I am indebted to Kevin Middlebrook and Kenneth Juster
for their efficient help in the collection of material and data for this paper.
1)
The Viability and Governability of American
Democracy
The 1960s witnessed a dramatic renewal of the
democratic spirit in America. The predominant trends of that decade involved
the challenging of the authority of established political, social, and economic
institutions, increased popular participation in and control over those
institutions, a reaction against the concentration of power in the executive
branch of the federal government and in favor of the reassertion of the power
of Congress and of state and local government, renewed commitment to the idea
of equality on the part of intellectuals and other elites, the emergence of
"public interest" lobbying groups, increased concern for the rights
of and provision of opportunities for minorities and women to participate in
the polity and economy, and a pervasive criticism of those who possessed or
were even thought to possess excessive power or wealth. [In addition to these
democratic trends, and often interspersed with them there were also, of course,
some markedly antidemocratic trends in the 1960s: elitist discrimination
against middle-class groups (rationalized in the name of egalitarianism); the
suppression of free speech (particularly on university campuses); and the
resort by extremist minorities to physical coercion and violence. These
activities formed, in a sense, the dark outriders of the democratic surge,
swept up in the same sense of movement, but serving different goals with very
different means.] The spirit of protest, the spirit of equality, the impulse to
expose and correct inequities were abroad in the land. The themes of the 1960s
were those of the Jacksonian Democracy and the muckraking Progressives; they
embodied ideas and beliefs which were deep in the American tradition but which
usually do not command the passionate intensity of commitment that they did in
the 1960s. That decade bore testimony to the vitality of the democratic idea.
It was a decade of democratic surge and of the reassertion of democratic
egalitarianism.
This democratic surge manifested itself in an almost
endless variety-of ways. Consider, for instance, simply a few examples of this
surge in terms of the two democratic norms of participation and equality.
Voting participation, which had increased during the 1940s and 1950s, declined
during the 1960s, reaching lows of 55.6 percent in the 1972 presidential
election and of 38 percent in the 1974 midterm election. Almost all other forms
of political participation, however, saw a significant increase during the
1950s and continuing into the 1960s. An index of campaign activity
(representing the mean number of campaign acts performed each year) rose from a
low of .58 in the 1952 election to a peak of .83 in the 1960 election;
thereafter, it declined somewhat and leveled off, registering .69 in 1962, .77
in 1964, .73 in 1968, returning to its previous high of .83 in 1970, and then
dropping to .73 in 1972. (1) The overall picture is one of a sharp increase in
campaign activity in the 1950s following which it remained on a high plateau in
the 1960s. The Goldwater, McCarthy, Wallace, and McGovern candidacies mobilized
unprecented numbers of volunteer campaign workers. In addition, the Republicans
in 1962 and the Democrats subsequently launched a series of major efforts to
raise a substantial portion of their campaign funds from large numbers of small
givers. In 1972 Nixon and McGovern each collected $ 13 million to $ 15 million
in small amounts from over 500,000 contributors.
The 1960s also saw, of course, a marked upswing in
other forms of citizen participation, in the form of marches, demonstrations,
protest movements, and "cause" organizations (such as Common Cause,
Nader groups, and environmental groups.) The expansion of participation
throughout society was reflected in the markedly higher levels of
self-consciousness on the part of blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic
groups, students, and women — all of whom became mobilized and organized in new
ways to achieve what they considered to be their appropriate share of the
action and of the rewards. The results of their efforts were testimony to the
ability of the American political system to respond to the pressures of newly
active groups, to assimilate those groups into the political system, and to
incorporate members of those groups into the political leadership structure.
Blacks and women made impressive gains in their representation in state legislatures
and Congress, and in 1974 the voters elected one woman and two Chicano
governors. In a similar vein, there was a marked expansion of white-collar
unionism and of the readiness and willingness for clerical, technical, and
professional employees in public and private bureaucracies to assert themselves
and to secure protection for their rights and privileges. Previously passive or
unorganized groups in the population now embarked on concerted efforts to
establish their claims to opportunities, positions, rewards, and privileges,
which they had not considered themselves entitled to before.
In a related and similar fashion, the 1960s also saw
a reassertion of the primacy of equality as a goal in social, economic, and
political life. The meaning of equality and the means, of achieving it became
central subjects of debate in intellectual and policy-oriented circles. What
was widely hailed as the major philosophical treatise of the decade (Rawls, A
Theory of Justice) defined justice largely in terms of equality. Differences in
wealth and power were viewed with increased skepticism. The classic issue of
equality of opportunity versus equality of results was reopened for debate. The
prevailing preoccupation with equality was well revealed in the titles of books
produced by social theorists and sociologists over the course of three or four
years. This intellectual concern over equality did not, of course, easily
transmit itself into widespread reduction of inequality in society. But the
dominant thrust in political and social action was all clearly in that
direction.
The causes of this democratic surge of the 1960s
could conceivably be: (a) either permanent or transitory; (b) either peculiar
to the United States or more generally pervasive throughout the advanced industrialized
world. The surge might, for instance, be the result of long-term social,
economic, and cultural trends which were producing permanent changes in
American society (often subsumed under the heading of the "emergence of
post-industrial society") and which would in due course equally affect
other advanced industrialized countries. Or it could have been the product of
rapid social and cultural change or upheaval in the 1960s which in itself was
transitory and whose political consequences would hence eventually fade, that
is, it could have been the product of a transitory process of change rather
than the product of the lasting results of change (e.g., the rapid expansion of
higher education enrollments in the 1960s rather than the resulting high level
of enrollment in higher education). In addition, given the similarities which
appeared to exist between the political temper and movements of the 1960s and
earlier periods in American history, it is possible that the surge could have
reflected a peculiarly American dynamic working itself out on a recurring or
cyclical basis. On the other hand, it is also possible that the sources for the
democratic surge were in a transient yet general crisis of the industrialized
world which manifested itself in comparable if different ways in other
Trilateral countries. Or, of course, most probable in fact and least satisfying
in theory, the surge could be the product of a mixture of factors, permanent
and transitory, specific and general.
"In framing a government
which is to be administered by men over men," observed James Madison in
The Federalist, no. 51, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first
enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it
to control itself." To assume that there is no conflict between
these two requirements is sheer self-delusion. To assume that it is impossible
to reach a rough balance between these two requirements is unrealistic
pessimism. The maintenance of that balance is, indeed, what constitutional democracy
is all about. Over the centuries, the United States has probably been more
successful than any other government in combining governmental authority and
limits on that authority in an effective manner appropriate to the environment,
domestic and external, in which that government has operated. Views as to what
constitutes the precise desirable balance between power and liberty, authority
and democracy, government and society obviously differ. In fact, the actual
balance shifts from one historical period to another. Some fluctuation in the
balance is not only acceptable but may be essential to the effective
functioning of constitutional democracy. At the same time, excessive swings may
produce either too much government or too little authority. The democratic
surge of the 1960s raised once again in dramatic fashion the issue of whether
the pendulum had swung too far in one direction.
The consequences of that surge will be felt for years
to come. The analysis here focuses on the immediate - and somewhat contradictory
- effects of the democratic surge on government. The basic point is this: The
vitality of democracy in the United States in the 1960s produced a substantial
increase in governmental activity and a substantial decrease in governmental
authority. By the early 1970s Americans were progressively demanding and
receiving more benefits from their government and yet having less confidence in
their government than they had a decade earlier. And paradoxically, also, this
working out of the democratic impulse was associated with the shift in the
relative balance in the political system between the decline of the more
political, interest-aggregating, "input" institutions of government
(most notably, political parties and the presidency), on the one hand, and the
growth in the bureaucratic, regulating and implementing, "output"
institutions of government, on the other. The vitality of democracy in the
1960s raised questions about the governability of democracy in the 1970s. The
expansion of governmental activities produced doubts about the economic
solvency of government; the decrease in governmental authority produced doubts
about the political solvency of government. The impulse of democracy is to make
government less powerful and more active, to increase its functions, and to
decrease its authority. The questions to be discussed are: How deep are these
trends? How can these seemingly contradictory courses be reconciled within the
framework of the existing political system? If a balance is to be restored between
governmental activity and governmental authority, what are the consequences of
this restoration for the democratic surge and movement of the 1960s? Does an
increase in the vitality of democracy necessarily have to mean a decrease in
the governability of democracy?
2)
The Expansion of
Governmental Activity
The structure of governmental activity in the United States
– in terms of both its size and its content – went through two major changes
during the quarter-century after World War II. The first change, the Defense
Shift, was a response to the external Soviet threat of the 1940s; the second
change, the Welfare Shift, was a response to the internal democratic surge of
the 1960s. The former was primarily the product of elite leadership; the latter
was primarily the result of popular expectations and group demands.
The 1948 is an appropriate starting point for the
analysis of these changes in the structure of governmental activity. [In this
analysis, governmental activity will be measured primarily in terms of
governmental expenditures. This indicator, of course, does not do justice to
many types of governmental activity, such as regulatory action or the
establishment of minimum standards (e.g., for automotive safety or pollution
levels or school desegregation), which have major impact on the economy and
society and yet do not cost very much. In addition, the analysis here will
focus primarily not on absolute levels of governmental expenditures, which
obviously expanded greatly both due to inflation and in real terms, but rather
to the relations among expenditures, revenues, and the GNP and among different
types of expenditures.] By that time governmental activity had adjusted from
its wartime levels and forms; demobilization had been completed; the nation was
setting forth on a new peacetime course. In that year, total governmental
expenditures (federal, state, and local) amounted to 20 percent of GNP;
national defense expenditures were 4 percent of GNP; and governmental purchases
of goods and services were 12 percent of GNP. During the next five years these
figures changed drastically. The changes were almost entirely due to the
onslaught of the Cold War and the perception eventually shared by the top
executives of the government – Truman, Acheson, Forrestal, Marshall, Harriman,
and Lovett – that a major effort was required to counter the Soviet threat to
the security of the West. The key turning points in the development of that
perception included Soviet pressure on Greece and Turkey, The Czech coup, the
Berlin blockade, the communist conquest of China [theLossOfChina], the Soviet
atomic explosion, the North Korean attack on South Korea. In late 1949, a plan
for major rearmament to meet this threat was drawn up within the executive
branch. The top executive leaders, however, felt that neither Congress nor
public opinion was ready to accept such a large-scale military buildup. These
political obstacles were removed by the outbreak of the Korean War in June
1950. (3)
The result was a major expansion in the U.S. military
forces and a drastic reshaping of the structure of governmental expenditures
and activity. By 1953 national defense expenditures had gone up from their 1948
level of $10.7 billion to $48.7 billion. Instead of 4 percent of GNP, they now
constituted over 13 percent of GNP. Nondefense expenditures remained stable at
15 percent of GNP, thus making overall governmental expenditures 28 percent of
GNP (as against 20 percent in 1948) and government purchases of goods and
services 22 percent of GNP (as against 12 percent in 1948). The governmental
share of the output of the American economy, in short, increased by about 80
percent during these five years, virtually all of it in the national defense
sector.
