., p. 27.

9 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 28Google Scholar.

10 Dahl, Preface, op. cit., p. 72.

11 Dahl, Who Governs?, op. cit., p. 164.

12 Freidrich, Carl J., Man and His Government (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), pp. 199–215Google Scholar. Of course Freidrich's “rule” is much broader than what is implied by my use; he develops a theory of political influence based on the rule which refers to nearly all political interactions, not just to relationships between electorates and representatives. A study which applies the “rule of anticipated reaction” and comes to conclusions similar to those advanced here is Gregory, Roy, “Local Elections and the ‘Rule of Anticipated Reactions,’” Political Studies, XVII (03, 1969), 31–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Schlesinger, Joseph A., Ambition and Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co. 1966)Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 2, italics added.

15 Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 269, 272.

16 Lipset, S. M., Trow, Martin, and Coleman, James, Union Democracy (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1962), p. 241Google Scholar.

17 Leuthold, David A., Electioneering in a Democracy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968), p. 127Google Scholar.

18 Prewitt, Kenneth, The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen-Politicians (Bobbs-Merrill, in press)Google Scholar. This book includes a more detailed analysis of the survey data.

19 Prewitt, Kenneth and Eulau, Heinz, “Political Matrix and Political Representation,” this Review, LXIII (06, 1969), pp. 427–441Google Scholar.

20 In this analysis the council in contrast to the individual councilman is taken as the unit of analysis. The theoretical rationale for this as well as some methodological considerations are spelled out in Prewitt and Eulau, ibid.

21 In every case the dependent items in Table 5 derive from some method of aggregating the responses of individual councilmen into a group measure. Two procedures are represented. With respect to all items but ‘c’ and ‘d’ the responses of individual councilmen were summed, a mean was computed, and the distribution of means was then used to assign councils as either above or below the median of all councils. With respect to the remaining items, a procedure relying on coder judgment to assign a score to each council was used. Footnote 9 in Prewitt and Eulau, Ibid., describes the procedure.

22 Young, James S., The Washington Community—1800–1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 57, 89Google Scholar.

23 Young writes of the “remoteness of the rulers from the citizenry and remoteness of the citizenry from the rulers” and that the “isolated circumstances of the early governing group must have afforded a freedom of choice as nearly uninhibited as any representative government could have.” Ibid., p. 34, 36. Young, of course, is making much of the sheer fact of geographical isolation whereas volunteerism implies a distance between rulers and citizenry established not by geography but by the processes of leadership selection.

24 Hyneman, Charles S., “Tenure and Turnover of Legislative Personnel,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 195 (1938), p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Wahlke, John, Eulau, Heinz, Buchanan, William, Ferguson, Leroy C., The Legislative System (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962), computed from Table 6.1, p. 122Google Scholar.

26 Barber, David, The Lawmakers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 8Google Scholar.

27 Schlesinger, op. cit., p. 63 (Table IV-2).

28 This inference seems warranted on the basis of evidence Schlesinger presents on p. 144, regarding the frequency with which the candidates for gubernatorial and senatorial elections differ from their predecessors, and his statement on p. 146 that the opportunity for men to be nominated for these offices is “impressively high, indicative of a great deal of fluctuation at the very top of the pyramid within state parties.” His data, of course, include controls for tenure limitations. There are two interpretations possible. Either the political parties habitually fail to renominate the incumbent, or the rates of voluntary retirement are high for governors and senators. The latter seems the more reasonable inference.

29 Schlesinger writes that the “impact of ambitions upon the behavior of public officials will be greater on those in high than in low office, greater upon congressmen than upon state legislators, greater upon United States Senators than upon United States Representatives.” Ibid., p. 193. Although this observation is intuitively persuasive, it is relevant to record that it is an inference and in no way is it directly confirmed by the massive amounts of evidence Schlesinger imaginatively analyzes. Evidence suggesting that salary differentials may promote or retard political ambitions at the state level is suggested by Soule, John W., “Future Political Ambitions and the Behavior of Incumbent State Legislators,” Midwest Political Science Review, XIII (08, 1969), pp. 443–444Google Scholar. For a study indicating that as a legislature becomes more professionalized over time, the incidence of volunteerism should drop, see Polsby, Nelson, “The Institutionalization of the U. S. House of Representatives,” this Review, LXII (03, 1968), 144–168Google Scholar. To read Polsby's study side-by-side with Young's analysis of the early congresses is very instructive, and indicates why volunteerism as an attribute of a legislature is variable over time.

30 McClosky, Herbert, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” this Review, LVIII, (06, 1964), 361–382Google Scholar. For instance, as reported on pp. 370–371, more than half the general electorate agree that “It seems to me that whoever you vote for, things go on pretty much the same” and “There is practically no connection between what a politician says and what he will do once he gets elected,” and “Nothing I ever do seems to have any effect upon what happens in politics.”

31 An interesting study which shows that the socio-economic composition of legislatures is related to voter turnout is that of Wences, Rosalio, “Electoral Participation and the Occupational Composition of Cabinets and Parliaments,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 75 (09, 1969), pp. 181–192CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A related discussion is in Prewitt, Kenneth, “From the Many Are Selected the Few,” American Behavioral Scientists, 11, 1969Google Scholar.

32 A finding of McClosky's is instructive in this context. One of the very few items on which political influentials measured higher than the general electorate was as follows: “Most politicians can be trusted to do what they think is best for the country.” Seventy-seven percent of the influentials agreed and fifty-nine percent of the electorate did. op. cit., p. 370.

33 Lipset, et al., op. cit., especially pp. 239–247.

34 A paper by John D. May, unfortunately not yet published, is particularly insightful on this issue. See his “Democracy and Inequality,” unpublished paper, Chicago, 1969Google Scholar.

35 Schlesinger, op. cit., p. 2.

36 Eulau, Heinz, “Changing Views of Representation,” in Pool, Ithiel de Sola (ed) Contemporary Political Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1967), p. 80Google Scholar.

37 Wahlke, Eulau, et al., op. cit., is the most elaborate application of the Burkean categories to the empirical study of legislators.

38 A measure of a council attribute related to trusteeship is something we term the “city father ethos;” a term which describes an orientation of paternalistic responsibility among the councilmen. Where volunteerism was most present, 65% of the councils are characterized by this orientation; where volunteerism is least present, 40% of the councils are characterized by the orientation. A great deal of additional analysis remains to be completed, however, before we can confirm that volunteerism and trusteeship are empirically linked.

39 Mosca, Gaetano, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1939), p. 70Google Scholar.

40 I have paraphrased the argument advanced in Parry, op cit., in this sentence. It has been the substantial and brilliant contribution of Lowi, Theodore, in his The End of Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1969)Google Scholar, to document exactly this tendency in contemporary politics. See, for instance, chapter 3, where he relates his thesis to the problem of holding leaders accountable for their actions.

41 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), especially pp. 476–487CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The authors actually refer to their finding as constituting a myth. The citizen's perception that he can be influential “may be in part a myth, for it involves a set of norms of participation and perceptions of ability to influence that are not quite matched by actual political behavior,” p. 481.

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