The Unheavenly Chorus

Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy

Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, Henry E. Brady

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780691159867, 9780691154848
• eBook ISBN: 9781400841912
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Why American democracy favors the affluent and educated

Politically active individuals and organizations make huge investments of time, energy, and money to influence everything from election outcomes to congressional subcommittee hearings to local school politics, while other groups and individual citizens seem woefully underrepresented in our political system. The Unheavenly Chorus is the most comprehensive and systematic examination of political voice in America ever undertaken—and its findings are sobering.

The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests—membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created—representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period—this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities—and more.

In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

1

Introduction: Democracy and Political Voice

American politicians have long claimed to speak for those who have no voice. Sounding a theme with an enduring pedigree in American politics, Richard Nixon famously appealed to “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans”—whom he contrasted with the “vocal minority” protesting the war in Vietnam. More than a century before, Andrew Jackson had lamented a situation in which “the laws undertake to add . . . artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful” and justified his veto of Bank of the United States in the name of “the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves.” Similarly, William Jennings Bryan exalted “the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and the miners who go a thousand feet into the earth” and claimed that “We come to speak for this broader class.” Later on, in a time of “grave emergency,” candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt urged the nation not to neglect “the forgotten, the unorganized.”¹

Who are the silent for whom the politicians claim to speak? Who are the articulate, even the clamorous, who speak for themselves? Is it a problem for American democracy that some have no voice and others speak loudly and clearly? And when the voices from citizens and organizations come together, does the “heavenly chorus,” in E. E. Schattschneider’s memorable phrase, sing “with a strong upper-class accent”?²

Political Voice in American Democracy

Among the requirements for a functioning democracy are mechanisms for the free expression of political voice so that members of the public can communicate information about their experiences, needs, and preferences and hold public officials accountable for their conduct in office. Citizens in American democracy who wish to have an impact on politics have a variety of options for exercising political voice by acting on their own, with others, or in formal organizations. Working individually or collectively, they can communicate their concerns and opinions to policy makers in order to have a direct effect on public policy, or they can attempt to affect policy indirectly by influencing electoral outcomes. They can donate their time or their money. They can use conventional techniques or protest tactics. They can work locally or nationally. They can even have political input as the unintended by-product when, for reasons entirely outside politics, they affiliate with an organization or institution that is politically active.

This book is concerned not simply with political voice but with equality of political voice in American democracy. While it matters for democracy that there be ample opportunities for the free expression of political voice and sufficiently high levels of participation across various political acts, the distribution of that participation across individuals and organizations is also significant. Citizens are not equally likely to undertake actions to let public officials know what they want or need, political activists are not representative of the citizenry at large, and a particularly acute form of participatory distortion results from the fact that those who are disadvantaged by low levels of income and education are less likely to participate in politics.

We examine inequalities of political voice—in the participation of Americans as individuals and in the activities of organizations that represent their interests—from a variety of perspectives. Among other topics, we consider how active and inactive individuals differ in their educations and incomes, their ages, and their preferences, needs, and priorities for government action; how inequalities of political voice are passed along across generations and how they have changed in an era of increasing economic inequality; how the possibilities for amplifying political voice by devoting more time or money to politics alter our expectations about the convergence of parties and candidates at the median voter; how inequalities of political voice among individuals are reinforced by the multiple forms of political involvement by organizations active in Washington politics; how the processes of recruitment by which friends, workmates, neighbors, and fellow organization and church members who ask one another to take part politically affect the socio-economic stratification of political voice; how the possibilities for political participation on the Internet affect the extent to which political voice under-represents both younger citizens and those who are disadvantaged in terms of socio-economic status; and whether various procedural political reforms hold the potential to alleviate participatory inequalities. Although this book relies, in the main, on the analysis of relevant evidence about individuals and organized interests, we place the subject in the broader context of, on the one hand, the American political tradition and, on the other, the contemporary increase in economic inequality.

Equal Political Voice and Democratic Accountability

Why does political voice matter in a democracy? Whether the medium is the participation of individuals or the activity of organizations, political voice performs two democratic functions: communicating information and providing incentives to policy makers. That is, through political voice, citizens inform policy makers about their interests and preferences and place pressure on them to respond positively to what they have heard.

Political acts vary in their information-carrying capacity. The vote is a blunt instrument of communication, conveying a voter’s decision to support a particular candidate but, in the absence of an exit poll or other type of election follow-up, nothing about why the choice was made. In contrast, a letter from an individual to a government official or a statement made at a community meeting can carry a lot of information, especially if it is trenchant and compelling. Similarly, communications from organizations—in such forms as advertisements, congressional testimony, research reports, or amicus briefs—can convey detailed information. Organizations are particularly likely to be in a position to provide expert information that is useful in the formulation of policy.

Political acts also vary in the extent to which they give policy makers an incentive to heed the messages conveyed. When political input includes valued resources—whether votes, campaign contributions, campaign work, political intelligence, favors, or information germane to the making of policy—politicians may feel pressure not to ignore the accompanying messages. The member of Congress who is drafting a piece of legislation, the mayor who wants to pacify a restive group that has been staging regular protests, the state legislator who seeks votes and political support in anticipation of a run for governor, and the agency regulator who needs cooperation to ensure regulatory compliance all have incentives to pay attention to activist publics.

