People and Politics

1. People and Politics Political participation and democracy

2. Goals of this unit • This unit is dedicated to investigating the way that people participate in the democratic process. Once you have finished the unit, you should be able to; • Correctly explain and identify Rational Choice Theory (RCT) • Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of RCT in explaining political participation • Identify major trends in political participation in advanced democratic societies • Understand the role and relevance of political parties and interest groups

3. Political Participation: A Big Normative Question • As I like to do, we will start this unit thinking about a normative question that arises in the study of political participation. This will then lead us in to a discuss of the empirical material contained in chapter 10 of the text. • The first question that has preoccupied political theorist is: how much participation is a good thing? From Plato onwards, philosophers have been interested in the question. We might think that the obvious answer is, “as much as possible”, but it turns out that many theorists have been reluctant to embrace that position. • For example, the framers of the American Constitution were extremely worried about too much participation and too little government authority (remember, the impetus to call the constitutional conventional was in large part a consequence of Shay’s rebellion). • They were, in general, very distrustful of intermediary institutions, and preoccupied with the question of limiting public action on government. We don’t often think of them in this way, but elections can be seen as a way of restraining the influence that people have over government (after all, why not change government leaders every week? Every day? Every time they make an unpopular decision?). • Again by way of illustration, George Washington, in his farewell address, warned of the danger posed by political parties! Today we see political parties as being the bedrock of democracy (even if we don’t like the specific parties that we may have).

4. Some Recent questions about participation • In recent years, there has been a lot of attention paid to this question of how much participation is a good thing. • As an example, Crozier, Huntington, and Wazanuki in 1975 edited a book called The Crisis of Democracy. They identified two contrary trendsin democratic socities; rising social demands and weakening government authority. In other words, people in democratic society were wanting more from government, while government was becoming less able to provide. • Crozier saw European countries as witnessing the collapse of traditional values and institutions and increased social mobilization. In other words, there seemed to be a breakdown of order and a rise of protest. • Huntington saw American governmental institutions as being overwhelmed by what he called a “democratic surge”. For Huntington, people were becoming too participatory for democracy to handle.

5. Disaffected Democracies • After The Crisis of Democracy, many political scientists were rather gloomy about the prospects for democratic society. In Disaffected Democracies, (2000) Pharr and Putnam acknowledge that democracy has not collapsed; on the other hand, they argue that perhaps “democracy is always in crisis” (p.311). • They note rising levels of apathy and also diminished levels of public trust. So the question now is not about too much participation, but whether the participation that exists is motivated by disaffection from democracy, and a lack of trust in democratic institutions. • Additionally they argue that “a certain erosion of civil society has robbed democracy of its social base” (p.313). What they mean by this is that we are losing the democratic habits that were so praised by Alexis de Tocqueville in his journeys through the United States in the early 1830’s. • They also ask the question; is democracy historically linked to the ‘nation-state’? Put another way, if globalization is reducing the power of the nation-state, does globalization also reduce the need for (and commitment to) democracy?

6. Empirical Questions • From this introduction, we might articulate the main empirical questions that political scientists ask when studying participation as: • Why don’t people participate? Or, more cogently, why do people participate? • What are the conventional channels of participation? • What are the non-conventional channels of participation? • What are their correlates?

7. Why do people participate? • The text begins chapter ten with a discussion of Mancur Olsen’s 1965 book, The Logic of Collective Action. Olsen uses the logic of Rational Choice Theory (RCT) to try and explain why it is that not all people participate in political groups all the time. • Rational Choice Theory assumes that all people are to some degree rational, meaning that we try to maximize our gains and minimize our loses (what those gains and losses are depends upon the circumstances and upon each individual’s structure of preferences). • Olsen observes that, when faced with a choice between collective action [acting together in a group] and individual inaction [sitting home alone], it is often most rational (all things being equal) to do nothing. • Why? Think about this for a moment. How often have you got mad about something, talked with your friends and neighbors and found out that they are mad about it too… and yet, despite all of your best intentions, nobody actually did anything? Be honest with yourself!