Table 1. Governmental spending in relation to GNP
|
Year
|
All Govt. Expenditures
|
Defense Expenditures
|
Nondefense Expenditures
|
Purchase of Goods and Services
|
|
1948
|
20%
|
4%
|
16%
|
12
|
|
1953
|
28
|
13
|
15
|
22
|
|
1960
|
27
|
9
|
18
|
20
|
|
1965
|
27
|
7
|
20
|
20
|
|
1971
|
32
|
7
|
25
|
22
|
|
1973
|
32
|
6
|
26
|
21
|
|
1974*
|
33
|
6
|
27
|
22
|
Source: Economic Report of the President, 1975
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975)
*Preliminary
With the advent of the Eisenhower administration and
the end of the Korean War, these proportions shifted somewhat and then settled
into a relatively fixed pattern of relationships, which remained markedly
stable for over a decade. From 1954 to 1966, governmental expenditures were
usually about 27 percent or 28 percent of GNP; governmental purchases of goods
and services varied between 19 percent and 22 percent; and defense expenditures,
with the exception of a brief dip in 1964 and 1965, were almost constantly
stable at 9 percent to 10 percent of GNP. The basic pattern for this period was
in effect:
|
|
Percent of GNP
|
|
Governmental expenditures
|
28
|
|
Defense expenditures
|
9
|
|
Nondefense expenditures
|
19
|
|
Governmental purchases of goods and
services
|
21
|
In the mid-1960s, however, the stability of this
pattern was seriously disrupted. The Vietnam war caused a minor disruption,
reversing the downward trend in the defense proportion of GNP visible in 1964
and 1965 and temporarily restoring defense to 9 percent of GNP. The more
significant and lasting change was the tremendous expansion of the nondefense
activities of government. Between 1965 and 1974, total governmental expenditures
rose from 27 percent to 33 percent of GNP; governmental purchases of goods and
services, on the other hand, which had also increased simultaneously with total
expenditures between 1948 and 1953, changed only modestly from 20 percent in
1965 to 22 percent in 1974. This difference meant, of course, that a
substantial proportion of the increase in governmental spending was in the form
of transfer payments; for example, welfare and social security benefits, rather
than additional governmental contributions to the Gross National Product.
Nondefense expenditures, which had been 20 percent of GNP in 1965, were 25
percent of GNP in 1971 and an estimated 27 percent of GNP in 1974. Defense
spending went down to 7 percent of GNP in 1971 and 6 percent in 1974. Back in 1948,
defense spending had been less than 20 percent of total governmental spending.
At the peak of the defense build-up in 1953 it amounted to 46 percent of the
total, and during the long period of stable relationships in the 1950s and
1960s, defense accounted for about 33 percent of total governmental spending.
Under the impact of the Welfare Shift of the late 1960s, however, the defense
proportion of total governmental spending again dropped down to less than
one-fifth of total governmental spending, that is, to the relationship which
had prevailed in 1948 before the military implications of the Cold War had
become evident.
The extent of the Welfare Shift in the scope and
substance of governmental activity can also be seen by comparing the changes in
governmental expenditures during the two decades of the 1950s and 1960s.
Between 1950 and 1960, total governmental expenditures rose by $81.0 billion,
of which $29.1 billion or roughly 36 percent was for defense and international
relations. Between 1960 and 1971, governmental expenditures increased by $218.1
billion, of which, however, only $33.4 billion or roughly 15 percent were
accounted for by defense and international relations, while expenditures for
domestic programs grew by $184.7 billion. This growth in domestic spending is
also reflected in a change in the relative shares of federal, state, and local
governments in total governmental expenditures. In 1960 the federal government
share of total government spending, 59.7 percent, was virtually identical with
what it had been ten years earlier, 60.3 percent. By 1971, the relative growth
in state and local spending had dropped the federal share of governmental
expenditures down to 53.8 percent of total governmental expenditures. (4)
Table 2. Governmental Revenues and Expenditures for
Major Functions (billions of dollars)
|
|
1950
|
1960
|
1965
|
1970
|
1971
|
1972
|
|
Total Revenues
|
$66.7
|
$153.1
|
$202.6
|
$333.8
|
$342.5
|
$381.8
|
|
Total Expenditures
|
70.3
|
151.3
|
205.6
|
333.0
|
369.4
|
397.4
|
|
Defense and International
|
18.4
|
47.5
|
55.8
|
84.3
|
80.9
|
79.3
|
|
Education
|
9.6
|
19.4
|
29.6
|
55.8
|
64.0
|
70.0
|
|
OASI and Other Insurance
|
.7
|
10.8
|
16.6
|
35.8
|
42.0
|
46.9
|
|
Interest on General Debt
|
4.9
|
9.3
|
11.4
|
18.4
|
21.7
|
23.1
|
|
Public Welfare
|
3.1
|
4.5
|
6.4
|
17.5
|
20.4
|
23.6
|
|
Health and Hospitals
|
2.8
|
5.2
|
7.7
|
13.9
|
14.8
|
17.0
|
|
Natural Resources
|
5.0
|
8.4
|
11.0
|
11.5
|
13.7
|
14.2
|
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of the United States: 1974 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1974), p. 246.
The major increases in government spending during the
1960s occurred in education, social security and related insurance benefits,
public welfare, interest on the public debt, health, and hospitals. In 1960,
government at all levels in the United States spent about 125 percent more for
defense than it did for education; in 1972 it spent less than 15 percent more.
In 1960, defense spending was about four-and-a-half times that for social
security; in 1972 it was less than twice as much. In 1960 ten times as much was
spent on defense as on welfare; in 1972 the ratio was less than four to one.
Even in terms of federal government spending alone, the same trends were
visible. In FY 1960, total foreign affairs spending accounted for 53.7 percent
of the federal budget, while expenditures for cash income maintenance accounted
for 22.3 percent. In FY 1974, according to Brookings Institution estimates,
with foreign affairs taking 33 percent and cash income maintenance 31 percent
of the federal budget. (5) Across the board, the tendency was for massive
increases in governmental expenditures to provide cash and benefits for
particular individuals and groups within society rather than in expenditures
designed to serve national purposes vis-à-vis the external environment.
The Welfare Shift, like the Defense Shift before it,
underlined the close connection between the structure of governmental activity
and the trend of public opinion. During the 1940s and early 1950s, the American
public willingly approved massive programs for defense and international
affairs. When queried on whether the military budget or the size of the armed
forces should be increased, decreased, or remain about the same, the largest
proportions of the public almost consistently supported a greater military
effort. In March 1950, for instance, before the Korean War and the NSC 68
rearmament effort, 64 percent of the public thought defense spending should be increased, 7 percent
thought it should be decreased and 24 percent thought it should remain about
the same. These figures were typical results of the early years of the Cold
War. During the middle and later 1950s, after defense spending had in fact
expanded greatly, support for still further expansion eased somewhat. But even
then, only a small minority of the public supported a decrease, with the
largest group approving the existing level of defense effort. Popular support
for other government programs, including all domestic programs and foreign aid,
almost always was substantially less than support for defense spending. (6)
During the mid-1960s, at the peak of the democratic
surge and of the Vietnam War, public opinion on these issues changed
drastically. When asked in 1960, for instance, how they felt about current
defense spending, 18 percent of the public said the United States was spending
too much on defense, 21 percent said too little, and 45 percent said the existing
level was about right. Nine years later, in July 1969, the proportion of the
public saying too much was being spent on defense had zoomed up from 18 percent
to 52 percent; the proportion thinking that too little was being spent on
defense had dropped from 21 percent to 8 percent and the proportion approving
the current level had declined from 45 percent to 31 percent. This new pattern
of opinion on defense remained relatively stable during the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Simultaneously, public opinion became more favorable to
governmental spending for domestic programs. When polled in 1974, for instance,
on whether spending should be increased, decreased, or remain about the same
for some twenty-three governmental programs, the composite scores (where 50
represents maintaining the existing level) for domestic programs were all in
favor of an increase, ranging from a score of 51 for welfare programs for low
income families up to scores of 84 and 86 for helping the elderly and
developing greater self-sufficiency in energy. All five foreign affairs
programs rated much lower than any domestic program, with their scores ranging
from 39 for total defense spending down to 20 for military aid for allies. For
every foreign affairs program, the weight of opinion was thus in favor of
reduced rather than higher spending. The overall average score for domestic
program was 70, and for foreign policy and defense programs it was only 29. (7)
During the 1960s, a dramatic and large-scale change thus took place in public
opinion with respect to governmental activity.
So far, our analysis has focused on the relations
between governmental expenditures and GNP and between different types of
expenditures. The growth in expenditures, however, also raises important issues
concerning the relation between expenditures and revenues. After the Defense
Shift, during the 1950s and early 1960s, governmental expenditures normally
exceeded governmental revenue, but with one exception (1959, when the deficit
was $15 billion), the gap between the two was not large in any single year. In
the late 1960s, on the other hand, after the fiscal implications of the Welfare
Shift had been felt, the overall governmental deficit took on new proportions.
In 1968 it was $17 billion and in 1971 $27 billion. The cumulative deficit for
the five years from 1968 through 1971 was $43 billion. The federal government
was, of course, the principal source of the overall governmental deficit. In
nine of the ten fiscal years after 1965 the federal budget showed a deficit;
the total deficit for those ten years came to an estimated $111.8 billion, of
which $74.6 billion came in the five years for FY 1971 through FY 1975. (8)
The excess of expenditures over revenues was
obviously one major source of the inflation which plagued the United States,
along with most other industrial countries, in the early 1970s. Inflation was,
in effect, one way of paying for the new forms of government activity produced
by the Welfare Shift. The extent of the fiscal gap, its apparent destabilizing
effects were sufficiently ominous for the existing system to generate a new
variety of Marxist analysis of the inevitable collapse of capitalism. “The
fiscal crisis of the capitalist state,” in James O’Connor’s words, “is the
inevitable consequence of the structural gap between state expenditures and
revenues.” As Daniel Bell suggests, in effect, the argument represents a
neo-neo-Marxism: The original Marxism said the capitalist crisis would result
from anarchical competition; neo-Marxism said it would be the result of war and
war expenditures, the garrison state; now, the most recent revision, taking
into consideration the Welfare Shift, identifies the expansion of social
expenditures as the source of the fiscal crisis of capitalism. (9) What the
Marxists mistakenly attribute to capitalist economics, however, is, in fact, a
product of democratic politics.
