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The Reform of Presidential Selection and Democratic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Nelson W. Polsby
Nelson W. Polsby*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The political science profession is very far indeed from having pronounced its last word on the subject of the reforms of the presidential nomination process which have so dramatically transformed American elections and the party system. The current wave of reform began over a decade ago, and, more or less on schedule, political scientists have now begun regularly to report findings that suggest that they have been incorporating questions about the consequences of these reforms into their research.

Many observers quite rightly have noted that central to debate about party reform among politicians and commentators have been questions of legitimacy that reflect varying conceptions of democratic theory. In this brief essay, I will consider a few of these questions further and speculate about the respects in which the work of political scientists might assist in resolving them.

Perhaps the earliest questions arose over the changes that reform seemed to induce in the sorts of people taking part in the national party conventions. Questions arose as to their “representativeness”—and especially in light of two successive Democratic national conventions— 1968 and 1972—at which there were many challenges to the right of delegates to be present. In 1968 the complaints centered on the propriety of seating delegates selected earlier than the election year and selected through processes dominated by state party leaders rather than by the insurgent forces of protest over the war in Vietnam. These complaints were largely ineffective in influencing the outcome of the 1968 nomination, but their impact on subsequent events was substantial. They formed the basis upon which the Democratic party undertook to examine the delegate selection process in its McGovern-Fraser Commission of 1969, and people associated with these complaints staffed the Commission.

Type
Articles
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , Fall 1983 , pp. 695 - 698
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1983

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References

1 For a thorough historical account of the formation and activities of the Commission see Shafer, Byron, Quiet Revolution (New York: Basic, 1983).Google Scholar

2 The numbers were assembled by the Democratic party's Winograd Commission in 1978 and showed:

3 See Kirkpatrick, Jeane, “Representation in the American National Conventions: The Case of 1972,” British Journal of Political Science 5 (July 1975), pp. 265–322 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kirkpatrick, , The New Presidential Elite (New York: Russell Sage, 1976).Google Scholar

4 McClosky, Herbert, Hoffman, Paul J., and O'Hara, Rosemary, “Issue Conflict and Consensus among Party Leaders and Followers,” American Political Science Reviews (June 1960), pp. 406–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 E.g., Johnson, Haynes, “Portrait of the New Delegate,” Washington Post, July 8, 1972.Google Scholar

6 See, in particular, work by Robert T. Nakamura, Denis G. Sullivan, and their collaborators.

7 See, e.g., Crotty, William, Party Reform (New York: Longman, 1983)Google Scholar; and Crotty, , Decision for the Democrats (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1978).Google Scholar

8 Key, V. O. Jr., American State Politics (New York: Knopf, 1956)Google Scholar; Ranney, Austin, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction (Berkeley: University of California, 1976)Google Scholar; and Ranney, , The Federalization of Presidential Primaries (Washington, D.C.: AEI, 1978).Google Scholar

9 See Lengle, James I., Representation and Presidential Primaries (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981).Google Scholar

10 See Arrow, Kenneth, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1951)Google Scholar, and Mueller, Dennis C., Public Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1979).Google Scholar The original insight is credited to a 1785 essay by Condorcet.

11 My preference, discussed in Consequences of Party Reform (New York: Oxford, 1983), is for a mixed system of primaries, state conventions and other methods dictated by the choices of state party leaders and conditioned by the political cultures of the several states. The one centralized constraint I would advocate has to do with protections against racism.