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The Salience of American State Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

M. Kent Jennings  and
Harmon Zeigler
M. Kent Jennings
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Harmon Zeigler
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

Research emphasizing the correlates of state policy outputs and the performance of particular institutions has overshadowed the role of the citizenry in the drama of state politics. One question of basic concern is the relevance of state government and politics for the inhabitants of a state. At the level of public policy and institutional performance the answer to this is factual and straightforward. The nature, amount, distribution, and to some extent the quality of a state's services and policies can be specified. Since states perform most of the traditional functions of governmental units and since these functions affect the fortunes of the citizens, state politics has an obvious, tangible, objective relevance for a state's inhabitants. At another level, however, the answer is not so clear-cut. Here we are dealing with the idea of what is subjectively relevant. Large numbers of people apparently pass their lives being touched by political institutions in a variety of ways without becoming particularly interested in or involved with these institutions. Other people become intensely, purposively related to these same institutions. Still others fall along a continuum between these two poles. If substantial variations exist in the general salience of politics, there is little reason to doubt that the same conditions may be found in particular subsets of political matters. In the case at hand this subset consists of the cluster of institutions, actors, and processes known as state political systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 523 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1970

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1968 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C. The direct and indirect financial support of The Danforth Foundation and the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We also wish to thank Bruce Campbell and Paul Beck for their assistance at various stages.

References

1 The literature on the correlates of state policy outputs is becoming voluminous. Dye's, ThomasPolitics, Economics, and the Public: Policy Outcomes in the American States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966)Google Scholar perhaps represents the zenith of this approach. Other questions are also receiving attention, however. See, for example, some essays in Jacob, Herbert and Vines, Kenneth (eds.), Politics in the American States (Boston: Little Brown, 1965Google Scholar); Patterson, Samuel C., “The Political Cultures of the American States,” Journal of Politics, 30 (02, 1968), 187–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Norman C., “The Electorate and State Constitutional Reform: An Analysis of Four Michigan Referenda,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (02, 1968), 115–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Francis, Wayne, Legislative Issues in the Fifty States: A Comparative Analysis (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967)Google Scholar. Jacob, Herbert and Lipsky, Michael provide a sound and enlightened discussion of the field in their “Outputs, Structures, and Power: An Assessment of Changes in the Study of State and Local Politics,” Journal of Politics, 30 (05, 1968), 510–538CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For an example and references to the literature see Jennings, M. Kent, “Pre-Adult Orientations to Multiple Systems of Government,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 11 (08, 1967), 291–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An historical perspective with a different focus is found in Hays, Samuel P., “Political Parties and the Community-Society Continuum,” in Chambers, William Nisbet and Burnham, Walter Dean (eds.), The American Party Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 152–181Google Scholar.

3 Dahl, Robert A., “The City in the Future of Democracy,” this Review, 61 (12, 1967), p. 968Google Scholar.

4 This question ran: “Some people seem to follow what's going on in government and public affairs most of the time, whether there's an election going on or not. Others aren't that interested. Would you say that you follow what's going on in government and public affairs most of the time, some of the time, only now and then, or hardly at all?” Those selecting one of the first three alternatives are considered to be members of the attentive public.

5 After handing the respondent a card showing the four levels of public affairs, he was asked to rank them in this fashion: “Which one of these kinds of public affairs do you follow most closely?” “Which one do you follow most closely?” “Which one do you follow least closely?” With first, second, and fourth ranks thus determined the residual level automatically occupied the third rank.

6 It should be recognized that we are not merely playing with numbers in order to make a case for the saliency of state politics. There is no logical necessity, given the nature of the questions used, that state affairs attract any second rankings. All respondents after making their first choice could have ranked state affairs third or even last had they been so inclined.

7 See Jennings, op. cit., for an application of the Coombsian unfolding technique to data of this type from a national adolescent sample. Separate analysis with the sample at hand yields similar results.

8 In the 1968 study the respondents were, as in 1966, first put through a screening question which eliminated the apoliticals. They then replied to questions about their attention to the four levels of politics. For state politics the question read: “And how about affairs here in (STATE WHERE R LIVES); do you pay a great deal, some, or not much attention to state affairs?” Rank orders of relative interest were obtained after these questions.

9 Since we have both relative and absolute measures for the 1968 sample, it might be asked why we do not utilize that sample rather than the earlier one. The reasons are two-fold: 1) in order to capture a “purer” reflection of the salience of American state politics it Seems desirable to base the analysis on data gathered during a period relatively uncontaminated by the forces of a national election, for much the same reasons that studies of state voting turnout, division of the vote, and party strength often separate the off-year from presidential year statistics; 2) a number of questions of direct relevance for state politics were asked in the 1966 study, but not in 1968. On the other hand, subsequent work in this general area might well utilize both absolute and relative measures of salience in order to arrange people in a multi-dimensional mode.