The Defense Shift involved a major expansion of the national
effort devoted to a military purposes followed by slight reduction and
stabilization of the relation of that activity to total national product. The
Welfare Shift has produced a comparable expansion and redirection of
governmental activity. The key question is: To what extent will this expansion
be limited in scope and time, as was the defense expansion, or to what extent
will it be an open-ended, continuing phenomenon? Has nondefense governmental spending
peaked at about 27 percent of GNP? Or will it increase further or, conceivably,
decrease? The beneficiaries of governmental largesse coupled with governmental
employees constitute a substantial portion of the public. Their interests
clearly run counter to those groups in the public which receive relatively
little in cash benefits from the government but must contribute taxes to
provide governmental payments to other groups in society. On the one hand,
history suggests that the recipients of subsidies, particularly producer
groups, have more specific interests, are more self-conscious and organized,
and are better able to secure access to the political decision points than the
more amorphous, less well-organized, and more diffuse taxpaying and consumer
interests. On the other hand, there is also some evidence that the conditions
favorable to large-scale governmental programs, which existed in the 1960s, may
now be changing significantly. The political basis of the Welfare Shift was the
expansion in political participation and the intensified commitment to
democratic and egalitarian norms which existed in the 1960s. Levels of
political participation in campaign have leveled off, and other forms of
political participation would appear to have declined. Some polls suggest that
the public has become more conservative in its attitudes towards government
generally and more hostile towards the expansion of governmental activity. In
1972, for instance, for the first time, as many liberals as conservatives
agreed with the proposition that government is too big. At the same time,
liberals continued to be heavily in favor of new government programs, such as
national health insurance, which conservatives opposed. If, however, the
general skepticism about what government can accomplish remains a significant
component of public opinion, the pattern of governmental activity which the
Welfare Shift produced by the early 1970s could well remain relatively stable
for the immediate future.
3)
The Decline in
Governmental Authority
a)
The Democratic
Challenge to Authority
The essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was
a general challenge to existing system of authority, public and private. In one
form or another, this challenge manifested itself in the family, the
university, business, public and private associations, politics, the
governmental bureaucracy, and the military services. People no longer felt the
same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to
themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents. Within most
organizations, discipline eased and differences in status became blurred. Each
group claimed its right to participate equally – and perhaps more than equally
– in the decisions which affected itself. More precisely, in American society,
authority had been commonly based on: organizational position, economic wealth,
specialized expertise, legal competence, or electoral representativeness.
Authority based on hierarchy, expertise, and wealth all, obviously, ran counter
to the democratic and egalitarian temper of the times, and during the 1960s,
all three came under heavy attack. In the university, students who lacked
expertise, came to participate in the decision-making process on many important
issues. In the government, organizational hierarchy weakened, and
organizational subordinates more readily acted to ignore, to criticize, or to
defeat the wishes of their organizational superiors. In politics generally, the
authority of wealth was challenged and successful efforts made to introduce
reforms to expose and to limit its influence. Authority derived from legal and
electoral sources did not necessarily run counter to the spirit of the times,
but when it did, it too was challenged and restricted. The commandments of
judges and the actions of legislatures were legitimate to the extent that they
promoted, as they often did, egalitarian and participatory goals. “Civil
disobedience,” after all, was the claim to be morally right in disobeying a law
which was morally wrong. It implied that the moral value of law-abiding
behavior in a society depended upon what was in the laws, not on the procedural
due process by which they were enacted. Finally, electoral legitimacy was,
obviously, more congruent with the democratic surge, but even so, it too at
time was questioned, as the value of “categorical” representativeness was
elevated to challenge the principle of electoral representativeness.
The questioning of authority pervaded society. In
politics, it manifested itself in a decline in public confidence and trust in
political leaders and institutions, a reduction in the power and effectiveness
of political institutions such as the political parties and presidency, a new
importance for the “adversary” media and “critical” intelligentsia in public
affairs, and a weakening of the coherence, purpose, and self-confidence of
political leadership.
b)
Decline in Public
Confidence and Trust
In a democracy, the authority of governmental leaders
and institutions presumably depends in part on the extent to which the public
has confidence and trust in those institutions and leaders. During the 1960s
that confidence and trust declined remarkably in the United States. That
decline can, in turn, be related back to a somewhat earlier tendency towards
ideological and policy polarization which, in turn, had its roots in the
expansion of political participation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The
democratic surge involved a more political active citizenry, which developed
increased ideological consistency on public issues, and which then lost its
confidence in public institutions and leaders when governmental policies failed
to correspond to what they desired. The sequence and direction of these shifts
in public opinion dramatically illustrates how the vitality of democracy in the
1960 (as manifested in increased political participation) produced problems for
the governability of democracy in the 1970s (as manifested in the decreased
public confidence in government.)
During the 1960s public opinion on major issues of
public policy tended to become more polarized and ideologically structured,
that is, people tended to hold more consistent liberal or conservative
attitudes on public policy issues. Between 1956 and 1960, for instance, an
index of ideological consistency for the average American voter hovered about
.15; in 1964 it more than doubled to .40 and remained at similar levels through
1972. (10) Thus, the image of American voters as independently and
pragmatically making up their minds in ad hoc fashion on the merits of
different issues became rather far removed from actuality.
This pattern of developing polarization and
ideological consistency had its roots in two factors. First, those who are more
active in politics are also more likely to have consistent and systematic view
on policy issues. The increase in political participation in the early 1960s
was thus followed by heightened polarization of political opinion in the
mid-1960s. The increase in polarization, in turn, often involved higher levels
of group consciousness (as among blacks) which then stimulated more political
participation (as in the white backlash).
Second, the polarization was clearly related to the
nature of the issues which became the central items on the political agenda of
the mid-1960s. The three major clusters of issues which then came to the fore
were: social issues, such as use of drugs, civil liberties, busing, government
aid to minority groups, and urban riots; military issues, involving primarily, of
course, the war in Vietnam but also the draft, military spending, military aid
programs, and the role of the military-industrial complex more generally. All
three sets of issues, but particularly the social and racial issues, tended to
generate high correlations between the stands which people took on individual
issues and their overall political ideology. On more strictly economic issues,
on the other hand, ideology was a much less significant factor. Thus, to
predict positions of individuals on the legalization of marijuana or school
integration or the size of the defense budget, one would want to ask them
whether they considered themselves liberals, moderates, or conservatives. To
predict their stand on federally financed health insurance, one should ask them
whether they were Democrats, Independents, or Republicans. (11)
The polarization over issues in the mid-1960s in
part, at least, explains the major decline in trust and confidence in
government of the later 1960s. Increasingly, substantial portions of the
American public took more extreme positions on policy issues; those who took more
extreme positions on policy issues, in turn, tended to become more distrustful
of government. (12) Polarization over issues generated distrust about
government, as those who had strong positions on issues became dissatisfied
with the ambivalent, compromising policies of government. Political leaders, in
effect, alienated more and more people by attempting to please them through the
time-honored traditional politics of compromise.
At the end of the 1950s, for instance, about
three-quarters of the American people thought that their government was run
primarily for the benefit of the people and only 17 percent thought that it
primarily responded to what “big interests” wanted. These proportions steadily
changed during the 1960s, stabilizing at very different levels in the early
1970s. By the latter half of 1972, only 38 percent of the population thought
that government was “run for the benefit of all the people” and a majority of
53 percent thought that it was “run by a few big interests looking out for
themselves.” (See Table 3.) In 1959, when asked what they were most proud of
about their country, 85 percent of Americans (as compared to 46 percent of
Britons, 30 percent of Mexicans, 7 percent of Germans, and 3 percent of
Italians, in the same comparative survey) mentioned their “political
institutions.” By 1973, however, 66 percent of a national sample of Americans
said that they were dissatisfied by the way in which their country was
governed. (13) In similar fashion, in 1958, 71 percent of the population felt
that they could trust the government in Washington to do what was right “all”
or “most” of the time, while only 23 percent said that they could trust it only
“some” or “none” of the time. By late 1972, however, the percentage which would
trust the national government to do what was right all or most of the time had
declined to 52 percent, while that which thought it would do what was right
only some or none of the time had doubled to 45 percent. (See Table 4.) Again,
the pattern of change shows a high level of confidence in the 1950s, a sharp
decline of confidence during the 1960s, and a leveling off at much reduced
levels of confidence in the early 1970s.
The precipitous decline in public confidence in their
leaders in the latter part of the 1960s and the leveling off or partial
restoration of confidence in the early 1970s can also be seen in other data
which permit a comparison between attitudes towards government and other major
institutions in society. Between 1966 and 1971 the proportion of the population
having a “great deal of confidence” in the leaders of each of the major
governmental institutions was cut in half. (See Table 5.) By 1973, however,
public confidence in the leadership of the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the
military had begun to be renewed from the lows of two years earlier. Confidence
in the leadership of the executive branch, on the other hand, was – not
surprisingly – at its lowest point. These changes of attitudes toward
governmental leadership did not occur in a vacuum but were part of a general
weakening of confidence in institutional leadership. The leadership of the
major nongovernmental institutions in society who had enjoyed higher levels of
public confidence in the mid-1960s – such as large corporations, higher
educational institutions and medicine – also suffered a somewhat similar
pattern of substantial decline and partial recovery. Significantly, only the
leadership of the press and television news enjoyed more confidence in 1973
than they had in 1966, and only in the case of television was the increase a
substantial and dramatic one. In 1973, the institutional leaders in which the
public had the greatest degree of confidence were, in declining order of
confidence: medicine, higher education, television news, and the military.
Table 3. Government Run by Few Big Interests or for
Benefit of All
|
|
1958
|
1964
|
1966
|
1968
|
1970
|
1972-Pre
|
1972-Post
|
|
For benefit of all
|
76.3%
|
64.0%
|
53.2%
|
51.2%
|
50.1%
|
43.7%
|
37.7%
|
|
Few big interests
|
17.6
|
28.6
|
33.3
|
39.5
|
40.8
|
48.8
|
53.3
|
|
Other, depends
|
1.0
|
4.0
|
6.3
|
4.8
|
5.0
|
2.5
|
2.5
|
|
Don’t know
|
5.1
|
3.5
|
7.2
|
4.5
|
4.1
|
5.1
|
6.5
|
Questions:
(1) 1958: Do you think that the high-up people in
government give everyone a fair break whether they are big shots or just
ordinary people, or do you think some of them pay more attention to what the
big interests want?
(2) Other years: Would you say the government is
pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is
run for the benefit of all the people?
Source: University of Michigan, Center for Political
Studies, election surveys.
Table 4. Trust in the National Government
|
|
1958
|
1964
|
1966
|
1968
|
1970
|
1972-Pre
|
1972-Post
|
|
Just about always
|
15.9%
|
14.3%
|
16.9%
|
7.3%
|
6.5%
|
6.8%
|
5.3%
|
|
Most of the time
|
57.1
|
62.3
|
48.2
|
54.2
|
47.3
|
45.3
|
47.8
|
|
Some of the time
|
23.4
|
21.9
|
28.2
|
36.4
|
44.2
|
45.1
|
44.3
|
|
Almost never
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
Depends
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
Don’t know
|
3.6
|
1.5
|
2.9
|
2.0
|
1.7
|
2.2
|
2.1
|
Question: How much (of the time – 1958, 1964) do you
think we can trust the government in Washington to do what is right – just
about always, most of the time, or only some of the time (or almost never –
1966)?
