The Victorious Incumbent: A Threat to Democracy? 9781855215146, 1855215144

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The Victorious Incumbent: A Threat to Democracy?

Edited by ALBERT SOMIT RUDOLF WILDENMANN BERNHARD BOLL ANDREA ROMMELE

Dartmouth Aldershot . Brookfield USA . Hong Kong . Singapore . Sydney

ifretil © A. Somit, R. Wildenmann, B. Boll, A. Rommele, 1994

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani­ cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited. Published by Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hants GUI 1 3HR England Dartmouth Publishing Company Old Post Road Brookfield Vermont 05036 USA British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Victorious Incumbent: A Threat to Democracy? I. Somit, Albert 321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Victorious incumbent: a threat to democracy? / edited by Albert Somit... [et al.]. p. cm. ISBN 1-85521-514-4 : $59.95 (Approx.) 1. Legislators. 2. Incumbency (Public officers) 3. Democracy. 4. Comparative government. I. Somit, Albert. JF501.V53 1994 328.3’3—dc20 93-49442 CIP ISBN 1 85521 514 4 Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne.

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures

vii

Dedication

x

In Memoriam

xi

Acknowledgements

xiii

List of Contributors

xv

Part I:

Hie Problem and the Questions

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Where We Came In ... Albert Somit ... And Where We Came Out Albert Somit The Problem of Incumbency in Democratic Systems Bernhard B oll/Andrea Römmele

2 3

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3 11

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Part II: At Least Some of the Answers 4 5 6

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8

9

10

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12 J

Incumbency in the United States John S. Jackson Incumbency in Israel’s Knesset Asher Arian Parliament in the United Kingdom: The Incumbency Paradox Philip Norton Democracy and Incumbency: The Canadian Case Jean A. Laponce Parliamentary Incumbents in Germany: No Matter of Choice? Bernhard Boll Incumbency in France: Electoral Instability as a Way to Legislative Turnover Colette Ysmal Incumbency Success and Defeat in Times of Electoral Turbulences: Patterns of Legislative Recruitment in Denmark 1945-1990 Mogens N. Pedersen Stability and Renewal Incumbency and Parliamentary Composition Keith Jackson The Incumbency Advantage in Japan Steven R. Reed Index

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29 71

103

122

150

190

218

List of Tables and Figures

Tables 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 9.2

House Turnover, 1946-1992 Senate Turnover, 1946-1992 Average Age, 103rd Congress Members' Occupations Knesset Members Elected Eight Terms or More, by Number of Terms, Party, and Party Size Marginal and Ultra-Safe Seats: 1992 By-elections 1945-92 Parties and Leaders in Office from 1867 to 1991 % Change in Electoral Support in the Post War Elections Profile of the Canadian 1988 Parliament, by Party Profile of the 1988 Parliament: Date of First Election to Parliament, by Party Civic Perception of Representation Direct Seats, Land List Seats and Election Results Average Length of Incumbency The Distribution of Legislative Seniority Sex (in per cent) and Average Age (in years) of the French MP's vii

40 41 47 48 76 112 114 124 132 141 141 155 166 172 197 197

9.3 9.4 9.5 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.10 11.11 12.1

Incumbents Defeated in Elections Newcomers or Legislators not Elected at the Previous Election Freshmen or New Legislators Without any Previous Experience Basic Data on Parliamentary Turnover in Denmark 1947-1990 Basic Data on Parliamentary Turnover in Denmark 19471990. Grouped Data: Averages Over Three Election Periods. The 1990 Election Tabulated Separately Three Indicators of the Legislative Incumbency Situation Eight Indicators of Personal Circulation of the Folketing The Distribution of Seats in the Folketing before and after the 1973 Election: 1960, 1971,1973,1981 and 1990 The Distribution of Seniority. Selected Legislative Sessions. Distributions of Seniority and Aggregate Electoral Volatility in the Scandinavian Countries. Averages over Four Decades. Incumbency Rate Compared US/NZ House of Representatives 1946-92 Average Incumbency in the NZ and US House of Representatives Ranked by Decade Incumbency Rate in NZ 1935-43 Incumbent Turnover Defeated Incumbents Mean Length of Service of all Leavers Death in Office The Impact of Boundary Re-distribution upon Incumbency Rates Number and Percentage of Women in Parliament Average Ages in Parliaments 1854-1978 Average Length of Service of Departing Legislators in Years Re-Election Rates by Order of Finish

viii

206 207 208 221 222 223 227 229 233 243 252 253 253 258 262 263 267 268 274 275 276 287

Figures 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4

House Incumbents' Average Vote Percentage New Knesset Members 1949-1992 Decades of Knesset Membership Number of Knessets Labor 1949-1992 Likud 1949-1992 Number of seats (maximum =10) given to one's preferred party in an ideal Parliament by Vancouver electors in 1965 Post War Elections in Canada Per Cent Change in Electoral Vote in Canada's Post War Elections FDP: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents CDU: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents SPD: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents CSU: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents Indicators of Turnover: The French Assemblée nationale 1946-1993 Incumbency Re-election Rates Incumbent Defeats by District The Incumbency Advantage over "New Faces" The Magnification Effect

ix

58 74 75 77 91 91 130 133 134 165 168 170 171 196 282 284 294 300

Dedication

I speak for all of the contributors to this volume in voicing both our desire that this volume be dedicated to Professor Rudolf Wildenmann and our profound sorrow at the event that makes such a dedication pos­ sible. Professor Wildenmann died just as the manuscript was being com­ pleted. With his death, Germany lost one of its most distinguished politic­ al scientists; his associates in the research undertaking reported here lost an invaluable colleague; and - a personal note is simply unavoidable - 1 lost someone who had also been a cherished friend for more than a quarter-century. For all of these reasons, and many, many more, he will be sorely missed. Albert Somit

In Memoriam

We dedicate this book to our academic mentor, teacher, and friend Rudolf Wildenmann. All contributors of this study are deeply indebted to his support and leadership while this comparative work was in process. We, as his last junior research fellows, owe him much more than grati­ tude. By working with him, Rudolf Wildenmann gave us the chance to gain significant insight into the theory of political science and methodo­ logy of empirical research. For years, he guided us through the labyrinth of academic research planning and organisation, and helped us make our own ways into academia. For the last time, his conceptual signature is obvious in this present volume to all who worked with him or simply enjoyed following his ap­ proach to the problems of political science. His thoughtful character and liberal open-mindedness is documented best with his desire concerning the present study: that we should take his part in writing the chapter he would have liked to do and edit this book along the lines we together set up during the last months and weeks of his lifetime.

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His inheritance will be our obligation: to keep his memory alive through our research and academic work, in the way we learned it from him. We will miss him. Mannheim, July 1993 Bernhard Boll and Andrea Römmele

Acknowledgements

The "incumbency project" could not have been launched, let alone completed, without continuing financial, logistical, staff, and even moral support from a number of sources. For these various types of encourage­ ment we want to express our appreciation to the following persons and agencies - even though they may be tempted, at some points in the volume, to plead "Not Guilty": To the Ministry of Science and Art in Stuttgart, Germany; To the Department of Political Science, the College of Liberal Arts, and the School of Law of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois; To Professors Itzhak Galnoor and Gerhard Loewenberg; To Inge Gellner-Schrimpf of the Foundation for Social Development (FGE), and to Melanie Smolak of the SIU School of Law;

And, especially, to our colleagues in the Incumbency Project, who always (well, almost always) responded promptly and willingly to a sometimes seemingly endless stream of editorial requests; To all of the foregoing, for Rudolf Wildenmann, Bernhard Boll, Andrea Rommele, and myself, our grateful thanks. Albert Somit

xiv

List of Contributors

Professor Asher Arian, Haifa University, Israel Bernhard Boll, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany Professor John S. Jackson, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA Professor Keith Jackson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Professor Jean A. Laponce, University of British Columbia, Canada Professor Philip Norton, University of Hull, England Professor Mogens N. Pedersen, Odense University, Denmark Professor Steven R. Reed, Chuo University of Tokyo, Japan Andrea Rdmmele, Research Unit for Societal Development at the University of Mannheim, Germany Professor Albert Somit, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA Professor Rudolf Wildenmann, Research Unit for Societal Development at the University of Mannheim, Germany Professor Colette Ysmal, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, France

xv

PARTI THE PROBLEM AND THE QUESTIONS

1 Where We Came In... ALBERT SOMIT

The issues addressed For several decades, it has been axiomatic among both political practi­ tioners and students of government that incumbent members of the United States Congress have a substantial advantage when they seek reelection. In recent years, this apparently widening edge has attracted growing attention in the "serious" journals and, politically even more important, in the popular media. Proposing "reforms", on the one hand, and opposing them, on the other, have become thriving cottage industries among politicians, journalists and political scientists. The resulting literature, debates and discussions are understandably centered on the American situation. Inevitably, though, they give rise to the obvious question: Is the problem of the "victorious legislative incumbent" unique to the United States or is it one also being experienced by other representative democracies? This, we soon realized, put the matter a bit too simplistically; an ad­ equate answer had to address not one but four separate, if closely inter­ related, issues:

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1.

What is the present pattern, and what are the trends, of (legislative) incumbent success in other major representative democracies, as well as in the U.S. ? 2. What factors (i.e., regime structure, party system, campaign practices, method of voting, etc.) are operative in furthering and limiting, respectively, the probability of incumbent electoral victory? 3. To what degree, in each of these countries, does incumbent success now pose, or seem likely to pose, a serious danger to democratic representative government? 4. What reform measures have been advocated to ensure that "incumbent advantage" does not jeopardize what democratic* theory regards as a necessary condition for the successful practice of repre­ sentative government - i.e., a truly meaningful threat of electoral defeat?^ These, then, were the questions around which we intitally structured our research design and to which all participants agreed to attend. A comparison of early draft chapters suggested, though, that there was another issue which should also be explicitly addressed: In those countries where reforms had been urged, what was the likelihood that the changes proposed would achieve their intended objectives or, alternatively, would not spawn at least as many political problems as they might resolve? The mandatory list of topics to be covered was accordingly expanded. This book seeks to answer these several questions for each of the coun­ tries covered by our study - Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. Pondering these answers, the thoughtful reader may wonder whether, in the process, we may have inadvertently raised an even larger issue. Let us assume that our nine countries are a fair cross section of the larger population of democracies and, stretching even further, that our nine "country" experts are essentially correct in their conclusions. If so, can representative democracy, as we have historically known it, really function effectively in urban societies characterized by highly sophisticated mass communica­ tions, powerful interest groups, vast differences of wealth - and extraordi­ narily costly elections? While our collective findings yield no necessarily definitive answer, neither are they very reassuring, a point to which we will subsequently return.

4

The countries covered Ideally, our study would have encompassed all contemporary demo­ cracies. There were, however, two large and insuperable obstacles. First, we would have speedily become bogged down in interminable arguments over which countries truly deserved this designation (see immediately below); second, it was unlikely that an investigation of such magnitude could be successfully launched, let alone completed, in our professional lifetimes. The only viable alternative was to pick a defensible sample of democratic nations and move ahead from there. In choosing the governments at which we would look, we were guided by several concerns. Our first requirement, almost needless to say, was that the countries selected pass muster as real democracies - that is, that they have a respectable track record of free and openly contested elec­ tions and a reasonably effective system for protecting individual rights against arbitrary governmental actions, i.e., the "rule of law".^ These two criteria compelled us to eliminate a number of countries sometimes overgenerously classified as democracies.^ Next, we wanted a good cross section of governmental (or regime) forms - presidential, parliamentary, federal, unitary, and the various "mixed" versions for which we do not have a generally accepted terminol­ ogy. There was also the need to encompass a variety of representational systems (single member districts, multiple member districts, etc.) and electoral practices (primary and non-primary nominating practices, single vote, preferential vote, "first past the gate", proportional representation, and all the wonderful hybrids which have been adopted in one nation or another). The inclusion of Japan and Israel provided, we felt, essential geographic and cultural diversification. One more factor, to be sure, entered into our choice - the availability of a recognized scholar to "do" each of these countries. Availability meant the ability to complete the task with the projected time horizon, i.e., basi­ cally IS months from the date of our initial meeting in May, 1991. Admit­ tedly, a tight schedule but one compelled, we felt, by a variety of circum­ stances. (This projected deadline was the primary reason, I should add, for the reluctant decision to drop Italy as one of our target countries.)

5

Whatever the merits, let alone the practicality, of our initial time-table, it was subsequently undercut by the decisions, in Great Britain and Israel, to hold parliamentary elections in April and June 1992, respectively. Our study, surely, would have to deal with those two events. But, if so, then an equally persuasive case followed for delaying completion of the manuscript until after the November balloting in the United States, espe­ cially given the extent to which the primary returns suggested massive popular disenchantment with Congress. The net effect, in short, was a six month delay, on the one hand, and the ability to include three major sets of recent electoral results, on the other. As we will see, in only one instance did these results differ in any notable degree from previously established patterns. The countries selected and work begun, an additional requirement promptly surfaced. Since relatively few of our American readers were likely to be overly familiar with the workings of governments other than their own, we asked that each contributor provide, early in the chapter, a succinct description of the major features of "his/her" country’s political and electoral system. For this purpose, the other contributors served as guinea pigs; where they could not readily follow the discussion, well, back to the word processor.

"Facts" and opinions At our first "project" conference, aimed at securing agreement on a common research design, it became clear that some of the questions we proposed to address were more easily posed than readily answered. For example, statistics dealing with the victory rates of legislative incumbents, and even with trends, could reasonably be viewed as "facts" about which there would be relatively little dispute. At what numerical level, though, could this success rate (or trend) be reasonably construed as posing a danger, actual or potential, to the successful workings of democratic representative government in a given nation? Similarly, what proposed changes merited approval, and which were to be abjured? After consid­ erable discussion, we arrived at what was probably the only sensible solu­

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tion: given the diversity of systems with which we were dealing, these matters would have to be decided on a country by country basis. That is how we have proceeded. In some instances, no doubt, our au­ thors have been compelled to make what they (and probably many of our readers) will concede to be essentially subjective judgements. Where this has occurred, we trust that even those who hold other views will find the author’s reasoning plausible, if not completely persuasive. Conceivably, there might be similar (though less heated) disagreement in identifying the factors which, in the author’s opinion, account for the level (or trend) of incumbency victory in a specific country. Here, again, the "facts" are likely to carry one only so far; personal opinion must provide the motive power for the rest of the journey. The greatest potential for controversy, I suspect, resides in those pages where our authors weigh the merits of the measures which have been proposed, in the United States and elsewhere, to restore, as the now almost threadbare phrase goes, "a more level playing field". Disputes here may arise from any or all of three quite different sources: first, on whether there really is a problem which requires intervention;^ second, on the probable effect of the recommended changes; and third, since all of the contributors (as well has the readers) have political preferences which color their view of the world, on whose oxen are most likely to be gored. Given the oft-demonstrated tendency of public policy to eventuate in quite unintended (and all too frequently rather undesirable) conse­ quences, all parties to the debate might be well advised to recall Cromwell’s plea - "...think it possible you may be mistaken." (An admoni­ tion, to be sure, which he himself regularly ignored.)

Organization of the volume Our initial intention was to have, in Part I, a brief introductory chapter describing, as in the foregoing pages, our objectives and the general plan of the undertaking. This was then to be followed by a chapter dealing with the theory of democracy and, in particular, the critical importance (especially in recent statements of that theory) of effective mechanisms for ensuring that the representatives are held accountable to their constit­

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uents in some meaningful fashion or, as in some versions, in a fashion which the representative, correctly or otherwise, perceives to be meaning­ ful and effective - and guides his/her behavior accordingly. Part II, of course, would consist of the nine country studies. We weren’t quite sure here of the best order of presentation. The United States, since that nation has received the most attention in this respect (even in the foreign press), would be first - but what would be the best sequence for the other eight countries? Several options were considered: alphabetical, according to some system of alternation and contrast, etc. etc. Eventually, whether by explicit agreement on some now forgotten formula or simply by tacit consensus, we adopted the order utilized below. Part III, as originally conceived, would then have consisted of a summary chapter which would have two objectives. The first would have been to call attention to possible cross-national patterns and trends, to major areas of agreement and disagreement and, quite possibly, to suggest future lines of research and exploration. The second purpose would have been to examine our findings in terms of their implications, present and future, for democratic theory generally and the theory and practice of representative democracy in particular. As our Table of Contents" testifies, further reflection led to a modified order. The projected Parts I and m have been consolidated into a single three-chapter Part I. Chapter 1 describes the nature and objectives of the study; Chapter 2 summarizes our major findings; and Chapter 3 discusses the implications of these findings for representative democratic theory, past, present, and future. Part II remains unchanged from the previous plan, presenting the findings and the author’s conclusions as they relate to each of the nine governments studied. Part I, consequently, constitutes a sort of "executive summary" of the book as a whole. Many readers, we think, will be primarily interested in the broad picture and will want to look at the detailed analyses of only a few of the nations; some, we hope, will have an interest in all of them. Both groups, we trust, will be better served by the revised "two part" structure.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

5

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, by this term I mean representative government, rather then the direct democracy of the (presumably) Athenian and New England modes. As John Keane has observed, democracy "... is a method of preven­ ting those who govern from permanently appropriating power for their own ends. Those exercising power are subject to procedures which enable others to question, rotate or sack them" (in Bobbio: 1989). As Polybius sagely observed, "... it is not enough to constitute a democracy that the whole crowd of citizens should have the right to do whatever they wish or propose. But where reverence to the gods, honour for parents, respect to others, obedience to laws are tradition­ al and habitual, in such communities, if the will of the majority prevails, we may speak of the form of government as a democracy." Classifications of "democratic" countries vary rather bizarrely. According to Freedom House, in 1991 some 75 nations were democratic (or free; the two terms seemed to be used interchange­ ably). Modelski and Perry (1991) are a bit more conservative, and recognize only 55 nations as democratic; my own view is that, if we take our two criteria at all seriously, there are probably barely half that number which merit such a designation. For a detailed and thoughtful analysis - even though his own rankings are debatable - of the problems entailed in making this type of classification, see Vanhanen (1990). Every language has its own version, no doubt, of the Americanism "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

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References Bobbio, N. (1989), Democracy and Dictatorship: Elements for a Theory o f Democracy, University of Minnesota Press. Modelski, G. and Perry, G. (1991), "Democratization from a Longterm Perspective" in Nakicenovic, N. and Gruber, A. (eds), Diffusion o f Technologies and Social Behavior, Springer Verlag. Vanhanen, T. (1990), The Process o f Democratization: A Comparative Study o f 147 States, 1980-88, Crane Russab.

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2 .. .And Where We Came Out ALBERT SOMIT

We set out to answer, the reader may recall, several questions: (1) What is the present pattern (and possibly trends) of incumbent success in these nine democracies? (2) What factors are operative in furthering and limiting the probability of incumbent victoiy? (3) To what extent, in these several countries, does incumbent success pose, or threaten to pose, a serious danger to democratic representative government? (4) What changes have been proposed to ensure that the likelihood of incumbent re-election does not vitiate the ability of the electorate to hold their repre­ sentatives accountable at the polls? And: (5) what, in the opinions of our authors, are the merits of these proposals? Undoubtedly the most important of these questions is that of the impli­ cations of incumbent success for the theory and practice of democratic government. That crucial issue will be examined in depth, both as it re­ lates to these nine countries and in terms of democratic government generally, by Bernhard Boll and Andrea Rdmmele in the next chapter. At this juncture, then, it might be useful to mention some of the findings which emerged as we explored the several other issues.

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Before doing so, however, I would like to offer four caveats about any generalizations expressed in the pages which immediately follow. First, as already mentioned, it is not always possible to separate fact from opinion on some of these matters. Second, generalizations and statistical data for any given country may conceal sharp inter-party differences within that country. Third, every one of the nine countries with which we deal has had at least one (and sometimes two or three) "watershed" elections which differ sharply from the more common outcome and which also have a disproportionate impact upon any statistical description of that pattern. Last, given the wide-ranging variations in electoral systems among these countries, similar quantitative results may conceal significant substantive differences and/or, alternatively, apparently diverse figures obscure un­ derlying similarities.

1. Patterns and trends If incumbency carries with it significant electoral advantage, this should be reflected, other factors being equal,* in the success^ rates of incum­ bents, whether chosen (as in the United States and Great Britain) by single member district; by multiple member district (as in Japan); by proportional representation and place on the party list (as in Israel); or by some convoluted combination of these two systems (as in Denmark and Germany). What, then, are the "facts" bearing upon incumbent victory and defeat ? Our nine countries fall into two distinct groups, those with a "high" (85 per cent or better) incumbent victory rate and those where the rate is much lower, running close to 60 per cent. In the former category we find Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States; in the latter, Canada, France, Great Britain, and Israel. Both groups, the reader will note, contain countries with strikingly different (first past the post and proportional representation; single and multiple member districts; and two party and multiple party) electoral systems. Barring the occasional "critical" election, the level of electoral success (i.e., trend line) has held essentially constant in all of these countries over the past decade or so.

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Another way of measuring the same phenonenon is to look at average length of legislative service. The figures here vary considerably, Canada (6.5 years) is the lowest; then comes France (7 years); Denmark (7.8 years); Germany (8.2 years); Israel (11 years) New Zealand (12 years)**; the U.S. (the House of Representatives, 12.2 years; the Senate, 11.1 years); and at the high end, Japan (15 years) and Great Britain (almost 20 years). But cross country comparisons are dangerous given the variations in legislative terms from one country to another and the recurrent likelihood that the averages may be "distorted" by a relatively small number of individuals. One example of the latter would be Israel where, in a small legislature (120 members) a dozen individuals have served eight terms or more; another would be that of the four "Maori" seats in New Zealand whose occupants were almost never defeated. In the majority of cases, the trend seems to be upward, that is, toward longer terms. Still, these patterns have often been cyclical, and the 1992 elections in Great Britain, Israel, and the United States (and 1993 in Japan) may indicate the beginning of a flattening tendency or even a downward drift.

2. Operative factors Whether we look at the "high" or the "low" incumbency rate countries, we find substantial differences both in the factors which produce this result and, even where the same factors seem to be operative, in thenrelative importance. History, regime structure, the nature of the party system, the organization and role of (usually) two legislative bodies, the manner in which elections are funded, and campaign practices, to mention only the most obvious elements, interact to influence the electoral outcome. In all of the "high incumbency success rate" states, for example, money plays an important part in political campaigns. Its relative importance, though, varies considerably, being much greater in Japan and in the United States than, say, in New Zealand or Denmark. In all of these coun­ tries, too, the perquisites of office (staff, expense allowances, fund raising ability, visibility, etc.) convey a substantial advantage to the incumbent

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although nowhere, I think it fair to say, is the cumulative advantage of these benefits as great as in the United States. Nor is there a single systemic feature which correlates consistently with either high or low incumbent success rates. Two major parties and a "first past the post" electoral practices are found both in nations with high (United States) and low (Canada) incumbency success rates; similarly, countries which have multi-party systems and proportional representation may rank at either the upper (Germany) or lower (Israel) end of the scale. It seems clear that, for any given country, the level of incumbent elec­ toral success is linked, as our contributors repeatedly emphasize, not to one but to several features of the polity - the constitutional system, the number of contending parties, the strength of party discipline, the nature of the nominating and electoral systems, etc. etc. Nowhere do we find simple one-to-one correlations between any single given political charac­ teristic and the pattern of electoral outcomes. Neither parliamentary nor presidential systems produce any consistent pattern of incumbent prefer­ ence; nor do two-party vs. multi-party systems, or first-past-the-post vs. proportional representation modes of electing legislators. From this flow two obvious but often overlooked consequences: first, that each national state is truly sui generis - and that a given politi­ cal/electoral practice or process which works in one fashion in a given polity may be associated with quite different results in another. And. second, that each of these entities is a political system in the literal sense of that term. Politically as well as anatomically, "the jawbone is connected to the neckbone", and any attempt to alter any one aspect of the electoral system is likely to have widespread - and not always desirable - ramifica­ tions elsewhere. This point is made with some regularity in Part II below when our contributors evaluate the changes which have been proposed in the effort to make the legislators more readily accountable to the voter.

3. Incumbency: A threat to democracy ? As stated earlier, this question is the focus of Bernhard Boll and Andrea Rommele’s chapter immediately following. A few comments here, though, may be in order.

