American Democracy
as a Legitimating Device
excerpted from the book
The Democratic Facade
by Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R. Judd Brooks
Cole Publishing Company, 1991, paper
American Democracy as a Legitimating Device
p1
The Oldest Democracy
Thomas Jefferson, 1786
" ... a little rebellion now and then is a good thing....It
is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government....God
forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion....The
tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood
of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
p2
From the early nineteenth century to the present, school textbooks
have functioned as catechisms to teach a civic religion whose
central article of faith is that America's government is the most
perfectly functioning democracy humans have thus far devised.
p3
In colonial America the top 20 percent of wealthholders owned
68 percent of total assets, and inequality in wealth distribution
was about the same in New England as in the slave-holding South.
In 1771, the top 10 percent of Boston's population held 63 percent
of the wealth-and the lowest three-tenths held less than one-tenth
of one percent of taxable assets. On the frontier, in contrast
to the cities, a considerable equality prevailed, but this was
because almost no wealthy people were living there.
The founders were an aristocratic group; several of them were
the richest individuals in all the colonies. The merchant and
landowning elites gathered in Philadelphia were keenly aware of
the threats that faced them. Many white Americans had been brought,
often forcibly, to the British colonies as indentured servants
(three out of four persons in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia
at the time of the Revolution). They had filled the ranks of the
revolutionary armies, risked their lives, and were armed. For
elites, it was urgent that a new government be founded that would
elicit a widespread sense of legitimacy. Democratic symbols were
crucial for accomplishing this purpose. But it was equally important
to the founders that their own wealth and political power be preserved.
This is not to say that most of the founders were antidemocratic
per se, or that they were cynical about the limited democracy
they were creating. They were, however, unable to distinguish
the preservation of their own property from the establishment
of democratic principles. Thus it should occasion little surprise
that, as Charles Beard observed, "The overwhelming majority...were
to a greater or less extent economic beneficiaries from the adoption
of the Constitution."
p4
Elites and Their Strategies
Elites in every society employ strategies to keep themselves
in power, but it IS not necessary to think that they must, or
ordinarily do, engage in conspiracies for this purpose. At times,
of course, elite groups do act conspiratorially: The founders
did so when they drafted the Constitution and plotted to get it
ratified; Richard Nixon and his advisors did so in the 1972 presidential
campaign (but then all election campaigns are partially, by their
nature, conspiratorial). Corporations constantly engage m conspiracies;
the term accurately describes a strategic plan or a product advertising
campaign. But it is usually more accurate to consider the political
strategies employed by elites as instinctive responses to threats
to their political power and economic privilege rather than as
conspiracies. It would be illogical to expect elites not to try
to maintain their position in society. And it also would make
little sense to believe that elites would respond to threats to
their power in completely chaotic, ineffectual fashion. Elites
share common interests, and they likewise share perceptions about
how to respond when these interests are threatened.
The composition of elites has changed markedly during the
nation's history reflecting changes in the American economy and
social structure. Consequently, the challenges to elites' autonomy
and power, and the political options available to them have changed.
In the past two hundred years three elite "constellations"
have dominated the U.S. economy and polity. The constitution of
1789 constituted a compromise between merchant elites in New England,
who derived their wealth from banking, trade, and land speculation,
and the owners of large estates in the South whose wealth depended
on a slave economy based on agricultural products-principally
cotton, rice, and tobacco-that were traded on the world market.
The delicate balance struck among the elite factions involved,
among other things, an agreement by the merchant elites to count
slaves in calculating representation in Congress (the three-fifths
compromise), and an agreement not to abolish the international
slave trade until 1808. Westward expansion eventually strained
the compromise to the breaking point, at which point Southern
elites tried to secede from the union
By the 1870s, a new class of industrial capitalists consolidated
their grip on economic and political institutions. The Industrial
Revolution fundamentally transformed the nation's social composition
and economic structure. Soon after the Civil War, the value added
from industry exceeded that of commerce and agriculture. The nature
of business organizations also changed. By the late nineteenth
century, corporations accounted for 60 percent of value in manufacturing.