Source: University of Michigan, Center for Political
Studies, election surveys.
Table 5. Proportion of Public Expressing “Great Deal
of Confidence” in Leadership of Institutions
|
|
1966
|
1971
|
1972
|
1973
|
Change 1966-73
|
|
Government
|
|||||
|
Federal executive
|
41%
|
23%
|
27%
|
19%
|
-22
|
|
Congress
|
42
|
19
|
21
|
29
|
-13
|
|
Supreme Court
|
51
|
23
|
28
|
33
|
-18
|
|
Military
|
62
|
27
|
35
|
40
|
-22
|
|
Social Institutions
|
|||||
|
Major companies
|
55
|
27
|
27
|
29
|
-26
|
|
Organized labor
|
22
|
16
|
15
|
20
|
-2
|
|
Higher education
|
61
|
27
|
33
|
44
|
-17
|
|
Medicine
|
72
|
61
|
48
|
57
|
-15
|
|
Organized religion
|
41
|
27
|
30
|
36
|
-5
|
|
Media
|
|||||
|
Press
|
29
|
18
|
18
|
30
|
+1
|
|
Television news
|
25
|
22
|
17
|
41
|
+16
|
Question: As far as people running these institutions
are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some
confidence, or hardly any confidence in them?
Source: Louis Harris and Associates, Confidence and
Concern: Citizens View American Government, Committe Print, U.S. Senate,
Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Intergovernmental
Relations, 93rd Congress, 1st Session, December 3, 1973.
The late 1960s and early 1970s also saw a significant
decline from the levels of the mid-1960s in the sense of political efficacy on
the part of large numbers of people. In 1966, for instance, 37 percent of the
people believed that what they thought “doesn’t count much anymore”; in 1973 a
substantial majority of 61 percent of the people believed this. Similarly, in
1960 42 percent of the American public scored “high” on a political efficacy
index developed by the Michigan Survey Research Center and only 28 percent of
the population scored “low.” By 1968, however, this distribution had changed
dramatically, with 38 percent of the people scoring “high” and 44 percent of
the population scoring “low.” (14) This decline in political efficacy coincided
with and undoubtedly was closely related to the simultaneous decline in the
confidence and trust which people had in government. As of the early 1970s,
however, the full impact of this change in political efficacy upon the overall
level of political participation had only partially begun to manifest itself.
In terms of traditional theory about the requisites
for a viable democratic polity, these trends of the 1960s thus end up as a
predominantly negative but still mixed report. On the one side, there is the
increasing distrust and loss of confidence in government, the tendencies
towards the polarization of opinion, and the declining sense of political
efficacy. On the other, there is the early rise in political participation over
previous levels. As we have suggested, these various trends may well all be
interrelated. The increases in participation first occurred in the 1950s; these
were followed by the polarization over racial, social, and military issues in
the mid-1960s; this, in turn, was followed by the decrease in confidence and
trust in government and individual political efficacy in the late 1960s. There
is reason to believe that this sequence was not entirely accidental. (15) Those
who are active in politics are likely to have more systematic and consistent view
on political issues, and those who have such views are, as we have shown above,
likely to become alienated if government action does not reflect their views. This
logic would also suggest that those who are most active politically should be
most dissatisfied with the political system. In the past, exactly the reverse
has been the case: the active political participants have had highly positive
attitudes towards government and policies. Now, however, this relationship
seems to be weakening, and those who have low trust in government are no more
likely to be politically apathetic than those with high trust in government. (16)
The decline in the average citizen’s sense of
political efficacy could also produce a decline in levels of political
participation. In fact, the presidential election of 1972 did see a substantial
decline in the level of reported interest in the election and a leveling off of
citizen campaign activity as compared to the levels in the 1968 election. (17)
There is, thus, some reason to think that there may be a cyclical process of
interaction in which:
(1) Increased political participation leads to increased
policy polarization within society;
(2) Increased policy polarization leads to increasing
distrust and a sense of decreasing political efficacy among individuals;
(3) A sense of decreasing political efficacy leads to
decreased political participation.
In addition, change in the principal issues on the
political agenda could lead to decreasing ideological polarization. The fire
has subsided with respect to many of the heated issues of the 1960s, and, at
the moment, they have been displaced on the public agenda by overwhelming
preoccupation with economic issues, first inflation and then recession and
unemployment. The positions of people on economic issues, however, are not as
directly related to their basic ideological inclinations as their positions on other
issues. In addition, inflation and unemployment are like crime; no one is in
favor of them, and significant differences can only appear if there are
significantly different alternative programs for dealing with them. Such
programs, however, have been slow in materializing; hence, the salience of
economic issues may give rise to generalized feelings of lack of confidence in
the political system but not to dissatisfaction rooted in the failure of
government to follow a particular set of policies. Such generalized alienation
could, in turn, reinforce tendencies towards political passivity engendered by
the already observable decline in the sense of political efficacy. This
suggests that the democratic surge of the 1960s could well generate its own
countervailing forces, that an upsurge of political participation produces
conditions which favor a downswing in political participation.
c)
The Decay of the
Party System
The decline in the role of political parties in the
United States in the 1960s can be seen in a variety of ways.
(a) Party identification has dropped sharply, and the
proportion of the public which considers itself Independent in politics has
correspondingly increased. In 1972 more people identified themselves as
Independent than identified themselves as Republican, and among those under
thirty, there were more Independents than Republicans and Democrats combined.
Younger voters always tend to be less partisan than older voters. But the
proportion of Independents among this age group has gone up sharply. In 1950,
for instance, 28 percent of the twenty-one to twenty-nine-year-old group
identified themselves as Independent; in 1971, 43 percent of this age group
did. (18) Thus, unless there is a reversal of this trend and a marked upswing
in partisanship, substantially lower levels of party identification among the
American electorate are bound to resist for at least another generation.
(b) Party voting has declined, and ticket-splitting
has become a major phenomenon. In 1950 about 80 percent of the voters cast
straight party ballots; in 1970 only 50 percent did. (19) Voters are thus more
inclined to vote for the candidate than to vote for the party, and this, in
turn, means that candidates have to campaign primarily as individuals and sell
themselves to the voters in terms of their own personality and talents, rather
than joining with the other candidates of their party in a collaborative
partisan effort. Hence they must also raise their own money and create their
own organization. The phenomenon represented at the extreme by CREEP and its
isolation from the Republican National Committee in the 1972 election is being
duplicated in greater or lesser measure in other electoral contests.
(c) Partisan consistency in voting is also
decreasing, that is, voters are more likely to vote Republican in one election
and Democratic in the next. At the national level, there is a growing tendency
for public opinion to swing generally back and forth across the board, with
relatively little regard to the usual differences among categorical voting
groups. Four out of the six presidential elections since 1952 have been
landslides. This phenomenon is a product of the weakening of party ties and the
decline of regionalism in politics. In 1920 Harding received about the same
percentage of the popular vote that Nixon did in 1972, but Harding lost eleven
states while Nixon lost only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. (20)
In a similar vein, the fact that the voters cast 60 percent of their votes for
Nixon in 1972 did not prevent them from reelecting a Democratic Congress that
year and then giving the Democrats an even more overwhelming majority in
Congress two years later.
As the above figures suggest, the significance of
party as a guide to electoral behavior has declined substantially. In part, but
only in part, candidate appeal took its place. Even more important was the rise
of issues as a significant factor affecting voting behavior. Previously, if one
wanted to predict how individuals would vote in a congressional or presidential
election, the most important fact to know about them was their party
identification. This is no longer the case. In 1956 and 1960, party
identification was three or four times as important as the view of voters on
issues in predicting how they would vote. In the 1964 and subsequent elections,
this relationship reversed itself. Issue politics has replaced party politics
as the primary influence on mass political behavior. (21) This is true, also,
not only with respect to the public and electoral behavior but also with
respect to members of Congress and legislative behavior. Party is no longer as
significant a guide as it once was to how members of Congress will vote. In the
House of Representatives, for instance, during Truman’s second term (1949-52),
54.5 percent of the roll call voters were party unity votes, in which a
majority of one party opposes a majority of the other party. This proportion
has declined steadily to the point where in Nixon’s first term (1969-72), only
31 percent of the roll call voters were party unity votes. (22)
The decline in the salience of party for the mass
public is also, in some measure, reflected in the attitudes of the public
toward the parties as institutions. In 1972, the public was asked which of the
four major institutions of the national government (President, Congress,
Supreme Court, and political parties) had done the best job and the worst job
in the past few years and which was most powerful and least powerful. On both
dimensions, the differences among the three formal branches of the national
government were, while clearly observable, not all that great. Not one of the
others, however, came close to the political parties as the voters’ choice for
doing the worst job and being the least powerful. (See Table 6.) While these
data could conceivably be interpreted in a variety of ways, when they are
viewed in the context of the other evidence on the decline of partisan loyalty,
they strongly suggest that the popular attitude towards parties combines both
disapproval and contempt. As might be expected, these attitudes are
particularly marked among those under twenty-five years of age. In 1973, for
instance, 61 percent of college youth and 64 percent of noncollege youth
believed that political parties needed to be reformed or to be eliminated; in
comparison, 54 percent of the college youth and 45 percent of the noncollege
youth believed big business needed to be reformed or eliminated. (23)
Table 6. Attitudes Towards Governmental Institutions,
1972
|
|
Best Job
|
Most Powerful
|
Worst Job
|
Least Powerful
|
|
President
|
39%
|
31%
|
11%
|
8%
|
|
Congress
|
28
|
32
|
7
|
6
|
|
Supreme Court
|
13
|
26
|
23
|
9
|
|
Political Parties
|
3
|
4
|
43
|
62
|
Questions:
(1) Which of the parts of the government on this list
do you think has done the best (worst) job in the past couple of years?
(2) Which part of the government on the list would
you say is the most (least) powerful?
Source: University of Michigan, Center for Political
Studies, 1972 postelection survey.
Not only has the mass base of the parties declined
but so also has the coherence and strength of party organization. The political
party has, indeed, become less of an organization, with a life and interest of
its own, and more of an arena in which other actors pursue their interests. In
some respects, of course, the decline of party organization is an old and
familiar phenomenon. The expansion of government welfare functions beginning
with the New Dal, the increased pervasiveness of the mass media, particularly
television, and the higher levels of affluence and education among the public
have all tended over the years to weaken the traditional bases of party
organization. During the 1960s, however, this trend seemed to accelerate. In both major parties, party leaders found it difficult to
maintain control of the most central and important function of the party: the
selection of candidates for public office. In part, the encroachment on
party organization was the result of the mobilization of issue constituencies by
issue-oriented candidates, of whom Goldwater, McCarthy, Wallace, and McGovern
were the principal examples on the national level. In part, however, it was
simply a reaction against party politics and party leaders. Endorsements by
party leaders or by party conventions carried little positive weight and were often
a liability. The “outsider” in politics, or the
candidate who could make himself or herself appear to be an outsider, had the
inside road to political office. In New York in 1974, for instance, four
of five candidates for statewide office endorsed by the state Democratic
convention were defeated by the voters in the Democratic primary; the party
leaders, it has been aptly said, did not endorse Hugh Carey for governor
because he could not win, and he won because they did not endorse him. The lesson of the 1960s was that American political parties
were extraordinarily open and extraordinarily vulnerable organizations, in the
sense that they could be easily penetrated, and even captured, by highly
motivated and well-organized groups with a cause and a candidate.
