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Democracy at the polls: An expository review
Electoral Studies (1982), I, 107-115 © Butterworths 1982
D e m o c r a c y at the Polls: Expository R e v i e w
An
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305, U S A
For some years now, political scientists have recognized that the most comprehensive continuing source o f information and analysis of elections around the world has come from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Its A t the Polls series, under the direction of H o w a r d Penniman, has issued 18 books reporting on elections in 15 countries, two dealing with referendums, and n o w the volume under review here, Democracy at the Polls. The authors o f the chapters in the latter work seek 'to use the information in the A t the Polls volumes and in all the other relevant literature to see what cross-national generalizations can be made about the conduct and impact o f general elections in western democracies'. The editors placed one limitation on countries to be considered, that they be nations with a population o f more than three million. The A.E.I. voting studies and the effort to synthesize their results follow the traditional approach o f political science, the study o f political institutions and processes, and differ, therefore, from the major corpus o f election studies that are based on public opinion surveys o f the electorate. The latter are largely concerned with analyzing the way in which people decide how to vote, how external forces impinge on the voter, and how the voter makes up his mind, in other words, political sociology and political psychology, respectively. What we get from the A.E.I. books is a focus on the contours and operation of the political game itself." what are the rules, how they vary, what are the consequences for the players, and what affects outcomes. As with all important works, much that is said is obvious, except that I often had not thought o f the various features they describe until I read them here, and I would not have known where to find the relevant documentation even if I had thought o f them. The best way to report on the findings is to follow the order set by the editors. They note in their introductory chapter that o f the twenty-eight countries that hold regular democratic elections and have a population o f more than three million, twenty-three have a parliamentary system o f government, and five have a variant o f the presidential system (Colombia, Finland, France, Venezuela, and the United States). There is little that can be said to suggest a causal relationship between national characteristics and form o f democratic government. Conversely, whether a nation has a presidential or parliamentary system does not seem related to the stability o f its politics. David Butler in his chapter on 'Electoral Systems' presents a great deal o f material in succinct fashion concerning systems of election, proportional or
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otherwise, sizes of parliaments, redistricting processes, and the like. And as he notes, although the 'electoral systems may determine the number o f parties and to some extent their coherence and their structure- . . . many of the essential characteristics of the competing parties have nothing to do with the electoral system; they spring from a country's history and its economic and social structure.' Still electoral systems make a difference. The 'first-past-the-post system' used largely in countries that are English-speaking or are part of the Commonwealth fosters 'strong parties and discourages weak ones; two parties are likely to predominate, and whichever gets a plurality in votes usually gets a majority in seats. Elections therefore choose government'. The system encourages sensitivity to public opinion, since a small shift among the electorate can change the government. Proportional representation produces greater control by the central party over members of parliament, but elections may not decide the composition of governments, since it is rare that any party wins a parliamentary majority. The largest party or the party that gained the most votes in an election may not be part of the post-election governing coalition. Hence, a 'fair' distribution of the electorate's w~tes into parliamentary seats need not translate shifts in opinion into changes in policy. Arend Lijphart incisively examines the ideological dimensions of party systems. As he notes, in the last decade, there have been seven principal ones: socioeconomic, religious, cultural-ethnic, urban-rural, regime support, foreign policy, and post-materialism. The socio-economic dimension, which coincides with the 'core-issues' of the traditional left-right division, is still the most important and 'is present in all of the democratic systems', In an analysis of the determinants of coalition formation in multi-party systems, Lijphart finds that 'the socioeconomic dimension predominated in 82 percent of the coalition years and the religious dimension in only 15 percent'. Various studies have shown that ideological differences are related to policy: 'leftist governments have systematically produced a higher rate of growth of the public sector o f the economy, larger central g o v e r n m e n t budgets, more income equalization, and higher levels of performance with regard to educational expenditures and public health than rightist governments.' Leon Epstein focuses on party organization. His comparison of the American system, the only one in which party organizations are legally deprived of the right to choose candidates, and the others, indicates the extent to which American parties are not parties in the European sense of the term. The separation of powers that characterizes the American system has fostered weak party organizations with little control over legislators and encouraged candidate- rather than party-centered elections. Ironically, the successful e~orts of reformers and progressives to democratize the process bv reducing the power of'bosses' and entrenched interests have weakened the ability of the electorate to make policy or ideologically-oriented choices. And he concludes that 'the difference between the American and other party organizations with respect to their domination of elections' will not diminish. Austin Ranney elaborates on some of the same themes in his chapter on 'Candidate Selection'. A m o n g other distinguishing aspects of the American model, he points out that the United States is the only country in which non-members are legally entitled to help choose the nominees in the primaries, in most countries, party rules are private, the law does not attempt to dictate to the parties. Still, even in the United States, 'the voters' party preferences remain by far the most powerful single
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determinant o f voting choice, and in most other democratic countries most voters vote for the candidate o f the party they prefer, not the candidate whose personal qualities they most admire'. Hence, the way candidates are chosen is critical for understanding the political process in different nations. H o w a r d Penniman continues the emphasis on party organization and candidate choice in his chapter on 'Campaign Styles and Methods'. He notes that technological developments, especially the rise of polling, enhanced more recently by its computerized capacity to produce rapid intelligence about political attitudes, the new ability to raise funds through computerized 'personal' letters, and the spread of television, which allows party leaders and candidates to reach large numbers o f voters, have reduced the need for a campaign organization o f party workers and thus have lessened the need to maintain a mass membership party. These innovations have led to a new type o f party professional, the expert in polling, modern fund-raising techniques and public relations. These changes have strengthened the hold o f party leaders and central organizations over candidates and legislators. The impact o f these developments on parties has been less evident in the American congressional elections since they are conducted locally and 'candidates in large urban districts f i n d . . , telecasts o f doubtful value', because