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In weighing the judgments expressed by our contributors on this particular issue, we should remember that different experts often interpret essentially the same data in quite dissimilar fashion. For some, to take the obvious example, incumbency success rates near or even above 90 per cent raise serious doubts whether, once ensconced in office, legislators can realistically be held accountable by their constituents except under truly exceptionable conditions. Others are not necessarily troubled by this statistic. As Professors Jackson and Norton stress in their discussion of the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively, it is imperative to distinguish between "objective" accountability, as measured by election results, and "subjective" accountability, as reflected in the legislator’s apparently pervasive sense, however mistaken, of vulnerability, Furthermore, in weighing the significance of high incumbency success, it is important to differentiate between an imperfection, on the one hand, and a defect which has near disastrous consequences on the manner in which the political system functions. In other words, the ease or difficulty of ousting legislators is only one of the many factors to be considered in assessing the effectiveness of any given democratic government. Both caveats seem applicable to the discussions of the those countries where incumbents have high success rates. Mogens N. Pedersen (Den­ mark), Steven R. Reed (Japan). Keith Jackson (New Zealand) and John S. Jackson (United States) do not see this as a serious problem; in contrast, essentially the same statistical outcome is viewed by Bernhard Boll as a matter of considerable concern for Germany. But, in terms of their implications for democratic governance, different positions may not be quite as far apart as they initially seem: As John S. Jackson (and Steven R. Reed describes much the same situation in Japan) explains, despite the electoral odds in their favor, the sense that they are constantly in danger of defeat has led American representatives and senators to be overly at­ tentive to narrow and selfish constituency interests. The end result has been what he terms legislative "responsiveness without responsibility" - a development, he believes, which in large part explains Congress’s manifest inability to legislate effectively on so many major national issues. This may be almost as serious a problem, of course, as that of incumbent unac­ countability.

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In most of what has been written and said, attention has focused on the possible implications of high incumbency success rates. According to Jean A Laponce, however, a low re-election rate among Canadian MFs is equal occasion for concern, since it tends to produce a body of transient and relatively inexperienced legislators. And in Israel, another country where the electoral system produces considerable legislative turnover, Asher Arian is no less troubled by a Knesset which, all too accurately reflecting deep-seated divisions among the voters, is often unable effectively to address urgent matters of public policy. In short, solely o f themselves, neither high nor low incumbency re-election rates necessarily constitute a serious threat to, or a guarantee of, effective representative government. As several contributors separately remark, the level of legislative turnover is closely linked to many other aspects of a nation’s political system and its significance must be evaluated within that larger context.

4. Proposed changes In which countries have the perceived problems of incumbent success given rise to serious discussions of possible change? The answer is fairly straightforward. In five - Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Israel and New Zealand - incumbency per se is not popularly viewed as a matter which requires attention, in the other four (Canada, Japan, Germany, and the United States) it has spawned a number of proposed changes.

5. Merits of the Proposed Changes We come, then, to our last query: What are the pros and cons of the "reforms" which have been advanced in these four countries? Here, the answer is a bit more complex. In Canada, Prof. Laponce concludes, the problem is too little, rather than too much, incumbency. He is sceptical, though, that any of the changes which have been suggested will appreciably improve the Canadian situation. "The incumbency problem", he ruefully observes, "pales in comparison to the major problem faced by

16

the Canadian state: transforming the existing federal structure to adapt it to the contradictory needs of two distinct societies, Quebec and English Canada." The popular and more scholarly media alike have given considerable attention to the "incumbency problem" in the United States and a number of proposals designed to limit incumbency have been debated and, in fact, already enacted in several of the fifty states. Nonetheless, in Professor John Jackson’s opinion, the high level of incumbency success does not constitute a threat to American representative democracy; furthermore, he contends, almost all of the changes which have been advocated (and/or enacted) are likely to do more damage than good. That brings us, finally, to Japan and Germany where incumbency is seen as a troublesome defect and where our authors, Professor Steven Reed and Bernhard Boll, respectively, agree that there is substantial merit in some of the suggested changes. They differ, though, in one respect: Professor Reed is optimistic about the likelihood of reform; for Bernhard Boll, though, the glass is only half full. The capacity of the electorate to hold their representatives accountable is clearly at the very heart of democratic theory and, in its initial formulation and development, there was a wide-spread confidence that this objective could be readily achieved. But that was a long, long time ago. We now live in polities increasingly characterized and dominated, to borrow a Chinese mode of expression, by the three M’s - mass, media, and money. In such a world, can we still realistically expect to hold incumbents effectively accountable? And if not, what are the consequent implications for the theory and practice of democratic governance? These are the two key questions which Bernhard Boll and Andrea Rdmmele address in the following chapter.

Notes 1

Even the advantages of incumbency may not be sufficient to offset the occasional political tidal wave, the consequences of hostile redistricting, or personal peccadillos beyond even the forbearance of the usually tolerant electorate. Two and perhaps all three of these

17

2

3

factors were apparently operative in the November 1992 U.S. natio­ nal election. Success rate may be defined either as the victory of the incumbent in a contested race or, alternatively, in the percentage of incumbents re­ elected - by one system or another - for another term. The first method does not yield especially useful results when we are dealing with a list system and proportional representation; the second does not take account of those incumbents (sometimes a sizeable number) who choose not to run for re-election, who die in office, etc. Depend­ ing on the nature of the system with which they deal, our several au­ thors utilize one method or another. This despite the fact that one of the two major parties in New Zealand has a policy of compulsory legislative retirement at the age of 70.

18

3 The Problem of Incumbency in Democratic Systems BERNHARD BOLL / ANDREA ROMMELE

The problem of incumbency in democratic systems can be viewed from two completely different theoretical angles. One could tackle the incumbency-issue from the viewpoint of elite power - from this perspective, it doesn’t appear to be a major problem at all: political elites have politi­ cal power and influence on important political decisions. Normally, only persons whose power is institutionalized - namely incumbents - belong to this elite. This is true not only for political representatives but also for the administrative and judiciary level (Weber: 1953). The discussion about elite power in general puts more emphasis on the acknowledgement of democratic rule by the elites. Compared to this emphasis equally impor­ tant questions like "How long should one be part of the elite and maintain an elite position?" are virtually moved into the theoretical background - at least as far as elite studies and related research is concerned. Why can incumbency then be seen as a threat to a democratic system? There are, no doubt, strong arguments in favor of incumbency: complex societies are characterized by the organization of power in some kind of network. (Hoffmann-Lange: 1992). Modem pluralistic democracies be­ come more and more interdependent systems where expertise and

19

individual as well as corporate communication are vital elements promo­ ting successful governance. Hence, elite recruitment and permeability is basically focused upon these functional systemic aspects. Parliamentary elites not only know the name of the game but also (ab-)use the parlia­ mentary platform: they are - presumably led by their noble interest in the common good - not only actors in the parliamentary scenario. With signif­ icant legal latitude, they are strategic masters and managers of political decisions not only of their constituency but also of their own political mat­ ters. What can be said against those arguments? Quite a lot, one must admit! The reason that incumbency is a problem or even a threat to democracy as a whole lies in the essential nature of mankind: men and women are always reluctant to relinquish power. Kay Lawson (1993) calls it "the dread disease of Caesarianism." History provides numerous examples of this addiction to power. Probably the most striking is former President Richard Nixon, who ultimately was forced from office only after being discredited and disgraced. The reluctance to relinquish power is perhaps the most difficult problem facing democratic systems. In western democracies, there are generally two ways of ousting an incumbent from office: (1) term limitations solve the problem more or less automatically, ignoring syste­ mic efficience and necessity; (2) the second, even more obvious way to get rid of incumbents, is by voting for the challenger. The latter is easier said than done: during election times, incumbents no doubt have a strong structural advantage compared to challengers. They already have name recognition, they are financially better off. If not decisive, money at least is capable of producing severe handicaps for most candidates. No candidate can make much of an impression without financial resources especially a candidate who challenges an incumbent (Alexander: 1976). Incumbents who have been in office for quite some time normally stick to their jobs and do everything within their power to keep them. This is so not only for egoistical reasons. Theoretically, but rarely in reality, defeated incumbents should be able to return to their original occupation. The vicious gap here is between their acquired political knowledge and the increasing deficit in their former professional education. This makes a return to their original occupation virtually impossible.

20

These problems of different theoretical provenances all add crucial aspects to democratic theory, the basic concern and motivation for our comparative study. However, comparative studies sometimes suffer from their own theore­ tical departures: the more analytical parameters added, the less the chance to find some, let alone one, satisfying diagnostical fit at the end of the study. As a tribute to this fact, we asked for just four aspects to be looked at in different countries, as Albert Somit described them in the previous chapters. Our results, we feel, present these aspects in very dif­ ferent colors indeed, and additionally open doors to other realms which still await further scholarly inquiry. Theoretically, the incumbency-problem seemed to be a clear-cut field of research, analytically appropriate for study. Different political systems, we knew, would produce some specific dimensions that would not help to reach our goal. But, ceteris paribus, similar factors extracted by every case-study could be distilled, and finally lead to a common set of patterns by which our question could be answered. The dangers posed for democratic theory and regimes was the under­ lying question we posed. But not even our basic thesis turned out to be a valid one: that an overall strong, internationally observable development towards higher re-election rates and longer periods in office would be an obvious indicator for a systemic malfunction. To the contrary. As we learned from the results, our own theoretical question turned out to be the dependent variable to which different but also interdependent explanatory references could be found. Hence, if our question was turned inside out, i.e. whether contemporary democratic theory still holds valid heuristical answers for the incumbency phenome­ non in modem democratic mass societies, then different criteria were central to this discussion. The representative form o f democratic government demands that, if the performance is weak, the electorate has an effective choice to change its representatives. Whether this choice is effective at all, and if so, to what extent, is a discriminating criterion between democratic and non-democratic systems. Amongst those belonging to the former types of regime, the arrangement of institutions and the nature of the rules of the game determines the standing and characteristics of a politicals representa­

21

tional life. Hence, it is common sense that it matters whether we are dealing with a presidential or parliamentary system, and that it is crucial whether the election of representatives takes place via a majority system or proportional representation or via derivates of both. But even a prohi­ bitively reduced set of parameters offers only partially a common pattern, because the bases of comparison of different systemic conditions of par­ liamentary incumbency vary only in the details, even when merely minor analytical aspects were concerned. Moreover, the role o f parties within each system accounts for the indivi­ dual polity in general and the representatives’ activities in particular (here, we feel, structural variance in terms of incumbency can be observed in a cross-country perspective). Party government, the "new Leviathan" as v. Beyme (1993) has named it only recently, undermines democratic theory and practice in pluralistic regimes more than any other political (f)actor - at least in parliamentary systems. Consequently, if parties have a strong control over their parliamentary personnel during selection and election times, individual return to parliament is far less certain, and reelection rates as well as the average length of membership in parliament is of less concern. Whether this is, ironically, the desired antidote against a perceived ageing, same-old-faces-parliament, is a matter of taste: if individual gain in power is exchanged for an increase in corporate partisan power, then democratic theory and practice won‘t profit much from that deal. Conversely, if parties, as in the US or Japan, do not or cannot very firmly organize (or even control) their representatives, the latter are found rather independent in their ways and methods of political survival. Running an individual election machine during and off election times, as Japanese politicians do, seems to lead to high re-election rates and almost heritable parliamentary seats. Raising funds, keeping in close touch with the constituency and simultaneously promoting one’s own career, as the political entrepreneurs in the US do more than any other of their international colleagues, seems to lead to similar (Japanese) trends which cannot be improved even by the somewhat idealistic, contemporary cry for a term limitation. An electoral system, in addition to weak intra-party control or parlia­ mentary party cohesion, that permits individual electoral success by

22

switching from one party to another as election day comes up, needs critical consideration as well. By an individual victory without a direct election via the voters (the Israel case), democratic theory, or at least the rules of the game, are no less imperilled. Then, pork-barrel politics and communal voting tend to guarantee individual parliamentary survival (the Israel experience), bypassing the real political contest by replacing important political issues on the national agenda with constituency-based or even individual bread-and-butter politics. Surprisingly though, incumbency variance is not unidirectional. It was our thesis, we have to admit, that incumbency would oscillate between a "long" and a "much too long" individual time in office. Canada’s case made us change our view. Apparently, the present structure of the Canadian parliamentary system of dominant party organizations, and minimal (renomination) contests lead towards a yet unexpected development. Thus, mature incumbent expertise and learned political experience in Canada seems to be more the exception than the rule on the floor at Ottawa. Consequently there are more attractive and more reputational goals to reach than being a long-time (successful?) member of parliament. Seemingly cyclical developments oust and return parliamentarians, a cycle sometimes accelerated by critical elections with high voter volatility. But, as can be observed in many of the studies, newcomers are the virtual victims of all these processes, not those, who are more responsible for critical parliamentary times during the respective legislative period. Watershed-elections tell a lot about these "insurance-mechanisms" for parliamentary party echelons. In all but the German case, however, voters seem to a limited extent to be able to effectively control the structure of parliamentary membership. Here, more research is needed; the focus of these future studies should include a differentiated, comparative analysis of length in office of parliamentary party elites and echelons versus simple parliamentary party "soldiers". Supposedly, re-election rates of parliamentary whips and inner leading circles will by far outdistance the longitudinal data we have gained. Incumbency, in general, seems not to be a high-priority problem if dif­ ferent countries and their polities are comparatively studied. To be sure, every political system produced major and/or minor irritating side-effects, but on the whole, the duration of membership in parliament, even re­

23

election quotas per se, were explicitly not the identified problems. Even in the US, where the issue seemed most urgent - some states have already introduced term limitation legislation - well informed analysts dissociate themselves from any reform attempt to "improve" the situation. Legislation on this behalf, so the argument goes, won't improve the efficiency of parliament in general nor the performance of the individual representative. So what is the problem, the reader might ask, are we all living happily ever after? No, we are inclined to answer, surely not. In every single coun­ try analysed, incumbency-related, structural malfunctions of the respective polity were detected, which seem to be no less crucial for the democratic practice in the country. For democratic theory, danger arises when incumbents are not able any longer to meet their expectations of the electorate and perform the func­ tional duties required by the respective nation's constitution. This task, however, has become increasingly difficult. While the gap between politi­ cal elites and non-elites has been narrowed by silent revolutions - to put it in Inglehard's words - the role and function of members of parliament has not experienced a similar operational change since the day of Burke's original sin. Yet two major questions still remain untouched. First, whether a politi­ cal system could ensure continuous efficient work in a highly complex and interdependent process, with higher tumover-rates and shorter terms in office, if the popular cry for term limitation would be met? Second, whether we can expect these new representatives to be much more effective in their duties (as some wish them to do) and simultaneously be less interested in keeping the office than are those politicans we are already "enjoying". This does not mean, that, with the status quo, we have maximized their role and function; we are still awaiting the perfect solution to that riddle. But if the answer to the latter question is yes, alternatives will be warmly welcomed and not only in the countries analysed here. From the respective analysts’ view, we reluctantly confess, this problem seems to be simply the price any given polity has to pay for the performance of a regime structure. However, if the answer to the first of our questions is also yes, well, then it really seems "time for a change", that no political system analysed here was able, so far, to bring about.

24

References von Beyme, K. (1993), Die politische Klasse, München: Suhrkamp. Alexander, H. (1976), Financing Politics. Money, Elections and Political Reform. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press. Hoffmann-Lange, U. (1992), Eliten, Macht und Konflikt in der Bundesre­ publik,, Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Lawson, K. (1993), The Human Polity, Boston: Houghton & Mifflin. Weber, M. (1953), Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

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PARTII AT LEAST SOME OF THE ANSWERS

4 Incumbency in the United States JOHN S. JACKSON

Introduction Early in the decade of the 1990s, the issue of incumbency and turnover in legislative bodies became a major item on the public agenda in the United States. It had long been recognized that legislative incumbents, whether in the Congress or in the state legislatures, had significant advan­ tages over their opponents. Those advantages translated into high levels of retention rates for incumbents, and those significant advantages for incumbents seemed to be widely understood and accepted, or at least tolerated. As distrust of and cynicism toward government and politics grew in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some part of the endemic dissatis­ faction with the political process came to be focused on incumbent legisla­ tors. Congress as an institution was criticized for a long list of short­ comings, real and imagined. Members of Congress were criticized for being out of touch with their constituents and insulated from the reality of day-to-day hardships faced by ordinary people. They were depicted as

29

having developed into a privileged elite, a class of career politicians, who were more interested in maintaining the prestige and perks of office than in addressing the nation’s problems. Relatively minor indiscretions like bounced personal checks at the "bank" in the House of Representatives and the Senate’s vote for a pay increase for itself in 1991 exacerbated an already lengthy set of grievances many people held toward their legisla­ tors. These were the small issues which caught the public’s attention and inflamed popular passion against the Congress and against state legisla­ tures. Academic observers and thoughtful people in the mass media had already raised fundamental policy oriented questions about how well the legislative process was serving the cause of effective government in the last quarter of the 20th century (Jacobson: 1992; Lowi: 1979; Fiorini: 1977; Mayhew: 1974). Indeed one did not have to be a rabid Congressbasher to be concerned about the implications of policy gridlock between the executive and legislative branches on such fundamental matters as the budget deficit, the proper size of the defense establishment and America’s foreign policy role in the world, racial conflict, the urban "underclass," the state of the nation’s health care system, environmental pollution, the per­ formance of the elementary and secondary educational system, and a host of other seemingly intractable problems facing the nation. The fact that the executive and legislative branches seemed to have ignored the Savings and Loan crisis until it was out of control in the last half of the decade of the 1980’s added further weight to the public’s growing sense of unease and dissatisfaction. Periodic public opinion soundings produced trend data indicating a steadily increasing level of basic alienation toward both Congress as an institution and toward the political process in general (Keene and Ladd: 1991; Balz and Morin: 1991). The "anti-incumbents movement" of the early 1990’s was thrust into this maelstrom of hot-button political issues and amorphous political discon­ tent. The term limitations campaign offered a quick and seemingly simple solution to difficult, perhaps intractable, problems. The problem was diagnosed as arrogance, unresponsiveness, and failure of competence on the part of those in power. The solution offered was to vote them out of office, not in individual races, but en masse via the term-limitations device.

30

This movement first surfaced as a serious item on the national political agenda in three referenda held in the states of Colorado, California, and Oklahoma in 1990. In all three of these states constitutional amendments were passed limiting the total number of terms a state legislator could serve. The most popular proposals were 10-12 year limits. In Colorado the amendment also would apply to Congress, limiting Members of Congress to 12 years, although the constitutionality of that provision was challenged in Federal court. The 1990 successes in these three states led to a well organized and well financed national movement to put term limitations on the ballot in all of the states. The public opinion polls showed that the movement had widespread appeal although the drive did suffer a tem­ porary setback in 1991 when a term limitations initiative in Washington state was defeated. The state’s Members of Congress (including Speaker of the House, Tom Foley) returned home to campaign against this proposal on the grounds that the state could ill-afford to lose its seniority and political clout in Congress and the movement lost a bit of momentum with that defeat. The 1992 elections provided tremendous impetus for the term limitations movement when 14 states voted on the proposal and all 14 passed. By 1992, it was clear that the term limitations movement was a growing political phenomenon directed at both the U.S. Congress and at state legislatures and fueled by widely varying forms of public discontent. This chapter provides a discussion and analysis of some of the major issues relevant to incumbency, its advantages and disadvantages and its effects in the United States in the last decade of the 20th Century. A comparison of the 1990 and 1992 Congressional election results is instructive in the debate over term limits and the importance of incum­ bency. "Throw the rascals out!" is a venerable slogan in American politics, and it seemed to have a certain cachet in the off-year Congressional elec­ tions held in 1990. Much media attention that year focused on the growing critique of incumbents (Keene and Ladd: 1991, p. 87). Nevertheless, when the votes were all counted and the national picture emerged, there was remarkably little evidence of an anti-incumbent backlash at work, at least in the Congressional elections. In the U.S. Senate, where one-third of the seats are always up for re-election every two years, only one incumbent running for re-election lost. He was Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a Minnesota

31

Republican, who was beaten by an obscure Carleton College political science professor, Paul Wellstone, in what appeared to be a classic case of anti-incumbent voter retribution. In the U.S. House, where all 435 seats theoretically are at risk each year, only 15 incumbents were beaten. The re-election rate in the U.S. House for incumbents in 1990 was 96 per cent, and it was a fraction higher than that for the Senate. For the House, the 1990 result was a record re-election rate, and for the Senate the incum­ bent re-election rate was the highest it had been since the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, when the Senate began to be chosen in popular elections (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 10, 1990). When one considers that in the traditional American Constitutional scheme the Congress in general and the House in particular were supposed to be the immediate and accurate mirrors of public opinion, this endorsement of incumbents via unprecedented re-election rates is most notable. So, one might well ask, what happened to the anti-incumbent bias in 1990? Was it all media hype? While there may have been a certain amount of media overkill to the theme, the answer is more complicated. For one thing, there was some popular rejection of incumbent state governors, and their re-election rate was relatively low in 1990. The inter­ pretation most often advanced regarding the governors is that they deal with issues close to home for the voters, and they have to provide and pay for vital services. Unlike the Federal Government, almost all of the governors must balance the state’s budgets each year, even if this means service cuts or tax increases (Henriksen: 1990). In addition, there were also some danger signals for Congress in the 1990 results. While most House and Senate incumbents won, they faced a much reduced victory margin compared to earlier years and a number of very well-known members found themselves in tighter races than had been expected (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 10, 1990). In some respects the warning shot fired against the incumbents in 1990 found its mark in the 1992 election results.

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The 1992 congressional elections The 1992 Congressional elections produced a somewhat schizophrenic judgment by the voters on their incumbents in Congress. This election was often billed as a referendum on incumbents and the popular anger against incumbents was depicted as being at a fever pitch in 1992. The public opinion polls showed Congress to be held in low repute and the voters in a mood to vote against incumbents. Several high profile members of the Senate, such as Senator Timothy Wirth of Colorado and Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire announced retirement plans while several members of the House tainted by the checks scandal were defeated in primaries. The number of House members not seeking re-election (65) was a record, and the number defeated in primaries (19) was the highest since the end of World War II although the number of incumbents de­ feated in the general election (N=24) was not high compared to the decades before the 1980’s. In all the 1992 elections produced 110 new members of the House which was higher than the 1974 Watergate induced revolution (N=92 new members). In fact since the end of World War II, only the historic 1948 election (N = 118) produced more new House members (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, November 7,1992). The 1992 results in the U.S. Senate produced a somewhat more mixed verdict on incumbents. Only one incumbent (Senator Alan Dixon of Illinois) was defeated in a primary. Three incumbent Senators were de­ feated in the general elections (Sanford of North Carolina, Kasten of Wisconsin, and Fowler of Georgia). Coupled with the eight who chose not to run, the elevation of Senator Albert Gore to the Vice Presidency and Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s appointment to Secretary of the Treasury, amounted to a total of 14 new faces in the U.S. Senate, which is a much higher turnover rate than 1990 but not particularly high in comparison to other recent elections (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, November 7,1992). That constituted the good news for the incumbents in 1992. The bad news included the fact that many incumbents won fairly narrow victories and fourteen states passed some kind of incumbent term limits. In a number of states, the voters simultaneously re-elected very senior incum­

33

bents to the House and Senate while at the same time approving state constitutional amendments which would have made those same incum­ bents ineligible to serve if those provisions had been in effect in 1992. In 1992, in those fourteen states, there were 70 incumbents re-elected who would have been ineligible under the term limits statutes those states passed (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, November 7, 1992). Much research has indicated that the American voters are not nearly as concerned about cognitive and philosophical consistency as are scholars, and the very mixed messages in the 1992 results continue to demonstrate that record of ambivalence.

Members vs. the institution The question of congressional accountability to public opinion goes to some of the most important and complex issues of democratic theory and representative government. The case of congressional elections is impor­ tant because the Congress is so central to the American system of repre­ sentative government that the conflict surrounding Congressional incum­ bency and proposed limitations on Congressional terms undoubtedly will continue. It should be stressed that public opinion polls have for many years shown an anomaly between the American people’s approval of Congress as an institution and their approval of the job their own individual Member o f Congress is doing. Decades of presidents running against the Congress and even Members of Congress constantly reviling the institu­ tion have taken their toll, and the American people routinely give the Congress rather low marks (Keene and Ladd: 1992, pp. 85-87). At the same time the voters in an individual Congressional District are just as likely to think that their own elected member is doing a fine job and plan to vote for that member in the next election. The great attention to the needs of the district ordinarily given by Members of Congress, their assid­ uous devotion to "casework" and their constant devotion to "pork barrel" politics, means that individual Members of Congress enjoy a phenomenal standing in their home districts and they are routinely rewarded with reelection (Fenno: 1978; Fiorini: 1977). In addition, the re-election rates of Members of the House typically exceed those of the Senate, even though

34

the House was supposed to be the vehicle for the most immediate expres­ sion of the popular mood. If one required a high level of turnover in the legislature to ensure responsiveness, then the U.S. Congress would be regarded as unresponsive. Some level of turnover is a necessary but not sufficient condition for responsiveness. Rather than being the barometer for popular opinion envisioned by the founders, the re-election rates for incumbents in the House indicates that House incumbents generally are insulated against the heat of popular passions although that insulation did not shield House incumbents in 1992. Nevertheless, this is a more complex question than incumbent re-election rates indicate, and it will require more consideration in a subsequent section of this chapter. The key concepts are "representation" and "accountability", which must be explored in greater depth.