In 1896, twelve firms were valued at more than $10 million, but
by 1903 fifty of them were worth more than $50 million. The giant
corporations that formed between 1896 and 1905 included (among
others) U.S. Steel (now USX), International Harvester, General
Electric, and American Telephone and Telegraph. These firms concentrated
legal expertise, accountants, a growing army of white-collar workers,
and finance capital into huge enterprises.
Over the past half century, another elite "constellation"
has replaced the industrial capitalists. The idea of the "postindustrial"
economy describes several phenomena: Individual wealthy industrialists
have been replaced by professional managers and executives who
run far-flung multinational corporations, though some families
still control great wealth and institutional power, such as the
du Ponts in Delaware and the Bushes and Danforths in Missouri.
Families in the top 10 percent income bracket own 72 percent of
all stock holdings and 65 percent of all bonds; the top 2 percent
of families own 50 percent of stocks and 39 percent of bonds.
Corporate institutions control an overwhelming proportion
of America's productive, financial, intellectual, and governmental
resources. The executives of the one hundred largest industrial
corporations controlled 58 percent of all industrial assets in
1984, and the fifty largest banks held half of all banking assets.
The three television networks produced 90 percent of television
news, and the fifty richest foundations presided over 40 percent
of all foundation assets. The 7,300 persons holding the top positions
in the institutions of the economy, government, and private foundations
and in research and higher education institutions were in a position
to make the key decisions about "war and peace, wages and
prices, consumption and investment, employment and production,
law and justice, taxes and benefits, education and learning, health
and welfare, advertising and communication, life and leisure."
A few hundred individuals with leverage in the largest private
and public institutions make the decisions that decide the well-being
and life chances of all Americans.
All of the elite constellations that have dominated American
life have been confronted with challenges, and in response they
have employed a variety of strategies to maintain their political
control. From time to time they have resorted to repression. The
application of repression however, is costly and full of risk
The brushfires of rebellion must be constantly put out. Intrigues
and divisions within the ranks of the rulers are more or less
built into repressive regimes, and thus they are frequently short
lived. It is far preferable for elites to find a way to elicit
the voluntary acquiescence, loyalty, or, if possible, positive
support of groups that are not in power. America's elites have
always attended closely to the processes that nurture and build
legitimacy, and they have been remarkably successful. Otherwise,
repression would have been more frequent and more violent than
it has been in our national history.
For elites, it is imperative that citizens embrace their rule
as necessary and just. In a polity with democratic political processes,
legitimation is necessarily based on the idea of the consent of
the governed (as opposed, for example, to the "divine right
of kings"). Therefore, elites must ensure that the institutions
of socialization carry the message that the government in power
represents "the people." Schools, media institutions,
and elections themselves have been crucial socializing mechanisms
organized and run by America's elites.
Despite the application of huge political and economic resources
to the institutions of legitimation, America's elites have evinced
a chronic anxiety about their position. Therefore, they have employed
a panoply of strategies to manipulate democratic processes. They
have successfully controlled the composition of the electorate
and restricted political discourse, with the consequences that
elections concern "safe" political issues and voters
are able to decide only between candidates who represent elite
preferences.
Since the Second World War, elites have invented a new set
of strategies to supplement and amplify the effect of those inherited
from the past. Whereas elites historically resorted to tinkering
with the electoral system to keep it operating within narrowly
circumscribed limits, in the past decades they have taken decisive
steps to insulate government policy making from elections altogether.