10 For experimental evidence see, inter alia, Rosenberg, Milton J., et al., Attitude Organization and Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

11 The question read: “Now we're interested in learning what kinds of work Americans respect most highly. Which of these occupations do you respect the most?” Three choices were made. The list included, in this order: “U.S. Senator, Bishop or other church official, general or admiral, famous doctor, justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, atomic scientist, professor at a large university, President of the U.S., well-known athlete, president of a large corporation like General Motors, governor of your state.” Altogether governor was the fourth-most choice, being tabbed by 29% of the sample. The correlation in the text is based on first choices.

12 The questions ran: “We also find that people differ in how much faith and confidence they have in various levels of government in this country. In your case, do you have more faith and confidence in the national government, the government of this state, or in the local government around here?” “Which level do you have the least faith and confidence in—the (——) or the (——)?”

13 Any further exploration of the linkage between salience maps and support structures needs to take into account such support dimensions as delineated by David Easton, namely, specific-diffuse; overt-covert; and direct-indirect. See his A System Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), pp. 153–340Google Scholar. For an investigation of support processes at the state level see Boynton, G. R., Peterson, Samuel C., and Hedlund, Ronald D., “The Structure of Support for Legislative Institutions,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (05, 1968), 163–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Controls included region, urbanization, education, subjective social class, interest in public affairs, voting regularity, and party identification.

15 The results obtained when controlling for voting participation are not artifactual of differential turnout rates by region or urbanization.

16 This holds true among Democrats and Independents, but not for Republicans.

17 An attempt to look at the nuances of state level salience over the life cycle will be found in an extended version of this article to be published in Dreyer, Edward C. and Rosenbaum, Walter A. (eds.), Political Opinion and Electoral Behavior (rev. edition, Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

18 Walker, Jack L., “The Adoption of Innovations by the American States,” this Review, 63 (09, 1969), 880–899Google Scholar; and Sharkansky, Ira, “Economic Development, Regionalism, and State Political Systems,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (02, 1968), 41–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stouffer, Samuel, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar; Glenn, Norval D. and Simmons, J. L., “Are Regional Cultural Values Diminishing?” Public Opinion Quarterly, 31 (Summer, 1967), 176–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jennings, M. Kent and Zeigler, Harmon, “Political Expressivism Among High School Teachers: The Intersection of Community and Occupational Values,” in Sigel, Roberta S. (ed.), Learning About Politics: Studies in Political Socialization (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar.

19 Regional groupings follow Census Bureau classifications: Northeast = New England and Middle Atlantic states; Midwest = East North Central and West North Central states; South = South Atlantic, East South Central, and West South Central states; and West = Mountain and Pacific states. Other regional combinations were employed, but with less rewarding outcomes.

20 Daniel Elazar discusses the historical tendencies toward state centralism versus localism in American Federalism: A View from the States (New York: Crowell, 1966), pp. 186–193Google Scholar.

21 The deviant case is that of length of residence controlled by region. Interest in state affairs does not increase with length of residence in the West (−.05), a finding no doubt occasioned by the continued Westward migration of the populace. Correlations for the other three regions are South = .39; Northeast = 26; Midwest = .16.

22 The monotonic ordering and predicted values for given combinations were constructed by taking the marginal values from the appropriate column and row intersected by the cell (combination), and adding these row and column effects to the grand mean. The intercorrelation problem was handled by utilizing Multiple Classification Analysis, a program which helps remove the intercorrelation effects. Nearly identical results were obtained by using James Coleman's partitioning formulas. See his Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), Ch. 6Google Scholar.

23 The sheer rates of interstate mobility impose a strong restraint on change. Contrary to popular impressions Americans do not change state of residence with great frequency. For the present sample 63% had lived their entire lives in one state and another 24% had spent at least 20 years there.

24 From David, Paul T. and Eisenberg, Ralph, Devaluation of the Urban and Suburban Vote, Vol. I (Charlottesville, Virginia: Bureau of Public Administration, University of Virginia, 1961)Google Scholar. Although widespread reapportionment has occurred since the Baker v. Carr decision of 1962, most occurred after 1964. Indeed the latest reapportionment of both legislative houses occurred as late as 1965–66 for thirty states and 1967–69 for eight states. Given the time lag between legal changes of this sort and their imprint on the mass public, it seems advisable to use the 1960 malapportionment figures for our 1966 sample. To utilize this measure and the ones to follow the respondents have been allocated into roughly equal quartiles or quintiles according to the scores of the state in which they resided. It can be shown that the distribution of the sample across groups of states with varying score ranges approaches the distribution for the universe.

25 The gubernatorial measure is based on contests from 1946–62, and is taken from Riley, Dennis and Walker, Jack, “Problems of Measurement and Inference in the Study of the American States,” (unpublished paper, University of Michigan, 1968)Google Scholar. Hofferbert's index is reported in Hofferbert, Richard I., “Classification of American State Party Systems,” Journal of Politics, 26 (08, 1964), esp. pp. 562–563CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recent single elections were also used in our analysis; these produced results similar to those for the above two measures.

26 The rankings come from Joseph Schlesinger, “The Politics of the Executive,” in Jacob and Vines, op. cit., Chap. 6.

27 Crittenden, John, “Dimensions of Modernization in the American States,” this Review, 61 (12, 1967), 989–1001Google Scholar.

28 Walker, op. cit., p. 883, Table 1.

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