Divided government and "Gridlock” Going into 1992 the dynamics of American public opinion vis-à-vis the Congress, and a separate set of dynamics surrounding American Presiden­ tial elections had produced "divided government" as the contemporary norm in the United States. The 1992 electoral debate added "gridlock" to the popular political vocabulary as President Bush campaigned against the "gridlocked Congress" with the same vigor Harry Truman used against the "Do-Nothing 80th Congress" in 1948. Before 1992 Republicans had won five out of the last six Presidential elections (1968-1988), and seven out of the last ten elections (1952-1988). During that era, the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress only during the first half of Eisen­ hower’s first term (1953-1954). They also controlled the Senate, but not the House during all of Reagan’s first term (1981-1984), and up through 1986. Otherwise, significant Democratic majorities in the House and lesser majorities in the Senate had become a seemingly permanent feature of modern American politics, and Democratic majorities usually faced a Republican President at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. One of the basic reasons for this phenomenon is another American phenomenon, i.e., "ticket-splitting". In the U.S., because Presidential and Congressional elections are separate, it is quite possible to vote for a

35

presidential candidate from one party and a congressional candidate from another party, and millions of Americans do this. In addition, the "ticketsplitting" phenomenon has grown markedly in the United States since the 1950’s. The era of divided government has produced tremendous political 'buck passing" and partisan blame laying by the President and the Congress. Whether the U.S. suffers from too much checks and balances, thus making accountability more difficult, this long era of divided government is an important issue which has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners alike. Until 1992 it appeared that this partisan division had hardened into an almost permanent political overlay on the American Constitutional fissures guaranteed by separation of powers. These political and structural divisions made it very difficult to mobilize coherent public policy short of a crisis situation in the American system. Most recent presidents have complained vociferously about Congress’s inability, or unwillingness, to move on issues deemed important by the White House. Building a winning policy-making coalition in the veiy fragmented American governmental system requires painstaking work and expenditure of political capital, prices that presidents often are not willing to pay to achieve their policy goals. Also, Democratic majorities in the Congress simply disagreed with many of the programmatic goals of the Reagan and Bush administrations, and that disagreement created policy-making impasses on a number of key issues. President Bush, as a former member of the House of Representatives and the only former Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) ever elected to the White House, was undoubtedly aware of the frustrations that his Republican Congressional colleagues, especially those in the House, experience as a result of their almost permanent minority status. He also experienced his own frustrations from divided government when considering the prospects of having to do battle with a Democratic Congressional majority for the second Bush Administration. He was un­ doubtedly aware of public opinion polls showing general support for strin­ gent limitations on Congressional terms. Whatever his mix of politics and philosophy, shortly after the November 1990 elections President Bush en­ dorsed the Constitutional amendment which would limit Congressional

36

terms. Bush’s endorsement added impetus to a rapidly developing natio­ nal debate about the virtues and abuses of incumbency and about the projected policy and political effects of limitations on Congressional terms. President Bush and Vice President Quayle both ran hard against the Congress in their 1992 campaigns. The Vice President even went so far as to suggest that the only way to break the gridlock was to either elect a Republican Congressional majority or a Democratic President although he naturally advocated the former course. At a post election meeting in Little Rock between Bill Clinton and Congressional leaders in November 1992, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt said you could hear the sounds of gridlock breaking up already. Naturally the Clinton administra­ tion had aspirations for getting many of their basic policy packages through Congress quickly, and the election of a safe Democratic majority in both Houses gave some basis to those aspirations.

Philosophical considerations The popular debate over incumbents and term limits generally was not couched in deep philosophical terms. The debate tended to be fueled by appeals to the supposed virtues of the "Citizen Legislator" and a desire to take retribution against those incumbents supposedly responsible for whatever "mess in Washington" (or the state capital) the commentators wanted to punish. Nevertheless, there are crucial questions of democratic theory embedded in this debate. Put simply, modem American govern­ ment assures rule by the political elites elected to govern rather than by any simple rule by "the people" in a direct sense of popular control over the exercise of power and the making of public policy. This is the essence of republican or representative government. The key point of contention is over the role of elections and their impact on those elites who hold and exercise political power on a day-to-day basis. Modem democratic theory requires that the office-holders submit to periodic free elections. In addi­ tion, these elections must, at least in theory, provide for meaningful elec­ toral competition. There must be an opposition party, and opposition candidates waiting in the wings with some potential for throwing the

37

incumbents out of office. Furthermore, the incumbent officeholders must be held accountable to the mass of the people through the vehicle of these periodic competitive elections. The officeholders must want to continue in office, i.e. to be re-elected to the seat they hold, or to move up to higher office. Wanting to succeed and to continue in public office, the leaders will plan their political moves, cast their votes, advance their programs and policies, and conduct their relations with their constituents with a practiced eye toward their re-election prospects. In this direct sense, then, "the people" can be said to rule, at least to the extent that the voters are an ever-present force to be reckoned with in the next election. Public opinion thus plays an important, although generally a secondary role, in the mobilization of American public policy. The muse of public opinion must be consulted, via the polls, via personal contacts, via the voice of editorial writers and opinion leaders, and in myriad other ways as the legislator decides how to vote on any particular issue. After casting a vote the Member of Congress must convince the constituency that the vote was the correct one, if the vote ever becomes controversial enough to come to the constituents’ collective attention. Too many votes too far out of alignment with prevailing constituent opinion, or votes inadequately defended, can become the fodder for opposition attack in the next elec­ tion - or so the theory goes. This opposition can come from the legislator’s own party via a challenge in the primaries or from the other party in the general election. The incumbent must be aware of all these possibilities for electoral retribution and must fear them, and make them an important part of his or her decision-making matrix for the theory of electoral accountability to function as billed in democratic theory. In fact, the simple assumption that incumbents want to be re-elected is a fairly powerful analytical device which allows the analyst to assume rational behavior designed to maximize the chance of reaching that goal on the part of the Member of Congress (Mayhew: 1974). Making that assumption is a simplifying theoretical position which will be adopted in this study. Political scientist, Kenneth Prewitt, who studied San Francisco Bay area 'dty council members, noted the relatively high number who were not at all fearful of defeat, and he wrote the following cogent comments about this crucial assumption in the theory of accountability:

38

Nearly one-fifth plan definitely to retire at the end of the present term; another third or so of the incumbents appear to be planning for only one more term. A high and persistent rate of voluntary depar­ ture from office suggests the need for a major qualification to the thesis that elections assure accountability of officeholders. For if the elected official plans to exit from office in any case, why should he fear voter disapproval? And if he has no need to fear voter disap­ proval, what is the guarantee that he will feel accountable? (Prewitt: 1970, p. 211).

The objective case Congressional incumbent re-election rates routinely above 90 per cent can also call into question the basic rationale on which the theory of elec­ toral accountability is predicated. If most Members of Congress have no opponents, or at the minimum no viable opponents, and if the incumbents routinely outspend their opponents by very wide margins, how realistic can the electoral accountability thesis really be? There are two answers to the theoretical question. One answer rests on the objective, empirically based assessment of the impact of incumbency on the electoral fortunes of legislators. This case is rather straightforward and easy to assess from the data in Table 4.1. As we have already seen the objective data indicated that it is very difficult to defeat an incumbent in most election years. It is only in the unusual years like 1946, 1948, 1974, and 1992 that you get high turn­ over rates and those elections are more aberrations than the norm especially for the House as Table 4.1 indicates. While it was not impos­ sible to defeat an incumbent Member of the House of Representatives between 1946 and 1990, the likelihood of doing so must have been quite discouraging to all but the most intrepid of challengers. On the other hand, the number of House incumbents who retired or who were defeated in primaries increased markedly in 1992. t

39

Table 4.1 House Turnover, 1946-1992 Year

Retirements

1946 1948 1950 19S2 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992

32 29 29 42 24 21 33 26 24 33 22 23 29 40 43 47 49 34 40 22 38 23 27 65

Defeat in Primary 18 15 6 9 6 6 3 5 12 8 8 4 10 12 8 3 5 6 10 3 2 1 1 19

Defeat in Gen Election 57 68 32 26 22 16 37 25 22 45 41 9 12 13 40 13 19 31 29 16 6 6 15 24

Percentage Re-elecuon 82 79 91 91 93 95 90 93 92 87 88 97 95 94 88 96 94 91 90 95 98 98 96 88

Total Turnover 107 118 73 81 56 46 79 25 68 91 73 39 56 70 92 67 77 74 81 45 50 34 45 no

1 Total Turnover includes the raw number of those who were defeated in the prima­ ries and the general election plus those who chose not to run again or who left office for other reasons. In short, it provides the amount of "new blood" in the legislative body. Source: Data compiled from "The New Gass: More Diverse, Less Lawyers, Youn­ ger”, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, November 7,1992, and G. C. Jacobson (1992), The Politics o f Congressional Elections.

The picture of the post World War II period in the U.S. Senate is deci­ dedly more mixed as the data in Table 4.2 indicate. Indeed, the 97 per cent incumbent victory margin in 1990 was a post-war high, and the long term average during that era was in the mid-60 per cent range. Beginning in 1946, only 57 per cent of incumbent U.S. Senators were re-elected and this percentage usually stayed in the 60 to 80 per cent range during the next thirty years. The exceptions are instructive. One can see in the 1978 and 1980 rates, which dropped to 60 per cent and 55 per cent respectively, the mark of the take-over of the Senate by the Republican Party in 1980. The 75 per cent incumbent success rate in 1986 partially reflects the recapture of the Senate majority by the Democrats. Certainly, U.S. Senate seats do change hands, and even majority party control in the Senate can change, although rarely. Nevertheless, the odds against the challengers are daunting. These rates are even more notable when compared to the

40

19th century in the U.S. Congress. Then turnover generally ranged from 40 to 50 per cent (Congressional Quarterly, November 19, 1988). Incum­ bents and potential challengers alike are undoubtedly aware of such statistics. The relatively low turnover rates make serious challengers fairly difficult to find. The first hurdle is to get past that unique American insti­ tution, the party primary. Party primaries are one of the innovative contributions the United States has made to the art of politics, and they are almost unique among the western democracies. Even today very few other nations have followed the United States in making nominations through the primaries. In other countries the naming of the party’s candi­ dates to bear the party label in the electoral contest is considered to be strictly the internal purview of the party qua organization. In those settings the nominations are made within party councils, in conventions or within leadership caucuses. Table 4.2 Senate Turnover, 1946-1992 Year

Retirements

1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992

9 8 4 4 6 6 6 5 4 2 3 6 4 6 7 8 10 5 3 4 6 6 10l

Defeat in Primary 6 2 5 2 2 0 0 0 1 1 3 4 1 2 2 0 3 4 0 0 0 0 0 1

Defeat in Gen Election 7 8 5 9 6 4 10 1 5 4 1 4 6 5 2 9 7 9 2 3 7 4 1 3

Percentage Re-election 57 60 69 65 75 86 64 97 83 85 88 71 77 74 85 64 60 55 93 90 75 85 97 86

Total Turnover 22 18 14 15 14 10 16 6 10 7 7 14 11 13 11 17 20 18 5 7 13 10 4 14

1 Includes Sen. AI Gore who was elected Vice President and Sen. Lloyd Bentsen who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury. Source: Data compiled from N. Omstein, T. Mann and M. Malbin (1987), Vital Statistics on Congress: 1987-88; Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports for 1988, 1990, 1992 and G. C. Jacobson (1992), The Politics o f Congressional Elections.

41

In the United States the party nominations for most local, statewide and federal offices, and increasingly for the presidency are made in the primary, which is, of course, simply an election held for the purpose of determining who the party nominees will be for each office (Crotty and Jackson: 198S). In addition, the United States relies exclusively on single­ member districts for federal offices. This also sets the United States apart from many other systems where multi-member districts are the norm. In effect, the public or the "party-in-the-electorate" is invited to choose the nominees in the primaries. Naturally, the party organization has some­ thing to do with helping support the most politically viable candidates. This means incumbents almost always enjoy organizational support, and they enjoy great advantages in the primaries. In spite of the theoretical possibility of a primary challenge to incumbents, very few serious primary challenges actually materialize. The authoritative Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report provided the following statistics on the 1990 Congressional primaries: "More than three-fourths of the incumbents seeking re-election this year (307 of 406) had no intra-party opposition. Of the rest, 67 had opposition but drew more than 75 per cent of the primary vote" (iCongressional Quarterly Weekly Report, October 20, 1990, 3538).

Turnover and average length of service The question of total turnover rates in the House and Senate is some­ what different from the question of per cent of incumbents re-elected in a single year. While the two are related, it is also notable that the percen­ tage of incumbents being re-elected in a single year can be relatively high while the total turnover is also relatively high. This is what happened in 1992 because of the large numbers voluntarily leaving office. Appendix A shows total turnover, i.e., all those who did not seek re-election plus those defeated in the primaries and the general election for the eight elections between 1978 and 1992. There one can see that the range is from 7 per cent (1988) to 25 per cent (1992) in the House and from 4 per cent (1990) to 20 per cent (1978) in the Senate. In other words, the turnover rate indi­

42

cates the amount of new blood being infused into the Congress, a question which is highly relevant to the term limits movement. A closely related question is that of the average amount of time served, or seniority, in each body. Seniority is extremely important intrinsically to how the House and Senate conduct business internally. Committee assign­ ments and internal housekeeping decisions are largely determined by seniority and years of accumulated service is as important in the Congress as in the military. Nevertheless, the critics claim that it is the career politi­ cians, those who go to Washington and stay who have lost touch with the people and become insulated and arrogant. It is this critique which drives the term limits movement. It is worth noting that in the 100th Congress (1987-1988) the mean number of terms served in the House was 5.6 terms, or 11.2 years. The mean number of terms served in the Senate was just over 1.5 terms, or 9.6 years (Omstein, Mann and Malbin, 1987). In addi­ tion, only 26 per cent of the House (N = 132 Members) had served more than sue terms, and only 25 per cent of the Senators (N=25) had more than 12 years of service. Those figures were fairly stable over the four decades of the 1950s and through the 1980s. By the 102nd Congress (1991-1992) the mean number of terms served in the House was 6.2 and the median was 5 terms. In the Senate the mean number of years served was 11.1, and 53 Senators had served 12 year or less while 47 had served over 12 years (Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin: 1992, p. 20-21). This repre­ sents a modest increase in the seniority of the 102nd Congress, undoubtedly a reflection of the unusually high incumbency re-election rates in 1990. Obviously, it is these most senior Members of Congress who are targeted by the term limits movement and just as obviously the aver­ age length of service would drop drastically if the term limits applied to the entire Congress. The rest of the accountability riddle rests on the subjective assessment that the impact of incumbency and the threat of electoral defeat have on the perceptions of the legislators. This assessment must rest on inference from the behavior of legislators, interviews with incumbents and former members, roll call studies, and anecdotal evidence (Clausen: 1973; Mayhew: 1974; Miller and Stokes: 1963; Fenno: 1978). Put simply, the legislators must fear electoral retribution, must fear the loss of job and

43

power if accountability is to work. This subjective assessment may go well beyond the reality suggested by objective turnover data. The subjective perceptions of the threat of electoral defeat, while more elusive, may also be the more important influence in the decision-making calculus of the legislator. In addition, the objective and subjective modes of analysis may yield two disparate answers to the riddle of electoral accountability in a democratic and representative system of government We will examine next the characteristics of American political elites and the advantages incumbents enjoy and then their subjective perspectives.

Hie characteristics and advantages of political elites To fully appreciate the advantages incumbents enjoy in the American system, one must go back to its roots in the socio-economic system. One must also examine the political recruitment process in the United States. Membership in the United States Congress is, by definition, a prestigious occupation. There are 435 voting members of the House and only 100 Senators; consequently, membership in the Senate is somewhat more prestigious than membership in the House. Memberships in these exclu­ sive bodies attract people predominately from the upper middle and upper strata of American society. In no way does the membership of the Congress represent a sort of socio-economic microcosm or random sample of the American population. Beginning with the veiy earliest days of the republic it has always been an elitist occupation attracting those predominately from privileged backgrounds. There is somewhat more diversity today in the U.S. Congress than there was in the past and the 1992 elections certainly increased that diversity; however, membership is still skewed toward the upper-middle class end of the socio-economic spectrum. Donald R. Matthews did some of the early research on political elites in general and on the Congress in particular. He wrote an early summary sketch: American political decision-makers ... are with very few exceptions, sons of professional men, proprietors and officials, and farmers. A very small minority were the sons of wage earners, low salaried

44

workers, farm laborers or servants ... the narrow base from which political decision-makers appear to be recruited is clear (Matthews: 1954, pp. 23-24). Although these words were originally written in the early 1950’s, this thumbnail description has changed only gradually in its major tenets since its definition. In a later work on U.S. Senators, Matthews provided the following summary: The Senators were selected, with only rare exceptions, from near the top of the society’s class system... this study and others like it indicate that governmental offices are class-ranked - the more important the office, the higher the social status of its normal incumbent... Voters seem to prefer candidates who are not like themselves but are what they would like to be (Matthews: 1960, pp. 44-45). In Congress today, there is more diversity in socio-economic status, sex, and racial background than was the case in the 1950’s and 1960’s; how­ ever, the Congress still does not provide a demographic mirror of the population. The U.S. Senate includes a very large number of multi­ millionaires. Senators like Rockefeller, Kennedy and Danforth are the scions of some of America’s most wealthy families. On the other hand, there is little sense in which these seats are hereditary. Very few father and son teams have served in the Senate, with the Byrd dynasty of Virginia, Harry F. Byrd Sr. and Jr. in the 1930’s to 1960’s era and the Long dynasty of Louisiana, Huey P. Long and Russell Long from 1928 to 1986 being the only recent examples in the Senate. In the House a few more examples exist where fathers were followed by sons, e.g. Representative Harley Staggers, Sr. and Jr. from West Virginia; however, those are fairly rare exceptions. There are other occasional family legacies, such as Senator Edward Kennedy taking the Massachusetts seat vacated by his brother John F. Kennedy in 1961. The most familiar pattern is the "widow succession" with the wife of a deceased Senator being appointed to fill the unexpired term of her husband, or serving until the next election can be held. This was the case of Jocelyn Peterson Burdick temporarily replacing

45

her deceased husband, Senator Quentin Burdick of North Dakota in 1992. A small number of these widows go on to win the House or Senate seat in their own right. This picture of a demographically unrepresentative Congress, from predominantly upper middle class backgrounds is the backdrop which makes the 1992 Congressional elections stand out in some relief. The 103rd Congress which took office in January of 1993 produced the most diverse demographic portrait of Congress ever assembled. In 1992, there were 48 women elected to the House, up from 29 in 1990, and 6 women elected to the Senate, up from the two elected members who held office in the 102nd Congress. There were 39 African-American Members of the House in the 103rd Congress, up from 29 members of the 102nd Congress. In addition, in January of 1993, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois took office as the first-ever African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate and Ben Nighthouse Campbell of Colorado took office as the first Senator of Native-American heritage to serve in the Senate since 1929. Also partially under the impetus of the 1990 redistricting, the number of Hispanic voting members of the House increased from 11 to 17 (19 inclu­ ding two non-voting members). As can be seen from Table 4.3, during the decade of the 1980’s the average age in the Congress had been increasing slightly but steadily, from 50.5 years in the 99th Congress up to 53.6 years in the 102nd. This average dipped slightly to 52.9 years in the 103rd which took office in January of 1993. The average age in the Senate in the 103rd Congress was 58.0 years while in the House it was 51.7. Overall, the current averages look very similar to the Congresses serving immediately after World War II, sug­ gesting more stability than real change on this dimension (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 7, 1992). Members of Congress come disproportionately from upper middle class backgrounds and occupations although that generalization is also changing somewhat. Studies constantly show that Members of the House and Senate are considerably better educated, from a higher social status, and wealthier than the national population. Members of the Senate tend to be from more affluent backgrounds than Members of the House. Occupational diversity in the Congress in increasing; however, Members of the legal profession have always predominated as the largest occupa­

46

tional category in the U.S. Congress. In the 103rd Congress, there are 239 members who have a legal background; however, this is down some from the 288 lawyers elected in the Watergate class of 1974. Table 4.3 Average Age, 103rd Congress (Ages as of Nov. 6,1992)

Both parties Democrats Republicans

All Members

Senate

House

52.9 52.7 53.1

58.0 57.7 58.5

51.7 51.7 51.8

Statistics based on apparent winners as of Nov. 6,1992.

90th-103rd Congresses*

103rd 102nd 101st 100th 99th 98th 97th 96th 95th 94th 93th 92nd 91st 90th

All Members

Senate

House

52.9 53.6 52.8 52.5 50.5 47.0 49.2 50.9 50.3 50.9 52.0 52.7 53.0 52.1

58.0 57.2 55.6 54.4 54.2 53.4 52.5 55.5 54.7 55.5 55.3 56.4 56.6 57.7

51.7 52.8 52.1 50.7 49.7 45.5 48.4 49.8 49.3 49.8 51.1 51.9 52.2 50.8

• Average age calculated at or near the beginning of each Congress. Source: Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report (1992), "The New Class: More Diverse, Less Lawyers, Younger", p. 10.

47

Table 4.4 Members’ Occupations D Acting/Entertainment Aeronautics Agriculture Business or Banking Clergy Education Engineering Homemaking Journalism Labor Officials Law Law Enforcement Medicine Military Professional Sports Public Service Real Estate

0

House R Total

1

1

0 7 56 1 45 2 0 11 2 122 8 4

2 12 75 1 20 3 1 12 0 59 2 2

2 19 131 2 66+ 5 1 24+ 2 181 10 6

0

0

0

0 51 9

1

36 17

1

87 26

D

0 1 3 12 0 6 0 0 7 0 33 0 0 0

1

8 2

Senate R Total

Congress Total

0 0 5 12

0 1 8 24

5 0 0 2 0 25 0 0

11 0 0 9 0 58 0 0

33 + 2 239 10 6

0 2 3

10 5

2 97 31

1

1

1

1 1

3 27 155 3 77+ 5

* Statistics based on apparent winners as of Nov. 6,1992. * Because some members have more than one occupation, totals are higher than total membership. + Includes Sanders, I-V t Source: Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, "The New Class: More Diverse, Less Lawyers, Younger", p. 9.

The second most prominent occupational category is business and banking with 155 members in the 103rd Congress followed by "public service" at 97 and education at 77 members. The occupational category which has declined the most markedly is agriculture with only 27 in the 103rd Congress compared to 41 in the Watergate class which took office in 1975 (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report: Special Report, November 7, 1992). Although there is increasing diversity in the U.S. Congress, neither body can claim to represent the demographic and occupational diversity of the American people. Increasingly the Members of Congress are themselves lifetime politi­ cians. After their first elective office they are very likely to have climbed steadily up the political ladder. The most likely route to the Senate is through a governorship or a U.S. House seat. The most likely route to the House is through a state legislative seat or a local office such as mayor. Indeed, as indicated by "Public Service" being the third largest category in the 103rd Congress, many Members do not have an occupation or career outside of governmental service and thus they have nothing to fall back on

48

if they are defeated. Many defeated Members stay in Washington to join law firms or become consultants or lobbyists. Some critics believe that this is one explanation for the extraordinary tenacity with which incumbents now strive to hold onto their offices until retirement age. Criticism of this careerism among the Members of Congress was widespread among those who wanted to limit the terms of incumbents.