Government officials now possess an unprecedented capacity to
manipulate information and shape public opinion, both at election
time and in the periods between. The presidency and the executive
agencies have vastly expanded their ability to define and control
the public agenda, with profound effects. Most domestic policy
is now made within the confines of hidden "subgovernments"
made up of congressional career incumbents, key executive branch
agencies, and relevant industries and corporate lobbyists. In
a sense, government policy has become privatized, a state of affairs
that has proceeded even further in foreign policy making than
in domestic policy. Postwar foreign policy has been moved behind
an impenetrable Veil of secrecy and deception insulated almost
completely from democratic processes.
p6
Repression As a Political Strategy
The fact that repression is always available to elites, even
as a last resort, exerts a powerful influence on the political
activity of ordinary citizens. From time to time it has flared
to ominous levels, rising during wars and periods of popular discontent
receding into the background when elites have felt more secure.
When other strategies have proven insufficient, repression has
always been readily available, and elites have made much more
liberal use of it in American history than the mainstream textbooks
will ever reveal. Coercion and the threats of force against political
enemies were used as instruments for keeping elites in power even
before the Constitution was drafted. During the American Revolution,
the estimated one-third of the population that opposed the revolt
faced retribution from supporters of independence. Those who sided
with the British faced confiscation of their property and physical
violence including Iynching, and they either fled to Canada or
retreated into silence. In the eighty years between independence
and the Civil War, slavery laws were enforced Native Americans
were annihilated, and labor organizers were fired, harassed, and
sometimes murdered. Today these events normally are treated as
unfortunate episodes that have little or no connection to the
present. Never would a term like genocide be introduced in a school
textbook, regardless of the appropriateness of the term as applied
to the experience of indigenous Americans. To use such an expression
would be to raise troubling thoughts about America's identity
and obligation to the victims better to treat such events as sidebars
in a history whose main plot involves the extension and consolidation
of freedom and democracy for all.
Likewise, episodes of repression of workers are represented
in official history as unusual deviations from a democratic heritage.
Of course, such an interpretation ignores the inconvenient fact
that America's history of violence against workers is , one of
the bloodiest among Western nations. Between 1880 and l900, there
were ,' almost 23,000 strikes in the United States, and even more
over the next several ~ decades. Repeatedly, federal troops, state
militias, and hired thugs were used to break strikes. In 1877,
railroad workers across the country called a strike rather than
accept a second 10 percent cut in wages imposed within an eight-month
period. The national and state governments mobilized 60,000 troops
against the workers; in less than two weeks, almost one hundred
strikers were killed. A few years later, in 1886, a national strike
for an eight-hour day led to a police massacre of union organizers
in Chicago, then prosecution, trial, and death sentences for several
unionists. In the Homestead, Pennsylvania, strike against Carnegie
Steel in 1892, a gun battle broke out between Pinkerton agents
and strikers in which nine workers and seven agents died. Ten
thousand state militia were mobilized. Two years later, during
the Pullman railroad strike, state militias were sent against
workers in seven states and federal troops poured into Chicago
and Pullman, Illinois. Thirty-four strikers were killed. In 1914,
in a dawn massacre near the coal fields at Ludlow, Colorado, state
militia soldiers fired into the tents of striking workers and
their families and killed twenty-six men, women, and children.
The government also targeted political radicals in the labor
movement without waiting for strikes. Workers who joined the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW) were singled out for furious repression.
In the years before the First World War, vigilante mobs organized
by corporations and state politicians attacked IWW members ("Wobblies")
all across the country. The level of repression escalated when
the United States entered the war. Congress used the war as a
pretext for passing the Espionage Act of 1917, which was nominally
aimed at spying activities. Relying on this legislation, the government
sent more than 900 people to prison in one year for their political
views, including the entire leadership of all the socialist organizations
in the United States, as well as hundreds of labor union leaders.