the audience o f individual television studios and congressional districts do not coincide. Campaign tactics and strategies remain important determinants of electoral results. Parties are not free to ignore the sentiments o f their members and supporters. There has been a decline in party allegiance, increasing proportions of the electorate make up their minds in the last few weeks o f a campaign. Still the fact remains, as David Butler and Donald Stokes have emphasized, that the voters now 'hold governments accountable for good and bad times', that they are most likely to seek, in Ivor Crewe's words, 'rising living standards, full employment, and price stability'. And as Penniman emphasizes: 'Depressions, inflation, and unemployment are the foundations of opposition victories.' In his chapter on 'Campaign Finance', Khayyam Zev Paltiel goes into detail on the varying ways different parties raise money. He notes that the rise o f the left groups, which secured mass memberships and could call on trade unions for support, led business to find ways to give money to conservative parties to counter the weight o f organized numbers on the other side. And in 'an increasingly complex and differentiated industrial society, there exists a constant tension between the interests o f the organized groups that possesses the bulk of the technical, material, and monetary resources needed by the parties and the principle of " o n e man [sic], one v o t e " that underlies democratic systems. Legal restrictions alone will neither eliminate group demands nor reduce the needs o f the parties. The conflict is itself the very stuff o f democratic politics.' In the chapter on 'Mass Communications', A n t h o n y Smith argues that the shift in the predominant form o f the mass media from newspapers to television has changed the response o f the electorate to politically relevant information. He notes that newspapers were originally very partisan and helped to build party communities around them to sustain strong party loyalty. Television, on the other hand, 'aspires to impartiality', since its audience is less differentiated, less self-selected than the party press. 'By showing both sides o f the argument, it tends to erode the stability o f people's political views and party identification and even the stability o f the party system.'
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There can be no question, as noted earlier by Penniman, that party loyalties have declined. But I would doubt that the cause is the shift from the partisanship of the newspapers to the impartiality of television. As Stein Rokkan noted a number of years ago, the proportion o f the population reading socialist and other left newspapers was far below the percentage of the vote the parties they supported obtained in various countries. Franklin Roosevelt complained in the 1930s about the 'one-party press' in the United States, yet he was triumphant at the polls. In Australia and New Zealand, Labor parties won elections without the support of a single newspaper. The Labour party flourished in Britain with little press backing. Television has made an important difference, as noted earlier, in enabling party leaders to reach out directly to the electorate, in reducing the need for the traditional party organization. But in earlier eras, w)ters were exposed to opposition stimuli through the press as much as or more than they are now through television. If there has been any change, it is that conservatively disposed voters are more likely to hear something o f the case of the left, most of the left's constituency always had the converse experience. It may be noted, however, that Smith's judgment that 'television has increased the expectation of impartiality in all media and has made the bias of newspapers appear increasingly unpopular' seems warranted. Dennis Kavanagh traces the impact o f ' P u b l i c Opinion Polls' on elections in his chapter on the subject. He correctly emphasizes the changes that have occurred as parties and candidates no longer have to rely 'on intuition and impressions for interpreting the mood o f w)ters'. He errs, I believe, in suggesting that polls were first used extensively for election purposes in the 1960s. According to Jim Farley, Franklin Roosevelt made a drastic policy shift during his first term in office in reaction to private polls commissioned by the Democratic National Committee, which indicated that he might suffer serious defections to third parties. During the 1950s, many European parties, particularly to my knowledge, in Germany and Scandinavia, relied heavily on polling data. The British were probably slower than others to accept the reliability of the new technique. Prior to the 1945 election, the contest in which polls were used, the Gallup poll, projected an overwhelming lead for the Labour party, a finding that was largely ignored by British politicians and the media. The election polls have, on the whole, been accurate in their anticipations of election results across a broad range of countries. As a result, politicians, the media, and others concerned with influencing public opinion have made extensive use of them. The polls have clearly affccted the way elections are conducted, in parliamentary countries, governments have gained an important advantage, since they can now try to pick an opportune moment to call an election, knowing the standing o f the parties among the public. Candidates for nominations in the United States, and for party leadership elsewhere, gain or lose m o m e n t u m depending on what the polls report, long before the day of decision. Although pollsters and scholars differ as to whether the polls create a 'bandwagon effect' among the electorate, there can be little doubt that survey results affect the flow of money and campaign activity for a candidate. In the United States, a bad showing dries up campaign contributions, thus increasing the difficulty of catching the front-runner. Increasingly, pollsters help to determine party strategy and even g o v e r n m e n t policies. They permit parties to target particular groups o f voters with issues tailored to their particular views. Yet, since most important parties have access to
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similar information, the concern that the electorate can be manipulated is unwarranted. Following an election, the polls help inform all parties as to the nature of the mandate, whether, for example, American voters rejected paternalism in 1980, while the French electorate opted for more g o v e r n m e n t in 1981, or whether both voted out incumbents for presiding over a declining economy. It should also be noted, however, that opinion surveys may also undermine governments' selfconfidence and their ability to act by documenting adverse changes in public opinion before major reforms have had a chance to work. Economic changes, whether introduced by leftist or conservative regimes, are initially more likely than not to produce instability and an economic downswing. Thus, by giving the electorate greater voice, the polls ironically may contribute to the difficulties of governing in democracies. Ivor Crewe's chapter on 'Electoral Participation' is one o f the most systematically comparative ones in the book, in large part because he could deal with quantitative indicators o f varying behavior among countries, namely turnout in elections. As he notes, there is a wide range o f variation, from 95 per cent in Australia and The Netherlands to 47 per cent in Colombia. H o w can these variations be explained? I. MACRO EXPLANATIONS
1. Legal and Administrative Factors (a). Is voting a compulsory or voluntary act? It is compulsory in Australia and The Netherlands. (b). H o w convenient is it to vote? The United States makes voting more difficult than most other countries by holding its elections on one day, a Tuesday. Some countries hold their elections on two days, on a Sunday or make Election Day a holiday, and make it easy to vote in advance, by post, through a proxy, or at special polling stations. (c). Disincentives. ' T h e United States, true to its liberal and Protestant tradition, is the only country where the individual voter is not automatically registered by the authorities but must take the initiative himself.'