Hie advantages of incumbency Going beyond family backgrounds and political recruitment advantages what are some of the root causes of the marked electoral advantages enjoyed by the incumbents? The answers can be dissected in terms of a dichotomy between "politics" and "government" and the close interaction between the two realms. In the area of politics, it is obvious that the incumbents enjoy a marked advantage in fund raising. One of the best supported generalizations in the campaign finance literature is that incumbents can almost always raise more money than challengers (Jacobson: 1980; Sorauf: 1988). Part of the imbalance in campaign finan­ ces between incumbents and challengers is due to the role of the Political Action Committees (PACs). Since 1974 the PACs have become increas­ ingly important in Congressional elections. They provide money and valuable indirect (or "in kind") contributions of services to favored candi­ dates. PACs represent organized interest groups and people who desire influence and access on Capitol Hill. This access is most likely to be provided by incumbents who have a proven track record and a high probability of re-election. Studies of PAC contributions have consistently demonstrated the marked proclivity for PACs to contribute to the incum­ bents (Sorauf: 1988; Jacobson: 1980; Malbin: 1984). It is clear from a long line of research done on the subject that money alone cannot ensure victory. In every election there appears a well-publicized case where a relatively unknown and badly outspent challenger wins an upset. The Minnesota race where Wellstone upset Boschwitz in 1990 and the Carol Moseley Braun primary victory over Alan Dixon in Illinois in 1992 are good cases in point. Nevertheless, most of the time there is a very high correlation between spending the most money on the campaign

49

and winning (Malbin: 1984; Jacobson: 1980). In addition, the challengers who are considered to be most "viable" are those who have the greatest ability to attract large campaign war chests, or who can put major amounts into the race out of their own personal fortunes. Obviously most candidates and their campaign managers would much prefer to have more money to spend than their opponents if they could freely choose their electoral situation. There is apparently a threshold of financial strength which the candidate must reach to mount a competitive campaign. It is far easier for the incumbents to reach this threshold than it is for most chal­ lengers. The electoral advantages of incumbency are not limited to campaign finances although the partisan composition of the district is also very important (Erikson: 1971). There are many other fringe benefits that go with holding congressional office which can be translated into electoral advantages. For one thing, the Member of Congress has a staff and an allowance for operating the office. In the 102nd Congress (1991-1992), Members of the House were given $515,760 per year to hire up to 22 personal staff members. They may also influence committee staff hires as well. They are also provided an office allowance whose amount varies according to the travel distance to the district and office rent in the district. The allocation for Senators ranged from $1,012,000 for those from small states to $1,836,000 for office operations for those from large states. In addition, Members of Congress can choose to spend their allocations on a variety of central office operations in Washington and district-based offices back in their states. Senators usually have 3 or 4 offices in the home state and House members support from 1 to 4 districtbased offices. All of these offices and staff people are supposed to help the member develop a legislative program and to provide constituency service as well. However, each is also likely to be devoted to the political health of the boss and re-election is likely to be an important priority for the staff person. It should be emphasized that when staff get directly involved in campaigns, they are required by law to take vacation or annual leave. The staff people are generally well aware that the way they perform their normal daily duties reflects on the Member and indirectly on his or her re-election prospects. We will return to this nexus between "government"

50

and "politics" in a subsequent section. There are many other electoral advantages which go with incumbency. The franking privilege is probably the most famous or notorious. Under the "frank," the member can post, for free, enormous amounts of mail to the constituency. It is well recognized that direct mail, at least if targeted intelligently, can have some positive electoral consequences. It is also well recognized that members use the frank to communicate with their constituents much more often in election years. With the constant increases in the price of postage, the frank provides a nice advantage to the incumbents. Citations of the alleged abuse of the incumbents’ "perks" and calls for reform are often centered on the franking privilege which seems to be symbolic of the advantages which accrue to incumbents. However, there are many other incumbent advantages in dealing with the processes of politics, and those other advantages far outweigh the benefits of the frank. Both major parties now have well-staffed and well-equipped national headquarters near Capitol Hill. Both are equipped with all the high tech facilities of the media age. Each has a television studio, complete with sophisticated production facilities, instant radio and newspaper access, and a staff who know how to use them. In addition, the average Congressional office has all the modem communication devices ranging from fax machines to computer networks. All of these wondrous electronic gadgets provide the machinery which supports the member either directly or indirectly in the constant quest for re-election.

The politics of government The late Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago is supposed to have coined the aphorism "good government is good politics." This saying illustrates the very close interaction between the two realms, and Members of Congress are keenly sensitive to that interaction. While it is true that formulating and acting on legislation is one major function of Congress, constituent service is another function of at least equal importance to members inter­ ested in re-election. Indeed, one of the surest routes to electoral defeat is for the member to become so engrossed in life on Capitol Hill as to be vulnerable to the charge that he or she has "lost touch" with the constitu­

51

ency (Fenno: 1978). One of the best ways for the member to be inoculated against such charges is to give assiduous attention to constituency service. The Federal Government has become a vast bureaucracy with significant impact on the lives and fortunes of millions of Americans. Often the citi­ zen needs a "go-between" with the bureaucracy, and the astute Members of Congress recognized that they personally, through effective staff work, can reap much credit for providing this service. In addition, laws often provide only the most general policy outline with much discretion left to the implementation stage of the program. Executive branch bureaucrats are usually charged with the responsibility of developing the more specific rules, publicizing those rules, and promulgating them. Often members get back into the act to shield constituents, or advance their interests with the bureaucrats at the implementation stage, and this function has become an increasingly important part of the role of Congress. Indeed Morris Fiorini has developed an entire theory of the growth of Federal Government and how it operates which is predicated on this Congressional "go-between" function. Fiorini’s thesis is succinctly summarized in the following words: The key to the rise of Washington establishment (and the vanishing marginal) is the following observation: the growth o f an activist federal government has stimulated a change in the mix o f Congressional activi­ ties. Specifically, a lesser proportion of congressional effort is now going into programmatic activities and a greater proportion into pork-barrel and casework activities. As a result, today’s congressmen make relatively fewer enemies and relatively more friends among the people of their districts (Fiorini: 1977, p. 46). Technically, this function is closely related to the Congress’ constit­ utional power to exercise "oversight" of the executive branch. The over­ sight of how the laws are administered, what regulations have been devel­ oped, and how they have been applied is a growth industry in Congress. Most members would be quick to defend it as one of their crucial governmental functions, but they would also recognize this activity as a relatively risk-free route to their constituents’ affections. Again "good government is good politics" and this increased constituency service role has increased the prospects of re-election for incumbents.

52

Another area of overlap between politics and government is in the Member of Congress’ relationships with the mass media, the technical side of which was alluded to earlier. On the substantive side of the equa­ tion a Member of Congress is, by definition, an important political official in the member’s district. The U.S. Senator is an important source of news for the statewide media and Representatives in leadership positions as well as many Senators are also able to garner national media attention (Foote: 1990; Hess: 1986). Thus, they command a certain amount of media coverage for even the most mundane stories such as announcing government contracts for their districts or states. They can command a great deal of media attention for the high profile stories such as hearings on the Savings and Loan or banking crisis, nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, hearings on the war in the Persian Gulf, etc. Here, too, the member may be exercising legitimate Congressional oversight or con­ stituent service functions which the media find newsworthy. Happily for the member’s constant drive for re-election, this nicely serves his or her political purposes by routinely keeping the member’s name before the public. The public opinion studies provide a double-edge message on this matter. Most voters cannot cite their Member of Congress’ name unaided; however, name identification (i.e. basic recognition) is high for most members in their own districts or states, and they are very likely to start any election with a vast advantage over any potential challenger in the crucial campaign asset of name identification (Campbell, et al.: 1966; Clausen: 1973; Jacobson: 1992). Barring doing something really self­ destructive, the Member’s access to the media should constitute a major campaign resource compared to that enjoyed by most challengers. In addition, the level of voter turnout in all American elections has been declining since the 1960s. We routinely expect off-year Congres­ sional elections to attract only 30 to 40 per cent of the voting age popula­ tion. (These percentages vary by state, and some states it is higher than this.) In general, we expect that a high level of name identification also is an advantage to incumbents in low turnout elections. One can only conclude that objectively speaking there are many significant electoral advantages which accrue to incumbents. Perhaps it should not be surpris­ ing then to find that so few incumbents are defeated for re-election in most election years.

53

The subjective assessment of the role of incumbency and the threat of electoral defeat

The subjective assessment of the role of incumbency and the threat of electoral retribution is more difficult to make. This case requires an assessment of the perceptions that the Members of Congress hold of their constituencies, their own understanding of their electoral situations, their desire for re-election and advancement, and the influence of other groups which compete with the constituency as a source of cues for votes and influence on the Congressional decision-making process (Clausen: 1973; Miller and Stokes: 1963; Fenno: 1978). Are the Members of Congress actually "home-haunted" to adopt Richard Neustadt’s felicitous phrase (Neustadt: 1990, p. 261)? While they may not always be haunted by the constituency, modem research consistently indicates that the constituency is one of the impor­ tant factors influencing the member’s decision-making calculus. For instance, the classic research on this nexus between constituency and Congress was done in 1958 on a sample of 116 districts in a special study of representation (Miller and Stokes: 1963). Miller and Stokes compared the policy preferences of the districts and their Members of Congress in three important issue areas, government support for social welfare legisla­ tion, foreign affairs along an isolation versus internationalist continuum, and support for civil rights for minorities. They used recorded roll call votes to measure the position of the Member of Congress, as well as interview data on their perceptions and values. Miller and Stokes hypo­ thesized that the level of agreement between constituency and the member was likely to vary according to which issue domain is studied. Miller and Stokes also found evidence that the personal values and atti­ tudes of the Member of Congress as well as their perception of the distri­ bution of opinion in the constituency both mattered in explaining roll call votes. The level of agreement between constituency public opinion and vote was highest for civil rights issues, lowest for foreign affairs, and social welfare votes were in the middle. As these two authors pointed out, issue saliency in the district can be crucial. On the volatile issue of civil rights they discovered that,"... it is influence passing through the Congressman’s

54

perception of the district’s views that is found to be preeminently important" (1963, p. 56). It is important to note one of Miller and Stokes’ conclusions: ... the idea of reward or punishment at the polls for legislative stands is familiar to members of Congress, who feel that they and their records are quite visible to their constituents (1963, p. 54). Many other studies have built on the Miller and Stokes work and elaborated on their fundamental findings. Most such studies find constitu­ ency influence, and the perceptions of the distribution of constituency opinion held by members, to be important variables which help to explain Congressional behavior (Clausen: 1973; Jacobson: 1992). While some of these rely on survey data, others depend on much more intensive inter­ views with the Member of Congress, as well as observing their behavior in their districts over an extended period of time (Fenno: 1973). One should not limit the member’s fear of constituency retribution to the drive for re-election. Joseph Schlesinger’s seminal work has demon­ strated the importance of ambition in deciphering the behavior of office holders (Schlesinger: 1961). That ambition can also be fixed on aspiration for higher office. Thus, the office holder must satisfy the current constitu­ ency with an eye on the potentially different constituency at the same time. The constituency is not the only source of resources to aid in the office holder’s desire to be re-elected or to move up in the world. Other factors include political parties, interest groups, and the executive branch. While the constituency is the court of last resort, all of these other electorally relevant groups can help the politician to mount an effective campaign or survive a challenge in the next election. Variance in Congres­ sional behavior can be attributed not only to the constituencies they serve but also to their relationships to these other masters they must serve as well. The one constant which we have posited for analytical purposes is their desire for re-election or advancement (Mayhew: 1974). Their per­ ceptions of those re-election probabilities are probed in the next section.

55

The vanishing marginals thesis

The discussion of incumbent re-election rates could lead one to the conclusion that objectively speaking the incumbents have little to fear. Nevertheless, the analysis turns as much on the office holders’ subjective assessment of their situations as on the objective data. In political and media circles a Congressional District usually is considered to be a "safe seat" if the incumbent won the last election by 55 per cent or more and a "marginal" district if the incumbent fell below that mark. If the incumbent won with more than 55 per cent it is much more difficult to find reputable challengers and to raise the requisite amount of money than if the incum­ bent was held below that mark. In practice the 55:45 per cent break nar­ rowly defines the "marginal" district although some academic studies also use a broader definition of a 60:40 vote split to define the marginal districts. Using either standard delineates the marginal districts from the safe districts, and only the open seats attract more attention than the races in the marginal districts. Political scientist, David Mayhew, is credited with coining the term, "the vanishing marginal" (Mayhew: 1974, pp. 295-317). It was Mayhew’s contention, based on much objective data, that the number of marginal seats declined drastically in the 1956-1972 era. He found that only approximately one-fourth of the seats fell into this electorally vulnerable category of competitive seats. Mayhew observed: ... at the least a House election like that one of 1964 (with a large turnover) produces a rotation of government elites that has policy consequences; at the most there is some detectable relation between what such temporarily empowered elites do and what popular wishes are ... The data, for the years 1956-1972, suggest strongly that the House swing is a phenomenon of fast declining amplitude and there­ fore of fast declining significance (Mayhew: 1974, p. 296). Mayhew then offered five hypotheses as to why the marginals were declining. One hypothesis was that incumbents were able to protect them­ selves at redistricting time; however, he found limited support for that view. The other four hypotheses had to do with electoral advantages

56

enjoyed by incumbents, i.e., name identification, claiming credit for public programs in the districts; use of polls to ascertain district sentiment; and use of incumbency as a voting "cue" by the public. He found considerable support for these hypothesized electoral advantages (Mayhew: 1974, pp. 310-311). In an earlier part of this chapter other incumbent electoral advantages were explored, and several of those advantages were compat­ ible with the Mayhew findings. Mayhew’s work provoked a long running discussion of marginal districts, incumbency and the role of electoral accountability. The thesis of the "vanishing marginal" is well known in the political world and much researched in the academic world. The major counter-argument to Mayhew holds that it is the fear of doing something wrong rather than the objective re-election rates, that leaves one vulner­ able to electoral challenge, and it is that subjective calculus which drives much Congressional behavior (Mann: 1977). The dichotomy between the objective re-election rates and subjective assessment is well-illustrated by the 1990 election results. In 1990 Congres­ sional Quarterly found two trends at work, both ominous in their implica­ tions for the support of incumbents. First, the number of marginal districts increased markedly in 1990; second, the victory percentage, even for several well-known and well-entrenched incumbents declined drastically in 1990 (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 10, 1990). Many of the declining victory percentages left incumbents near the marginal range for 1992. Figure 4.1 compares the incumbents’ margins in 1990 to 1956, 1974 and the five elections in the 1980’s. Obviously the decline in 1990 compared to the 1980’s is marked.

57

Incumbents by Party

All Incumbents

Year Democrats Republicans 1956 1974 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990

623 68.5 64.0 67.9 64.2 70.2 68.8 65.8

60.1 55.2 67.9 59.9 682 65.6 67.5 59.8

Note: Includes only incumbents with major-party opposition. 19S 0

1974

1010

1 91 2

1004

1900

1900

1990

Source: CQ Almanacs (Percentages compiled by Thomas Galvin).

Figure 4.1 House Incumbents’ Average Vote Percentage Source: "Most Members Survive, but many Margins Narrow", Congres­ sional Quarterly Weekly Report (1990), p. 3800.

Congressional Quarterly emphasized the size of the 1990 fall off in the following terms: "... the average vote for House incumbents this year fell to 63.5 per cent. That is nearly 5 percentage points below the incumbent average in 1986 and 1988, and barely two points above the incumbent average in the volatile Watergate election of 1974 or the more competitive congressional elections of the 1950’s ... More important for the future, though, were the many incumbents who tumbled from a zone of safety to the brink of defeat in 1990, or at least to a level at which this year’s election could be considered an important wake-up call" (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, November 10, 1990, pp. 3738).

58

In addition, in 1992, this regression toward the margin continued for incumbents. In 1992, 13 per cent of all House victories were by 52 per cent or less compared to only 2.7 per cent of such close races in 1988. Also, 58.3 per cent of the 1992 victories were at the 60 per cent or above mark, compared to 84.6 per cent of such comfortable victories in 1988. The average vote for victors in the House was just below 62 per cent, down again from the 63.5 per cent attained in 1990. (USA Today, November 6, 1992, 7-A). Coupled together, 1990 and 1992 to an extent produced the "return of the vanishing marginals." The point is that the subjective perception of the incumbents’ vulner­ ability is probably a great deal more important than the fact that few of them are ever defeated. This is the point Mann made as a reply to Mayhew in his monograph (Mann: 1978). Other scholars who have studied Congress intensively have emphasized the same point. John W. Kingdon, for example, found that 52 per cent of the members he studied felt uncertainty regarding whether they would win the next election (Kingdon: 1968). Other studies have found similar levels of uncertainty among incumbents (Mann: 1977). In addition, Jacobson has documented that even incumbents who win at levels above the margins can be de­ feated unexpectedly in the next election thus adding further to the incum­ bents’ perceived vulnerability (Jacobson: 1992). Senator Alan Dixon of Illinois won his 1986 re-election over a Republican woman, Judy Kohler, by almost one million votes before suffering a totally unexpected upset by Carol Moseley Braun in the March 1992 Democratic Primary. It was not until the decade of the 1980’s that incumbents with comfortable margins finally began to win re-election at very high rates (Jacobson: 1992, pp. 3435). The results of the 1990 and 1992 elections demonstrate that the marginal districts may be making something of a comeback in the U.S. elections. Both trends, i.e. the increase in the number of marginal districts and the decline in the winners’ percentages can increase the incumbents’ perception of electoral threat or make them appear to be more vulnerable to potential challengers. Whether this "return of the marginal" is an anti­ incumbents induced aberration of the 1990 and 1992 elections, or the harbinger of bad news for incumbents for the entire decade of the 1990’s

59

remains to be determined by the electoral tides of those years. What does seem to be a constant of Congressional life is the fear that one, or at best a few highly salient and controversial votes, a brief misstep, an unguarded moment can provide the grist for the opponents’ thirty second attack commercials and a career can lie in ruins as soon as the next election. For the individual member this can be an uncomfortable way of life, but it is the price they pay for the ambition which drives them toward a political career. For the purposes of accountability in the political system such a constant electoral threat is a fixed star in the democratic constellation.

Policy Implications and institutional integrity The argument so far has demonstrated that most Members of Congress care greatly about re-election, and thus, they care about the views of their constituencies • or at least a working majority of the voters of their constituencies. They fear retribution at the polls unless they have decided to retire voluntarily, and this fear induces electoral responsiveness. They want to do the things which will enhance their electoral prospects and avoid those things which will threaten their future, and in this sense, they can be said to be accountable to the constituency. So far so good for democratic theory. On the other hand, the kind of accountability guaranteed by the electoral nexus does not guarantee the integrity of Congress as an institu­ tion. It also does little for the ability of Congress to mount a coherent response to national problems. Jacobson has made the argument that modem Congressional politics produces "responsiveness without responsi­ bility" (1992, p. 232). By this, Jacobson meant that the fragmentation of power, the centrifugal forces in Congress, e.g. the stress on subcommit­ tees, weakened Congressional parties, limited sanctions controlled by the leaders, and the members’ constant drive for re-election and their concomitant need to "vote the district" are functional for the individual member but dysfunctional for the Congress as an institution. Jacobson cogently presented his thesis in the following words:

60

"The dilemmas public opinion creates for Congress reinforce the fundamental flaw in the kind of representation produced by electoral politics: great individual responsiveness, equally great collective irre­ sponsibility. Emphasis on constituency services becomes more attrac­ tive when policy matters become more diverse and threatening. Moreover, the safest way to cope with contradictory policy demands is to be acutely sensitive to what constituents and other potentially important groups want in taking positions, but to avoid responsibility for the cost they would impose. Voting for Gramm-Rudman [an act requiring a balanced budget] but against spending cuts or tax in­ creases is the paradigmatic strategy" (Jacobson: 1992, p. 232). During the 1980’s, there were some countervailing trends. For example, the national party organizations and the various Congressional Campaign Committees became much more aggressive in their recruitment of Con­ gressional candidates. The recruitment function previously had been almost exclusively the province of the state and local parties and this national party recruitment represented a real nationalizing trend in U.S. parties (Hermson: 1988). Also, the Reagan administration scored some significant victories in Congress, particularly early with their tax and spending cuts. These vic­ tories were extended in the signal legislative achievement of the second Reagan administration, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (Bimham and Murray: 1987). The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was touted as a national policy designed for the common good and ignoring many of the special and parochial interests in a manner which many analysts believed impos­ sible for Congress to do. The Reagan tax bills in 1981 and 1986 were passed with almost unanimous Republican support in both the House and Senate. Indeed, the Republican "presidential support scores" were generally high during the Reagan years. They were especially impressive during Reagan’s first term although these scores declined somewhat in Reagan’s second term (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1988: 23-B). Those electoral and governmental developments seemed to portend some limited development of a more responsible party system and indicated some level of integration between the policy objectives of Congressional Republicans and the Reagan administration. The Bush presidential sup­

61

port scores among Congressional Republicans were lower than all his recent predecessors (Congressional Quarterly Alamanac, 1991,3B-9B). Clearly, Bill Clinton wanted to achieve a high level of support among Democrats in Congress during his first year in office, and he worked at courting Congress in order to do so. Clinton even admitted to admiration for the way Reagan had been effective in getting his economic and tax policies out of Congress. In addition, the Democrats in Congress had much incentive for working with Clinton early in his administration. While these countervailing trends are important, the basic fragmentation of power and policy-making in the Congress, the structural and political divi­ sion of a government where the Congress was controlled by the De­ mocrats and the presidency was controlled by the Republicans, remained until the Clinton elections. All of these electoral and Constitutional condi­ tions conspired to keep Congress in considerable disrepute as an institu­ tion. This chapter has explored many facets of these anomalous outcomes in 1990 and 1992. Congress as an institution was held in low regard, yet incumbents were usually re-elected. Whether electoral retribution will be taken against incumbents in future elections remains to be seen, but the 1992 elections show that high turnover rates can be achieved in spite of the real electoral advantages incumbents enjoy. More ominously, the popular movement toward a Constitutional limit on Congressional and state legislative terms could gain greater momentum as an anti-incumbent and anti-institutional backlash. The passage of term limits in fourteen states in 1992 and in three states in 1990 promises tremendous change in Congresses of the future. Yet the anomaly is that the voters in these same states overwhelmingly re-elected many incumbents who would have been ineligible under the term limits. This seeming paradox is similar to the other well-known paradox of high incumbent re-election rates coupled with very low regard for Congress as an institution. This creeping constitutional revision may well change the Congress very dramatically. This is a form of anti-institutional backlash that indiscriminately targets the good and the poor incumbents equally. In the opinion of this author, the term-limitations movement would not increase personal accountability and would probably exacerbate many of the institutional problems it is supposed to solve. The critics who maintain

62

that it would increase the power of the lobbyists, the PACs, the Commit­ tee staffs, and the media in Washington are undoubtedly correct. Those groups already constitute a sort of "permanent government” in Washing­ ton and they could easily outlast most Members of Congress if there was a twelve year deadline on tenure in Congress. As we saw earlier, the aver­ age tenure in Congress is already near or below that twelve year limit and it would decline drastically if the roughly 25 per cent who ordinarily stay beyond the twelve year limit were automatically excluded. Most importantly the balance of power would undoubtedly shift more decidedly toward the executive branch in general and to the President in particular. The twentieth century has witnessed an almost inexorable trend toward enhancing the power of chief executives due to a variety of factors including the requirements of making war, the balance of terror epitomized in the nuclear stalemate, the growth of federal and domestic programs, and the influence of the mass media’s focus on the President. The system would be skewed even further toward the President if the Congress were recreated anew at least once every 12 years, and if the forced turnover were a constant threat at the individual member’s level. Congress, which has its problems as an institution, would have even greater effectiveness and competence problems under this plan. Finally, there is no real reason to believe that individual accountability would be increased by term-limitations. A member would not necessarily take a more public-spirited stance on the policy issues of the day if he or she knew 12 years were the maximum term of service. The member likely has worked hard, given up a year or two of his or her life, left a secure job or public office, incurred a very large campaign debt upon arriving in Washington for the first day of the first term. There is no reason to expect that the member’s need to pay off his or her debts, accumulate some credibility with the voters back home, and make a name in some policy field will all change dramatically just because there is a day certain beyond which the member cannot serve. In fact the shortened time span could indeed lead to an even shorter public policy attention span for the member if he or she cannot hope to make a long-term career in the Congress (Ehrenhalt: 1991, p. 3). There is already a very cogent critique of American government which holds that the span of attention of our politicians, like our business leaders, is ordinarily limited to the next

63

election. Automatically forcing them out of office in 12 years, if not sooner, will not compel them to take the longer view. We delude ourselves if we believe we can legislate statesmanship with this legislative deus ex machina. V.O. Key characterized the Congressional electorate as a "... rational God of vengeance and reward" (Key: 1968). Whether the American elec­ torate has the information and interest to act in such a highly rational fashion has been the subject of much empirical work in the mass voting behavior Held over four decades. Nevertheless, the electoral impact on Members of Congress, as they contemplate the specter of a constituency which can turn them out of office is the more important fact of political life. The specter of defeat is part of Congressional decision-making at the individual member’s level of analysis, and the collective impact of that threat helps explain much about why Congress behaves as it does. It also provides much of the explanation for why Congress so often is not capable of addressing national problems other than in a fragmented and incre­ mental fashion. Coupled with divided government we find much of the explanation for how the American system has worked (or not worked) for three decades.

Author’s Note: The author would like to thank Jack Van der Slik, Cynthia Meadow, Amy Isbell, and Bill Poole for their help in assembling some of the information and reviewing the manuscript. Their suggestions were invaluable and much appreciated. Thanks also to Matthew Florio, Amy Elbl, Bill Poole and Sandra Taylor for typing the manuscript numerous times.

64

Appendix A Re-election Rates and Turnover of House and Senate Incumbents 1978-1992 Not Seeking Re-election

DefeatedPrimaries

DefeatedGeneral Election

Total Leaving Office 77 74 81 43 49 31 44 110

Year

Seeking Re-election

House

1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992

382 398 393 411 394 411 407 370

53 37 42 24 41 24 28 65

5 6 10 3 2 1 1 19

19 31 74 16 6 6 15 24

Senate

1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992

25 29 30 29 28 27 32 36

10 4 3 2 6 6 3 8

3 9 0 0 0 0 0 1

7 9 2 3 7 4 1 4

20 17 5 5 13 10 4. 143

Per cent* Re-elected

Total T.O.0 Rate^

94 91 90 95 98 98 96 88

18% 17 21 10 11 7 10 25

60 55 93 90 75 85 97 86

20 17 5 5 13 10 4 14

1 Per cent Re-elected = Those defeated in primaries plus those defeated in general election divided by the total seeking re-election. 2 Turnover (T.O.) rate includes both those who were defeated in the primaries as well as the general elections plus those who did not run again divided by the total in the body. 3 Includes 1 deceased and replacement for Vice-President A1 Gore in Tennessee and Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen in Texas. Source: Re-election Rates were taken from: Jacobson, G. C. (1992) 3rd ed., The Politics o f Congressional Elections. Glenview, Illinois; Scott, Foresman and Co. 27*28 for 1978-1990 data. Turnover rates were calculated from the Con­ gressional Quarterly Weekly Report.