The states and the federal government worked with employers to
ferret out "traitors." In 1917, the Department of Justice
founded the American Protective League; within a year there were
local chapters in six hundred towns and cities. The Post Office
Department refused to handle magazines and newspapers it considered
politically unacceptable. The repression continued for years after
the war had ended. In 1920, raids coordinated by Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer rounded up hundreds of Wobblies. Government
agents ransacked IWW offices and confiscated or destroyed their
records. In scores of trials, some lasting only a few minutes,
defendants were tried en masse and convicted for conspiracy, treason,
and other "crimes." After midnight raids and secret
deportation hearings, the federal government deported more than
4,000 people in less than a year. There is little question that
a well-orchestrated government repression from 1915 to 1920 effectively
destroyed the socialist movement and almost eradicated militant
labor leadership in the United States.
World War II provided the pretext for a new wave of restrictions
on civil liberties. Hundreds of pacifists were jailed for their
political beliefs. Newspapers and movies were censored. Over I00,000
Japanese-American citizens were rounded up and interned in detention
camps sprinkled throughout the western states. In the years after
the war, congressional committees, federal agencies, state governments,
and private employers hounded thousands of citizens in search
of the "enemy within." The litmus test for disloyalty
was defined as previous membership in any of several dozen civil
rights, union, or left-of-center organizations that had flourished
in the 1930s-or family or friendship connections to suspected
individuals. In less than five years, the American left was decimated.
During the civil rights campaigns of the l950s and 1960s,
FBI agents infiltrated civil rights organizations and harassed
and intimidated activists. All groups identified as "leftist"
were similarly targeted. During the 1960s, for example, at least
10 percent of all members of the Socialist Workers' Party and
about 8 percent of the Young Socialist Alliance actually were
FBI informants. The FBI's activities continued until the late
1980s, possibly ceasing in 1988 as a result of a federal court
injunction (though, more plausibly, these activities continue
but have become, once again, wrapped in a cloak of secrecy). The
FBI infiltrated meetings, photographed people attending demonstrations;
searched the household garbage of individuals working for peace
in Central America; ran checks on license plates of cars parked
near meetings and demonstrations; confiscated personal notes and
books from people returning from visits to Latin America; and
interviewed family members, landlords and employers. The investigation
embraced dozens of organizations, including the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, Amnesty International, the American Civil
Liberties Union, and the American Federation of Teachers.
Repression and threats of repression remain important guarantors
of elite rule and governmental power. Too much or too blatant
a use of violence, however, may provoke protest and opposition
from elites more willing to accommodate change more committed
to democratic ideals, or fearful of the backlash that frequent
resort to violence might generate. Such a backlash occurred in
the early 1960s, when state and local law enforcement authorities
brutalized civil rights marchers in the South and again in 1968,
when Chicago police went on a rampage against demonstrators at
the Democratic National Convention. Repression has helped to preserve
elites and governments in power in America because it has been
applied selectively within the context of a political system that
is widely regarded as legitimate.
p8
Legitimacy and the Democratic Facade
Strategies for creating a popular sense of legitimacy have
been far more important to America's elites than have strategies
of repression. However, legitimation through a democratic ideal
of rule "by the people" has often posed serious problems
for elites because populist groups have repeatedly tried to use
the electoral system to change the political balance of power.
When confronted with such threats elites have adjusted the rules
of the game: They have expanded or reduced the size of the electorate,
pushed for new campaign and election laws, and regulated the political
parties. Invariably, reforms have been justified as necessary
for improving democratic processes. Elites have expended a great
deal of energy to fine-tune the day-to-day rules and procedures
of the political system to protect their interests. If they are
so troublesome to elites as to require constant tinkering, why
have democratic processes been tolerated at all?
The delegates who convened in Philadelphia during the summer
of 1787 agreed that there was an urgent need for a central government
strong enough to contain popular discontent and protect property.
Though it was not clear to all of them that democratic symbols
were the answer, they faced the problem of creating a new government
that would not soon be overturned. The landowner and merchant
elites had just enlisted farmers and workers to overthrow British
rule. The citizenry was now well armed and, as was so convincingly
shown by Shays' Rebellion, it was capable of challenging the indigenous
aristocracy. The Constitution was a brilliant solution to a practical
problem. It legitimated aristocratic control by articulating a
language of democratic participation.