2. Organizational Mobilization The 'strength o f the linkage between a country's party system and its established social divisions, such as class, religion, language, and race' affect turnout. The greater the relationship between such factors and vote choice the higher the proportion voting. Crewe demonstrates a very high correlation between national turnout rates and 'the closeness o f fit between its party system and major social cleavages'. In addition, voting is higher in countries where there is a high degree of interpenetration between party organization and the network o f institutions serving its 'client' social groups, as in Italy and Austria where the church and the labor m o v e m e n t are closely linked to parties.
3. Electoral and Party Systems The assumption that increased competitiveness, close elections, increases voting
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participation could not be validated by comparative data, although the very low level of competition in Switzerland may explain the low turnout there. Proportional representation systems, in which each vote counts, should increase participation, but the actual relationship is not high. II. M i c R o EXPLANATIONS
1. Personal Resources and Capacities Crewe tests my analysis in Political Man that certain social characteristics are correlated with voting turnout. These traits include income, education, occupation, race, gender, age, length of residency, marital status, and organization membership. He concludes that this summary of factors 'has stood the test of time and international comparison' a finding which does not displease me. The variations linked to race, sex and age have, however, declined somewhat, while there is some evidence that education is the most powerful variable of them all. But the factors that correlate with w~ting on the individual level do not necessarily correlate at the national level. Thus increased education and affluence do not appear related to changes in turnout rates a m o n g or within countries. T h e wealthy, well educated United States has a much lower level of participation than do much poorer nations. Crewe suggests 'the plausible, albeit still speculative explanation, that national rates of turnout rest on a combination of individual level factors and institutional factors . . . . In the presence of such institutional incentives to vote as a close alignment between partisan and social divisions, automatic registration, a PR electoral system, a competitive party system, and the administrative facilitation of voting, individual-level factors will be overridden.' in a discussion o f ' W h a t Decides Elections?' Donald Stokes seeks to pull together on a comparative basis the factors that affect them, as presented in the A t the Polls volumes. He notes at the outset that the 'electoral politics of a country may be profoundly altered by changes in the composition of its electorate or in the voters' basic alignments with the rival parties'. The key factors on a cross-national basis are:
1. Political i)emography The ethnic composition of various countries have been modified by boundary changes or partition, e.g., G e r m a n y , India, and Ireland, or by high levels of immigration or emigration, e.g., post-war Australia and Israel, and more c o m m o n l y by the gradual turnover of generations o f varying sizes. A ' b a b y - b o o m ' can have a delayed powerful impact on national politics.
2. Voting Alignments The determinants of voting usually 'extend far into the past, and every election builds u p o n prior alignments'. The passing of a generation f r o m the scene may open the d o o r to new sets o f loyalties.