The trends in party reform and organization in the
1960s were all designed to open the parties even further and to encourage
fuller participation in party affairs. In some measure, these reforms could
conceivably mitigate the peculiar paradox in which popular participation in
politics was going up, but the premier organization designed to structure and
organize that participation, the political party, was declining. At the same
time, the longer-term effect of the reforms could be very different from that
which was intended. In the democratic surge during the Progressive era at the
turn of the century, the direct primary was widely adopted as a means of
insuring popular control of the party organization. In fact, however, the
primary reinforced the power of the political bosses whose followers in the
party machine always voted in the primaries. In similar fashion, the reforms of
the 1970s within the Democratic party to insure the representation of all
significant groups and viewpoints in party conventions appeared likely to give
the party leaders at the national convention new influence over the choice of
the presidential nominee.
As we have indicated, the signs of decay in the
American party system have their parallels in the party systems of other
industrialized democratic countries. In addition, however, the developments of
the 1960s in the American party system can also be viewed in terms of the
historical dynamics of American politics. According to the standard theory of
American politics, a major party realignment occurs, usually in conjunction
with a “critical election,” approximately every twenty-eight to thirty-six
years: 1800, 1828, 1860, 1898, 1932. (24) In terms of this theory, such a
realignment was obviously due about 1968. In fact, many of the signs of party
decay which were present in the 1960s have also historically accompanied major
party alignments: a decline in party identification, increased electoral
volatility, third party movements, the loosening of the bonds between social
groups and political parties, and the rise of new policy issues which cut
across the older cleavages. The decay of the old New Deal party system was
clearly visible, and the emergence of a new party system was eagerly awaited,
at least by politicians and political analysis. Yet neither in 1968 nor in 1972
did a new coalition of groups emerge to constitute a new partisan majority and
give birth to a new party alignment. Nor did there seem to be any significant
evidence that such a realignment was likely in 1976 – by which time it would be
eight to sixteen years overdue according to the “normal” pattern of party
system evolution.
Alternatively, the signs of party decomposition could
be interpreted as presaging not simply a realignment of parties within an
ongoing system but rather a more fundamental decay and potential dissolution of
the party system. In this respect, it could be argued that the American party
system emerged during the Jacksonian years of the mid-nineteenth century, that
it went through realignments in the 1850s, 1890s, and 1930s, but that it
reached its peak in terms of popular commitment and organizational strength in
the last decades of the nineteenth century, and that since then it has been
going through a slow, but now accelerating, process of disintegration. To
support this proposition, it could be argued that political parties are a
political form peculiarly suited to the needs of industrial society and that
the movement of the United States into a post-industrial phase hence means the
end of the political party system as we have known it. If this be the case, a
variety of critical issues must be faced. Is democratic government possible
without political parties? If political participation is not organized by means
of parties, how will it be organized? If parties decline, will not popular
participation also drop significantly? In less developed countries, the
principal alternative to party government is military government. Do the highly
developed countries have a third alternative?
d)
The Shifting Balance
between Government and Opposition
The governability of a democracy depends upon the
relation between the authority of its governing institutions and the power of
its opposition institutions. In a parliamentary system, the authority of the
cabinet depends upon the balance of power between the governing parties and the
opposition parties in the legislature. In the United States, the authority of
government depends upon the balance of power between a broad coalition of
governing institutions and groups, which includes but transcends the
legislature and other formal institutions of government, and the power of those
institutions and groups which are committed to opposition. During the 1960s the
balance of power between government and opposition shifted significantly. The
central governing institution in the political system, the presidency, declined
in power; institutions playing opposition roles in the system, mostly notably
the national media and Congress, significantly increased their power.
“Who governs?”
is obviously one of the most important questions to ask concerning any
political system. Even more important, however, may be the question: “Does
anybody govern?” To the extent that the United States
was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed
by the president acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and
groups in the Executive Office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more
important business, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute
the private establishment. In the twentieth century, when the American
political system has moved systematically with respect to public policy, the
direction and the initiative have come from the White House. When the president
is unable to exercise authority, when he is unable to command the cooperation
of key decision-makers elsewhere in society and government, no one else has
been able to supply comparable purpose and initiative. To the extent that the
United States has been governed on a national basis, it has been governed by
the president. During the 1960s and early 1970s, however, the authority of the
president declined significantly, and the governing coalition which had, in
effect, helped the president to run the country from the early 1940s down to
the early 1960s began to disintegrate.
These developments were, in some measure, a result of
the extent to which all forms of leadership, but particularly those associated
with or tainted by politics, tended to lose legitimacy in the 1960s and early
1970s. Not only was there a decline in the confidence of the public in
political leaders, but there was also a marked decline in the confidence of
political leaders in themselves. In part, this was the result of what were
perceived to be significant policy failures: the failure “to win” the war in
Indochina; the failure of the Great Society’s social programs to achieve their
anticipated results; and the intractability of inflation. These perceived failures induced doubts among political
leaders of the effectiveness of their rule. In addition, and probably more
importantly, political leaders also had doubts about the morality of their
rule. They too shared in the democratic, participatory, and egalitarian ethos
of the times, and hence had questions about the legitimacy of hierarchy,
coercion, discipline, secrecy, and deception – all of which are, in some
measure, inescapable attributes of the process of government. [And also, as my
colleague Sydney Verba comments at this point, one must not forget that
“disorder, distrust of authority, difficulties in reconciling competing claims
on the government, conflict among governmental branches, and yelling from the
back of the room at city council meetings are in some measure inescapable
attributes of democratic government.”]
Probably no development of the 1960s and 1970s has
greater import for the future of American politics than the decline in the
authority, status, influence, and effectiveness of the presidency. The effects
of the weakening of the presidency will be felt throughout the body politic for
years to come. The decline of the presidency manifests itself in a variety of
ways.
No one of the last four presidents has served a full
course of eight years in office. One President has been assassinated, one
forced out of office because of opposition to his policies, and another forced
out because of opposition to him personally. Short terms in office reduce the
effectiveness of the president in dealing with both enemies and allies abroad
and bureaucrats and members of Congress at home. The greatest weakness in the
presidency in American history was during the period from 1848 to 1860, during
which twelve years four presidents occupied the office and none of them was
reelected.
At present, for the first time since the Jacksonian
revolution, the United States has a president and a vice-president who are not
the product of a national electoral process. Both the legitimacy and the power
of the presidency are weakened to the extent that the president does not come
into office through an involvement in national politics which compels him to
mobilize support throughout the country, negotiate alliance with diverse
economic, ethnic, and regional groups and defeat his adversaries in intensely
fought state and national electoral battles. The current president is a product
of Grand Rapids and the House – not of the nation. The United States has almost
returned, at least temporarily, to the relations between Congress and president
which prevailed during the congressional caucus period in the second decade of
the nineteenth century.
Since Theodore Roosevelt, at least, the presidency
has been viewed as the most popular branch of government and that which is most
likely to provide the leadership for progressive reform. Liberals,
progressives, intellectuals have all seen the presidency as the key to change
in American politics, economics, and society. The great presidents have been
the strong presidents, who stretched the legal authority and political
resources of the office to mobilize support for their policies and to put
through their legislative program. In the 1960s, however, the tide of opinion
dramatically reversed itself: those who previously glorified presidential
leadership now warn of the dangers of presidential power.
While much was made in the press and elsewhere during
the 1960s about the dangers of the abuses of presidential power, this criticism
of presidential power was, in many respects, evidence of the decline of
presidential power. Certainly the image which both President Johnson and Nixon
had of their power was far different, and probably more accurate, if only
because it was self-fulfilling, than the images which the critics of the
presidency had of presidential power. Both Johnson and Nixon saw themselves as
isolated and beleaguered, surrounded by hostile forces in the bureaucracy and
the establishment. Under both of them, a feeling almost of political paranoia pervaded
the White House: a sense that the president and his staff were “an island” in a
hostile world. On the one hand, these feelings of suspicion and mistrust led
members of the president’s staff to engage in reckless, illegal, and
self-defeating actions to counter his “enemies”; on the one hand, these
feelings also made it all the more difficult for them to engage in the
political compromises and to exercise the political leadership necessary to
mobilize his supporters.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Congress and
the courts began to impose a variety of formal restrictions on presidential
power, in the form of the War Powers Act, the budgetary reform act, the limits
on presidential impoundment of funds, and similar measures.
At the same time, and more importantly, the
effectiveness of the president as the principal leader of the nation declined
also as a result of the decline in the effectiveness of leadership at other
levels in society and government. The absence of strong central leadership in
Congress (on the Rayburn-Johnson model, for instance) made it impossible for a
president to secure support from Congress in an economical fashion. The
diffusion of authority in Congress meant a reduction in the authority of the
president. There was no central leadership with whom he could negotiate and
come to terms. The same was true with respect to the cabinet. The general
decline in the status of cabinet secretaries was often cited as evidence of the
growth in the power of the presidency on the grounds that the White House
office was assuming powers which previously rested with the cabinet. But in
fact the decline in the status of cabinet secretaries made it more difficult
for the president to command the support and cooperation of the executive
bureaucracy; weak leadership at the departmental level produces weakened
leadership at the presidential level.
To become president a candidate has to put together
an electoral coalition involving a majority of voters appropriately distributed
across the country. He normally does this by: (1) developing an identification
with certain issues and positions which bring him the support of key
categorical groups – economic, regional, ethnic, racial, and religious; and (2)
cultivating the appearance of certain general characteristics – honesty,
energy, practicality, decisiveness, sincerity, and experience – which appeal
generally across the board to people in all categorical groups. Before the New
Deal, when the needs of the national government in terms of policies, programs,
and personnel were relatively small, the president normally relied on the
members of his electoral coalition to help him govern the country. Political
leaders in Congress, in the state houses, and elsewhere across the country
showed up in Washington to run the administration, and the groups which
comprised the electoral coalition acted to put through Congress the measures in
which they were interested.