References

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Fiorini, M. (1977), Congress: Keystone o f the Washington Establishment, New Haven: Yale University Press. Foote, J. S. (1990), Television and Political Power, New York: Praeger. Henrikson, S. (1990), "The Gubernatorial Elections", Comparative State Politics, 11, pp. 1-8. Herrnson, P. (1988), Party Campaigning in the 1980’s, Cambridge, Massa­ chusetts: Harvard University Press. Hess, S. (1986), The Ultimate Insiders: U.S. Senators in the National Media, Washington, D.C.: The Brooklyn Institution. Hinckley, B. (1978), Stability and Change in Congress, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers. Jacobson, G. C. (1978), "The Effects of Campaign Spending in Congres­ sional Elections", American Political Science Review, 72, pp. 469-491. Jacobson, G. C. (1980), Money in Congressional Elections, New Haven: Yale University Press. Jacobson, G. C. (1992), The Politics of Congressional Elections, Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Keene, K. H. and Ladd, E. C. (eds) (1991), "The Public’s Critique of Congress", The American Enterprise, January/February 1991, pp. 81-91. Keene, K. H. and Ladd, E. C. (eds) (1992), "Congress’s Ratings at an Alltime Low", The American Enterprise, November/December 1992, pp. 86-87. Key, V. O. Jr. (1966), The Responsible Electorate, Cambridge, Massa­ chusetts: Harvard University Press. Kingdon, J. W. (1968), Candidates for Office: Beliefs and Strategies, New York: Random House. Ladd, E. C. (1990), "Public opinion and the "Congress Problem"", The Public Interest, 100, pp. 57-67. Lasswell, H. D. (1951), Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How. Quoted in the Political Writings o f Harold D. Lasswell, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. Lowi, T. J. (1979), The End o f Liberalism: The Second Republic o f the United States, New York: W.W. Norton. Malbin, M. J. (1984), Money and Politics in the United States, Chatham, New Jersey: Chatam House Publishers, Inc.

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70

5 Incumbency in Israel's Knesset ASHER ARIAN

Introduction Israel’s political culture is group-based in practice and communityoriented in ideology. The benefit of the group is expected to take preced­ ence over individual desires. When her nomination was challenged in a party forum, Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel between 1969 and 1974, expressed the point of view that the individual who held the position of power was less important than the ideology of the party that the person represented. An argument can be made that her intent was to exert control within the party and government, and to silence opponents; what is beyond argument is that her verbal emphasis on the group at the expense of the individual was widely accepted in Israel. This communal culture expressed itself in the political arrangements used in Israel since independence in 1948, and before. The electoral system uses fixed-list proportional representation, and is based on a single national constituency. Formally, the list is the unit of analysis of the elec­ tion process in Israel, although lists are often amalgamations of political

71

parties. In this article, "list" refers to the formal unit which stands for elec­ tion, "party" to the ongoing institutions of the political party. Seats were awarded to lists receiving at least one per cent of the vote through 1988; before the 1992 elections the minimum was raised to 1.5 per cent. Participating in the elections is not difficult; in 1992, for example, new lists needed 3,500 signatures of voters over 21 years of age and a deposit of about $10,000. The d’Hondt method, which affords a slight benefit for the larger parties, was used for the calculation of the surplus vote. There are no legal requirements regarding the manner in which lists are to be generated. The list must be submitted 35 days before the elec­ tion date. The Central Elections Committee, made up of representatives of the various parties in proportion to their strength in the outgoing Knesset (parliament) and headed by a Supreme Court justice, is respon­ sible for conducting the election, including the approval of lists. The law that applied in 1988 gave the committee the right to disallow lists that denied the Jewish nature of the state of Israel, opposed its democratic regime, or were racist. The Committee prohibited Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party from running in the 1988 elections because of its racist and anti-democratic platform. An attempt to disallow an Arab-Jewish mixed list called the Progressive List for Peace, on the grounds that their call for the establishment of a Palestinian state negated Israel as a Jewish state, failed. This was repeated before the 1992 elections, except that Kahane had been assassinated in New York, and a list "Kahane lives" was formed, and disallowed. The Progressive List for Peace ran, and failed to win the 1.5 per cent needed. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is the supreme legislative body of the state. Like other things in Israel, reactions to it are ambivalent and complex. The Knesset has enormous symbolic importance, although "Knesset member" and "politician" are not prestigious occupations. A taste of the orientation of the public toward politicians is gleaned from the story of the Haifa-area resident arrested for attacking his neighbor with a knife. In explaining his behavior he claimed that his neighbor had called him a politician (Haaretz: 1983). "Knesset member" was 64th out of 90 preferred occupations ranked by a national sample (Samuel and Yuchtman-Yaar:

72

1979). However, when asked about individual parliamentarians, many of whom have gained public visibility and esteem, the reaction tends to be more supportive. The major explanation for the ambivalence regarding the Knesset in the public mind is that members are elected by party lists and not directly by the voters. The names of candidates do not appear on the ballot on election day; voters select the letter or group of letters representing their list of choice and insert the slip of paper bearing the symbol of their party into an envelope and then into the ballot box. Moreover, the public has no direct say in determining the composition of the party lists, although, as we shall see below, a trend toward democratizing the process has been developing in certain parties. Israel’s political system remains centralized and hierarchical, despite a propensity toward democratization in certain parties and a periodic groundswell for constitutional and electoral reform (Arian: 1989). Deci­ sions regarding policy, however, are still made in the inner-sanctums of the major political parties, and control of the party that forms the government implies control of the Knesset and of the major ministries (Weiss: 1979).

Incidence of incumbency Israel held elections thirteen times between 1949 and 1992. On each of those thirteen occasions, 120 members were elected to the Knesset. If a vacancy takes place, the next person on the list replaces that Knesset member. In all, a total of 571 individuals have served in the Knesset through the 1992 elections. Incumbents are those who returned to serve in the Knesset after having served before. Most Knesset members (about 65 per cent) served more than one term. The average number of terms served was 2.74, or about 11 years; the median was 2 terms, or about eight years. Usually, about a third of the incoming Knesset members are new to the body (see Figure 5.1). For the first elections, all members were necessarily new; for the July 1961 elections, held less than two years after the November 1959 elections, and decided upon months earlier, only 9 new

73

members entered. Besides those two unusual years, the range of new members in the 120-member Knesset was between 30 (1955) and 50 (1977); the average for those eleven elections (excluding 1949 and 1959) was 40.2 new Knesset members.

49

51

55

59

61

65

69

73

77

81

84

88

92

Figure 5.1 New Knesset Members 1949-1992 For the 571 Knesset members in the 1949-92 time frame, a plurality (212 members, or 37.1 per cent) served one term in the Knesset (see Figure 5.2). About a quarter (127 members; 22.2 per cent) of the total served twice. There was a very small and hardy group, numbering 14 people, that was elected eight terms and more (see Table 5.1). Nine of them began their service with election to the very first Knesset in 1949; two in that category were serving in 1992, indicating a more rapid turnover of legislators as Israel’s democracy matured. The two with the longest service were Tawfiq Toubi and Meir Vilner of the Communist party; their party had a turbulent organizational history, but the size of the delegation elected to the Knesset varied little over the years. Elected "only" eleven times was Yosef Burg of the National Religious party. Those elected ten times included Herat's (the major faction of the Likud) Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres of Labor (also elected on the Rafi and

74

Mapai lists), and Menachem Porush of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel. Of the nine Knesset members who were elected eight or more times and were first elected in 1949, three came from the Likud, two each from the Communists and the National Religious party, and one each from Labor and Agudat Israel. Parties with strong hierarchical organizations, such as the Communists, and parties with a strong nucleus of dedicated leaders, such as Herat, sent their leaders back to the Knesset time and time again.

1959

1969

1981

Key: number of MKa elected In x end y

Figure 5.2 Decades of Knesset Membership

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1992

Table 5.1 Knesset Members Elected Eight Terms or More, by Number of Terms, Party, and Party Size

a b c

Party

1949 size (name)

1992 size (name)

names of members

number of terms

Communists

4 (MaJd)

3 (Hadash)

Tawfiq Toubi* M eir vilner*

12 12

National Religious party®

16 (U TF)

6 (NRP)

Yosef Burg* Zerach Wahrhaftig*

11 9

H erut

14 (H erut)

32 (Likud)

M enachem Begin* Eliezer Shostak Yochanan Bader* Chaim Landau*

10 9 8 8

Labor

46 (M apai)

44 (Labor)

Shimon Peresc G olda Meir* Abba Eban

10 8 8

Agudab

16 (U TF)

4 (Aguda)

Kalman Kahana* Shlomo Lorincz Menachem Porushc

9 9 9

First elected in 1949. The National Religious party and Aguda ran a joint list in 1949 called the U nited Torah Front (LTIT). In 1951, running separately, the NRP won 10 seats and Aguda won S. Elected in 1992.

Most Knesset members, if given the choice, wish to continue in their roles as members of parliament Since elections are not for individuals, however, it is not possible to know precisely how many Knesset members actually decline running again having once served. An unobtrusive measure of the extent of desire to continue to serve in the Knesset is the fact that 55 of the 571 members (9.6 per cent) of all Knesset members have served in nonconsecutive Knessets. It is reasonable to infer that these breaks in service-continuity did not stem from decisions by Knesset members not to run; rather, these individuals were too low on their respective lists and/or the fortunes of their parties soured. There is a tendency for Knesset members to continue in office over time, which can be seen by considering decade-long longevity patterns of Knesset members, although that tendency appears to be weakening (see Figure 5.3). The technique used here to study that pattern was to take

76

those elected around the beginning of each of the five decades of Israel’s independence and to inquire how many of them were elected again in the elections at the beginning of the following decade. For example, how many of those serving in 1949 were elected again in 1959, and then in 1969, in 1981, and finally in 1992? For those serving in 1959, how many were still serving in 1969,1981, and 1992, and so on? 40% — f- All Partlaa

M Ê Labor 30%

m

Likud

20%

10%

o% 1940-1992; not nacaaaarily continuous total - 671; Labor • 233; Likud • 148

Figure 5.3 Number of Knessets (per cent of elected MKs) Figure 5.3 shows a step-like progression for each of the decades of representation, but the stairwell is becoming less steep. For those first elected in 1949, 53 were still in office after the 1959 elections, but only 20 following the 1969 vote, four after 1981, with none left after the 1992 poll. By contrast, for those selected in 1959, 50 remained after 1969, 21 after 1981, and six after the 1992 vote. Of those serving in 1969, only 21 were left after the 1981 election, and 6 after the 1992 count. 35 of the 1981 Knesset members were also serving after the 1992 vote. The different rates of longevity reflect political developments in the country. The first two decades were decades of consolidation and the political elite perpetuated their rule in hierarchical parties little affected

77

by the demographic changes occurring in the country. Even the 1973 elec­ tion, held soon after the traumatic Yom Kippur war, generated high levels of turnover, with the Labor party doing less well than in the past, but retaining power. The 1977 election saw the largest political upheaval in Israeli political history, with the dominant Labor party losing its place of primacy to the Likud. These elections were influenced by the emergence of a reformoriented party, the Democratic Movement for Change, which successfully siphoned off a considerable fraction of Labor’s leadership and voters, partly because of scandals uncovered within the Labor party. No less important, however, was the coming of age of a generation of voters whose parents had immigrated from Asian and North African countries. Many of the parent immigrant generation had voted for the Labor party and for related Establishment parties, although they had suffered during their absorption into the country. The younger generation reacted against this Establishment and catapulted the Likud to power. The wholesale displacement of established patterns of voting explains the 1977 dip in longevity seen in Figure 5.3. After the 1977 elections, Israeli politics re­ turned to a more stable basis, but turnover in Knesset membership became a familiar feature. The 1992 elections represented another political swing, although the electoral shift was smaller than in 1977. The rolls were swelled by the introduction of hundreds of thousands of new voters who had immigrated from the former Soviet Union. The Likud engineered for itself an elec­ toral loss of major proportions, much as Labor had done to itself in 1977. The more hawkish Yitzhak Rabin regained the leadership of the Labor party by virtue of primaries held among Labor party members, from the more dovish Shimon Peres, and led Labor back to power; by doing so, Rabin returned to the prime ministry he had vacated in 1977 to Menachem Begin. Some - though by no means all - of the Asia-North Africa Jewish immigrants and their children bolted from the Likud and supported Labor or parties of the right.

78

Factors affecting incumbency a) Place on list and size ofparty The path to incumbency in Israel is simple. The first rule is to be high on the list; the second is to have your party win seats greater in number than your place on the list. If you are first, one seat will do, two is better etc.; if you are tenth, ten would be the minimum number of seats needed by your party to ensure your incumbency, etc. Election results are obviously not known in advance, so the likelihood of being elected and re-elected diminish as one approaches the last place on the list that the party has usually won. Since 1973, all Likud and Labor candidates above the 39th position on their respective lists were elected, with the exceptions of Labor in 1977, and Likud in 1992, when only 32 were highly enough placed to enter the Knesset. But there has also been a cap on success: since 1973, neither party has elected more than 51 members. Those placed in the range of the forties in either party have every right to be anxious. The margins of security for candidates of smaller lists are much nar­ rower. Many parties in Israel’s parliament are small. The only two large parties in the 1988 elections were Likud and Labor, which won 40 seats and 39 seats, respectively. However, 27 lists competed, and 15 won repre­ sentation. The remaining 41 seats of the 120 total were divided among 13 lists, with one gaining six seats, three getting five each, one winning four positions, two securing three places, four lists attaining two seats each, and two getting one each. Reforming the minimum needed in 1992 to 1.5 per cent of the vote to win representation succeeded in diminishing the number of elected lists. Only 10 lists of the 25 that ran in 1992 won seats, and no list won only one seat. Labor won 44, Likud got 32; the next biggest parties won 12 and 8 seats, respectively; there were two lists at 6, one at 4, two at 3, and one at 2 seats. Being high on the list obviously increases the probability of being elec­ ted and re-elected. Even for those not elected, the chance of becoming a Knesset member remains, since the next candidate on the list fills the place if a vacancy should occur. For example, when the Knesset elected Chaim Herzog in 1988 to be President of Israel, he resigned from the

79

Knesset and was replaced by the next candidate on the Labor list who had not been elected, Chaim Ramon. Ramon, a young, ambitious politician became the head of the Labor delegation in the Knesset, achieved a high place on the 1992 Labor list, and was appointed minister of health in Rabin’s government, although he was almost not even a Knesset member four years before. It follows that the number of persons actually elected from the list will be related to the chances of being re-elected. A small party can ensure incumbency for a very small number of people. Although the politician in a larger party may have the luxury of developing a political career over a number of years and may be able to achieve mobility up the list without challenging the top leadership or splitting off to form one’s own list, the activist of a small list has no such option. Those at the margins win some­ times and lose at other times. As noted, almost ten per cent of the total number of people elected to the Knesset have served non-consecutive terms in the Knesset. Mostly, this was because after one term they achieved places in the list below the cut-off point the voters decreed for their parties in the next election. At a later election, they were more successful and were re-elected.

b) Knesset membership Knesset membership itself imparts an important advantage to the indi­ vidual seeking election. As the discussion in the previous section indica­ ted, the individual’s success in achieving a high position on the list is the most important factor in assessing the probability of re-election. This is especially important in large parties in which there is relatively open competition for the Knesset slots on the list. Knesset members have many more ressources and relative advantages compared with others: the Knesset member may articulate positions deemed important by the party; the group or region represented by the Member might be considered important for the party; the visibility of the Member in the mass media is likely to be much greater than most other contenders for a high place on the list, especially since live television

80

broadcasting of some sessions has begun; his or her vote might be crucial in a political situation and it might be exchanged for a seat in the next election. The understanding of incumbency can only be complete if the method of selecting the list is known. In small parties with dominant leaders, the continuity was almost automatic; that meant that there was no realistic room on the list for others. So, Shulamit Aloni’s Citizens Rights Move­ ment (CRM) on the left, Amnon Rubinstein’s Shinui in the center, and Meir Kahane’s Kach on the right (along with others) renominated their leaders for the first place on the list time after time. It was not surprising in 1992, when the CRM, Shinui, and the leftist Mapam formed a joint list called Meretz, that the top positions on the list were peopled by the lea­ ders of the constituent parties. For larger parties, there have been two periods in the history of nomi­ nations in Israeli political life. The first was the period of the nominations committee, the smoke-filled closed room in which the party bosses deter­ mined the list (Aronoff: 1975). The top of the list was reserved for the founding fathers and their confidants. The second, present period is one of democratization of the nomination process in the largest parties. The Labor party held primaries for the first time in 1992 among its 160,000 members to select the leader of the list, and the candidates for Knesset. The result was the selection of a list with many young, new faces, and the process gave an organizational lift to a party which had been unsuccessful in winning a clear victory for many years. Although some of the places on the list were not contested in the primaries but were reserved for party leaders, the change in procedure was dramatic. The advantages of incum­ bency (exposure in the media, the franking privilege, etc.) certainly worked to an extent, but the system generated a relatively balanced list. While many small parties struggle with the dilemma of appearing to democratize nomination procedures while controlling the outcome, Labor in 1992 took a giant step away from oligarchic control of the nomination process and, since they won the elections, were pleased with this change. Likud, having lost the elections, will likely follow the example of Labor and plan to hold a primary election among its membership to determine the successor to Yitzhak Shamir as head of the party.

81

Knesset members who are ministers, deputy ministers, or committee chairs, often have clout and visibility. They - and especially government ministers - have natural advantages in their quest for incumbency. They are often in the news, and they may fill important leadership roles. The power they seek, however, often goes beyond personal incumbency. A minister who appoints members of his party’s Center or Convention to a position of influence and/or status, such as a board of directors of a government corporation, may be seeking to enlarge or ensure the power of his faction, or his candidacy for party leadership. The mirror-image of this process, however, is for a Center member to increase the chances of his own incumbency by being a loyal follower of a minister-leader. The state finances party activity and election expenses. Parties receive payment from the state treasury in proportion to their representation in the Knesset. The party receives one "unit" for each Knesset member, the amount being set by the Knesset’s finance committee. In 1992 the "unit" was set at $300,000 per Knesset member per year, with an additional unit in an election year to defray campaign expenses doubling the total. That was an increase of a third over the amount in effect in May 1991. Litiga­ tion prevented the increase from taking effect (the High Court of Justice ruled that it would have to be approved by an absolute majority of the entire Knesset since the Committee’s decision to link the quarterly increase in the unit to the cost-of-living index was not included in the orig­ inal legislation) and it remained at "only" $200,000 per year. Had the "reform" taken effect, the total of public funds going to the parties in an election year would have been $72 million, or about $29 per vote! This was about the level of 1988. Since the change was thwarted, the election year bill for the parties in 1992 was $42 million, coming to "only" $19 per vote for the election year’s expenses. Politicians from different parties, who are often split by deep ideological divisions, usually manage to agree on raising the funding unit for the parties. In 1992, they were stymied by the High Court, but not before they went to unusual lengths. The most flagrant of these occurred when members of the Finance Committee who opposed the increase were replaced by their party leadership with members who supported it. Above and beyond this generous allowance, certain organizations and educational institutes are exempt from the legal limitations placed on

82

donations by individuals and groups, thus providing loopholes for those who seek them (Rubinstein: 1991). Funds are not provided to individual members; rather, they are given to the Knesset delegation. Leaders obviously have more access to these monies than do those lower down in the hierarchy. Obviously, leaders of small delegations may have more leverage over these monies than do Knesset members who are low on the lists of large parties. In addition to their control of the public funds, leading politicians in large parties are also likely to enjoy considerable advantages: they may have the ability to provide invitations and expenses for Center members for travel abroad - a highly desirable commodity in Israel - with international organizations or sister-parties which have exchange relations with their party. The control of channels of communications is another important resource. Election broadcasting time on television and radio is distributed in proportion to the strength of the party in the out-going Knesset. Those who decide who will appear on these broadcasts are the leaders of the party. The public and those who vote in the Center or Convention are exposed to these broadcasts, and are likely to identify an individual as a leader simply because he or she appears. The franking privilege was another way of keeping in touch with the attentive public. Recently, the franking privilege was limited after a public outrage when one Knesset member sent 450,000 letters (in 1992 2.66 million voted) concerning pending legislation regarding the rights of veterans. Knesset members (and their spouses after their demise) are entitled to 25,000 free tele­ phone message units per month. While it depends where and when the conversation takes place, that allows for a good deal of talking. Besides political and administrative clout, Knesset members are well off by Israeli standards. It is important to note that many Knesset mem­ bers are established (if not wealthy) before entering parliament. Many are lawyers, professors, rabbis, kibbutz or moshav members, retired generals, or apparatchiki in the labor unions or other organizations related to party life. They earn a handsome salary in Israeli terms from the Knesset, but many of them would do even better if they were not Knesset members. The present rules limit the Knesset member to no more than 50 per cent additional earnings in non-Knesset activities. The matter is important, especially for professionals such as lawyers and accountants, since some

83

have used their position in the Knesset in the past to advance their profes­ sional careers. There were once extraordinary health benefits and pension rights for Knesset members, but these have been reduced or abolished. But benefits still exist; for example, if the general pension rate among salaried workers in Israel is about two per cent per year, for Knesset members it is four per cent. Parliamentary immunity once included all traffic violations, but this too has been reformed. Some of the crassest affronts to civic sensibilities have been rectified, but a well-known Knesset member still enjoys a considerable social advantage since the Israeli public is very aware of celebrities in their midst.

c) Splits, mergers, and political maneuvering Parties secure their political future, and politicians their political careers, by aligning with other parties. Two examples are the General Zionists and Mapam. The General Zionists ran in 1959 and won 9 seats. Before the 1961 elections, they joined the Progressive party to form the Liberals. This merger broke down when the Liberals and Herut movement decided to form Gahal before the 1965 elections; at that point, a faction of the Liberals (who later called themselves the Independent Liberals) split off. In the 1961 elections, the liberals won 17 seats; Herut also won 17 seats. Before the 1973 elections, Gahal and others formed the Likud. By 1988, most of the separate parties which formed the alliance merged into a single Likud party. An important faction of the former Liberals, headed by Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, bolted from the Likud and attempted to retain a separate organizational identity under the name of the Movement for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea. The Liberal party and its leaders, although they had not stood for elec­ tion since 1961, continued to enjoy incumbency under the protection of the Likud umbrella. Polls have consistently shown that running alone, the electoral promise of the Liberal party was slight. However, by affiliating with Herut to form Gahal and then the Likud list for elections, its leaders were able to retain their parliamentary positions on the coat-tails of the popularity of Herut’s Menachem Begin.