The idea of democracy is immensely powerful. The measure of
its symbolic value can be seen everywhere in the world: in the
habit of dictators who hold rigged elections to prove their popularity
(e.g., Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines), in the one-party
elections that prevailed until recently in Eastern Europe and
in the Soviet Union, in the U.S. State Department's routine application
of the label "democratic" to authoritarian regimes and
military juntas that happen to be allied with the United States.
The idea of democracy is irresistible. It would be odd indeed-even
perhaps impossible-for American politics to proceed without the
manipulation of the symbols of democracy by all who take part
in it. These symbols are essential to elites as a means for preserving
their political hegemony.
The term hegemony comes from the Greek word hegeisthai, meaning
to guide. To speak of the hegemony of the elites means to speak
of their capacity to "guide," in particular to have
the rest of us accept as "common sense" that the economic
and political system that perpetuates their rule is the best and
most just. This production and reproduction of what people come
to think of as truth and common sense is not carried out through
some grand, well-organized conspiracy, but by a variety of institutions,
controlled by elites, that specialize in the production and distribution
of ideas.
Political socialization takes place in a wide variety of settings,
including the family, workplace, and church. But there are three
principal arenas used by elites for the express purpose of political
communication and socialization. The first arena is comprised
of the institutions presiding over the process of schooling. These
institutions assume the crucial task of inculcating in each new
generation apolitical ideology that legitimates the state. This
is accomplished in a straightforward, expensive, overt, meticulously
organized manner: approved curricula, civics and history courses,
textbooks, class discussions, and exams. By the age of eighteen,
an American student has run an impressive gauntlet of political
indoctrination. Schools have been regarded by elites as essential
institutions for teaching Americans that their democracy is the
"one best" system and that capitalism is essential for
its success. Every generation of schoolchildren has been taught
loyalty to the flag and the nation. More specifically, for most
of our national history a great deal of energy has been expended
to teach schoolchildren that America is governed by "We,
the people," that all groups can easily assimilate into American
life (if they want to), that Americans are prosperous and free,
and that America is the beacon of freedom for all the world.
A second crucial arena of socialization is made up of institutions
of the mass media. Americans are literally bombarded by images
and words carried by the electronic media. Because most of our
information, ideas, and opinions are derived from these media
sources, the mass media industry has become a principal arbiter
and interpreter of mass culture and political opinion. A survey
conducted by the Roper Organization in l 983 asked Americans what
appliance they enjoyed owning the most. More than half of the
respondents mentioned their television sets. Which activity did
they enjoy or look forward to during a day? Nearly one-third answered,
"Watching television." The average American is exposed
to l,000 commercial messages each day-about l90 on television
alone. Per capita media consumption in the United States exceeds
that of almost every other nation on earth.
How do Americans cope with this information flood tide and
what role do media play in shaping political behavior? The question
is not easy to answer because there is a key difference between
exposure and consumption. People screen information. On average,
people read only about half the stories they notice in a newspaper,
and many of these only partially. They read less than one-fifth
of the stories in full. Similarly, of the fifteen to eighteen
stories reported in a typical television newscast, viewers retain
only one "sufficiently well so that it can be recalled in
any fashion shortly afterwards." But the details are less
important than the abstract messages. The media sustain and reinforce
cultural values and political beliefs. Media institutions are
pivotal for socializing mass publics into accepting sanctioned
versions of political and economic reality.
Electoral processes make up a third crucial arena used by
elites for political indoctrination and communication. Campaigns
and elections have become elaborate pageants experienced by most
citizens vicariously through television. The "key linkage
now in American democracy is the spectacular presentations of
the electronic media," which mediates national politics and
culture as "sound bites and film clips on the screen."