Since the 1930s, however, the
demands on government have grown tremendously and the problems of constituting
a governing coalition have multiplied commensurately. Indeed, once he is
elected president, the president’s electoral coalition has, in a sense, served
its purpose. The day after his election the size of his majority is almost – if
not entirely – irrelevant to his ability to govern the country. What counts
then is his ability to govern the country. What counts then is his ability to
mobilize support from the leaders of the key institutions in society and
government. He has to constitute a broad governing coalition of
strategically located supporters who can furnish him with the information,
talent, expertise, workforce, publicity, arguments, and political support which
he needs to develop a program, to embody it in legislation, and to see it
effectively implemented. This coalition, as we have indicated, must include key
people in Congress, the executive branch, and the private establishment. The
governing coalition need have little relation to the electoral coalition. The
fact that the president as a candidate put together a successful electoral
coalition does not insure that he will have a viable governing coalition.
For twenty years after World War II presidents
operated with the cooperation of a series of informal governing coalitions. Truman made a point of brining a substantial number of
nonpartisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his
administration. He went to the existing sources of power in the country to get
the help he needed in ruling the country. Eisenhower in part inherited this
coalition and was in part almost its creation. He also mobilized a substantial number
of midwestern businessmen into his administration and established close and
effective working relationships with the Democratic leadership of Congress.
During his brief administration, Kennedy attempted to recreate a somewhat
similar structure of alliances. Johnson was acutely aware of the need to
maintain effective working relations with the Eastern establishment and other
key groups in the private sector, but, in effect, in 1965 and 1966 was
successful only with respect to Congress. The informal coalition of
individuals and groups which had buttressed the power of the three previous
presidents began to disintegrate.
Both Johnson and his successor were viewed with a
certain degree of suspicion by many of the more liberal and intellectual elements
which might normally contribute their support to the administration. The
Vietnam war and, to a lesser degree, racial issues divided elite groups as well
as the mass public. In addition, the number and variety of groups whose support
might be necessary had increased tremendously by the 1960s. Truman had been
able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of
Wall Street lawyers and bankers. By the mid-1960s, the sources of power in
society had diversified tremendously, and this was no longer possible.
The most notable new source of national power in
1970, as compared to 1950, was the national media, meaning here the national TV
networks, the national news magazines, and the major newspapers with national
reach such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. [Suggestive of the
new power relationships between government and media were the responses of 490
leading Americans when asked to rate a number of public and private
institutions according to “the amount of influence” they had “on decisions or
actions affecting the nation as a whole.” Television came in a clear first,
well ahead of the president, and newspapers edged out both houses of Congress.
The average ratings, on a scale from 1 (lowest influence) to 10 (highest
influence), were:
1.
Television: 7.2.
2.
White House: 6.9
Supreme Court: 6.9
3.
Newspapers: 6.4
4.
Labor unions: 6.3
Industry: 6.3
U.S. Senate: 6.3
5.
Government bureaucracy: 6.0
U.S. House of Representatives: 6.0
U.S. News and World Report (April 22, 1974)] There
is, for instance, considerable evidence to suggest that the development of
television journalism contributed to the undermining of governmental authority.
the advent of the half-hour nightly news broadcast in 1963 led to greatly
increased popular dependence on television as a source of news. It also greatly
expanded the size of the audience for news. At the same time, the themes which
were stressed, the focus on controversy and violence, and conceivably, the
values and outlook of the journalists, tended to arouse unfavorable attitudes
towards established institutions and to promote a decline in confidence in
government. “Most newsmen,” as Walter Cronkite put it, “come to feel very
little allegiance to the established order. I think they are inclined to side
with humanity rather than with authority and institutions.” (25) And, in fact,
public opinion survey shows us that, even with controls for education and
income, increased reliance on television for news is associated with low
political efficacy, social distrust, cynicism, and weak party loyalty. (26)
Television news, in short, functions as a “dispatriating” agency – one which
portrays the conditions in society as undesirable and as getting worse. In the
1960s, the network organizations, as one analyst put it, became “a highly
creditable, never-tiring political opposition, a maverick third party which
never need face the sobering experience of governing.” (27)
Less dramatic but somewhat parallel changes also occurred
in the political role of newspapers. It is a long-established and familiar
political fact that within a city and even within a state, the power of the
local press serves as a major check on the power of the local government. In
the early twentieth century, the United States developed an effective national
government, making and implementing national policies. Only in recent years,
however, has there come into existence a national press with the economic
independence and communications reach to play a role with respect to the
president that a local newspaper plays with respect to a mayor. This marks the
emergence of a very significant check on presidential power. In the two most
dramatic domestic policy conflicts of the Nixon administration – the Pentagon
Papers and Watergate – organs of the national media challenged and defeated the
national executive. The press, indeed, played a leading role in bringing about
what no other single institution, group, or combination of institutions and
groups, had done previously in American history: forcing out of office a
president who had been elected less than two years earlier by one of the
largest popular majorities in American history. No future president can or will
forget that fact.
The 1960s and early 1970s also saw a reassertion of
the power of Congress. In part, this represented simply the latest phase in the
institutionalized constitutional conflict between Congress and president; in
part, also, of course, it reflected the fact that after 1968 president and
Congress were controlled by different parties. In addition, however, these
years saw the emergences, first in the Senate and then in the House, of a new
generation of congressional activists willing to challenge established
authority in their own chambers as well as in the presidency.
The new power of the media and the new assertiveness
of Congress also had their impact on the relations between the executive branch
and the president. During the Johnson and Nixon administrations the White House
attitudes toward executive branch agencies often seemed to combine mistrust of
them, on the one hand, and the attempt to misuse them, on the other. In part,
no doubt, the poisoning of the relationship between White House and executive
agencies reflected the fact that not since Franklin Roosevelt has this country
had a chief executive with any significant experience as a political executive.
The record to date of former legislators and generals in the presidency
suggests they do not come to that office well equipped to motivate, energize,
guide, and control their theoretical subordinates but actual rivals in the
executive branch agencies. The growth in the power of the press and of Congress
inevitably strengthens the independence of bureaucratic agencies vis-à-vis the
president. Those agencies are secondary contributors to the decline of
presidential power but primary beneficiaries of that decline.
The increased power of the national opposition,
centered in the press and in Congress, undoubtedly is related to and is perhaps
a significant cause of the critical attitudes which the public has towards the
federal as compared to state and local government. While data for past periods
are not readily available, certainly the impression one gets is that over the
years the public has often tended to view state and local government as
inefficient, corrupt, inactive, and unresponsive. The federal government, on
the other hand, has seemed to command much greater confidence and trust, going
all the way from early childhood images of the “goodness” of the president to
respect for the FBI, Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies having
an impact on the population as models of efficiency and integrity. It would now
appear that there has been a drastic reversal of these images. In 1973, a
national sample was asked whether it then had more or less confidence in each
of the three levels of government than it had five years previously. Confidence
in all three levels of government declines more than it rose, but the
proportion of the public which reported a decline in confidence in the federal
government (57 percent) was far higher than those reporting a decline in
confidence in state (26 percent) or local (30 percent) government.
Corroborating these judgements, only 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively,
thought that local and state government had made their life worse during the
past few years, while 28 percent and 27 percent of the population thought that
local and state government had improved their life. In contrast, only 23
percent of the population thought that the federal government had improved
their lives, while a whopping 37 percent thought it had made their lives worse.
As one would expect, substantial majorities also went on record in favor of
increasing the power of state government (59 percent) and of local government
(61 percent). But only 32 percent wanted to increase the power of the federal
government, while 42 percent voted to decrease its power. (28) The shift in the
institutional balance between government and opposition at the national level
thus corresponds neatly to the shift in popular attitudes towards government at
the national level.
The balance between government and opposition depends
not only on the relative power of different institutions, but also on their
roles in the political system. The presidency has been the principal national
governing institution in the United States; its power has declined. The power
of the media and of Congress has increased. Can their roles change? By its very
nature, the media cannot govern and has strong incentives to assume an
oppositional role. The critical question consequently concerns Congress. In the
wake of a declining presidency, can Congress organize itself to furnish the
leadership to govern the country? During most of this century, the trends in
Congress have been in the opposite direction. In recent years the increase in
the power of Congress has outstripped an increase in its ability to govern.
[There are, it might be noted, some parallels between Congress and the
Communist parties in Europe, as described by Michzel Crozier. Both have long
been accustomed to playing opposition roles; with the decline in authority and
power of other groups, the power of both these institution is increasing; and
one crucial question for the future – and governability – of democracy in
Italy, France, and the United States is whether these oppositional bodies can
adapt themselves to play responsible governing roles. Professor Crozier appears
to be somewhat more optimistic about the European communists in this respect
than I am about the American Congress at this moment in time.] If the
institutional balance is to be redressed between government and opposition, the
decline in presidential power has to be reversed and the ability of Congress to
govern has to be increased.
4)
The Democratic
Distemper: Consequences
The vigor of democracy in the United States in the
1960s thus contributed to a democratic distemper, involving the expansion of
governmental activity, on the one hand, and the reduction of governmental
authority, on the other. This democratic distemper, in turn, had further
important consequences for the functioning of the political system. The extent
of these consequences was, as of 1974, still unclear, depending, obviously, on
the duration and the scope of the democratic surge.
The expansion of governmental activity produced
budgetary deficits and a major expansion of total governmental debt from $336
billion in 1960 to $557 billion in 1971. These deficits contributed to
inflationary tendencies in the economy. They also bought the fore in the early 1970s
the entire question of the incidence of the tax burden and the issues of tax
reform. The major expansion of unionism in the public sector combined with the
difficulty, if not the impossibility, of measuring productivity or efficiency
for many bureaucratic activities made the salary and wage determinations for
governmental employees a central focus of political controversy. Unionization produced
higher wages and more vigorous collective bargaining to secure higher wages.
Strikes by public employees became more and more prevalent: in 1961, only
twenty-eight strikes took place involving governmental workers; in 1970, there
were 412 such strikes. (29) Governmental officials were thus caught between the
need to avoid the disruption of public services from strikes by governmental
employees for higher wages and the need to avoid imposing higher taxes to pay
for the higher wages which the governmental employees demand. The easiest and
obviously most prevalent way of escaping from this dilemma is to increase wages
without increasing taxes and thereby to add still further to governmental
deficits and to the inflationary spiral which will serve as the justification
for demands for still higher wages. To the extent that this process is
accompanied by low or negative rates of economic growth, tax revenues will be
still further limited and the whole vicious cycle still further exacerbated.
At the same time that the expansion of governmental
activity creates problems of financial solvency for government, the decline in
governmental authority reduces still further the ability of government to deal
effectively with these problems. The imposition of “hard” decisions imposing
constraints on any major economic group is difficult in any democracy and
particularly difficult in the United States where the separation of powers
provides a variety of points of access to governmental decision-making for
economic interest groups. During the Korean war, for instance, governmental
efforts at wage and prince control failed miserably, as business and farm groups
were able to riddle legislation with loopholes in Congress and labor was able
to use its leverage with the executive branch to eviscerate wage controls. (30)
All this occurred despite the fact that there was a war on and the government
was not lacking in authority. The decline in governmental authority in general
and of the central leadership in particular during the early 1970s opens new
opportunities to special interests to bend governmental behavior to their
special purposes.