3. Partj, Organization Many suggest that party efforts can play a major role in determining outcomes, but
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there is slight evidence for this in the A t the Polls volumes. There has been little research on this subject. 4. Mass Media
As noted earlier by Anthony Smith, the press has become less partisan. Although television is now the electorate's chief source of information, there is no evidence that it plays a role in converting people to different political persuasions. The media, however, set 'the agenda of political discussion'. They tell people 'what to think about'. Television by its broad coverage of different points of view and by exposing party leaders visually to its audience as flesh and blood people helps to moderate partisan feelings. 5. Electoral Systems
In spite of the varying number of political parties, related in part to differences in electoral systems, a pattern of two major alignments 'has emerged almost everywhere', that is two major parties or their functional equivalents. Overall, there is no evidence that electorates are being 'alienated by the futility of electoral choices'. Voters appear to believe that 'significant values turned on the choices they were asked to make at the polls'. Anthony King follows this with a discussion o f ' W h a t Do Elections Decide?' He emphasizes that the electorate has been able to have a real impact on policy in most countries. As noted earlier by Lijphart, left oriented governments are more likely than conservative ones to support high levels of public welfare, to redistribute income, to extend opportunity through increasing educational facilities, and to follow policies that result in relatively high inflation and low unemployment, while conservative governments are more disposed to move in the opposite direction. The record, therefore, suggests that there is a 'relationship between what political parties say they will do if elected and what they actually do (or attempt to do) . . . . Political parties are "reliable" in this sense.' But it is clear that we do not know enough in this area. We need, for example, to learn much more about the conditions under which elections do or do not have a major determinant on public policy, as well as about the consequences of prolonged governance by the left or right as contrasted with frequent alternations in office. Jeane Kirkpatrick concludes the book with an essay addressed to 'Democratic Theory'. She contrasts the descriptive approach of democracy in operation, as illustrated by the books in the A t the Polls series, with the efforts of political theorists to define 'What is democracy?' from a normative standpoint. The empirical school has basically emphasized that democracy is a system in which the bulk of the population choose office holders through competitive elections. Implicit in this definition are assumptions about guarantees of free speech, opposition, limitations on tenure in office, and the like. These writers basically describe the system that has been institutionalized in the West. Normative theorists raise various criteria as conditions for democracy, as they define it. These may include 'political equality', a system that guarantees equal input in the election process through proportional representation, and social or economic equality, sometimes with the implication that only an egalitarian socialist society may be considered democratic. Western democracy is, of course, often criticized by
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Marxist and other radicals for not really influencing the basic power structure, since in their judgment, power, the control of key societal decisions, rests with possession of wealth. Normative theorists pit the perfect 'ideal' against an imperfect reality. But as Kirkpatrick notes, 'if democracy is defined in terms of ideals, rather than institutions, any ideal will do'. It is impossible to test objectively whether systems live up to ideals, since we have no measure of most ideals. Insisting on the ideal 'leads almost inevitably to devaluation of the real, as actual regimes fail to measure
up'.
The empirical approach leads us to ask what are the social requisites for democracy, the conditions associated with popularly elected stable governments. This approach requires comparative analysis. It is basically the method o f social science. Democracy at the Polls is an important and useful book. By seeking to generalize from analyses of elections in 15 countries, it helps to counter the tendency often exhibited by those who deal with events in a single country to treat them parochially, to seek local explanations. Clearly, if we know that the correlation between class and voting has declined in much of the industrialized world, that voting participation rates have fallen generally, and that party loyalty has decreased in a number of countries, the explanation for such developments in any one nation cannot be framed in terms of the particular conditions of that society. But though the book helps to counter particularistic emphases, its authors drawing largely on the books previously published in the A t the Polls series, faced the problem that the data had not been systematically gathered to facilitate comparative social science analysis. Rather each book was assembled soon after a given election to report on what happened, how the parties performed, what the issues were, how the electorate divided, and so on. The A t the Polls books are extremely useful compendia. The effort, however, to draw comparative generalizations from these case studies which are focused on the details of national events at one point in time inevitably has serious limitations. Three writers, Lijphart, Crewe, and King, were able to overcome some of these di~culties because they dealt with topics for which quantitative indicators were available. They could, therefore, either through their own statistical research or by drawing on the work of others, present the results of cross-national efforts to test hypotheses about the changing ideologies of parties, sources of voting participation, and the relationship between programs and policy. For most of the other authors, an effort to address large comparative questions would have required new research going beyond the available data. The changes referred to above in the correlations between class and party, and the decline in voting participation and party allegiance, are topics that call for systematic cross-national study. Some research suggests that the class-party correlation has declined as a result o f the growth of post-materialist or social issues, which have pressed the well-educated to the New Politics Left and the less-educated to the more traditional Right. But it may also be that the prolonged prosperity of the post-World War II decades has reduced the saliency of class linked economic issues for the younger generation. Some studies cited in Democracy at the Polls focus on television as a source of reduced loyalty to party. But alternatively, it may be suggested that partisan allegiances have decreased because of a growth in cross-cutting value cleavages
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115
resulting from developments in a post-industrial society, which parties find difficult to encompass in a coherent ideology. The rise of single-issue movements, not discussed much here, which cuts across parties in many countries environmentalism, ethnic autonomy, minority rights, feminism, tax revolt, peace movements--also have upset traditional relationships between party and social base, and in some cases have given rise to new parties. To what extent are these shifts a function of a rapidly changing social structure in an emerging post-industrial society that gives rise to post-materialist social values and consequent reactive backlashes? Or are they linked to changes away from the broad economic and political parameters of the 1930s and 1940s, that is, an economic shift from a period of deep depression to one of prolonged economic growth and affluence, followed in the late seventies by relative decline, and in the political sphere by the discrediting of fascist, racist, and other ideologies identified with the extreme right and the concomitant legitimatizing of left orientations. In raising these questions, I do not want to suggest that the authors of Democracy at the Polls have not brought together important comparative findings. They definitely have. For example, the book documents: (a) generalizations about correlates of voting participation, (b) that most political systems basically still involve a choice between the left and the right, (c) that economic events tend to be determinative in affecting election results, i.e., whether the incumbent or the opposition wins, (d) that election results do have a major impact on public policy, (e) that social issues have become increasingly important in many countries, and (f) that changes in the technology of elections, particularly the use of polls, computers, and television have contributed to the decline of the mass membership party. The conclusions set the stage for further research both on comparative and national bases. For the analysis of deviant cases is the best way to explore the implications of a comparative generalization. Such deviant cases include the inversion of the correlation between class and left or right voting in Israel and to some extent in Japan; the low turnout rate in Switzerland; the weakness of class-based parties and organization in the United States; and the high rate of female voting at times in Italy. Efforts to consciously explain deviant cases should inform future volumes in the A t the Polls series, since their authors will be able to draw on the generalizations in Democracy at the Polls.