84

Before the 1977 elections which propelled the Likud to power, for example, the chief partners in the negotiations for generating the Likud list were Herat, the Liberals, and La’am. La’am was a remnant of a group which had split off from Labor with David Ben-Gurion and formed Rafi in 1965. Some of the Rafi group (Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Chaim Herzog) later returned to Labor; others, and especially those in La’ara, moved to the right and coalesced into the Likud. Places were assigned to the partners in the joint list; the partners then could determine whose name should be put next to the number. The "people" of course were as­ signed the task of watching passively. Of the 43 seats the Likud was to win in the 1977 elections, twenty had been pre-assigned to Herut (numbers 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, and 42). The Liberals received fourteen places (2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 18, 20, 23, 25, 30, 34, 38, 41, 43). La’am obtained eight places (3,10,15,21,28,31,36, and 40) (Akzin: 1980). Yitzhak Modai’s parliamentary career is a good example of the way the system works. It began in 1973 when he was number 21 in the Likud list, followed by position 18 in 1977. By the 1980s he had moved up in the Liberal ranks, after bitter personal quarrels with colleagues, ultimately winning the mantle of leader of the party. In the 1981 elections he was in Likud’s position 6, and was number three in the Likud for both 1984 and 1988. His incumbency depended on his role in his party, and had nothing to do with his own personal electoral attractiveness. In his case, and in the case of many others, his incumbency had more to do with how successful his party was in negotiation with the major party of the joint list; his own place on the list was assured if he was successful in his party and if his party was successful regarding the joint list. In 1991, Modai’s Movement for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea was outside of the Likud but within the Likud’s government coalition and Modai was Finance Minister. For the 1992 elections, the party ran on its own as the New Liberal list, but the list failed to win representation. When put to the voters in 1992, Modai lost his parliamentary seat. Another example of the phenomenon of incumbency being organiza­ tionally determined was Mapam, a socialist Zionist party which ran as part of the Labor-Mapam Alignment from 1969 until 1988. Mapam, like the Liberals in Gahal and the Likud, was clearly subordinate in its part­

85

nership in the Alignment with the Labor party. The leader of the joint list came from Labor, and never from Mapam, just as the head of Gahal and the Likud were always from Herut, and never from the Liberals. Mapam last ran alone in Knesset elections in 1965, in which it won eight seats, compared to 45 for Mapai, and ten for Ahdut Haavoda (later components of Labor). In 1988, Mapam decided to run on its own again; in those elec­ tions it only won three seats. Throughout the years of the Alignment, the ratio of Mapam to Labor seats was roughly maintained at the 1965 level. Having run alone and lost, Mapam in 1988 achieved an uplifting feeling of ideological independence, and a concomitant sense of loss of parliamen­ tary jobs. By 1992, Mapam had formed a joint list with the CRM and Shinui; the 12-member Meretz delegation included four Mapam mem­ bers. The pre-positioning of candidates is a major method for securing incumbency. When national leaders run on their own small lists, they have sometimes (but not always) won enough votes to secure the incumbency of the top leaders. But they have never been able to turn these small lists into major competitors for Knesset power. Lists that win a small number of seats because of the attractiveness of a single leader are even more vulnerable; accordingly, they are often anxious to trade their visibility for incumbency by joining a larger list. A most common payoff in Israeli political party negotiation is the promise to have a "secure" place on a list in the next election. Examples of this abound. Aharon Abu-Hatzeira had been elected twice as a member of the National Religious party; in 1973, he was number 7 in the ten-person group elected; in 1977, he was fourth of the twelve elected. In 1981, he decided to run at the head of his own list called Tami, and parlayed his religious message and his appeal to Jews of Moroccan background into a list which won three seats in the Knesset. In 1984, Tami’s strength had shrunk from three seats to one, after his parliamentary immunity was lifted as a result of accusations of improper use of public funds, and partly because the Likud was successful in incorporating many of the themes he stressed in the public image of the Likud. Rather than risk defeat in 1988, Abu-Hatzeira allowed himself to be coopted into the Likud list with a position high enough (12) to ensure re-election. It became clear that it

86

was much more dangerous to compete with others for a high spot in the Likud Center; Abu-Hatzeira was not among the 32 Likud representatives elected to the 1992 Knesset. In the discussions between political groups, entire factions and their future places on the list are negotiated. Take Ezer Weizman, who was Defense Minister representing the Likud during the Camp David talks which preceded the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt. For the 1984 elections, Weizman ran at the head of his own list, and won three seats. Before the 1988 elections, however, this party was coopted by Labor, and Weizman agreed to join Labor, on condition that Weizman would auto­ matically be put in one of the top ten positions of the 1988 Labor list, with less secure places promised some of his major political sidekicks. By 1992, Weizman had resigned from the Knesset and did not run in the elections. The practice of ensuring one’s political future and avoiding the scrutiny of the public in open elections is one of the major criticisms leveled against Israel’s democracy. This type of behavior is especially maddening when it was used to blackmail a larger party in conjunction with larger issues on the public agenda. When another vote or two were needed to hold the coalition together or to bring it down, to pass a law or to defeat it, to call for new elections or to delay the call, then it was especially infu­ riating to have a politician bargain for his own political skin.

Likud and Labor

The use of the nominating committee lasted until 1977 in the Likud and until 1988 in Labor. Groups and individuals could petition and lobby for a place on the list, but in the end the decisions would be made behind closed doors by the nominations committee of the parties. These decisions often took into consideration representation of age, gender, ethnic, func­ tional, and economic groups, and geographical representation. This is in contrast to the results of the one democratic primary in Israeli party history. In 1977, the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC) held a primary among its 30,000 members to determine the composition of the list, and came up with a group composed mainly of generals and profes­ sors. In the same year, the Labor list was much more representative, al­

87

though much less democratically selected. But the DMC did very well in the election, and Labor suffered a blow which would weaken it for years to come. To complete the picture, by the 1981 election, the DMC had ceased to exist. The Likud merged only after the 1988 elections; for those elections, each constituent element of the Likud selected its members according to its own rules. Herat's method was to have the candidates for the Knesset list selected in a ranking procedure within clusters of seven. Herat first chose its leader, although Begin was rarely challenged. In 1992, Shamir won the support of 42 per cent of the party Center, with Sharon getting 22 per cent. In addition, special political considerations were taken into ac­ count. In 1988, for example, the Likud Center was identical to the Likud Convention, because the latter was bitterly divided among the followers of Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and David Levy, and was unable to select a smaller Center. Thus, in 1988, with some 3000 participating, the election of the clusters of seven proceeded. Herat selected its candidates, but the Likud list was made up of the choices of the Liberal party, and others, as well. Yigael Horowitz, Zalman Shuval, and Aharon Abu-Hatzeira were added to the Herat and Liberal candidates, because of side-payoffs nego­ tiated by the leadership. The merger agreement between Herat and the liberal party provided for a united Center selecting the Likud’s candida­ tes after 1988. Labor attempted to introduce a greater degree of democratization in 1988 compared to previous experiences. In the past, a nominating com­ mittee controlled by the party leadership presented a list which was ap­ proved by the Center. In 1988, a complex system decentralized the system somewhat. The democratic nature of the exercise was immediately tar­ nished by the fact that the important leaders were granted the luxury of being nominated to the list without facing election within the party. Those who made the head of the list without election included Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Navon, Knesset speaker Shlomo Hillel, party se­ cretary general Uzi Baram, and Histadrat head Israel Kaisar. In addition, in the agreement that brought Ezer Weizman’s list into the Labor party, it was agreed that Weizman would automatically be put in one of the top ten positions.

88

Knesset members who had already served two Knesset terms had to win a reaffirmation vote by a margin of 60 per cent of the Center in order to compete. It was at that point in 1988 that Abba Eban fell. Considered one of the party’s illustrious leaders, representing the party in the Knesset since 1959, and having never been below position 12 on the Mapai/Labor list, the Center nonetheless failed to approve him. His opponents called it party rejuvenation; his supporters saw him as a victim of the jungle of democracy. There were two other ways of getting on the Labor list in 1988: one was through the party’s districts and the other was through election by the 1,340 member Center. Competition took place for fifty places - 23 posi­ tions on the list reserved for the party’s districts, and 27 to be selected by the Center by secret ballot. The party’s district councils of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, kibbutzim, moshavim, etc., held elections for their candidates. Alternatively, a candidate could be nominated for election by the party Center. Eighty-six candidates competed for these 27 slots. To assure representation, provision was made that at least one Druze, one Arab, one young person, three women, and one candidate from develop­ ment towns were selected. After these first rounds of selection, the 1,340 members of the Center met. The Center itself had been selected by the 3201-member Labor Convention. The constitutional size of the Convention was 3001 members, but another 200 members had been coopted for organizational and politi­ cal reasons. The Center’s task was to determine the positions on the Knesset election list of 50 candidates (23 from the districts and 27 from the central list) using a system of voting for clusters of ten. The results indicated the difficulties inherent in democratization: the big losers were the districts; their candidates were ranked in low positions in the runoffs which determined how high on the list a candidate would be. Of the 23 district candidates, only nine were finally elected to the Knesset - and seven of them were in the last ten places on the list of those elected. Although the districts might be closer to "the people," they could control fewer votes in the Center. Those who were known by many Center members and enjoyed national visibility were more likely to be elected. Still, an unusually large percentage of new and young candidates emerged.

89

At least a partial success, Labor followed Herut into an era of greater - if not perfect - democracy in the selection process (Doron and Goldberg: 1990). By 1992, it was Labor that took the next giant step toward general selection of the list. Most dramatically, the head of list was selected by the party’s members, using a second-round system if no candidate had more than 40 per cent. Rabin won slightly more than 40 per cent in a Held of four candidates; had there been a run-off, it was likely that Peres would have been the winner, since more voters who supported the third and fourth place candidates were thought likely to vote for him. The list was selected by primaries as well, with the structure predetermined. The first place went to the head of the list, and then to candidates who did best on the national list. After that, positions were pre-assigned to the winner of the Tel Aviv district primary, the Jerusalem district primary, etc. Candi­ dates who ran in district primaries had a better chance in 1992 of being high on the list than those who put in only a fair showing on the national list because the slots were allocated in advance. Incumbency patterns in Israel are driven by the rates in Labor and the Likud because these two parties make up such an important fraction of the total. The figure for the number of times members have served in a Knesset in general is similar to the pattern generated separately for Labor and the Likud (see Figure 5.2). Labor, the larger of the two parties in terms of overall Knesset members, had more members serving five and sue terms. It also had more one-term service than did the Likud, indicating larger size for longer periods and greater experimentation. The Likud, for its part, had a larger number of members serving three and four terms; this reflected the growth of the party in 1977 and the emergence of a second generation of political leadership in Likud at that point. (The totals of the General Zionists, Liberals, and Herut are combined here for the pre-1961 Likud.) These observations are reinforced by an analysis of Figures 5.4 and 5.5. In those figures, the total delegation, the number of new Knesset mem­ bers, and the number of new members in the bottom third of the elected lists, for Labor and the Likud respectively, are charted.

90

60 50

/

40

\

New Labor

30

u

HI

Total Labor bottom th ird new

A

20 10 1 51

55

59

61

65

1

1

69

M

m

73

77

M 81

I

84

I 88

92

Figure 5.4 Labor 1949-1992

60 New Likud

50

~ 0" Total Likud ■1

,R

bottom th ird new

40

30

n -------

/

/ V

20

/

55

59

61

65

1

51

■

t

10

X

69

73

Figure 5.5 Likud 1949-1992

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77

81

84

88

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For the Likud (Figure 5.5), the gap between the number of previously elected members and the number of new members appeared to be growing. Until 1973, about half of the Likud delegation was new, and between 1955 and 1969, almost all of these newly elected Knesset members had been in the bottom third of the elected list From 1977, the incidence of new members dropped off sharply, even as the party was becoming electorally successful. Moreover, a large fraction of the bottom third of the elected list in 1977 was new to the Knesset. This group contained the seeds of a new leadership generation, keen on persisting in office if possible, anxious to control the relatively democratic procedures of the party Convention. The new leadership generation (not all began their Knesset careers in 1977) included the "princes" of the movement: Benny Begin, Uzi Landau, Dan Meridor, and Ehud Olmart, all sons of prominent Likud leaders. It stands to reason that this once-young, now middle-aged successor generation, having served two, or three, or four terms, will block access to a new group of young and ambitious party activists. As members of the founding generation dropped off, some replacement took place, but newcomers found it increasingly more difficult to penetrate the list. The question on the Likud’s agenda especially after the catastrophic loss in 1992 - is how to rejuvenate the ranks of Knesset members without emasculating the emerging leadership of the party. Labor’s pattern, by contrast, was different but also complex. The ratio between new Labor Knesset members and the number of new Knesset members in the bottom third of the Labor list was more constant. This had to do in part with a conscious effort by past nominating committees to keep most - but not all - new members in the lower, more vulnerable part of the list. It indicated orchestration of the list, but obviously not of the election results. Labor’s adoption of democratic procedures for the selec­ tion process in 1992 will soon present the party with the dilemma of simul­ taneously retaining parliamentary experience and new faces. The average age of Knesset members has varied a good deal. In the first 20 years of Israel’s history the average age of Jewish members of the Knesset tended to become older and older, from 49.0 in 1949 to 52.8 in 1965, but this trend tended to moderate. However, 1992 saw a marked drop in the average age of the Knesset, reflecting the political upheaval of

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the Likud’s loss of power. The average age in 1988 was 52.3, but sharply dropped to 46.8 in 1992. As a rule, Knesset members continued their political careers for a number of years, blocking entrance to younger members. As these older members faded, a more normal distribution was generated. A small party with a tight-knit leadership that perpetuated itself over the years (Mapam, Agudat Israel) tended to have a higher average age from Knesset to Knesset. A larger party (Labor, Likud) could retain its old leadership and introduce new blood at the same time. The ageing of the Knesset is likely to be cyclical, especially if members pursue the parliamentary way of life and if the election results are relatively stable. Age-based parties have never won representation in the elections, however, although both a pensioner’s party and a youth party have stood for election. The major parties are aware of the importance of appealing to these large age groups, but the rule is that parliamentarians in Israel begin at middle age and hold on if they can. The general rule is that new Knesset members tend to be in the lower portions of their party’s list. But once elected, they climb in position as they age in office. Take 1988 for example. Many of the candidates elected by both Labor and the Likud were new to the Knesset. A third of the 39 elected from Labor, and eight of the 40 from Likud had never served in the Knesset before. The Labor party delegation’s average age was a year younger than was the Likud’s: 51 for Labor, 52 for the Likud. Labor’s Knesset members tended to be older, however, the higher on the list they were. When studied in groups of ten, the average age of the first Labor group was 60.7, the second 50.7, and then 46.7 and 44.1. For the Likud’s pattern reflected the emergence in the early 1980s of a very young political cohort: the first group of ten elected was oldest (56.8), but the second group was youngest (47.7), with the other two 51 and 52.5 years of age. As a result of the many new young faces to emerge in Labor in 1992, it is likely that Labor in the later years of the 1990s will display the patterns that appeared in the Likud in the 1980s. The sex composition of the Knesset has shown little change. Women have never been numerous; the most there has ever been was eleven out of 120, achieved in 1992, 1973, 1955, 1951, and 1949. In 1984 and 1961 there were ten women, and in the 1981 and 1977 eight. Labor has always been careful to provide representation for women. Even though it

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dropped from 52 to 32 seats in 1977, the percentage of women in its delegations dropped only from 13.7 per cent to 12.5 per cent; seven in the outgoing Knesset, four in the incoming. In absolute figures the National Religious party's increase was most impressive, from none to one. The Likud increased from one to two. All this indicates that women are still very far from achieving equality with men. In 1984, six of the ten Knesset women were from the Labor-Mapam Alignment. Only seven women were elected in 1988, four of them from the Labor-Mapam Alignment. In the 1973 elections Marsha Friedman was elected to the Knesset on Shulamit Aloni’s Civil Rights Movement list; at that time, Friedman was leader of the Women’s Liberation movement. In 1977, 1981, and 1992, a women’s list ran and failed to achieve representation. The woman who achieved greatest power in the system was Golda Meir, who was prime minister at the end of her colorful and eventful career. She was an impor­ tant Labor party leader who happened to be a woman. It would be histori­ cally inaccurate to characterize her as a "representing" women in her many roles. The political system of Israel was developed by new immigrants from Eastern Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century. It was only natural for these politicians to continue dominating the political system during their lifetimes. As the percentage of East European-born in the population diminished and the percentage of native-born increased, the incidence of native-born Israelis in the Knesset increased. But in an important sense this datum is misleading because the overwhelming tendency was for the second generation of Israeli Knesset members to be the sons of the East European-born first generation. The frequency distri­ bution in the country of birth category may have changed, but the focus of political power and membership in the Knesset in the hands of those with European background was maintained. Sephardim were grossly underre­ presented in the Knesset; the political power of the country was firmly in the hands of Europeans and their children. The dominance of East Europeans is demonstrated dramatically when the place of birth of the 37 signers of Israel’s declaration of independence is analysed. They were members of the National Committee and later the Provisional State Council that served up to the first general election of 1949. Of these "founding fathers," 29 came from Eastern Europe and six

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from the rest of Europe. One was bom in Israel, one in Yemen. There was significant carryover from this body to the first Knesset elected in 1949. Of the 40 members of the expanded Provisional State Council, 27 were elected to the first Knesset; 20 years later, in 1969,10 of them were still members of the Knesset. The number of Israel-born Knesset members has continually increased, mostly as an artifact of the changing demographic composition of the population. European-born Knesset members made up more than 85 per cent of the house as a result of the first three elections, 79 per cent in the next two, and 68 per cent in the sixth Knesset elected in 1965. By the seventh election the percentage of European-born members had fallen to 63 per cent, then to 56 per cent in the eighth and 38 per cent in the ninth (Brichta: 1972). On the other hand, Israel-born and Sephardim Knesset membership was increasing. The Israel-born rose from 11 per cent in the first Knesset to 14 per cent in the fourth (1959) and to 24 per cent by the seventh (1969), and to more than two-thirds in the thirteenth (1992). In 1973 they comprised 38 per cent, 50 per cent in 1977, and 60 per cent in 1984. In 1992, eight Knesset members were Arabs or Druzes, compared with seven elected in 1984 and five in 1988. Knesset members of Asian and African birth have also increased steadily and now replicate more accurately their relative strength in the population. From 3 per cent in the first Knesset to 8 per cent in the fifth (1961), there were 12 per cent in both the eighth and ninth (1973 and 1977), 25 per cent in the tenth (1981), and 20 per cent in the eleventh (1984) and thirteenth (1992) Knessets. The gradual increase of represen­ tation of the Sephardim community is clearer when those bom in Asia and Africa are added to Sephardim bom in Israel. Both Labor and Likud, as well as many of the smaller lists, placed Sephardim candidates in prominent places on the list. In a major revision compared with past lists, Labor in 1988 fielded eleven candidates born in Asia or Africa among the first 40 on its list. The parallel number for the Likud was six. 20 of Labor’s first 40, and 29 of the Likud’s first 40, were bom in Israel. Rabin was bom in Israel, but both Peres and Shamir were bom in Poland. On the whole, the composition of the Knesset delegations was coming more in line with the demographic changes taking place in the society.

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While all parties want Sephardim on their lists for their electoral potential, ethnic groups in Israel have rarely been successful in winning Knesset seats on their own (Herzog: 1986). There was a Sephardim list in 1949 that won Knesset representation before the massive influx of Sephardim voters in the early 1950s, and Abu-Hatzeira’s Tami in 1981. The Progressives/Independent Liberal party had large measures of support in the 1950s from German immigrants. There was a Russian immigrant list in 1992, but it did very poorly.

A relevant case study The practice of trading political advantage for future incumbency reached unusual proportions in the determined attempt by both the Likud and Labor to form a government after the downfall of the National Unity Government in March 1990. By the beginning of 1990, the peace initiative put forth by the Israeli government - to hold elections among the Palestinians in the territories to select a delegation which would discuss future arrangements - had gained support in Washington and Cairo. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt suggested having the foreign ministers of the United States, Israel, and Egypt meet in Cairo to discuss details of the elections which the Israelis had proposed. United States Secretary of State James Baker was pressing the Israeli government for more flexible terms regarding that Cairo meeting, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir recoiled in the end. The Knesset expressed no-confidence in its govern­ ment for the first time in Israeli history and the Unity Government fell. The highest principles of ideology and the basest motivations of politi­ cal opportunism are often intertwined in Israeli politics. Modai and his group of four other former-Liberal/former-Likud Knesset members (five votes) demanded recognition as an independent Knesset faction in return for their support of the government and Shamir’s position. The approval of their demand was granted just before the vote of no confidence. On March 15, the government fell by a vote of 60 to 55, with the votes of Labor, the Arabs, the left and ultra-orthodox Agudat Israel. The key to the "victory" of Peres and Labor was the fact that five of the six Knesset

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members of the ultra-orthodox Shas party absented themselves from the vote. With the fall of the government, Shimon Peres was appointed by President Herzog to form a government. Peres had to placate his own party, made up of hawks and doves, and to fashion a government within which the clericals of the religious parties and the anti-clericals of the extreme left would both agree to participate. Moreover, he had to have a coalition which could negotiate regarding the future of the Zionist state. With 39 seats of Labor, five of the Civil Rights Movement, three of Mapam, and two of Shinui, he started with only 49 votes of the 61 that he needed. Three of the four religious parties (the National Religious Party was the exception) were non-Zionist; the Arab parties had votes, but he could not plan on negotiating away territory if their support was seen as pivotal. Peres considered forming a minority government. After a vitriolic anti­ secular speech by a leading ultra-orthodox rabbi, Labor’s only hope was to find Knesset members of the other camp willing to desert to the Labor side. Israeli constitutional practice did not prohibit the Knesset member from switching allegiance. Once elected, there was no limitation on politi­ cal freedom. The three most promising candidates for the role of turn­ coat had all been placed on the Likud list in deals cut to solve previous coalition crises. One was Yigael Horowitz, leader of Ometz (two seats), who had left the Labor party years before; another was Aharon AbuHatzeira, former head of the Tami list; finally, there was the Modai group, with five seats, recently liberated from the Likud and now recog­ nized as an independent Knesset faction. Things were touch and go for Peres. Aguda, an ultra-orthodox party, agreed with Peres not to participate in a Likud government under any circumstances, and agreed to support a Labor government without formally joining it. On the other hand, the deciding rabbinical council of the Sephardim, ultra-orthodox, non-Zionist Shas, decided to back a government headed by Shamir. Charlie Bitton, of the Communist list (Rakah), was wooed to Labor’s ranks. Avraham Sharir, one of Modai’s group who felt that Prime Minister Shamir had slighted him in the past, seemed to be leaning to Labor, and Modai was also reportedly wavering.

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It was a seller’s market. Peres and Labor agreed to appoint Sharir minister of transportation and to give him a sure place on the Labor list for the next two elections. Meanwhile, the Likud did not sit idly by. They were busy tiying to block Peres’s attempt, and pre-negotiating their own government. Shamir met with Modai to work out details by which his new faction would support a Likud government. The Likud promised Modai an important ministry (foreign, defense, or treasury), another ministry for one of his colleagues, five certain places in the next Likud election list, and a $10 million secu­ rity deposit to guarantee these pledges. After petitions to the judicial system, and a massive demonstration calling for constitutional reform, Modai backed down from his demand for a cash deposit, and agreed to make do with the signatures of all of the Likud ministers on the agreement with him. When four Likud ministers refused to go along, Modai reopened negotiations with Labor. Peres planned to present his government to the Knesset on the day that his 21-day mandate ended. By adding Sharir to the 60 votes that had brought down the Unity government, Peres thought that he had turned the trick. He believed that other parties that traditionally benefit from the patronage and power of office (especially religious ones) would join later. At least two Knesset members of Shas were tempted to go with Labor; their dilemma was that they would have to oppose their rabbinical leaders, and to contend with their voters whose political views were much more hawkish than were those of Peres. But Peres’s plans unraveled when two of the Aguda supporters bolted, and refused to support Labor and Peres. This was especially surprising because of the discipline which Aguda Knesset members had always de­ monstrated to the dictates of their party’s Council of Torah Sages. But these two Knesset members (Verdiger and Mizrahi) chose to disobey party dictates rather than to allow the creation of a government headed by Peres. The president gave Peres a fifteen day extension to form the go­ vernment. The Aguda lined up Verdiger, one of its two wayward Knesset members, after extracting a promise from Peres that new elections would be held before any territory was returned. Mizrahi was to be tried before

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a rabbinical tribunal for breaking his promise to follow the dictates of the Council of Torah Sages. Ultimately, he resigned from the Aguda and set up his own one-member faction in the Knesset. The uncertainty grew. After a meeting with David Levy, it appeared that Sharir would again shift his support to the Likud. The deal with Modai’s group drew sharp criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. Many Herat members were incensed that much of the next Likud list was being given away; not only that, the Liberal party members added to the Likud central committee at the time of the merger would still be there even though their leaders defected. The liberals who had not left the Likud with Modai opposed the special treatment one faction of their former party was getting. Observers concerned with good government were appalled at the measures taken to form the coalition. For the senior Likud leadership, preventing Labor from forming a government was worth almost any price. The ideological call of averting the return of territories was sounded; unsounded but understood by all was that blocking Labor meant retaining power for the Likud. The deal with Modai was brought up for approval at the Likud Central Committee. The judicial system was asked to intervene at a number of crucial points, and set rales of eligibility for voting on the agreement with Modai. The Central Committee approved the deal by 70.49 per cent; the party’s rales, however, demanded that 75 per cent approve it. Shamir declared that the margin of approval was sufficient to commit the Likud, even if the rales stipulated more. Everything was still up in the air, and up to Modai. Finally, he decided to accept the promises made to him and to go with the Likud. After trying for weeks to form a government, Peres returned his mandate to the president on 25 April. It was now Shamir’s turn. He had troubles of his own. He deflected the calls for a Unity government and persevered in his attempt to gain a majority for his government. The Likud succeeded in winning the support of Mizrahi of the Aguda list, and by turning a Labor Knesset member, Ephraim Gur. With them, the Likud could count on 62 votes. Both were rewarded with appointments as deputy ministers, and Gur was given a promise of a secure place on the Likud list for the next Knesset. On June 11, 1990, the Knesset approved the Shamir government.

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In February, 1991, the Knesset reacted to this unseemly chain of events by passing legislation which was intended to reform basic parliamentary norms. According to the legislation, a Knesset member who resigns from the party on whose list he was elected, or who votes no-confidence against the decision of the party on whose list he was elected, will be penalized. The offending Knesset member will not be able to join any other partygrouping within the Knesset; will not be allowed to run in the next elec­ tions on a list represented in the current Knesset; will not be allowed to serve as a minister or a deputy minister during the term of the Knesset in which the prohibited act occurred; and will not be entitled to party finan­ cing from the public treasury.