In the United States, as
elsewhere in the industrialized world, domestic problems thus become
intractable problems. The public develops expectations which it is impossible
for government to meet. The activities – and expenditures – of
government expand, but the success of government in achieving its goals seem
dubious. In a democracy, however, political leaders in
power need to score successes if they are going to stay in power. The natural
result is to produce a gravitation to foreign policy, where successes, or
seeming successes, are much more easily arranged than they are in domestic
policy. Trips abroad, summit meetings, declarations and treaties,
rhetorical aggression, all produce the appearance of activity and achievement.
The weaker a political leader is at home, the more likely he is to be traveling
abroad. Nixon had to see Brezhnev in June 1974, and Tanaka, for similar
reasons, desperately wanted to see Ford in September 1974. Despite the best
efforts by political leaders to prop each other up at critical moments, there remains,
nonetheless, only limited room for substantive agreements among nations among
whom there are complex and conflicting interests. Consequently, politicians in
search of bolstering their standing at home by achievements abroad either have
to make a nonachievement appear to be an achievement (which can be done
successfully only a limited number of times), or they have to make an
achievement which may have an immediate payoff but which they and, more
importantly, their countries are likely to regret in the long run. The dynamics
of this search for foreign policy achievements by democratic leaders lacking
authority at home gives to dictatorships (whether communist party states or oil
sheikhdoms), which are free from such compulsions, a major advantages in the
conduct of international relations.
The expansion of expenditures and the decrease in
authority are also likely to encourage economic nationalism in democratic
societies. Each country will have an interest in minimizing the export of some
goods in order do keep prices down in its society. At the same time, other
interests are likely to demand protection against the import of foreign goods.
In the United States, this has meant embargoes, as on the export of soybeans,
on the one hand, and tariffs and quotas on the import of textiles, shoes, and
comparable manufactured goods, on the other. A strong government will not
necessarily follow more liberal and internationalist economic policies, but a
weak government is almost certain to be incapable of doing so. The resulting
unilateralism could well weaken still further the alliances among the
Trilateral countries and increase their vulnerability to economic and military
pressures from the Soviet bloc.
Finally, a government which lacks authority and which
is committed to substantial domestic programs will have little ability, short
of a cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the
sacrifices which may be necessary to deal with foreign policy problems and
defense. In the early 1970s, as we have seen, spending for all
significant programs connected with the latter purposes was far more unpopular
than spending for any major domestic purpose. The U.S. government has given up
the authority to draft its citizens into the armed forces and is now committed
to providing the monetary incentives to attract volunteers with a stationary or
declining percentages of the Gross National Product. At the present time, this
would appear to pose no immediate deleterious consequences for national
security. The question necessarily arises, however, of whether in the future,
if a new threat to security should materialize, as it inevitably will at some
point, the government will possess the authority to command the resources and
the sacrifices necessary to meet that threat.
The implications of these potential consequences of
the democratic distemper extend far beyond the United States. For a
quarter-century the United States was the hegemonic power in a system of world
order. The manifestations of the democratic distemper, however, have already
stimulated uncertainty among allies and could well stimulate adventurism among
enemies. If American citizens don’t trust their government, why should friendly
foreigners? If American citizens challenge the authority of American
government, why shouldn’t unfriendly governments? The turning inward of
American attention and the decline in the authority of American governing
institutions are closely related, as both cause and effect, to the relative
downturn in American power and influence in world affairs. A decline in the
governability of democracy at home means a decline in the influence of
democracy abroad.
5)
The Democratic Distemper:
Causes
The immediate causes of the simultaneous expansion of
governmental activity and the decline of governmental authority are to be found
in the democratic surge of the 1960s. What, however, was in turn responsible
for this sharp increase in political consciousness, political participation,
and commitment to egalitarian and democratic values? As we have indicated, the
causes of the surge can be usefully analyzed in terms of their scope and
timing. Are these causes country-specific or Trilateral-general? Are they
transitory, secular, or recurring? In actuality, as we have suggested, the
causes of the democratic surge seem to partake of all these characteristics.
The most specific, immediate, and in a sense
“rational” causes of the democratic surge could conceivably be the specific
policy problems confronting the United States government in the 1960s and 1970s
and its inability to deal effectively with those problems. Vietnam, race
relations, Watergate, and stagflation: these could quite naturally lead to
increased polarization over policy, higher levels of political participation
(and protest), and reduced confidence in governmental institutions and leaders.
In fact, these issues and the ways in which the government dealt with them did
have some impact; the unraveling of Watergate was, for instance, followed by a significant
decline in public confidence in the executive branch of government. More
generally, however, a far-from-perfect fit exists between the perceived
inability of the government to deal effectively with these policy problems and
the various attitudinal and behavioral manifestations of the democratic surge. The
expansion of political participation was underway long before these problems
came to a head in the mid-1960s, and the beginning of the decline in trust and
of the increase in attitude consistency go back before large-scale American
involvement in Vietnam. Indeed, a closer look at the
relationship between attitudes toward the Vietnam war and confidence in
government suggests that the connection between the two may not be very
significant. Opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, for instance,
became widespread among blacks in mid-1966, while among whites opponents of the
war did not outnumber supporters until early 1968. In terms of a variety of
indices, however, white confidence and trust in government declined much
further and more rapidly than black confidence and trust during the middle
1960s. In late 1967, for instance, whites were divided roughly 46 percent in
favor of the war and 44 percent against, while blacks were split 29 percent in
favor and 57 percent against. Yet in 1968, white opinion was divided 49.2
percent to 40.5 percent on whether the government was run for the benefit of
all or a “few big interests,” while blacks thought that it was run for the
benefit of all by a margin of 63.1 percent to 28.6 percent. (31) Black
confidence in government plummeted only after the Nixon administration came to
power in 1969. While the evidence is not as complete as one would desire, it
does, nonetheless, suggest that the actual substantive character of
governmental policies on the war, as well as perhaps on other matters, was of
less significance for the decrease in governmental authority than were the
changes generated by other causes in the attitudes of social groups toward
government and in intensity with which social groups held to particular
political values.
At the opposite extreme in terms of generality, the
democratic surge can also be expanded in terms of widespread demographic trends
of the 1960s, the younger age cohorts furnished many of the activists in the
democratic and egalitarian challenges to established authority. In part, this
revolt of the youth was undoubtedly the product of the global baby boom of the
post-War War II years which brought to the fore in the 1960s a generational
bulge which overwhelmed colleges and universities. This was associated with the
rise of distinctive new values which appeared first among college youth and
then were diffused among youth generally. Prominent among these new values were
what have been described as “changes in relation to the authority of
institutions such as the authority of the law, the police, the government, the
boss in the work situation.” These changes were “in the direction of what
sociologists call ‘deauthorization,’ i.e., a lessening of automatic obedience
to, and respect for, established authority...” The new disrespect for authority
on the part of youth was part and parcel of broader changes in their attitudes
and values with respect to sexual morality, religion as a source of moral
guidance, and traditional patriotism and allegiance “to my country right or
wrong.” (32)
As a result of this development, major differences
over social values and political attitudes emerged between generations. One
significant manifestation of the appearance of this generational gap in the
United States is the proportion of different age groups agreeing at different
times in recent decades with the proposition: “Voting
is the only way that people like me can have any way about how the government
runs things.” In 1952 overwhelming majorities of all age groups agreed
with this statement, with the difference between the youngest age group
(twenty-one to twenty-eight), with 79 percent approval, and the oldest age
group (sixty-one and over), with 80 percent approval, being only 1 percent. By
1968, the proportion of every age group supporting the statement had declined
substantially. Of even greater significance was the major gap of 25 percent
which had opened up between the youngest age group (37 percent approval) and
the oldest age group (62 percent approval). (33) Whereas young and old related
almost identically to political participation in 1952, they had very different
attitudes toward it sixteen years later.
The democratic surge can also be explained as the
first manifestation in the United States of the political impact of the social,
economic, and cultural trends towards the emergence of a post-industrial
society. Rising levels of affluence and education lead to changes in political
attitudes and political behavior. Many of the political and social values which
are more likely to be found among the young than among the elderly are more
likely to be found among better-off, white-collar, suburban groups than among
the poorer, working-class, blue-collar groups in central and industrial cities.
The former groups, however, are growing in numbers and importance relative to
the latter, and hence their political attitudes and behavior patterns are
likely to play an increasingly dominant role in politics. (34) What is true
today in North America is likely to be true tomorrow in Western Europe and
Japan.
The single most important status variable affecting
political participation and attitudes is education. For several decades the
level of education in the United States has been rising rapidly. In 1940, less
than 40 percent of the population was educated beyond elementary school; in
1972 75 percent of the population had been either to high school (40 percent)
or to college (35 percent). The more educated a person is, the more likely he
is to participate in politics, to have a more consistent and more ideological
outlook on political issues, and to hold more “enlightened” or “liberal” or
“change oriented” views on social, cultural, and foreign policy issues.
Consequently the democratic surge could be simply the reflection of a more
highly educated people.
This explanation, however, runs into difficulties
when it is examined more closely. Verba and Nie, for instance, have shown that
the actual rates of campaign activity which prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s
ran far ahead of the rates which would have been projected simply as a result
of changes in the educational composition for this discrepancy (See Table 7.)
In part, the explanation for this discrepancy stems from the tremendous
increase in black political participation during these years. Before 1960,
blacks participated less than would have been expected in terms of their
educational levels. After 1960, they participated far more than would have been
expected by those levels, the gap between projected and actual participation
rates in these latter years being far greater for the blacks than it was for
the whites. The difference in participation between more highly educated and
less highly educated blacks, in turn, was much less than it was between more highly
educated and less highly educated whites. Black
political participation, in short, was the product primarily not of increased
individual status but rather of increased group consciousness. (35) That
political participation will remain high as long as their group consciousness
does. A decline in the saliency of school integration, welfare programs,
law enforcement, and other issues of special concern to blacks will at some
point presumably be accompanied by a decline in their group consciousness and hence
their political participation.
Table 7. Mean Number of Campaign Acts: Actual and
Projected
|
|
1952
|
1956
|
1960
|
1962
|
1964
|
1968
|
1970
|
|
Actual
|
.58
|
.66
|
.83
|
.69
|
.77
|
.73
|
.83
|
|
Projected
|
-
|
.57
|
.59
|
.61
|
.62
|
.65
|
.66
|
Source: Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation
in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper &
Row, 1972). p. 252.
In a similar vein, the assumption that increased
attitude consistency can be explained primarily by higher levels of education
also does not hold up. In fact, during the 1950s and 1960s major and roughly
equal increases in attitude consistency occurred among both those who had gone
to college and those who had not graduated from high school. In summarizing the
data, Nie and Anderson state:
The growth of attitude consistency within the mass
public is clearly not the result of increases in the population’s “ideological
capacities” brought about by gains in educational attainment. ... those with
the lowest educational attainment have experienced the largest increases in
consistency on the core domestic issues; and little significant difference
appears to be present between the two educational groups in comparison to the
dramatic increases in consistency which both groups have experienced.