D e m o c r a c y at the Polls: Expository R e v i e w
An
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305, U S A
For some years now, political scientists have recognized that the most comprehensive continuing source o f information and analysis of elections around the world has come from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Its A t the Polls series, under the direction of H o w a r d Penniman, has issued 18 books reporting on elections in 15 countries, two dealing with referendums, and n o w the volume under review here, Democracy at the Polls. The authors o f the chapters in the latter work seek 'to use the information in the A t the Polls volumes and in all the other relevant literature to see what cross-national generalizations can be made about the conduct and impact o f general elections in western democracies'. The editors placed one limitation on countries to be considered, that they be nations with a population o f more than three million. The A.E.I. voting studies and the effort to synthesize their results follow the traditional approach o f political science, the study o f political institutions and processes, and differ, therefore, from the major corpus o f election studies that are based on public opinion surveys o f the electorate. The latter are largely concerned with analyzing the way in which people decide how to vote, how external forces impinge on the voter, and how the voter makes up his mind, in other words, political sociology and political psychology, respectively. What we get from the A.E.I. books is a focus on the contours and operation of the political game itself." what are the rules, how they vary, what are the consequences for the players, and what affects outcomes. As with all important works, much that is said is obvious, except that I often had not thought o f the various features they describe until I read them here, and I would not have known where to find the relevant documentation even if I had thought o f them. The best way to report on the findings is to follow the order set by the editors. They note in their introductory chapter that o f the twenty-eight countries that hold regular democratic elections and have a population o f more than three million, twenty-three have a parliamentary system o f government, and five have a variant o f the presidential system (Colombia, Finland, France, Venezuela, and the United States). There is little that can be said to suggest a causal relationship between national characteristics and form o f democratic government. Conversely, whether a nation has a presidential or parliamentary system does not seem related to the stability o f its politics. David Butler in his chapter on 'Electoral Systems' presents a great deal o f material in succinct fashion concerning systems of election, proportional or
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otherwise, sizes of parliaments, redistricting processes, and the like. And as he notes, although the 'electoral systems may determine the number o f parties and to some extent their coherence and their structure- . . . many of the essential characteristics of the competing parties have nothing to do with the electoral system; they spring from a country's history and its economic and social structure.' Still electoral systems make a difference. The 'first-past-the-post system' used largely in countries that are English-speaking or are part of the Commonwealth fosters 'strong parties and discourages weak ones; two parties are likely to predominate, and whichever gets a plurality in votes usually gets a majority in seats. Elections therefore choose government'. The system encourages sensitivity to public opinion, since a small shift among the electorate can change the government. Proportional representation produces greater control by the central party over members of parliament, but elections may not decide the composition of governments, since it is rare that any party wins a parliamentary majority. The largest party or the party that gained the most votes in an election may not be part of the post-election governing coalition. Hence, a 'fair' distribution of the electorate's w~tes into parliamentary seats need not translate shifts in opinion into changes in policy. Arend Lijphart incisively examines the ideological dimensions of party systems. As he notes, in the last decade, there have been seven principal ones: socioeconomic, religious, cultural-ethnic, urban-rural, regime support, foreign policy, and post-materialism. The socio-economic dimension, which coincides with the 'core-issues' of the traditional left-right division, is still the most important and 'is present in all of the democratic systems', In an analysis of the determinants of coalition formation in multi-party systems, Lijphart finds that 'the socioeconomic dimension predominated in 82 percent of the coalition years and the religious dimension in only 15 percent'. Various studies have shown that ideological differences are related to policy: 'leftist governments have systematically produced a higher rate of growth of the public sector o f the economy, larger central g o v e r n m e n t budgets, more income equalization, and higher levels of performance with regard to educational expenditures and public health than rightist governments.' Leon Epstein focuses on party organization. His comparison of the American system, the only one in which party organizations are legally deprived of the right to choose candidates, and the others, indicates the extent to which American parties are not parties in the European sense of the term. The separation of powers that characterizes the American system has fostered weak party organizations with little control over legislators and encouraged candidate- rather than party-centered elections. Ironically, the successful e~orts of reformers and progressives to democratize the process bv reducing the power of'bosses' and entrenched interests have weakened the ability of the electorate to make policy or ideologically-oriented choices. And he concludes that 'the difference between the American and other party organizations with respect to their domination of elections' will not diminish. Austin Ranney elaborates on some of the same themes in his chapter on 'Candidate Selection'. A m o n g other distinguishing aspects of the American model, he points out that the United States is the only country in which non-members are legally entitled to help choose the nominees in the primaries, in most countries, party rules are private, the law does not attempt to dictate to the parties. Still, even in the United States, 'the voters' party preferences remain by far the most powerful single
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
109
determinant o f voting choice, and in most other democratic countries most voters vote for the candidate o f the party they prefer, not the candidate whose personal qualities they most admire'. Hence, the way candidates are chosen is critical for understanding the political process in different nations. H o w a r d Penniman continues the emphasis on party organization and candidate choice in his chapter on 'Campaign Styles and Methods'. He notes that technological developments, especially the rise of polling, enhanced more recently by its computerized capacity to produce rapid intelligence about political attitudes, the new ability to raise funds through computerized 'personal' letters, and the spread of television, which allows party leaders and candidates to reach large numbers o f voters, have reduced the need for a campaign organization o f party workers and thus have lessened the need to maintain a mass membership party. These innovations have led to a new type o f party professional, the expert in polling, modern fund-raising techniques and public relations. These changes have strengthened the hold o f party leaders and central organizations over candidates and legislators. The impact o f these developments on parties has been less evident in the American congressional elections since they are conducted locally and 'candidates in large urban districts f i n d . . , telecasts o f doubtful value', because the audience o f individual television studios and congressional