5 As a result of this development, a lucrative industry of media
consultants, pollsters, advertising agencies, and professional
campaign managers has evolved, skilled at applying the techniques
of persuasion borrowed from product advertising and applied to
political campaigning. In the United States elections do not mainly
serve the purpose of allowing voters to choose their political
leaders. Rather, they are invested with the crucial legitimating
symbols of democratic rule. They provide ritualized opportunities
for people to participate, as individuals and as members of a
collective citizenry, in the political process. When people vote,
they reaffirm their belief that the political system listens to
their voice.
p10
Manipulating Democratic Processes
If socialization were a perfectly efficient process, elites
would comfortably allow democratic processes faithfully to represent
popular preferences about leadership and public policies because
all political expression would be entirely predictable. Dissent
would be literally unimaginable. However, as evidenced by the
political turbulence that has characterized U.S. history, the
values, opinions, and actions of ordinary people have been far
from predictable. Populist movements have repeatedly been mobilized
to challenge ruling elites, and in each historical period elites
have responded to these challenges by taking steps to ensure that
the political system cannot be used to upset existing social,
economic, and political relationships In short, democratic processes
have been rigged to produce acceptable outcomes.
The Constitution can be regarded as the new nation's first
successful attempt to rig the rules of government and democratic
participation in favor of elites. Having won the war for independence,
the creditors, merchants, and landowners now faced serious threats.
State taxes imposed to pay the debts incurred to fight the war
were resented by farmers and workers. In New England, farm foreclosures
were common and the courts made matters worse by frequently jailing
farmers who could not pay their debts. Between 1784 and 1786,
almost one-third of the farmers in one Massachusetts county had
been hauled into court to force them to pay their debts as well
as the new taxes imposed by the Massachusetts government. Shays'
Rebellion was a reaction to these conditions.
Had the delegates to the Constitutional Convention been representative
of the people instead of the merchants, bankers, and plantation
owners who composed it in secrecy in 1787, a much more democratic
document would have emerged. In 1776, for example, backwoods farmers,
laborers, artisans, and small tradesmen had taken control of Philadelphia
and drafted a constitution that extended popular control to an
extent "beyond any American government before or since."
It created a single-house legislature and a weak executive (composed
of twelve elected members of a Supreme Executive Council). Representatives
had to stand for election every year before an electorate made
up of anyone, propertied or not, who paid taxes. Compared to this
plan, the Constitution should be regarded as a conservative, even
counterrevolutionary document.
American history and civics texts reflexively praise the ingenious
structure of the government that the Founders produced, yet the
result was hardly democratic. Only the members of the House of
Representatives were directly elected by the people. With each
legislator representing a small geographic constituency, an effective
check was placed against what James Madison called the "sudden
passions and impulses" of the mass electorate. Senators were
chosen by the states. Electors who chose the President were selected
by state legislatures. Aside from the checks on popular democracy
written into the Constitution, electoral participation was strictly
controlled. From the constitutional period to the late 1820s,
the states imposed property restrictions that limited the number
of eligible voters, which had the effect of excluding from the
electorate riffraff like Daniel Shays and his ilk.
Jacksonian democracy, which resulted in the dropping of property
restrictions and the vast expansion of the electorate, eventually
presented problems to a new generation of elites. By the last
decades of the nineteenth century, giant industrial corporations
dominated the economy. After the 1860s, an agrarian and labor
rebellion against the new capitalists waxed and waned, keeping
time with economic cycles. The Democratic party channeled protests
against "big money" into the electoral arena by constructing
a fragile coalition of midwestern farmers, southern white populists
and laborers. In the presidential campaign of 1896, William Jennings
Bryan led the Democrats in a campaign against the "money
interests" symbolized by such financiers and industrialists
as Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, James Fisk, and J. P. Morgan.
The Democratic platform advocated a reduction of tariffs to force
eastern businesses to lower prices and compete with imported goods.
