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Representational roles and representative/constituency agreement: The democratic national party convention of 1976
Abstract
Representational Role Theory is applied to presidential nominating conventions. Delegates to the 1976 Democratic convention are compared to the voters who selected their slates in 10 key presidential preference primaries. Because of party rule restrictions on delegates'' behavior, representational roles are not pertinent to what is typically the most important decision of the convention, the first ballet vote for the party''s presidential nominee. However, role orientations appear to be useful in understanding two other sets of decisions: (1) the creation of the party platform and (2) voting for the party''s presidential nominee in the event that the nomination requires more than one ballot. Other than the first ballot, the Delegate role is not very popular among convention delegates.
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American political parties are often regarded as “brokerage” organizations, weak in principle, devoid of ideology, and inclined to differ chiefly over unimportant questions. In contrast to the “ideological” parties of Europe—which supposedly appeal to their followers through sharply defined, coherent, and logically related doctrines—the American parties are thought to fit their convictions to the changing demands of the political contest. According to this view, each set of American party leaders is satisfied to play Tweedledee to the other's Tweedledum.
This study assesses the ability of legislators to predict constituency opinion by comparing the predictions made by members of Florida's lower house with actual constituency opinion as reflected in subsequent referendum results. On the whole, predictions prove reasonably accurate. An attempt is also made to identify what influences legislators' predictions. On some issues, previous constituency voting behavior seems to guide the legislators' estimates of constituency opinion. Legislators' self-described role orientations are not consistently related to prediction prowess.
Despite the attention given to representational role, few efforts have been made to measure its predictive capacity. Using three policy dimensions, it was found that on two salient dimensions, contemporary liberalism and taxation, delegates were more representative of constituency preferences in their roll-call voting than were politicos or trustees. In contrast, the relationship between roll-call voting and constituency opinions on the least salient dimension, government administration, was negative for both delegates and trustees. Furthermore, delegates were much more responsive to electoral competitiveness than either politicos or trustees on the two salient dimensions.
The research reported in this article examines the relationships between the representative styles of congressmen and four types of legislative behavior. It is found that representative style has little or no impact on the campaign activities of congressmen. In relation to a second type of legislative behavior, attempts to "tap" constituency opinions, it is found that delegates do make a greater effort to "tap" constituency opinions than either politicos or trustees. This is the only type of legislative behavior, however, that representative style seems to be related to. Representative style is found to be unrelated to the party support scores of congressmen. With regard to a fourth type of legislative behavior, representative style is not consistently related to the degree to which congressmen voted in accordance with their constituencies' opinions. Furthermore, the representative styles of congressmen do not greatly influence the representational process as hypothesized by the Miller-Stokes model of constituency influence. Thus, this articles indicates that representative style does not seem to influence legislative behavior in situations where its impact should be significant.
Central to representation are the questions of the content of the representational decision and the manner in which it is achieved. Recent empirical work has been grounded in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin's definition of representation: “Representation here means acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them.” Responsiveness, the manner in which activity must take place to be characterized as representation, seems the more important component of Pitkin's definition. Representative democracy presumes that the governed generally know their own interests, or if they do not in a particular instance, that the representative is able to convince the represented that their wishes do not correspond to their interests.
Coalition theory has moved to increasingly more sophisticated models in order to account better for the alliances and deals contracted between political actors competing for scarce political prizes. Virtually all formal theories posit the idea of “rational” actors who make decisions—either consciously or unconsciously —after shrewd and often complicated calculations about maximizing their rewards and satisfactions. Thus, William Riker has developed a theory about the “minimum winning coalition” which applies the mathematics of game theory to zero-sum conditions of competition. Anthony Downs, in his study of decision-making by voters and political parties, proposes spatial economic models to show the relationship between ideology and coalition-formation.
This paper is concerned with representation. More specifically, it is concerned with the theory and practice of representation in the American national conventions of 1972 – with how the conceptions of representation that dominated the parties in 1972 are related to older views and institutions. In what ways was the Democratic convention of 1972 representative, and of whom? In what ways was the Republican convention representative, and of whom? How is the representation of biological traits related to the representation of opinion? Why is it so difficult to construct a representative national convention? These are the questions discussed in this paper.
The Democratic Party in the I974"s The Politics of Representation: The Democratic Convention 1972Assessing Legislative-Constituency Policy Agreement
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