districts do not coincide. Campaign tactics and strategies remain important determinants of electoral results. Parties are not free to ignore the sentiments o f their members and supporters. There has been a decline in party allegiance, increasing proportions of the electorate make up their minds in the last few weeks o f a campaign. Still the fact remains, as David Butler and Donald Stokes have emphasized, that the voters now 'hold governments accountable for good and bad times', that they are most likely to seek, in Ivor Crewe's words, 'rising living standards, full employment, and price stability'. And as Penniman emphasizes: 'Depressions, inflation, and unemployment are the foundations of opposition victories.' In his chapter on 'Campaign Finance', Khayyam Zev Paltiel goes into detail on the varying ways different parties raise money. He notes that the rise o f the left groups, which secured mass memberships and could call on trade unions for support, led business to find ways to give money to conservative parties to counter the weight o f organized numbers on the other side. And in 'an increasingly complex and differentiated industrial society, there exists a constant tension between the interests o f the organized groups that possesses the bulk of the technical, material, and monetary resources needed by the parties and the principle of " o n e man [sic], one v o t e " that underlies democratic systems. Legal restrictions alone will neither eliminate group demands nor reduce the needs o f the parties. The conflict is itself the very stuff o f democratic politics.' In the chapter on 'Mass Communications', A n t h o n y Smith argues that the shift in the predominant form o f the mass media from newspapers to television has changed the response o f the electorate to politically relevant information. He notes that newspapers were originally very partisan and helped to build party communities around them to sustain strong party loyalty. Television, on the other hand, 'aspires to impartiality', since its audience is less differentiated, less self-selected than the party press. 'By showing both sides o f the argument, it tends to erode the stability o f people's political views and party identification and even the stability o f the party system.'
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There can be no question, as noted earlier by Penniman, that party loyalties have declined. But I would doubt that the cause is the shift from the partisanship of the newspapers to the impartiality of television. As Stein Rokkan noted a number of years ago, the proportion o f the population reading socialist and other left newspapers was far below the percentage of the vote the parties they supported obtained in various countries. Franklin Roosevelt complained in the 1930s about the 'one-party press' in the United States, yet he was triumphant at the polls. In Australia and New Zealand, Labor parties won elections without the support of a single newspaper. The Labour party flourished in Britain with little press backing. Television has made an important difference, as noted earlier, in enabling party leaders to reach out directly to the electorate, in reducing the need for the traditional party organization. But in earlier eras, w)ters were exposed to opposition stimuli through the press as much as or more than they are now through television. If there has been any change, it is that conservatively disposed voters are more likely to hear something o f the case of the left, most of the left's constituency always had the converse experience. It may be noted, however, that Smith's judgment that 'television has increased the expectation of impartiality in all media and has made the bias of newspapers appear increasingly unpopular' seems warranted. Dennis Kavanagh traces the impact o f ' P u b l i c Opinion Polls' on elections in his chapter on the subject. He correctly emphasizes the changes that have occurred as parties and candidates no longer have to rely 'on intuition and impressions for interpreting the mood o f w)ters'. He errs, I believe, in suggesting that polls were first used extensively for election purposes in the 1960s. According to Jim Farley, Franklin Roosevelt made a drastic policy shift during his first term in office in reaction to private polls commissioned by the Democratic National Committee, which indicated that he might suffer serious defections to third parties. During the 1950s, many European parties, particularly to my knowledge, in Germany and Scandinavia, relied heavily on polling data. The British were probably slower than others to accept the reliability of the new technique. Prior to the 1945 election, the contest in which polls were used, the Gallup poll, projected an overwhelming lead for the Labour party, a finding that was largely ignored by British politicians and the media. The election polls have, on the whole, been accurate in their anticipations of election results across a broad range of countries. As a result, politicians, the media, and others concerned with influencing public opinion have made extensive use of them. The polls have clearly affccted the way elections are conducted, in parliamentary countries, governments have gained an important advantage, since they can now try to pick an opportune moment to call an election, knowing the standing o f the parties among the public. Candidates for nominations in the United States, and for party leadership elsewhere, gain or lose m o m e n t u m depending on what the polls report, long before the day of decision. Although pollsters and scholars differ as to whether the polls create a 'bandwagon effect' among the electorate, there can be little doubt that survey results affect the flow of money and campaign activity for a candidate. In the United States, a bad showing dries up campaign contributions, thus increasing the difficulty of catching the front-runner. Increasingly, pollsters help to determine party strategy and even g o v e r n m e n t policies. They permit parties to target particular groups o f voters with issues tailored to their particular views. Yet, since most important parties have access to
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similar information, the concern that the electorate can be manipulated is unwarranted. Following an election, the polls help inform all parties as to the nature of the mandate, whether, for example, American voters rejected paternalism in 1980, while the French electorate opted for more g o v e r n m e n t in 1981, or whether both voted out incumbents for presiding over a declining economy. It should also be noted, however, that opinion surveys may also undermine governments' selfconfidence and their ability to act by documenting adverse changes in public opinion before major reforms have had a chance to work. Economic changes, whether introduced by leftist or conservative regimes, are initially more likely than not to produce instability and an economic downswing. Thus, by giving the electorate greater voice, the polls ironically may contribute to the difficulties of governing in democracies. Ivor Crewe's chapter on 'Electoral Participation' is one o f the most systematically comparative ones in the book, in large part because he could deal with quantitative indicators o f varying behavior among countries, namely turnout in elections. As he notes, there is a wide range o f variation, from 95 per cent in Australia and The Netherlands to 47 per cent in Colombia. H o w can these variations be explained? I. MACRO EXPLANATIONS
1. Legal and Administrative Factors (a). Is voting a compulsory or voluntary act? It is compulsory in Australia and The Netherlands. (b). H o w convenient is it to vote? The United States makes voting more difficult than most other countries by holding its elections on one day, a Tuesday. Some countries hold their elections on two days, on a Sunday or make Election Day a holiday, and make it easy to vote in advance, by post, through a proxy, or at special polling stations. (c). Disincentives. ' T h e United States, true to its liberal and Protestant tradition, is the only country where the individual voter is not automatically registered by the authorities but must take the initiative himself.'