Bryan called for a paper currency backed by silver as well as
gold that would, it was presumed, benefit indebted farmers and
small businessmen. The Democrats also proposed a graduated income
tax, a government takeover of land grants previously given to
the railroads and public ownership of telegraphs and telephones.
In the campaign of l900, when he was once again the Democratic
nominee, Bryan assailed trusts and monopolies, urged the direct
election of senators, opposed court injunctions against strikes,
and favored the creation of a Department of Labor.
Elites in the South reacted to populism by disenfranchising
much of the t electorate. The South's defeat in the Civil War
had given blacks the vote, but by the early years of the twentieth
century voter registration laws, literacy requirements, and poll
taxes had effectively taken it away. Working-class and poor whites
were discouraged from voting by these same reforms. In the North,
voter registration and other reforms adopted during the Progressive
Era reduced voting participation by foreign immigrants and by
people on the lower end of the social scale. The consequences
of these reforms are still felt; compared to other democratic
nations, voter turnout in the United States is abnormally low.
Proposals to increase electoral participation by easing voter
registration requirements still meet with resistance from political
elites.
Elites also have successfully managed democracy by manipulating
voter choice and political debate. Political scientists have often
blamed the objects of this manipulation-the voters-for the sorry
state of political discourse in American politics... voters are
quite adept at linking their votes to issues they consider important-despite
being presented with very little concrete information in campaigns,
which in any case are conducted within very restricted ideological
confines.
... campaigning has become a significant growth sector of
the American economy, and its ostensibly public function-to give
the electorate a choice among candidates-has substantially been
eclipsed. Elections have been privatized. Candidates employ a
campaign industry of consultants, pollsters, and media specialists.
The escalating cost of these kinds of campaigns have cast wealthy
individuals and corporate interests as arbiters of the electoral
process. By their contributions they winnow out candidates in
the "hidden primary" that precedes the official nomination
primary contests. Favored candidates who survive this stage then
use money to buy the powerful technologies of modern campaigning.
Thus election campaigns have been made a straightforward extension
of corporate America, a growth sector of the capitalist economy.
Historically, the political parties served as mechanisms for
mediating political competition among elites and for facilitating
political communication between elites and the mass electorate.
The parties also engaged in coalition building on behalf of political
candidates and political agendas... the political parties have
been eclipsed as the gatekeepers of the electoral process by professional
campaign specialists and financial contributors. The fact that
parties no longer serve their historic functions means that elections
have been reduced to media-managed passion plays for the voters
by professional campaign specialists and financial contributors.
p13
Insulating Government from Accountability
... America's policy-making institutions have become remarkably
isolated from electoral decisions. Presidential power has expanded
partly because the presidency has become the center (or object)
of a continuous, sophisticated image-making industry. Presidents
do not now campaign only for election and reelection. Pollsters
and image makers work full time between elections to sell presidential
policies to the public. No other institution has such a capacity
for organizing such a well-organized, sustained public relations
campaign. When selling policy does not work, presidents are able
to insulate themselves from public accountability through covert,
ad hoc agencies and groups that define and implement policies
without the consent or knowledge of Congress, the courts, or the
public. Since the Second World War, there has been a tendency
for all presidents to expand their power in this way by exaggerating
threats to national security.
Congress also has become remarkably insulated from electoral
decisions, an outcome of the fact that elections have become less
and less competitive. More than half of the representatives in
the House elected in 1870 were serving their first term. By 1900,
only about one-third were newly elected, and this proportion fell
to about 15 percent by the 1970s. In the 1986 congressional elections,
98 percent of incumbents who ran were reelected, and 99 percent
were returned in 1988. Most representatives and senators have
served for several terms, a fact that is virtually institutionalized
in an era of high-cost media campaigns, when incumbency confers
a decisive advantage in fundraising. Congressional representatives
and senators derive most of their campaign funds from political
action committees (PACs) representing corporations and large interest
groups; and they spend their money on expensive media campaigns.