Conclusion Incumbency in Israel’s Knesset was a feature encouraged by the electoral system. Leaders of parties achieved a high degree of staying power, even if they were never chosen by the voters in direct elections. The communal orientation of selecting the representatives of a group or of an ideology was deep-rooted in the Israeli political culture. Over the years, the excesses of practice have led to some reforms and to calls for the changing of the electoral and constitutional systems (Brichta: 1991). This is now under way: beginning with the election scheduled for 1996, Israeli voters will directly elect the prime minister; the trend toward elec­ ting the head of the list and others on it through primaries of party members, especially in the larger parties, will undoubtedly gain strength. The rate of replacement of about a third of the legislators each election has been a remarkably consistent feature of a system which has changed dramatically in many other senses, and it is likely to persist. Incumbency is, after all, only an indicator of deeper processes at work in the political system. Loosening of the hierarchical system proceeds, but the communalism of the political culture ensures continuity of groups and individuals. Incumbency poses no threat to Israeli democracy. On the contrary, despite the advantages of it and the pressures incumbents feel to resist change, reforms of the political and constitutional system are gaining ground. These reforms were often bom of the cynicism of the population

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and their feelings of helplessness as politicians jockeyed for personal and coalition gains. Then as now, the system faced a series of difficult chal­ lenges which include the security situation, economic problems, religioussecular matters, and issues of immigrant absorption. The reluctance of the system to fix things resulted as much from conflicting priorities as from structural faults. Reforms are likely to continue and they are just as unlikely to change basic problems. Politicians with power will still find ways to hold things up if they desire, or to press too hard in the opinion of some in undesirable directions. The voting public is unlikely to lose its cynical view of politics and politicians quickly. Knesset members will likely be more attendant to the demands of their party membership but their enhanced accountability will put them in positions which seem untenable to the public, since not all goals can be met simultaneously. As individuals they are likely to desire re-election, and in that aspiration, if past experience is an indicator, two-thirds will be successful.

Author’s Note: My thanks to Ruth Amir for her work with the data.

References Akzin, B. (1980), "The Likud" in Arian, A (ed.), The Elections in Israel 1977, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, p. 51. Arian, A (1989), Politics in Israel- The Second Generation, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. Aronoff, M. J. (1975), "The Power of Nominations in the Israeli Labor Party" in Arian, A (ed.), The Elections in Israel - 1973, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, pp. 21-40. Brichta, A (1972), "The Social and Political Characteristics of Members of the Seventh Knesset" in Arian, A (ed.), The Elections in Israel - 1969, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, pp. 109-131. Brichta, A (1991), "Proposed Electoral Reform in Israel", The Jewish Journal o f Sociology, 33, pp. 83-95.

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Doron, G. and Goldberg, G. (1990), "No Big Deal: Democratization of the Nominating Process." in Arian, A. and Shamir, M. (eds), The Elec­ tions in Israel - 1988, Boulder, CO: Westview, pp. 155-171. Haaretz, 9 March 1983. Herzog, H. (1986), "Between Political and Cultural Ethnicity: The Ethnic Lists.", State, Government and International Relations (Hebrew) 25, pp. 91-114. Rubinstein, A. (1991), The Constitutional Law o f the State o f Israel, Jerusalem: Shocken (Hebrew; 2 volumes). Samuel, Y. and Yuchtman-Yaar, E. (1979), "The Status and Situs Dimen­ sions as Determinants of Occupational Attractiveness." Quality and Quantity 13, pp. 485-501. Weiss, S. (1979), Past and Present in Israeli Politics, Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim (Hebrew).

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6 Parliament in the United Kingdom: The Incumbency Paradox PHILIP NORTON

British politics are dominated by party. Mass parties developed in the 1870s and serve as the essential mechanism for ensuring a political system that is both coherent and credible. Since the end of the 19th Century, the party label has determined outcomes in the several hundred constituen­ cies that have returned members to the elected House, the House of Commons.* For most of the 20th Century, the class-party nexus has en­ sured some degree of stability of voting behaviour, resulting in most constituencies returning the same party candidate election after election. Given this, incumbency has been a significant feature of the 20th Century House of Commons, with the average length of service in the House being high by international comparison. Any strengthening of incumbency, with MPs being able to assume even greater security of tenure than before, would have the potential to distance the incumbent further from the particular needs of the constituency, the Member relying on the protection of the party label to prevent any threat to incumbency that may arise from neglect of local needs. The purpose of this paper is to test two hypotheses. The first is that there has been an increase in electoral security on the part of MPs and

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that this has had the effect of maintaining party hegemony at Westminster with consequent neglect of constituency duties. The second is that there has been no objective change in electoral security but rather an increase in the perception of electoral vulnerability by MPs and that this has increased the level of activity in the constituency and lessened the party stranglehold at Westminster. If the first hypothesis is found to be valid, then we have the basis for asserting a threat to representative democracy, the threat in this context being to constituency interests. If the second hypothesis is valid, then we have no basis for asserting such a threat.

The systemic context The British Parliament has one elected House, the House of Com­ mons. It is divided into constituencies (districts), each electing one mem­ ber. There are presently 651 constituencies. ^ Each constituency in England has roughly 70,000 electors, the number being less in Scotland and Wales. Shifts in population produce some significant deviations from the mean, and every ten to fifteen years, boundaries are reviewed by inde­ pendent Boundary Commissions (McLeon: 1992; Boundary Commission: 1991). The maximum life of a Parliament is five years (until 1991, it was seven years). Within that five year period, the prime minister can choose to recommend to the monarch when a general election should be held. It is rare for a Parliament to last a full five-year term: prime ministers usually opt for an election after four years. When a general election is held, the method of election used is the first-past-the post, or plurality, system (the same as employed for legislative elections in the United States), with the candidate winning the largest number of votes being declared elected. If a Member of Parliament dies or leaves Parliament during the lifetime of a Parliament, a special election (a by-election) is held in the seat, the method of election being the same as that in a general election. Parties operate usually on a constituency basis. Within each constitu­ ency, the local party will be responsible for candidate selection. The for­ mat employed varies from party to party (see Norton: 1990), but the basic choice is in the hands of party activists. In the case of the Liberal 104

Democratic party, all local party members have a right to be involved in making the final selection. The Labour party is moving in a similar direc­ tion. In the Conservative party, the choice is made by a selection commit­ tee, with the candidate selected being presented to a general meeting of party members for approval. The national party organizations retain a power of veto over candidates selected by local parties and that power is very occasionally exercised: but the basic principle adopted by both main parties is that of local choice. Candidates seek nomination through es­ tablished processes within each party. There is no equivalent in the UK of a "registered" Democrat or Republican. Parties recruit dues-paying mem­ bers and those members form the local parties. There is no equivalent therefore of a primary election in which electors who are not dues-paying party members can participate. Candidate selection is a process internal to each party and governed by the rules of each party. It is the local par­ ties that organize, and finance, the election campaigns of their candidates. Candidates have no responsibility for fund raising and what money is spent by the local parties is limited by strict campaign finance laws. These are features of a political system that may be characterized as coherent and credible. It is coherent in that parties serve to aggregate demands of electors, with one party usually being returned to office in order to implement a particular programme of public policy. The firstpast-the-post electoral system facilitates the return of a single party with a majority of seats, but the parliamentary form of government - the execu­ tive being drawn from, and remaining within, Parliament - ensures that the party can then ensure passage of its declared programme by the legis­ lature (Norton: 1993a). The parties publish election manifestos detailing their programmes. These manifestos have become increasingly detailed in the period since 1945 (Craig: 1970). The parties indulge in vigorous election campaigns, the campaigns being organized - and financed - by the parties, not the individual candidates. Electors know what is on offer by the parties and can vote accordingly. By credible, I refer to popular confidence in the system: to voter perceptions that the system itself is a credible one. Political parties have a high success rate in implementing their manifesto promises (Hofferbert and Budge: 1992) and popular support for the parliamentary system appears to have been maintained in recent decades. Though there is a 105

current debate over Britain’s constitutional arrangements (Norton: 1982; Holme and Elliott: 1988; Thornton: 1989; Norton: 1991) levels of support for Parliament and for parliamentarians appear to have been maintained. When MPs are distinguished from the generic class of "politicians", most voters express the view that they are doing a good job. A MORI poll for the Rowntree Trust in 1991 found that 59 per cent of respondents thought that Parliament was doing "a good job". Less than 20 per cent thought that it was doing a bad job. According to Gallup polls, popular confidence in Parliament is greater than in most other national institutions and actually increased in the period from 1989 to 19917 It is plausible to hypothesize that there is a causal relationship between coherence and credibility. Because the system appears to deliver the goods expected of it, then there is a belief in the system itself. Indeed, this positive view of the British system appears to underpin many of the calls for constitutional reform in the United States (Bums: 1963; Hardin: 1974; Committee on the Constitutional System: 1987). Nonetheless, there is a problem. The coherence provided by party is credible only if it forms the central but not the exclusive feature of the relationship between the citi­ zen and Parliament. Electors vote on the basis of party. That is a well-established feature of voting in Britain. Yet, having returned MPs on a party basis, electors look to them to fulfil tasks outside the context of party. Constituents expect their Member of Parliament to give priority to local needs (Marsh: 1985; Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina: 1979; Crewe: 1975) serving, as one observer put it, as "a county councillor at Westminster" (Jeger: 1978). One survey in 1990 found that two-thirds of respondents thought that MPs ought to be "working on behalf of individual constituents" (Select Committee on Tele­ vising the Proceedings of the House: 1990). Tasks such as law making, and other Westminster-oriented activities, are deemed less important. MPs on the basis of this evidence would thus appear to be expected to fulfil a dual role: a party role and a constituency role. The two roles are not necessarily incompatible. However, there is the potential for tension at two levels. One is in terms of balance. If too much time and attention is devoted to the party role, constituents are likely to feel neglected. The other is in terms of conflict. A particular government policy may result in job losses in a constituency represented by a member of the governing 106

party, that MP then having to choose between loyalty to party and loyalty to the constituency. There is a potential threat to credibility if MPs are seen to be devoting too much time to party-dominated activities at Westminster or if they follow the party whip on occasions when the stance of the party appears to be harming constituency interests. The temptation for MPs to follow the party to the neglect of constituency would appear to be greater if they know that they enjoy security of tenure. Once in Parliament, MPs are dependent on their party leaders for advancement. The route to political office is through party in Parliament (see Norton: 1993a). Unlike the USA, there are not multiple channels to the top. If re-election is assured, MPs can turn their attention to doing that which attracts the attention and commendation of party leaders. That includes loyalty to the party line. There is, on this postulation, no incentive to devote time to one’s constit­ uency. Local party workers can be left to ensure party supporters turn out at election. Short-term considerations (the quest for office) may thus take prece­ dence over the long-term health of the parliament system (maintaining credibility). If local needs are neglected, then the credibility of the system is undermined. The greater and more sustained the neglect the greater the potential for a collapse in confidence in the institution. We thus have a plausible hypothesis that points to incumbency as a problem. Has the nature of incumbency changed in recent years?

Hypothesis 1: Greater security and constituency neglect The first hypothesis suggests that there has been an objective change in the electoral security of MPs. Only a minority of seats are marginal seats. A marginal seat is traditionally defined as one in which the winning candidate’s majority constitutes less than ten per cent of the total poll and hence, in terms of the conventional two-party "swing", is vulnerable to being lost at the next election on a swing of five per cent to the challeng­ ing party. Seats in which the winning candidates are carried to victoiy with majorities that constitute ten per cent or more of the total poll are classi­ fied as safe seats. The premiss of this hypothesis is that the number of safe

107

seats has increased in recent decades, rendering an even smaller minority of MPs than before vulnerable to being voted out by their constituents. Empirical verification for this premise has been found in the decline of the number of marginal seats between 1955 and 1987. In 1955, 172 seats were held by Labour or Conservative with majorities of under ten per cent; in 1987, the comparable figure was only 80 (Butler: 1989). The figure of 172 seats in 1955 represented 27 per cent of the seats in the House; that of 80 in 1987 represented twelve per cent The explanation given for this decrease in the number of marginal seats is one of demographic change, the movement of population and economic activity resulting in rural seats becoming more heavily Conservative and urban seats more heavily Labour (Butler: 1989). The increase in the number of safe seats also coincides with a change in the nature of those seeking election to the House of Commons. More careerists are seeking election, intent on making membership of the House a full-time and long-term occupation (King: 1981). In earlier decades, there were more independently wealthy Members for whom service in Parliament was not the sole purpose in life and who would often pursue other interests while serving in the House and also be prepared to leave the House to follow other or more rewarding activities. Even as late as the Macmillan Government of 1957-63, one MP accepted a govern­ ment post only on condition that he could still go hunting at least twice a week. Post-war changes in the education system and in mass communication have generated a more politically aware body of citizens. The process of what Inglehart has termed cognitive mobilization (Inglehart: 1977) has resulted in a greater willingness to engage in political activity and a greater confidence that through this kind of activity it is possible to affect political outcomes. One of the most significant manifestations of this development has been the growth in the number of middle-class career politicians entering the House of Commons. The years since 1945 have seen a growth in the number of middle-class MPs (Mellors: 1978; Rush: 1979,1988). The proportion of workers among Labour MPs has declined and more Conservative MPs are drawn from professional backgrounds. The number of graduates has increased over the years, with the proportion drawn from Oxford and Cambridge Univer­ 108

sities decreasing slowly; there has also been a decline in the number of MPs drawn from "public" (meaning private, as opposed to state) schools. There has been, according to Rush (1988) "a socio-economic convergence of the two major parties", a convergence which he ascribes to the greater educational opportunities after 1944 (the year the Education Act was passed) and consequent social mobility. This new breed of MP has been intent on making a life-time’s career in politics. The average length of service in the House in the decades since the Second World War is greater than that in pre-war decades. The median length of service for MPs leaving Parliament between 1900 and 1917 was eleven years, for the period 1918-44 nine years, and for the period 1945-74 fourteen years (Rush: 1979). Of the MPs leaving the House in the first period, just over 20 per cent had sat in the House for twenty years or more; of those leaving in the second period, the figure was under 15 per cent; in the third period, the figure had increased to 29 per cent (Rush: 1979). Reinforcing the hypothesis is the fact that the number of MPs who left the House through retirement, as opposed to electoral defeat, increased significantly in the third period: 43 per cent left through retirement and 27 per cent as a result of electoral defeat. (Fifteen per cent died and the other fifteen per cent left for various other reasons, such as elevation to the peerage or resignation to take up an appointment as a judge.) The figures for the preceding period were 33 per cent and 37 per cent respectively (Rush: 1979). We thus have the basis for asserting the increased significance of incumbency, with MPs enjoying greater electoral security and a greater willingness to utilize that security to ensure a life time’s service in the House of Commons. However, we now encounter a problem. Has there been the neglect of constituency and increase in party voting posited by the hypothesis? The answer is no. Recent empirical studies have shown precisely the opposite. In the 1940s and 1950s, constituency neglect was a feature of political life in Britain (Norton and Wood: 1990; Norton and Wood: 1993). Some MPs paid what amounted to annual visits to their constituencies. A Labour newcomer in 1945 told of his first visit to the constituency after the election: A top-hatted station master met him to ask whether he 109

would be following the previous Member in paying his annual visit at that time of year (Mitchell: 1982). There is no residency requirement in the UK for parliamentary candidates and as late as 1963 two-thirds of MPs did not have addresses in their constituencies (Norton and Wood: 1993). Neglect by longer-serving MPs was still apparent in the 1960s and early 1970s. As an MP first elected in 1970 recalled, when he first entered the House "there were still several of the old school around who firmly believed that any letter unanswered for six weeks answered itself (Cormack: 1992). However, the "old school" were a dying breed. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a notable increase in constituency activ­ ity by MPs. The number holding surgeries - publicly-advertised meetings in the constituency at which constituents could come to discuss their problems with the MP - increased, as did the general level of constituency activity. The amount of time devoted to constituency work increased, as did the amount of time spent in the constituency (Norton and Wood: 1990). A 1971 survey of MPs found that backbenchers spent approxi­ mately eleven hours per week outside the House on constituency business. When the survey was repeated in 1981, the amount of time had increased to sixteen hours. Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina (1987) found that more than a quarter of Members were proactive in constituency casework, actually seeking out problems in the constituency. Following the 1987 general election, a majority of new Members listed addresses in or near their constituencies. Nor has there been the increase in party voting posited by the hypo­ thesis. Party cohesion has been a notable feature of parliamentary beha­ viour in the twentieth-century House of Commons (Beer: 1965). It was especially high in the 1950s (Norton: 1975). However, since 1970 there has been a notable increase in parliamentary cross-voting (Norton: 1975, 1978, 1980, 1985). Government backbenchers in the 1970-74 Parliament voted against their own side more often than before, in greater numbers and with greater effect. The Parliament witnessed six defeats of the Government as a result of cross-voting. The incidence of cross-voting increased in the rest of the decade, inducing a change of attitude on the part of many MPs: their old deferential attitude was replaced by what Beer (1982) referred to as a participant attitude. Cross-voting remained a feature of the 1980s and has been a marked feature of the new House of 110

Commons elected in April 1992 (Norton: 1993b). Within seven months of being returned to office, the Government of John Major was busy making concessions in order to avoid defeat in the Commons’ division lobbies. The change in voting behaviour is relative. By international comparison (and certainly compared with the US Congress), the level of cross-voting is low. Party cohesion remains the norm (Rose: 1983). However, com­ pared with parliamentary behaviour pre-1970, the change has been dramatic. Neither of the consequences predicted by the hypothesis has thus been realized. On the face of it, we have an apparent paradox: MPs are more secure in the tenure of the seats yet devoting more attention to constituency needs and less to party. Does our second hypothesis help resolve the apparent paradox?

Hypothesis 2: Less security and greater constituency attentiveness The second hypothesis is based on the premiss that there has been no objective change in electoral security but a change in MPs’ perceptions of their electoral security. The evidence we have already presented would appear to question this premiss. The decline in the number of marginal seats suggests an objec­ tive increase in electoral security. However, the comparison of 1987 with 1955, given above, is misleading. The general election of 1992 produced almost as many marginal seats as there were in 1955. As Table 6.1 shows, 152 seats were held by Conservative or Labour MPs with majorities of under ten per cent of the poll. (MPs from other parties held a further seventeen seats with majorities of under ten per cent.) The increase in security is thus not as great as originally hypothesized. However, the figures do not suggest any decrease in electoral security over the past 40 years. More than 70 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons are safe seats. Indeed, as Table 6.1 reveals, there are more seats held by Conservative and Labour MPs with majorities representing thirty per cent and more of the poll than there are holding marginal seats. Four Labour MPs in the 1992 general election were actually elected with majorities representing 63 per cent or more of the poll, the record being

111

held by the Member for Blaneau Gwent, Llewellyn Smith, whose majority of 30,067 constituted 69.16 per cent of the poll. On the Conservative side, the highest majority was achieved by Prime Minister John Major: his majority of 36,230 in Huntingdon was both the highest Conservative majority in absolute terms and also expressed as a proportion of the poll (4926 per cent; less than in Blaneau Gwent because the number of electors was substantially higher). For most MPs, then, security of tenure is not in doubt. Table 6.1 Marginal and Ultra-Safe Seats: 1992 Seats held in the 1992 General Election with Majorities under 10% of the poll Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat Other

92 60 11 6

Majorities of 30% or more 77 85 0 6

Source: Figures calculated from "The New House of Commons", The Times, 11 April 1992. The apparent paradox thus remains in that MPs have not experienced any decrease in electoral security yet behave as if they have. The paradox is resolved in terms of MPs’ perceptions of their electoral vulnerability. They may not, on the basis of election outcomes, be vulnerable to defeat but they nonetheless believe that they are. The data are insufficient to prove this hypothesis. There is, though, sufficient evidence to render it plausible. The plausibility of the hypothesis derives from the increased volatility in voting intentions. The period since the 1960s has seen a weakening of class voting in the United Kingdom (Franklin: 1985). In the 1950s, class provided both main parties with large and relatively stable blocks of voting support. There were sufficient shifts in voting behaviour to result in one party replacing another in office, but there was no dramatic volatility in voting intentions in between elections and no regular loss of by-elec­

112

tions with large swings to the challenging party. The 1960s and since have witnessed a decline in the class-party nexus and a significant volatility in voting intentions. The governing party has variously been subject to dramatic losses of supposedly safe seats in by-elections. The emergence of the Social Democratic Party in 1981 and its alliance with the Liberal Party added to the electoral uncertainty, especially when the alliance parties at one point pushed the Conservatives into third place in the opinion polls and then challenged the Labour Party for second place in the number of votes cast nationally in the 1983 general election. (In the election, Labour got 27.6 per cent of the votes cast, the alliance parties got 25.4 per cent.) In the South of England, the alliance was the main challenger to the Conservative Party. The return of the Conservative Party to government in four successive elections between 1979 and 1992 conveys a misleading picture of electoral stability. In between each election, the Conservative Party variously trailed the Labour Party in the opinion polls: it was lagging badly behind in the polls in 1981, it trailed Labour in the wake of the Westland crisis in 1986, and it fell dramatically behind in the polls in 1989 and 1990. At one point in Spring of 1990, it trailed Labour by more than 20 points. The prospect of electoral defeat was a powerful inducement to Conservative MPs to contemplate a change of leader and in November 1990 they re­ placed Margaret Thatcher with John Major (see Norton: 1992a). In the election contest for a new leader, both John Major and Michael Heseltine drew heavily on polls that showed that the Conservative Party would do well in a general election under the leadership of either of them. Volatility in voting intentions was shown in by-election results. In the thirteen Parliaments from 1945 to 1992, there were 398 by-elections. As the figures in the Table 2 show, there are two generalizations that can be drawn. The first is that there are now fewer by-elections in a Parliament than there used to be: an average of 40 per Parliament in the six Parliaments up to and including that of 1964-66, and an average of 22 per Parliament in the seven Parliaments since. The second generalization is that, when a by-election is held, there is now a far greater chance of the incumbent party - especially if it is the governing party - losing the seat.