8. Rational Choice Theory (RCT) and the “free rider” problem • As we just mentioned, Olsen’s argument rests upon the grounds laid out in RCT. • Let us assume for a moment that any individual action entails both potential costs and benefits. Equally, people are rational to the extent that they try and maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. • Thus, observes Olsen, people will only act (under this assumption) when costs are outweighed by the benefits. • Let’s apply this to interest groups for a moment…

9. The case of the NRA • Whether we are for or against the group, we can agree that the NRA exists to protect its version of 2nd amendment rights. • Every time there are some horrific high profile shootings, there are calls for the sale of firearms to be restricted. This is a fact (if you disbelieve this statement, go and read media reports over the last decade or so). • If one is concerned that one’s rifle is going to be controlled as a result of any potential legislation, one could join the NRA to lobby for the right to keep such weapons. • But the NRA has a substantial number of members already; why bother joining? (The NRA, by the way, currently has about 4 million members). • One will get the benefit of any actions of the NRA even if one doesn’t join. The organization is equally powerful without me, and whatever benefits they achieve in protecting the right to own a gun will be passed on to one anyway. • One is then what Olsen calls “a free rider” (getting the benefits without paying the costs).

10. Then what are the incentives to join? • If this version is right, then nobody would join groups at all. There must be some other reason why individuals would join a group like the NRA, says Olsen. • In order to solve the puzzle, he distinguishes between what he calls “collective incentives” and “selective (individual)” incentives • Anyone gets the benefits of the collective incentives, whether of not they are a member. • However, only members get the advantage of the selective incentives. • What are these for the NRA? Well, the organization sends a hat, a silver bullet, discounted gun insurance, firearms instruction, etc. Olsen argues that we tend in the main to join groups for these reasons, not for purely political motives. • In my classes, I like to ask how many people are members of an interest group. In general, there are very few who think that they do. Then I ask who is a member of AAA (the answer is usually quite a lot). I go on to point out that the AAA is actually a very powerful interest group, lobbying for more federal highway money, inexpensive gasoline, etc. We just don’t think about it as an interest group, because most of us join to get the selective incentives (the free towing, the insurance, etc.).

11. Applying Olsen’s Logic to Psephology • Psephology is the study of voting. Voting seems quite straightforward, but actually political scientists have shown us that it is a little more complicated to explain than we might think. • If voting is considered a “collective action” in Olsen’s terms, then we would expect a substantial number of free riders. • In fact, as many have observed – and given what Olsen’s work tells us -, the curious thing about voting is not why don’t people vote, but why do they? • Voting is an act that carries costs with it, after all (time, effort). We all get collective benefits (who wins wins, and will be our representative whether we voted or not); but there are not very obvious selective incentives.

12. Why Do People Vote? • So let us ask the question; how can we explain the fact that people do vote? • The costs of voting are fairly obvious; registration, information gathering, information processing, going to the polling booth, etc. • We know that people see these as costs: for example, there is substantially higher turnout in countries that have weekend elections or election holidays (meaning that for some people work is a barrier to voting). • We also know that voter turnout decreases in bad weather. • So what are the incentives to vote? Clearly they are not selective (we don’t, in democracies at least, get money for voting, although there are colorful stories from the old days of the ‘city bosses’ such as Boss Tweed in New York or Mayor Daley in Chicago). • Rational Choice Theorists has argued that there may be another kind of incentives, what we call purposive incentives. These include things that are important to rational individuals such as feeling good, doing the right thing, the sense of civic duty, etc. • Purposive incentives may also include support for a particular party, what we call partisan identification.