2. Organizational Mobilization The 'strength o f the linkage between a country's party system and its established social divisions, such as class, religion, language, and race' affect turnout. The greater the relationship between such factors and vote choice the higher the proportion voting. Crewe demonstrates a very high correlation between national turnout rates and 'the closeness o f fit between its party system and major social cleavages'. In addition, voting is higher in countries where there is a high degree of interpenetration between party organization and the network o f institutions serving its 'client' social groups, as in Italy and Austria where the church and the labor m o v e m e n t are closely linked to parties.
3. Electoral and Party Systems The assumption that increased competitiveness, close elections, increases voting
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participation could not be validated by comparative data, although the very low level of competition in Switzerland may explain the low turnout there. Proportional representation systems, in which each vote counts, should increase participation, but the actual relationship is not high. II. M i c R o EXPLANATIONS
1. Personal Resources and Capacities Crewe tests my analysis in Political Man that certain social characteristics are correlated with voting turnout. These traits include income, education, occupation, race, gender, age, length of residency, marital status, and organization membership. He concludes that this summary of factors 'has stood the test of time and international comparison' a finding which does not displease me. The variations linked to race, sex and age have, however, declined somewhat, while there is some evidence that education is the most powerful variable of them all. But the factors that correlate with w~ting on the individual level do not necessarily correlate at the national level. Thus increased education and affluence do not appear related to changes in turnout rates a m o n g or within countries. T h e wealthy, well educated United States has a much lower level of participation than do much poorer nations. Crewe suggests 'the plausible, albeit still speculative explanation, that national rates of turnout rest on a combination of individual level factors and institutional factors . . . . In the presence of such institutional incentives to vote as a close alignment between partisan and social divisions, automatic registration, a PR electoral system, a competitive party system, and the administrative facilitation of voting, individual-level factors will be overridden.' in a discussion o f ' W h a t Decides Elections?' Donald Stokes seeks to pull together on a comparative basis the factors that affect them, as presented in the A t the Polls volumes. He notes at the outset that the 'electoral politics of a country may be profoundly altered by changes in the composition of its electorate or in the voters' basic alignments with the rival parties'. The key factors on a cross-national basis are:
1. Political i)emography The ethnic composition of various countries have been modified by boundary changes or partition, e.g., G e r m a n y , India, and Ireland, or by high levels of immigration or emigration, e.g., post-war Australia and Israel, and more c o m m o n l y by the gradual turnover of generations o f varying sizes. A ' b a b y - b o o m ' can have a delayed powerful impact on national politics.
2. Voting Alignments The determinants of voting usually 'extend far into the past, and every election builds u p o n prior alignments'. The passing of a generation f r o m the scene may open the d o o r to new sets o f loyalties.
3. Partj, Organization Many suggest that party efforts can play a major role in determining outcomes, but
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there is slight evidence for this in the A t the Polls volumes. There has been little research on this subject. 4. Mass Media
As noted earlier by Anthony Smith, the press has become less partisan. Although television is now the electorate's chief source of information, there is no evidence that it plays a role in converting people to different political persuasions. The media, however, set 'the agenda of political discussion'. They tell people 'what to think about'. Television by its broad coverage of different points of view and by exposing party leaders visually to its audience as flesh and blood people helps to moderate partisan feelings. 5. Electoral Systems
In spite of the varying number of political parties, related in part to differences in electoral systems, a pattern of two major alignments 'has emerged almost everywhere', that is two major parties or their functional equivalents. Overall, there is no evidence that electorates are being 'alienated by the futility of electoral choices'. Voters appear to believe that 'significant values turned on the choices they were asked to make at the polls'. Anthony King follows this with a discussion o f ' W h a t Do Elections Decide?' He emphasizes that the electorate has been able to have a real impact on policy in most countries. As noted earlier by Lijphart, left oriented governments are more likely than conservative ones to support high levels of public welfare, to redistribute income, to extend opportunity through increasing educational facilities, and to follow policies that result in relatively high inflation and low unemployment, while conservative governments are more disposed to move in the opposite direction. The record, therefore, suggests that there is a 'relationship between what political parties say they will do if elected and what they actually do (or attempt to do) . . . . Political parties are "reliable" in this sense.' But it is clear that we do not know enough in this area. We need, for example, to learn much more about the conditions under which elections do or do not have a major determinant on public policy, as well as about the consequences of prolonged governance by the left or right as contrasted with frequent alternations in office. Jeane Kirkpatrick concludes the book with an essay addressed to 'Democratic Theory'. She contrasts the descriptive approach of democracy in operation, as illustrated by the books in the A t the Polls series, with the efforts of political theorists to define 'What is democracy?' from a normative standpoint. The empirical school has basically emphasized that democracy is a system in which the bulk of the population choose office holders through competitive elections. Implicit in this definition are assumptions about guarantees of free speech, opposition, limitations on tenure in office, and the like. These writers basically describe the system that has been institutionalized in the West. Normative theorists raise various criteria as conditions for democracy, as they define it. These may include 'political equality', a system that guarantees equal input in the election process through proportional representation, and social or economic equality, sometimes with the implication that only an egalitarian socialist society may be considered democratic. Western democracy is, of course, often criticized by
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Marxist and other radicals for not really influencing the basic power structure, since in their judgment, power, the control of key societal decisions, rests with possession of wealth. Normative theorists pit the perfect 'ideal' against an imperfect reality. But as Kirkpatrick notes, 'if democracy is defined in terms of ideals, rather than institutions, any ideal will do'. It is impossible to test objectively whether systems live up to ideals, since we have no measure of most ideals. Insisting on the ideal 'leads almost inevitably to devaluation of the real, as actual regimes fail to measure
up'.