Instead, they argue, the increase in ideological
thinking is primarily the result of the increased salience which citizens
perceive politics to have for their own immediate concerns: “The political
events of the last decade, and the crisis atmosphere which has attended them,
have caused citizens to perceive politics as increasingly central to their
lives.” (36) Thus, the causes of increased attitude consistency, like the
causes of higher political participation, are to be found in changing political
relationships, rather than in changes in individual background characteristics.
All this suggests that a full explanation of the
democratic surge can be found neither in transitory events nor in secular
social trends common to all industrial societies. The timing and nature of the
surge in the United States also need to be explained by the distinctive
dynamics of the American political process and, in particular, by the
interaction between political ideas and institutional reality in the United
States. The roots of the surge are to be found in the basic American value
system and the degree of commitment which groups in society feel toward that
value system. Unlike Japanese and most European societies, American society is
characterized by a broad consensus on democratic, liberal, egalitarian values. For
much of the time, the commitment to these values is neither passionate nor
intense. During periods of rapid social change, however, these democratic and
egalitarian values of the American creed are reaffirmed. The intensity of
belief during such creedal passion periods leads to the challenging of
established authority and to major efforts to change governmental structure to
accord fully with those values. In this respect, the democratic surge of the
1960s share many characteristics with the comparable egalitarian and reform
movements of the Jacksonian and Progressive eras. Those “surges” like the
contemporary one also occurred during periods of realignment between party and
governmental institutions, on the one hand, and social forces, on the other.
(37) The slogans, goals, values, and targets of all three movements are
strikingly similar. To the extent this analysis is valid, the causes of the
democratic surge in the United States would be specific to the United States
and limited in duration but potentially recurring at some point in the future.
6)
Conclusion: Toward a
Democratic Balance
Predictively, the implication of this analysis is
that in due course the democratic surge and its resulting dual distemper in
government will moderate. Prescriptively, the implication is that these
developments ought to take place in order to avoid the deleterious consequences
of the surge and to restore balance between vitality and governability in the
democratic system.
Al Smith once remarked that “the only cure for the
evils of democracy is more democracy.” Our analysis suggests that applying that
cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today
stem from an excess of democracy – an “excess of democracy” in much the same
sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the consequences of the
Jacksonian revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War. Needed,
instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.
In practice, this moderation has two major areas of
application. First, democracy is only one way of constituting authority, and it
is not necessarily a universally applicable one. In many situations the claims
of expertise, seniority, experience, and special talents may override the
claims of democracy as a way of constituting authority. During the surge of the
1960s, however, the democratic principle was extended to many institutions
where it can, in the long run, only frustrate the purposes of those
institutions. A university where teaching appointments are subject to approval
by students may be a more democratic university but it is not likely to be a
better university. In similar fashion, armies in which the commands of officers
have been subject to veto by the collective wisdom of their subordinates have
almost invariably come to disaster on the battlefield. The arenas where
democratic procedures are appropriate are, in short, limited.
Second, the effective operation of a democratic
political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on
the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society
has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not
actively participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part of
some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors
which has enabled democracy to function effectively. Marginal social groups, as
in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political
system. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands which
extend its functions and undermine its authority still remains. Less
marginality on the part of some groups thus needs to be replaced by more
self-restraint on the part of all groups.
The Greek philosophers argued that the best practical
state would combine several different principles of government in its
constitution. [Who? Fuckingdumbass.] The Constitution of 1787 was drafted with
this insight very much in mind. Over the years, however, the American political
system has emerged as a distinctive case of extraordinary democratic
institutions joined to an exclusively democratic value system. Democracy is
more of a threat to itself in the United States than it is in either Europe or
Japan where there still exist residual inheritances of traditional and
aristocratic values. The absence of such values in the United States produces a
lack of balance in society which, in turn, leads to the swing back and forth
between creedal passion and creedal passivity. Political authority is never
strong in the United States, and it is peculiarly weak during a creedal passion
period of intense commitment to democratic and egalitarian ideals. In the
United States, the strength of democracy poses a problem for the governability
of democracy in a way which is not the case elsewhere.
The vulnerability of democratic government in the
United States thus comes not primarily from external threats, though such
threats are real, nor from internal subversion from the left or the right,
although both possibilities could exist, but rather from the internal dynamics
of democracy itself in a highly educated, mobilized, and participant society.
“Democracy never lasts long,” John Adams observed. “It soon wastes, exhausts,
and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit
suicide.” [ShipOfFool byPlaton.] That suicide is more likely to be the product
of overindulgence than of any other cause. A value which is normally good in
itself is not necessarily optimized when it is maximized. We have come to
recognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economic growth. There
are also potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political
democracy. Democracy will have a longer life if it has a more balanced
existence.
7)
Notes
1.
Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in
America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row,
1972), pp. 251-52. The campaign acts measured included: urging others to vote
for a party or a candidate; contributing money; attending a meeting or rally;
doing other work for a candidate; belonging to a political organisation; using
a campaign button or bumper sticker.
2.
See, for example, S. M. Miller and Pamela A.
Roby, the Future of Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 1970); Christopher
Jencks, Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 1972); Herbert J. Gans, More
Equality (new York: Pantheon, 1973); Lee S. Rainwater, Social Problems,
Inequality and Justice (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1974); Edward C. Budd,
Inequality and Poverty (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Murray Milner, The
Illusion of Equality (San Francisco; Jossey-Bass, 1972); David Lane, The End of
Equality? (Harmendworth, Middlesex, England and York: Penguin Books, 1971); “On
Equality,” Symposium, The Public Interest, Fall 1972; Frank Parkin, Class
Inequality and Political Order (London; MacGibbon & Kee, 1971).
3.
See Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 33-64.
4.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract
of the United States: 1973 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1973), p.
410.
5.
Edward R. Freid, et al., Setting National
Priorities: The 1974 Budget (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1973), p.5.
6.
Huntington, Common Defense, pp. 234-48.
7.
William Watts and Lloyd A. Free, State of the
Nation: 1974 (Washington: Potomac Associates, 1974); The Gallup Opinion Index,
Report No. 112, October 1974, p. 20.
8.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract,
1973, p. 410; U.S. Office of Management and Budget, The United States Budget in
Brief-Fiscal Year 1975 (Washington: Government Printing office, 1974), p. 47.
9.
Daniel Bell, “The Public Household- On ‘Fiscal
Sociology’ and the Liberal Society,” The Public Interest, no. 37, (Fall 1974),
p. 41; James O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1973), p. 221.
10.
Norman H.
Nie and Kristi Anderson, “Mass Belief Systems Revisited: Political Change and
Attitude Structure,” The Journal of Politics, 36 (August 1974), pp. 558-59.
11.
William Schneider, “Public Opinion: The
Beginning of Ideology?” Foreign Policy, no. 17 (Winter 1974-75), pp. 88 ff.
12.
Arthur H. Miller, “Political Issues and Trust in
Government: 1964-70,” American Political Science Review, 68 (September 1974),
pp. 951 ff.
13.
Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic
Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), pp. 64-68; Gallup Survey, New York
Times, October 14, 1973, p.45.
14.
University of Michigan, Survey Research Center,
Codebook, 1960 Survey, p. 146, and Codebook, 1968 Survey, p.310.
15.
See Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R.
Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
forthcoming, 1976), Chapter 15.
16.
Jack Citrin, “Comment: Political Issues and
Trust in Government: 1964-70,” American Political Science Review, 68 (September
1974), pp. 982-84.
17.
Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, Changing American
Voter, Chapter 15, pp. 2-10.
18.
Gallup Survey reported in New York Times,
October 17, 1971, p. 34; N. D. Glenn, “Sources of the Shift to Political Independence,”
Social Science Quarterly, 53 (December 1972), pp. 494-519.
19.
Frederick G. Dutton, Changing Sources of Power:
American Politics in the 1970s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), p. 228; Richard
W. Boyd, “Electoral Trends in Postwar Politics,” in James David Barber, ed.,
Choosing the President (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 185.
20.
Boyd, ibid., p. 189.
21.
Gerald M. Pomper, “From Confusion to Clarity:
Issues and American Voters: 1956-1968,” American Political Science Review, 66
(June 1972), pp. 415 ff.; Miller, ibid., 68 (September 1974), pp. 951 ff.;
Norman H. Nie, “Mass Belief Systems Revisited,” Journal of Politics, 36 (August
1974), pp. 540-91; Schneider, Foreign Policy, no. 17, pp. 98 ff.
22.
Samuel H. Beer, “Government and Politics: An Imbalance,”
The Center Magazine, 7 (March-April 1974), p. 15.
23.
Daniel Yankelovich, Changing Youth Values in the
‘70’s; A Study of American Youth (New York: JDR 3rd Fund, 1974), p.
37.
24.
Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the
Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970); James L.
Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System (Washington: The Brookings Institution,
1973); Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (New York: Harper, 1951)
25.
Quoted in Michael J. Robinson, “American
Political Legitimacy in an Era of Electronic Journalism: Reflections on the
Evening News,” in Richard Adler, ed., Television as a Social Force: New
Approaches to TV Criticism (New York: Praeger-Aspen, 1975), p. 123.
26.
Michael J. Robinson, “Public Affairs Television
and the Growth of Political Malaise: The Case of The Selling of the Pentagon,”
American Political Science Review, forthcoming, June 1976.
27.
Robinson, “American Political Legitimacy,” pp.
126-27.
28.
Louis Harris and Associates, Confidence and
Concern: Citizens View American Government (Committee Print, U.S. Senate,
Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Intergovernmental
Relations, 93rd Cong., 1st Sess., December 3, 1973), pp.
42-43, 299.
29.
Tax Foundation, Inc., Unions and Government
Employment (New York, 1972), pp. 29, 39-41.
30.
Huntington, Common Defense, pp. 271-75.
31.
See University of Michigan, Survey Research
Center, surveys 1958, 1964, 1966, 1968 and 1970, on black and white “Attitudes
Toward Government: Political Cynicism,” And John E. Mueller, War, Presidents,
and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1973), pp. 140-48.
32.
Yankelovich, Charging Youth Values, p. 9.
33.
Anne Foner, “Age Stratification and Age Conflict
in Political Life,” American Sociological Review, 39 (April 1974), p. 190.
34.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Postindustrial Politics:
How Benign Will It Be?” Comparative Politics, 16 (January 1974), pp. 172-82;
Louis Harris, The Anguish of Change (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), pp. 35-52,
272-73.
35.
Verba and Nie, Participation in America, pp.
251-59.
36.
Nie and Anderson, Journal of Politics, 36
(August 1974), pp. 570-71.
37.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Paradigms of American
Polticis: Beyond the One, the TWo, and the Many,” Political Science Quarterly,
89 (March 1974), pp. 18-22.
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