The Level and Distribution of Political Voice

Recent political science inquiries into political voice place the spotlight on the amount or level of citizen involvement. Has political participation been declining and, if so, why?³ What are the implications for democratic governance of the erosion in political engagement? In the discussion of this important issue, what matters about the condition of civil life is the overall level of voluntary involvement rather than its uneven distribution across society. As we shall discuss from a number of perspectives in Chapter 4, the level of participation has consequences for democracy. Citizen voice emanating from a limited number of activists might lack the legitimacy of the activity of a larger group—as witnessed by the unacceptability of using surveys to gather Census data. Similarly, the significant educative and community-building functions of political activity can be achieved only if participation is sufficiently widespread.

Nevertheless, our concern is the equality of political voice rather than the amount of political voice. While it matters for democracy that there be ample opportunities for the free expression of political voice and sufficiently high levels of participation across various political acts, the distribution of that participation across individuals and groups is also significant. Equal political voice does not require universal or even a very high level of activity; it requires only representative activity. Just as a few thousand responding to a carefully selected random-sample survey can yield a fairly accurate snapshot of public attitudes, a relatively small but representative set of activists might satisfy the requisites for equal voice. Thus the conditions for political equality would be fulfilled if, across political issues, the total volume of activity were representative, containing proportionate input from those with politically relevant characteristics—which include such attributes as income, race or ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, health, or immigrant status; attitudes on political matters ranging from school prayer to taxes to environmental preservation to U.S. policy in the Middle East; or such policy-relevant circumstances as reliance on government benefits or employment in an industry that is regulated by the government or a firm that has a government as a customer. However, the individuals and organizations that are active in American politics are anything but representative. In particular, those who are not affluent and well educated are less likely to take part politically and are even less likely to be represented by the activity of organized interests.

Equal Voice—Equal Consideration

One of the hallmarks of democracy is that the concerns and interests of each citizen be given equal consideration in the process of making decisions that are binding on a political community. Robert Dahl explains the case for political equality on the basis of “the moral judgment that all human beings are of equal intrinsic worth . . . and that the good or interests of each person must be given equal consideration. . . . [Furthermore, that] among adults no persons are so definitely better qualified than others to govern that they should be entrusted with complete and final authority over the government of the state.”⁴ Thus, our concern is with equality of voice, the input side, and not with equality of response, the output side. Equal voice does not imply equal responsiveness or equal outcomes. Because politics involves conflict among those with differing preferences and clashing interests, it is inevitable that political outcomes will not leave all contenders equally satisfied. Yet it is possible for everyone to be heard and their views considered on an equal basis.

Nevertheless, as we shall demonstrate over and over in the pages that follow, the disparities in political voice across various segments of society are so substantial and so persistent as to preclude equal consideration. Public officials cannot consider voices they do not hear, and it is more difficult to pay attention to voices that speak softly. If some stakeholders express themselves weakly and others say nothing at all, there is little or nothing for policy makers to consider. As Lindblom and Woodhouse comment: “If poorer, less educated minorities participate less, their judgments about what problems deserve government’s attention will attain less than proportionate weight in the process of partisan mutual adjustment.”⁵ Of course public officials have other mechanisms besides participatory input from individuals and organizations for learning what is on the minds of citizens. They can, for example, consult polls or follow the media. And the influences on policy include many additional factors—ranging from an incumbent’s values and ideology to partisan pressures to a desire to take a political career up a notch—other than policy makers’ perceptions of what the public wants and needs. Still, if votes, campaign contributions, e-mails, lobbying contacts, comments on proposed agency regulations, or amicus briefs come from an unrepresentative set of individuals and organizations, government policy is likely to reflect more fully the preferences and needs of the active part of the public.

Unequal Voice: A Persistent American Problem

Unequal political voice is a persistent feature of American politics. As an illustration, Figure 1.1 presents data from surveys in the United States across half a century. The surveys contain similar questions about a variety of modes of participation beyond voting. They make clear that socio-economic stratification of political activity has been present in American politics for a long time.⁶ We can see that in each of the surveys, the average amount of political activity rises steeply across five quintiles of socio-economic status (SES).⁷Furthermore, the association between socio-economic status and political voice presumably dates back much further than the half century for which we have data.

We shall explore the theme of persistence from several perspectives in later chapters. Using panel data, we demonstrate that, even when characteristics associated with political participation are taken into account, individuals who are politically active at one time are more likely to take part politically in the future. Using cross-sectional surveys collected over several decades, we show the continuity over time of the characteristics of participant publics. And, using recall data, we establish that individuals are more likely to be politically active if their parents were, and we seek to explain why.

From the perspective of democratic equality, the finding that the same individuals are more likely, over time, to be politically active might not be cause for concern. We have argued that what matters is not that the expression of political voice be universal but that it be representative. When it comes to equal political voice, much more important than the tendency for the same individual citizens and organizations to be persistently active is the remarkable continuity in the kinds of individuals and organizations that express political voice. Across several decades, there has been a great deal of stability in the distribution of the kinds of individuals and organized interests represented in politics. Such findings converge with the message conveyed by the data in Figure 1.1 with respect to the long-term structuring of political voice by socio-economic status an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: Democracy and Political Voice
• Part I Thinking about Inequality and Political Voice
• Part II Inequality of Political Voice and Individual Participation
• Part III Inequality of Political Voice and Organized Interest Activity
• Part IV Can We Change the Accent of the Unheavenly Chorus?
• Appendixes
• Index