Elites, Participation, and the Democratic Creed
| Author | Joseph V. Femia |
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1979.tb01184.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ELITES, PARTICIPATION, AND
THE
DEMOCRATIC CREED*
JOSEPH
V.
FEMlA
Uni
versify
(q
Li
wrpool
Absfracr.
The primary purpose
of
this paper
IS
to
cast doubt on the theoretical and empirical
soundness
of
two well-known survey studies
of
public opinion, 'Consensus and Ideology in
American Politics' by McClosky. and 'Fundamental Principles of Democracy, Bases
of
Agreement and Disagreement' by Prothro and Grigg. That these articles contributed to the
pluralist orthodoxy
01
the fifties and early sixties is evident from their data and conclusions,
which can be summarized as follows:
(I)
it cannot be claimed that the United States enjoys a
wide democratic consensus; the majority of citizens exhibit only a superficial commitment to
democratic norms and ideas;
(2)
rather, it is the social and political elites who are the main
repositories of democratic virtue; therefore
(3)
any attempt greatly to increase popular
participation would needlessly expose present institutions to authoritarian pressures.
Although the past decade
or
so
has witnessed a rehabilitation
of
radical democratic theory,
these articles have enjoyed remarkable freedom from serious criticism. Indeed, their findings
have become conventional academic wisdom. Through
a
detailed analysis,
I
attempt
to
demonstrate that the questionnaires used in the
tw'o
investigations are both carelessly
constructed and arbitrarily tied to a narrow, ahistorical conception of democracy.
It
is also
argued that both studies are marred by a fundamental contradiction common (though
hitherto undetected) in pluralist writing.
I
THE thesis
of
working class authoritarianism, once the height of academic
fashion, no longer enjoys currency in the field
of
political sociology. This
decline cannot simply be explained by 'scientific' refutation in the ordinary
sense. An altered political climate, reflecting widespread disillusionment with
current institutional forms and procedures, has also fostered a shift in
scholarly emphasis.
To
focus on the supposedly anti-democratic inclinations
of
the common man
is
to
hark back
to
the heyday
of
complacent, cold war
pluralism, which championed the supremacy of enlightened elites as a
bulwark against the latent totalitarianism of the masses. Whatever its purely
intellectual merits, such thinking has become markedly unseasonable. In the
past decade, most
of
the empirical research that fed the stream
of
pluralist
orthodoxy has been subjected
to
withering criticism, much
of
it
methodologi-
cal; yet
two
important contributions
to
the cause have emerged unscathed
from the antipluralist revolt and haunt us
to
this day. Both the contributions in
question are influential and frequently cited survey studies of public opinion,
My thanks are due to Peter Morriss and
L.
J.
Sharpe for their kind and helpful comments on
an earlier draft
of
this article.
'
For reasons
of
convenience, this article includes under the broad heading
of
'pluralism' all the
variants of what has come to
be
known as 'democratic elitism', a brand
of
thought set forth in the
writings
of.
most notably, Schumpeter, Dahl, Sartori, and Kornhauser.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XXVII,
No.
I (I-LO)
2
ELITES, PARTICIPATION AND THE DEMOCRATIC CREED
published in the form of articles: Herbert McClosky’s ‘Consensus and
Ideology in American Politics’;* and James W. Prothro and Charles
M.
Grigg’s ‘Fundamental Principles
of
Democracy; Bases of Agreement and
Disagreement’. These studies were provocative because, through a systematic
analysis of representative samples, they uncovered attitudes and opinions
inconsistent with the conventional picture of a highly consensual American
populace, unequivocally attached to the fundamental rules
of
the democratic
game. They did, then, introduce a modicum of empirical clarity into the murky
discussion of preconditions for democracy. But the innovative side of these
works, the bold challenge they posed to the vague Parsonian notion of value-
consensus, has diverted attention from their essentially conservative premises
and implications.
Confining their inquiry to two small
U.S.
cities (Tallahassee and Ann
Arbor), Prothro and Grigg investigated support for democratic ideals at both
abstract and specific levels. When questions were expressed in abstract terms,
they found, a high degree of consensus existed, one that transcended
‘community, educational, economic, age, sex, party and other common bases
of differences in opinion’. However, when ‘these broad principles are trans-
lated into more specific propositions,
. . .
consensus breaks down completely’
(p.
286).
That is
to
say, consensus disappeared when the researchers put
forward concrete questions involving the
application
of
democratic principles.
Further, those respondents with high educational attainments almost in-
variably exhibited more democratic tendencies than those with lesser educ-
ation:
‘.
.
.
education may be accepted as the most consequential basis of
opinions on basic democratic principles. Regardless of their other group
identifications, people with high education accept democratic principles more
than any other grouping’ (p.
288).
Thus, while not directly addressing
themselves to the thesis of working class authoritarianism, Prothro and Grigg
discovered a positive correlation between low status and intolerance. These
results are more or less consistent with those
of
McClosky, who analysed
answers to similar items, though he used a national sample. He also
ascertained that support for democratic ideals tended to erode when they were
applied
in
concreto
and that members of the elite affirmed these ideals more
enthusiastically than did the common people, who little resembled the
textbook model of a rational democratic citizenry. ‘The findings furnish little
comfort’, he concluded, ‘for those who wish to believe that a passion for
freedom, tolerance, justice and other democratic values springs spontaneously
from the lower depths of the society, and that the plain, homespun, uninitiated
yeoman, workers, and farmers are the natural hosts
of
democracy’. Rather, the
‘evidence suggests that it
is
the articulate classes [in particular, those who are
politically active] rather than the public who serve as the major repositories of
the public conscience and as the carriers
of
the [democratic] Creed’ (pp.
374-5).
Although results like these may no longer suit the prevailing mood in Anglo-
American political analysis, the two aforementioned studies retain unimpaired
influence and cast a spell even over commentators generally critical of the
American Polifical Science Review,
58
(1964). 361-82.
Hereafter page references
to
this paper
’
Journal
of
Politics,
22 (1960), 27694.
Hereafter page references to this paper are contained in
are contained in the main text.
the main text.
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