The empirical approach leads us to ask what are the social requisites for democracy, the conditions associated with popularly elected stable governments. This approach requires comparative analysis. It is basically the method o f social science. Democracy at the Polls is an important and useful book. By seeking to generalize from analyses of elections in 15 countries, it helps to counter the tendency often exhibited by those who deal with events in a single country to treat them parochially, to seek local explanations. Clearly, if we know that the correlation between class and voting has declined in much of the industrialized world, that voting participation rates have fallen generally, and that party loyalty has decreased in a number of countries, the explanation for such developments in any one nation cannot be framed in terms of the particular conditions of that society. But though the book helps to counter particularistic emphases, its authors drawing largely on the books previously published in the A t the Polls series, faced the problem that the data had not been systematically gathered to facilitate comparative social science analysis. Rather each book was assembled soon after a given election to report on what happened, how the parties performed, what the issues were, how the electorate divided, and so on. The A t the Polls books are extremely useful compendia. The effort, however, to draw comparative generalizations from these case studies which are focused on the details of national events at one point in time inevitably has serious limitations. Three writers, Lijphart, Crewe, and King, were able to overcome some of these di~culties because they dealt with topics for which quantitative indicators were available. They could, therefore, either through their own statistical research or by drawing on the work of others, present the results of cross-national efforts to test hypotheses about the changing ideologies of parties, sources of voting participation, and the relationship between programs and policy. For most of the other authors, an effort to address large comparative questions would have required new research going beyond the available data. The changes referred to above in the correlations between class and party, and the decline in voting participation and party allegiance, are topics that call for systematic cross-national study. Some research suggests that the class-party correlation has declined as a result o f the growth of post-materialist or social issues, which have pressed the well-educated to the New Politics Left and the less-educated to the more traditional Right. But it may also be that the prolonged prosperity of the post-World War II decades has reduced the saliency of class linked economic issues for the younger generation. Some studies cited in Democracy at the Polls focus on television as a source of reduced loyalty to party. But alternatively, it may be suggested that partisan allegiances have decreased because of a growth in cross-cutting value cleavages
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resulting from developments in a post-industrial society, which parties find difficult to encompass in a coherent ideology. The rise of single-issue movements, not discussed much here, which cuts across parties in many countries environmentalism, ethnic autonomy, minority rights, feminism, tax revolt, peace movements--also have upset traditional relationships between party and social base, and in some cases have given rise to new parties. To what extent are these shifts a function of a rapidly changing social structure in an emerging post-industrial society that gives rise to post-materialist social values and consequent reactive backlashes? Or are they linked to changes away from the broad economic and political parameters of the 1930s and 1940s, that is, an economic shift from a period of deep depression to one of prolonged economic growth and affluence, followed in the late seventies by relative decline, and in the political sphere by the discrediting of fascist, racist, and other ideologies identified with the extreme right and the concomitant legitimatizing of left orientations. In raising these questions, I do not want to suggest that the authors of Democracy at the Polls have not brought together important comparative findings. They definitely have. For example, the book documents: (a) generalizations about correlates of voting participation, (b) that most political systems basically still involve a choice between the left and the right, (c) that economic events tend to be determinative in affecting election results, i.e., whether the incumbent or the opposition wins, (d) that election results do have a major impact on public policy, (e) that social issues have become increasingly important in many countries, and (f) that changes in the technology of elections, particularly the use of polls, computers, and television have contributed to the decline of the mass membership party. The conclusions set the stage for further research both on comparative and national bases. For the analysis of deviant cases is the best way to explore the implications of a comparative generalization. Such deviant cases include the inversion of the correlation between class and left or right voting in Israel and to some extent in Japan; the low turnout rate in Switzerland; the weakness of class-based parties and organization in the United States; and the high rate of female voting at times in Italy. Efforts to consciously explain deviant cases should inform future volumes in the A t the Polls series, since their authors will be able to draw on the generalizations in Democracy at the Polls.