Senators and congressional representatives have become accustomed
to conducting much of their business outside the public's scrutiny,
through hidden subgovernments in which they can more or less continuously
negotiate with executive agencies and corporate and interest-group
lobbyists.
p14
Elites and the Democratic Ideal
Except as a device for legitimating their control, elites
in the United States have little attachment to democracy. At first
blush, this assertion may seem indefensible. There are no cases
in which these elites have abrogated democracy through resort
to a coup d'etat. The Constitution has never been suspended (though
during the Civil War and the Second World War some of its provisions
were ignored). It would appear that America's elites have convincingly
demonstrated their support for democratic processes; they seem
to have met a two-hundred-year loyalty test.
Actually, however, on many occasions America's elites have
demonstrated a distrust and disdain for democracy to the point
where they have been willing to destroy it when it seemed inimical
to their interests-that is, when it threatened their political
hegemony and control over wealth-producing institutions... In
its self-proclaimed sphere of influence, the Caribbean and Latin
America, the United States has repeatedly destroyed democracy
and protected repressive regimes. Democracies based on mass participation
have consistently been opposed, often violently, by U.S. political
and corporate elites. Conversely, political systems pasted over
with a transparent patina of democracy have been both supported
and sponsored. These ostensible democracies are often as far removed
from popular influence as are the military dictatorships that
they often replace, but they are enthusiastically embraced as
"democratic" by U.S. foreign policy elites. These cynical
manipulations of democratic symbols can be used as a mirror that
faithfully reflects the ideal of democracy embraced by America's
elites. They tolerate democratic processes only if these processes
pose no significant danger to their autonomy and political hegemony.
p14
Must Democracy in America Be a Facade?
In his textbook written for college students enrolled in courses
on American government, the political scientist Robert Dahl suggested
several principles that may be used to judge whether a political
system is genuinely democratic. He asserted that every citizen
must have "unimpaired opportunities" to formulate political
preferences. For these opportunities to exist, a formal educational
process and a communications (media) system must present significant
political alternatives so that citizens can make informed judgments
by engaging in lively political debate. Second according to Dahl,
citizens must be able to express their preferences. This takes
place in the voting booth but also in other contexts, such as
demonstrations and associational activities. And third, citizens
must have their expressed preferences "weighed in the conduct
of government." Electoral procedures must provide access
to alternative sources of information and genuine competition
among candidates. Incumbent officeholders must always be at risk
of replacement when citizens preferences are at variance from
their own
Citizens in the United States have neither an education system
nor a media system that provides "unimpaired opportunities"
for them to formulate and signify preferences. Neither liberal/conservative
nor the Democratic/Republican spectrum of alternatives is sufficiently
broad today to merit much confidence that competition among leaders
for votes provides either meaningful political debate or a mechanism
for mass influence over government. The decay of political parties
and their replacement by a private-sector campaign industry has
transformed elections into exercises in electronic advertising
and information management. And, in any case, most of the government
institutions that make both domestic and foreign policy now operate
outside and beyond the reach of electoral politics.
The American political system amounts to a democratic facade.
It is important 3 to note that this label should not be equated
with dictatorship or the kind of authoritarian government in which
participation is prohibited, governmental power is concentrated
into one institution or person, and only a few people are allowed
a political voice. The American system does respond to well-funded
and highly organized mass-membership interest groups. When energetic
social movements emerge, whether or not they are encouraged by
some elite sectors, they can wrest important concessions. In some
circumstances, elections have taken on considerable significance.
But recent national elections have become little more than symbolic
exercises. They function mainly as mechanisms for conferring legitimacy
on the elites that "win."
This situation need not persist. American politics is not
and never has been quiescent. Beyond the world of the textbooks,
American history is the story of political struggles. The symbols
of democracy manipulated by elites inspire ordinary people to
work for political change. The most significant reforms in our
time would open up the political system so that democracy would
not only legitimate government, but also keep it accountable.
The
Democratic Facade
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