13. Challenges to the RCT model of voting • We might ask the question; is the RCT explanation of the dynamics of voting (and non-voting) a good one? • We should note the assumptions built into the model, explained on pages 232-3 of the text. • Critics of the RCT model suggest that very few voters actually seem like the average voter predicted by the RCT model (knowing their own preferences, being informed, understanding the consequences of their vote, and choosing the best alternative). • There is the existence of what Converse called “non-attitudes”; that is, people don’t really have much of an opinion on a particular issue until it is actually suggested to them. • Then there is the lack of information among the mass public (survey show only a limited number of people are actually highly informed about politics) • The salience of random factors in elections (the candidate who is tallest often wins, for example, in US presidential elections!). • The defenders of RCT have responded with a revised model of ‘low information’ or ‘bounded’ rationality, emphasizing that information thresholds don’t need to be as high as Olsen and Down had suggested. • Nonetheless, whether we think that RCT is a good theory or not, it is provocative in that it draws our attention towards the question of why do people vote, as opposed to studying non-voting as a ‘problem’.

14. Conventional Channels of Participation • Political scientists have classically distinguished between what we might think of as conventional and non-conventional forms of democratic participation. Conventional forms refer to those outlined by the great theorists of democracy, and include; • Elections • Political Parties • Interest Groups • “Associative life” (civil society) • Non-conventional channels include many that have emerged in recent years and which were seen as threatening by the authors of The Crisis of Democracy. They include; • Strikes • Demonstrations • Political Protest • Political Violence • Let us look for a moment at trends in each of these things…

15. Trends in Conventional Participation: elections • Since the 1960’s, participation in elections seems to be declining. This is not just happening in the United States, but has taken place in almost all democratic societies. • Look at the data that have been collected by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA): IDEA Website (hyperlink) • If we only observed a decline in electoral participation in one country, then we might be tempted to conclude that it had to do with factors specific to that country (in the case of the United States, the Vietnam war, Watergate, etc.). But one of the values of comparative politics is that it can highlight trends across countries, and demand better explanations for them. • As a point for discussion; what do you think might account for the systematic decline in electoral participation all across advanced democratic societies? Remember, any explanation that is rooted just in the American experience cannot, by definition, explain electoral decline elsewhere!

16. The decline in political parties • Similarly (and maybe very closely linked), there has been a decline in the ability of political parties to structure the vote. We can observe the following things across a wide range of countries. Most of them are very familiar again to us in the United States, but we might not know that they are also happening elsewhere. • The has been a decline in party voting, meaning that people are less willing to vote for candidates uniquely on the basis of their party affiliation. Voters are willing to vote for different parties in the same election where possible or in subsequent elections. • There has been a decline in party identification, meaning that fewer of the voters are willing to say that they identify strongly with one or other party. • There has been a pronounced decline in party membership. In most countries (the Unites States is an exception), people actually pay membership dues to join political parties. • The transformation of parties from particularistic to “catch-all” parties, meaning that parties are less willing to follow a strict ideological line (see page 235). Is this a good thing? Well, critics argue that if parties do NOT follow an ideological line, it makes it much harder for the voters to distinguish between them.

17. Decline in Interest Groups and Associative Life • Recently, Robert Putnam wrote a highly provocative and influential book called “Bowling Alone” (2000). • In this book, he argued that Americans are participating less and less in common associations, what we would call civic life. • He identified a negative correlation with amount of TV use in particular, and argued that we would rather watch television than participate in groups and associations. • What is the consequence? For Putnam and others, the consequences are (a) a decline of trust in others which leads to (b) a decline of trust in political institutions. • We know from surveys, for example, that: • There is a generalized decline in levels of trust in government across democratic countries; • There is a correlation between conventional participation and trust; • There is a negative correlation between TV use and trust in government. • There is a strong negative correlation both at the individual level and the aggregate level between conventional and unconventional channels of participation • There is a strong negative correlation between trust in government and unconventional participation

18. To summarize • Trends in political participation seem quite common across many democratic societies • There are some strikingly similar trends in what is happening to the conventional avenues of participation; elections, parties, and interest groups. • Unconventional forms of political activity are up. • All of this seems to be linked to some worrying trends in political trust. • For further discussion; do you think that democratic societies are now in an are when it is virtually impossible for citizens to trust government completely? If so, what are the consequences for democracy? Have democracies become virtually ‘ungovernable’? • As an exercise; next time there is an election in a democratic country, follow the campaign closely. How similar or different is it to campaigns in the United States?