113

Table 6.2 By-elections 1945-92 Number of By-elections

Number of Seats Changing Hands (Government losses in brackets)

% Change

Parliament 1945-50 1950-51 1951-55 1955-59 1959-64 1964-66 1966-70 1970-74 1974 1974-79 1979-83 1983-87 1987-92

52 16 48 52 62 13 38 30 1 30 17 16 23

3 (0) 0 (0) 1 (0) 6 (4) 9 (7) 2 (1) 16 (15) 9 (5) 0 (0) 7 6 (4) 5 (4) 8 (7)

6% 0% 2% 12% 14% 15% 42% 30% 0% 23% 35% 31% 35%

The Conservative Party lost several safe seats throughout the 1980s. After one major loss, the BBC commentator noted that if the result was repeated at a general election the Conservative Party would be left with only one seat! In the 1979-83 Parliament, the party lost four of the seven seats it was defending in by-elections, three to the alliance parties and one to Labour. In the 1983-87 Parliament, it lost four of the nine seats it was defending, three again to the alliance and one to Labour. In the 1987-92 Parliament, it held on to three seats but then lost all the remaining byelections in the seven seats it was defending, including losing one safe seat (Mid Staffordshire) to Labour - the Labour Party achieving its best byelection victory over the Conservatives for more than fifty years. (Con­ servative safe seats were usually lost to the Liberals, or their successor the Liberal Democrats, rather than to Labour.) In the by-election, a Conserv­ ative general election majority of 14,654 (25.9 per cent of the poll) was converted into a Labour majority of 9,499 (16.8 per cent of the poll). The by-election results combined with opinion poll findings suggested that the Conservative Party was not assured of election victory and that even those Conservatives sitting for supposedly safe seats could not take their

114

incumbency for granted. In 1991, the party lost its fourteenth safest seat Ribble Valley • to the liberal Democrats. The Conservative Party was not the only victim of this volatility. In 1982, a seat defended by an incumbent alliance candidate, who had defected from the Labour Party, was lost to the Conservatives. The following year, the safe Labour seat of Bermondsey was lost to the liber­ als. In 1987, the Labour seat of Greenwich was lost to the SDP and in November 1988 Labour lost its supposedly ultra-safe seat of Glasgow Govan - in which its 1987 majority represented more than fifty per cent of the poll - to the Scottish National Party. Such volatility encouraged incumbents to pay more attention to their constituencies. They were encouraged in this by local parties. On the Labour side, a reinforcing factor was the introduction in 1981 of the policy of compulsory re-selection, requiring each Labour MP to go through a full re-selection process in each Parliament. (This meant other candidates could be considered. Previously re-nomination had usually been a formal affair.) Those MPs who were seriously challenged were usually challenged on political grounds (usually but not always a right-wing Labour MP challenged by left-wing party activists) but found that a reputation for being a "good constituency Member" was a powerful means of protection. The increase in the number of career politicians is also an important independent variable. If election and re-election are not seen as being assured, the careerist does everything necessary to ensure continued elec­ tion to the House. As far as such MPs are concerned, constituency activity helps raise their profiles in their constituencies and may bolster electoral support (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina: 1987). It may not result in many electors changing their voting intentions but it may help encourage those leaning towards the incumbent to turn out on election day and may deter voters disenchanted with the MP’s party from switching to the other side. Even if constituency activity does not have such an effect, MPs’ percep­ tions that it may do so can affect their behaviour. Recent research suggests that, in fact, constituency activity may result in some electoral reward. Analysis of the results of the 1987 general election, compared with those of the 1983 election, reveals that incumbents did better than non-incumbents and that, most significantly of all, first term incumbents did better than all other candidates, both incumbents and challengers 115

(Norton and Wood: 1990; Wood and Norton: 1992). In the 1992 general election, in key marginal Conservative-held seats that were targetted by Labour, the swing against incumbent Conservative MPs was about one per cent less than against new candidates replacing retiring Members. In a dozen seats, Conservative incumbents held on to seats that, on the regional swing to Labour in its target seats, should have been lost. A further three kept the swing below the regional swing to Labour, even though still losing their seats. Of the fifteen, twelve had been first returned to Parliament in the 1983 or 1987 general elections (Norton: 1992b). Had Labour actually won the twelve marginal seats, the Conservatives would have been denied an overall majority in the general election. Members thus work hard to ensure their re-election. They have to rely on constituency activity in order to give them a visibility that can out­ match challengers. Other parties in a constituency select prospective candidates and those candidates then spend time in the constituency, making speeches, writing to the press, and attending local events. An incumbent has some advantage by virtue of being the MP. Activity in Parliament attracts local media attention. However, incumbents lack many of the advantages that flow to their equivalents in the United States and other countries. They do not enjoy the same franking facilities. They enjoy free mailing for letters that are written exclusively in pursuit of their parliamentary duties: sending out newsletters to constituents does not fall within that category. Any mailshots designed to solicit support, or raise the MP's profile, have to be financed by the Member or the local party. Secretarial and research support is now more generous than before (a secretarial allowance was only introduced in 1969) but remains limited. The average MP will have one or two secretaries and one full-time or part-time researcher. It is rare for a backbench MP to have an office staff that exceeds four in number. Thus, facilities that are viewed elsewhere as faciliting the election of incumbents are so limited in the UK as to be of marginal value. Instead, the emphasis for the incumbent wanting reelection is on personal activity in and on behalf of the constituency. The highly plausible picture that emerges from the evidence at our disposal, therefore, is that perceptions of electoral uncertainty lead career politicians to engage in greater constituency activity than their predeces­ 116

sors and that this activity can actually have some electoral pay-off, at least at the margins. Party still determines voting in almost all cases and hence the hard-working incumbent cannot be certain that constituency activity will necessarily affect the outcome. Incumbency can thus not be taken for granted - a safe seat can be lost as a result of a massive swing to the chal­ lenging party - but a desire to remain the incumbent encourages the MP to take out some form of insurance cover through attention to the constit­ uency. Furthermore, this perception of electoral vulnerability may also facili­ tate a greater willingness on the part of Members to cross-vote in the House of Commons’ division lobbies. The evidence here, though, is less clear cut. There are other explanations that have been advanced for cross­ voting, and especially the sudden increase in the 1970-74 Parliament (Norton: 1978, 1987), and there is little empirical support for the "new breed" thesis (Franklin, Baxter and Jordan: 1986). However, perceptions of electoral vulnerability at the party - rather than the individual - level may have contributed to a greater sensitivity to external pressures and, at the constituency level, may have increased the tendency for MPs to vote against their own side on those occasions when there is a perceived constituency interest at variance with the party line. There are instances of Members cross-voting on the basis of constituency interests in the 1970s (Norton: 1978) and since, though they explain only a very small propor­ tion of the incidences of dissension. For our purposes, what is important is that there has been no increase in party cohesion in the House of Commons.

Conclusion What data we have support the second hypothesis. The majority of MPs wants to be re-elected and most are. Volatility in election intentions has meant that incumbents are nonetheless unwilling to take that reelection for granted. Consequently, they seek to bolster party support by constituency-oriented activity. Insofar as this activity adds to other timeconsuming, Westminster oriented activities, there is the danger of MPs being overloaded with work (Norton: 1992b). However, inasmuch as it

117

bolsters the link between MP and constituent, it serves to reinforce the legitimacy of MPs, and hence of Parliament, in the eyes of electors (Norton: 1993a). MPs are now performing more of the dual role expected of them by electors. The problem of potential overload can be addressed through increasing resources for MPs. Indeed, it is that feature parliamentary overload - that is at the heart of calls for parliamentary refrom (Norton 1992c), there are few if any demands for change designed to limit the number of terms served by Members. Incumbency, as such, is not a threat to representative democracy. If anything, in the United Kingdom, the reverse is proving to be the case.

Notes 1

2

The number of seats in the House of Commons has fluctuated con­ siderably in the 20th Century. From 1900 to 1918, there were 670. In 1918, the number increased to 707, but then with the loss of most Irish seats the number was reduced in 1922 to 615. It remained at 615 until 1945, when it was increased to 640. Following a boundary review, the number was reduced to 625 in 1950, the increased to 630 in 1955, to 635 in 1974, to 650 in 1983 and to 651 in 1992. In Dec. 1989, 38 per cent expressed a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Parliament, a figure surpassed by the armed forces, the police, the church, the education system, the legal system, the civil service and major companies. In April 1991, 47 per cent expressed confidence in Parliament, a figure surpassed only by the armed forces and the police. Gallup Political and Economic Index, Report 368.

References Beer, S. H. (1965), Modem British Politics, London: Faber. Beer, S. H. (1982), Britain Against Itself, London: Faber. Boundary Commission (1991), The Review o f Parliamentary Constituencies 1991, London: The Boundary Commission.

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Burns, J. M. (1963), The Deadlock o f Democracy, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Butler, D. E. (1989), British General Elections Since 1945, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cain, B., Ferejohn, J. and Fiorina, M. (1979), "Popular Evaluations of Representatives in Great Britain and the United States", California Insititute o f Technology Working paper 288, California Institute of Tech­ nology. Cain, B., Ferejohn, J. and Fiorina, M. (1987), The Personal Vote, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Committee on the Constitutional System (1987), A Bicentennial Analysis o f the American Political Structure, Washington DC: Committee on the Constitutional System. Cormack, P. (1992), "Back to Work, And Bang Goes September", The House Magazine, 18 (566), pp. 4-5. Craig, F. W. S. (1970), British General Election Manifestos 1918-1966, Chichester: Political Reference Publications. Crewe, I. (1975), "Electoral Reform and the Local MP" in Finer, S. E. (ed.), Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform, London: Anthony Wigram. Dalton, R. J. (1988), Citizen Politics in Western Democracies, Chatham NJ: Chatham House. Franklin, M. (1985), The Decline o f Class Voting in Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franklin, M., Baxter, A. and Jordan, M. (1986), "Who Were the Rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons 1970-74", Legislative Studies Quar­ terly, 11, pp. 143-59. Hardin, C. (1974), Presidential Power and Accountability: Towards a New Constitution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hofferbert, R. I. and Budge, I. (1992), 'The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model: Election Programmes and Government Spending in Britain, 1945-85", British Journal o f Political Science, 22, pp. 151-82. Holme, R. and Elliott (1988), 1688-1988: Time for a New Constitution, London: Macmillan. Inglehart, R. (1977), The Silent Revolution, Princeton NJ: Princeton Uni­ versity Press. 119

Jeger, J. (1978), "The Image of the M F in Mackintosh, J. (ed.), People and Parliament, Aldershot: Saxon House. King, A. (1981), T he Rise of the Career Politician in Britain - and its Consequences", British Journal o f Political Science, 11, pp. 249-85. Marsh, J. W. (1985), "The House of Commons: Representational Chan­ ges" in Norton, P. (ed.), Parliament in the 1980s, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McLeod, R. (1992), "Reviewing the Situation”, The House Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 571, November 16:10. Mellors, C. (1978), The British MP, Aldershot: Saxon House. Mitchell, A. (1982), Westminster Man, London: Thames Methuen. Norton, P. (1975), Dissension in the House o f Commons 1945-74, London: Macmillan. Norton, P. (1978), Conservative Dissidents, London: Temple Smith. Norton, P. (1980), Dissension in the House of Commons 1974-1979, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Norton, P. (1982), The Constitution in Flux, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Norton, P. (1985), "The House of Commons: Behavioural Changes", in Norton, P. (ed.), Parliament in the 1980s, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Norton, P. (1987), "Dissent in the House of Commons: Rejoinder to Franklin, Baxter, Jordan", Legislative Studies Quarterly, 12, pp. 143-52. Norton, P. (1990), The British Polity, 2nd ed., New York: Longman. Norton, P. (1991), "In Defence of the Constitution" in Norton, P. (ed.), New Directions in British Politics? Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Norton, P. (1992a), "The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Major" in King, A. (ed.), Britain at the Polls 1992, Chatham NJ: Chatham House. Norton, P. (1992b), "Swings and Roundabouts", The House Magazine, 18, April 27, p. 13. Norton, P. (1993a), Does Parliament Matter? Hemel Hempstead: Har­ vester Wheatsheaf. Norton, P. (1993b), "Parliament", in Catterall, P. (ed.), Contemporary Britain: An Annual Review, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Norton, P. and Wood, D. (1990), "Constituency Service by Members of Parliament: Does it Contribute to a Personal Vote?", Parliamentary Affairs, 43, pp. 196-208.

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Norton, P. and Wood, D. (1993), Back to Westminster, Lexington KY: Kentucky University Press. Rose, R. (1983), "Still the Era of Party Government", Parliamentary Affairs, 36, pp. 282-99. Rush, M. (1979), "The Members of Parliament" in Walkland, S. A. (ed.), The House o f Commons in the Twentieth Century, Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press. Rush, M. (1988), "The Members of Parliament" in Ryle, M. and Richards, P. G. (eds), The Commons Under Scrutiny, London: Routledge. Select Committee on the Televising the Proceedings of the House, House of Commons (1990), First Report: Review o f the Experiment in Televising the Proceedings o f the House, Session 1989-90, HC 265-1, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Thornton, P. (1989), Decade o f Decline, London: NCCL. Wood, D. and Norton, P. (1992), "Do Candidates Matter? ConstituencySpecific Vote Changes for Incumbent MPs, 1983-1987", Political Studies, 40, pp. 227-238.

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7 Democracy and Incumbency: The Canadian Case JEAN A. LAPONCE

Should the members of the Canadian House of Commons be as im­ mortal as those of the French Academy? Obviously not. The post-war Taiwanese parliament is not to be taken as a model. * But, if legislators are not to be immortal, how mortal should they be? Should represen­ tation be a one parliament affair? The members of the French Constit­ uent Assembly of 1791 so decided as well as the German Greens of today. The former’s collective political suicide was a naive mistake and the Greens are increasingly having second thoughts about the wisdom of their death wish. If we reject both immortality and ephemerality as dysfunctional, what should be the norm? How long should one hold office in the ideal democratic parliament? Let us consider the Canadian evidence on incumbency and related effects before suggesting an answer.

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1. Systemic background

In the Canadian House of Commons, the parties operate in the manner of their British ancestors: they are disciplined. In the colourful language of the mother of Parliaments, they live by the whip. As in Britain again, the Canadian party system is of the "two and a hair variety, only two parties being normally expected to alternate in office. But, outside parliament, the resemblance to Britain disappears: the parties are weak at the command center and, between elections, usually dormant at the periphery if alive at all. The nomination of candidates is made locally by amorphous organizations that come out of their hibernation to nominate candidates, then go back to sleep. Once elected, a member of Parliament becomes a servant of the party he or she represents; and that means, to a large extent, the servant of the party leader, notably for the members of the party in office since Prime Ministers appoint their cabinet and decide when to call an election within a Parliament’s five year mandate. Considering the succession of parties and leaders in office, since the origins of the present federal system, leaves an impression of extraordi­ nary stability. A few names - Conservatives and Sir John A. Macdonald in the nineteenth century; Liberals, Mackenzie King, and Trudeau in the twentieth - suffice to express continuity at the top (see Table 7.1).^ Are the incumbents similarly favored at the constituency level?

2. Measuring the incumbency effect Does the incumbent local candidate have an advantage? The answer is clearly yes and on two counts. a) The incumbent is almost certain to be renominated if he or she wishes to run again (Erickson and Carty: 1991). The renomination proce­ dure is the same as that for nominations; it is not regulated by law but by party rules. The norm is that in order to run under the label of a given party one must be designated by a local constituency organization (usually at a meeting of card carrying members, many of whom acquire the card at

123

Table 7.1 Parties and Leaders in Office from 1867 to 1991 Name

Party

From

Until

Conservative Liberal Conservative Conservative Conservative Conservative Conservative Liberal Conservative Unionist Unionist-Liberal and Conservative William Lyon Mackenzie King Liberal Arthur Meighen Conservative William Lyon Mackenzie King Liberal Richard Bedford Bennett Conservative William Lyon Mackenzie King Liberal Louis Stephen St. Laurent Liberal John George Diefenbaker Progressive Conservative Lester Bowles Pearson Liberal Pierre Elliott Trudeau Liberal Charles Joseph Clark Progressive Conservative Pierre Elliott Trudeau Liberal John Turner Liberal Brian Mulroney Progressive Conservative

01.07.1867 07.11.1873 17.10.1878 16.06.1891 05.12.1892 21.12.1894 01.05.1896 11.07.1896 10.10.1911 10.12.1917

05.11.1873 08.10.1878 06.06.1891 24.11.1892 12.12.1894 27.04.1896 08.07.18% 10.06.1911 10.12.1917 07.10.1920

6.3 4.9 12.7 1.4 2.0 13 0.2 15.25 6.0 2.75

07.10.1920 29.12.1921 29.06.1926 25.09.1926 08.07.1930 23.10.1935 15.11.1948 21.06.1957 22.04.1963 20.04.1968 06.04.1979 03.03.1980 30.06.1984 17.09.1984

12.09.1921 06.08.1926 25.09.1926 08.07.1930 23.10.1935 15.11.1948 21.06.1957 22.04.1963 20.04.1968 06.04.1979 03.03.1980 30.06.1984 17.09.1984

1.4 4.5 0.25 3.9 5.2 13.1 8.6 5.8 5.0 112 0.75 4.25 1.25

Average term for the Conservative Party: 5.59 years. Average term for the Liberal Party: 10.28 years. Average term for all parties: 735 years.

Average term for Conservative P.M.s: 3.81 years. Average term for Liberal P.M.s: 7.2 years. Average term of P.M.s: 536 years.

Sir John A. Macdonald Alexander Mackenzie Sir John A. Macdonald Sir John J.C. Abbott Sir John S.D. Thompson Sir Mackenzie Bowell Sir Charles Tupper, Bart Sir Wilfrid Laurier Sir Robert L. Borden Sir Robert L. Borden Arthur Meighen

Source: The Parliamentary Guide.

Length of P

Length of Party* 63 4.9 17.6 15.25 6.0 2.75 1.4 4.5 0.25 3.9 52

21.7 5.8 16.2 0.75 5.5

or shortly before the meeting) and be endorsed by the party leader. Fail­ ing the support of the constituency or the leader one will normally have to run as an independent (Williams: 1981). In 1991, however, the Liberals gave to their party leader the power to appoint rather than simply veto lo­ cal candidates. That power is likely to be used sparingly, but that remains to be seen (as of August 1993, Jean Chretien, the Liberal leader, had ap­ pointed candidates for the election expected to take place in the fall of that same year in 5 per cent of the districts). It does happen that a local constituency will not renominate an incum­ bent, and it does happen that the leader will refuse to endorse a candidate nominated or renominated locally. But these refusals are extremely rare. Nearly all incumbents are renominated, if they wish so. A study of the 1988 nomination process by Erickson and Carty (1991) shows that 88 per cent of MPs were not challenged locally and that only two per cent of those seeking re-election failed to be renominated.^ b) The renominated candidate has an electoral advantage due to in­ cumbency. The findings are concordant. Krachinsky and Milne, in a study of federal elections from 1953 to 1980, estimate that, measured in per­ centage points, an incumbent had, over a new candidate running for the same party, an advantage that stood at 3.40 for the liberals, 3.45 for the Conservatives, and 4.27 for the New Democrats (Krachinsky and Milne: 1986). In the election of 1988, the same authors measured an incumbency effect of 3.5 for the Conservatives, 4.3 for the NPD, and an unexpectedly high 12.1 for the liberals (Krachinsky and Milne: 1991). In the case of the small Social Credit party (the type of populist protest party that appears occasionally on the federal scene), the incumbency advantage was much higher - a high 10 percentage points which may be due to the small num­ ber of cases, but may also be explained by the fact that the party was then on its way to disappearance (Krachinsky and Milne 1985). That second explanation would be more rewarding from the point of view of theory building since it would lead one to predict that the incumbency effect is more pronounced when electoral support goes down than when it goes up. This might explain the high incumbency effect for the liberals in 1988. Taking a still larger corpus of elections - ranging from 1926 to 1980 Krachinsky and Milne (1985) find the incumbency effect to be insignifi­ cant in only two cases, both in 1926, when the elections were fought over a

125

controversial decision of the Governor General who, rather than dissolve the House, had asked the leader of the opposition to form a government. The elections fought over that breach of parliamentary tradition took the form of constitutional referendums and can thus be set aside. If we do so, we no longer find any exception to the rule that the incumbency effect is positive, ranging normally between three and ten percentage points. That is an important advantage if we consider that the number of seats won by 10 percentage points or less is relatively high. Between 1925 and 1958 the percentage of marginal seats ranged from a low of 31 per cent to a high of 50 per cent. During the same period the percentage of seats won by less than a five percentage point margin ranged from 15 per cent to 29 per cent (Lovink: 1970, 1973). The pattern has remained the same in recent years.1* In their 1986 study, Krachinsky and Milne report that an early election (within two years) does not lower the incumbency effect, but that the ad­ vantage of incumbency is incremental from election to election. That last finding confirms that the effect picked up by the analysis of variations in electoral support of the candidates of the same party is due in part to of­ fice holding. Whether the advantage comes from having higher levels of resources to be spent as side payments - an explanation that is not sup­ ported by the Heintzman (1991) study of the effects of incumbency, cam­ paigning, and funding in the 1988 election - or whether the advantage comes more simply from the incumbent having greater visibility, it makes sense that the effect be incremental, at least up to the point where the in­ cumbent has reached maximum visibility or exhausted his or her re­ sources.

3. Democracy between repetition and random change There once was a French king who was so out of tune that he could vocalize only one note properly. To his intention, the court musician wrote a choral piece that enabled the sovereign to keep repeating his single good note while the other singers wove melodies around the royal

126

contribution. If everybody at court had been like the king, the composer would have faced serious difficulties. Simple repetition does not make music, and neither does random sliding across the scale. Democracy has a somewhat different problem. It can survive both re­ petition and randomness, although it would, in theory, prefer the latter to the former. To reflect on the rationality of repetitive or non-repetitive choices, con­ sider three situations: a) one candidate or party running in a given district (candidate to simplify) continues to serve best the interests of the elector, b) that candidate ceases to be the best servant of the interests of the elec­ tor, and c) both candidates (two to simplify) serve the elector equally well. In the first case, transferring one’s support from the preferred to the less preferred candidate would be irrational if we exclude situations of strategic voting that would lead a voter to support a second choice to prevent the victory of a third, a case admittedly more frequent in a disci­ plined parliamentary two-and-a-half party system such as the Canadian than in a "whip free" two party system such as the American. In the second case, not transferring support to maximize one’s interests is as seemingly irrational as transferring it in the first case. In the third case however, the elector’s personal interests being equally satisfied with either choice, that elector may well decide that shifting his or her vote (his to simplify) is more rational if, personal interest being kept constant, the system (here democracy) will benefit from the rotation of representatives. That third elector, unlike the other two, would face the problem that focuses our reflections: how fast should the rotation be? Case a leads us to predict that the representative who keeps satisfying the minimum number of electors needed to win re-election will keep being re-elected. The positive effect of incumbency should lead him to increase electoral support, possibly beyond the point of exhaustion of resources available for redistribution. Considering case c (we can skip case b which is less theoretically inter­ esting) leads to the question: when the elector is personally indifferent to the local outcome but reasons his vote solely on the basis of its effects at

127

the systemic level, should not the incumbency effect be negative? In other words should it not be to the disadvantage of the incumbent to be an incumbent? Consider at this point the following experimental and survey evidence on bandwagon and underdog effects.

4. A digression concerning underdog and bandwagon effects

To identify the existence and relative strength of these two effects, I asked American and Canadian second year political science University students to participate in a voting contest the rules of which were to be specified as the election proceeded (Laponce: 1966). On a first ballot, the "electors" were asked to vote for either of two candidates identified simply as "Brown" and "Jones". No other information was provided. After the vote and a fake count, pre-determined results were announced to the voters. In one of the groups (we used separate classes meeting at the same time or very close in time in order to prevent inter-group communication) we announced that the vote had been Brown 51 per cent Jones 49 per cent; in a second group we announced 61 per cent 39 per cent, in a third 71 per cent 29 per cent, and so on up to 91 per cent 9 per cent The subjects were then asked to vote again (still in the absence of information). At subsequent stages in the experiment we introduced selected information (sex, party preference, etc.), but the two ballots that interest us here are the first two, those recording a vote in the absence of any other information than a name and a perceived imbalance in electoral support. The analysis of the voting pattern of each subject showed that the greater the perceived unbalance, the higher the tendency to shift one’s vote to the underdog. That pattern obtained among American as well as Canadian students, and was verified in Poland in a replication of the experiment by PotockaHoser (1967). By contrast the same experiment performed on Canadian primary school students produced opposite results, the bandwagon overwhelmed the underdog effect.

128

When a political system operates in a warlike mode and when the actors are motivated primarily by the desire to be on the winning side (the Lord o f the Flies psychology) the bandwagon effect will predominate. When, on the contrary, the system operates in a game-like mode - and when the game requires that all players remain in the game - then the underdog effect will predominate, as it did among our university students who had been put in a situation akin to that of our type c voter. Their collective behavior was rational. Consider now the answers given by Canadian electors to a survey conducted in a Vancouver district in 1965 (Laponce: 1969). The re­ spondents were asked: "In the best interest of the country, how many seats do you think each party should get? To make it simple, suppose there were only say ten seats in Parliament, how many would you give to the party you like best? Should the other parties have any seats at all? how many? Let us start with the party you like best: how many seats?". Plotting the answers of Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats on a 0 to 10 seat scale shows a pattern that would please William Riker, a pattern consistent with a minimum coalition strategy. The modes of the three curves at six seats satisfy two of the objectives we expect from a rational democratic type a voter who would share some of the concerns of type c : give the advantage to one’s preferred party but make the advan­ tage as modest as possible in order to keep a tight rein on one’s repre­ sentative. Read in relation to the "Brown vs Jones" voting experiment, the prefer­ ence expressed by our Canadian voters for a victory by 6 out of 10 (the narrowest of majorities) signifies, I presume, that "democratic" type c elec­ tors will rally to their party when it is perceived to be uncertain of victory, with the result that the minimum winning coalition will be overshot, and that such overshooting will, in turn, provoke a counter reaction in favor of the underdog.

129

o

*

-

c

\

j

c

o

^

i

o




o

« ----- CONS d ----- LIB

♦----- NDP Figure 7.1 Number of seats (maximum = 10) given to one’s preferred party in an ideal Parliament by Vancouver electors in 1965. Source: Laponce (1969).

130

5. Who is the incumbent: The party or the local candidate?

Let us pursue our theoretical mapping of the elector’s dilemma in a parliamentary system with disciplined parties by outlining three different strategies that result from either taking into account or not taking into account the local candidate and the national party. Strategy 1 - The elector closes his district "eye" and looks only at Parliament. In that case, the chances of victory of the party nationwide should have an even effect on the local candidates, whether they are incumbent or not. That sole strategy does not provide a good explanation of what happens since we have already identified an incumbent effect. Strategy 2 - Now our hypothetical elector closes the Ottawa "eye" and looks only at the district. When asked whether the local candidate is important to them, Canadian electors give typically Burkean answers: yes, the local candidate is very important (Irvine: 1982), but much of that school textbook type of opinion can be discounted (Wilson: 1986). Cunningham (1971) estimates that the independent strength of the local candidate amounts to about ten percentage points. Drummond and Fletcher (1980) assume it is closer to five per cent, and Morris Davis’s analysis of the vote in a two seat constituency (Davis: 1964) recorded a six percentage point difference. Strategy 3 - Obviously, Canadian electors keep their two eyes open, that watching the candidate and that watching Ottawa. Conflicting desires may thus lead to wanting to trim the size of one’s party in office while favoring the incumbent. Indeed, John Terry found that on the average, at the aggregate level, the party in office lost 1.6 per cent of its popular vote at each election from 1921 to 1968 (Terry: 1977). But more important than this slow erosion which has, in the years following Terry’s study, affected the Conservatives more than the Liberals (see Table 7.2), are the occasional wild swings that devastate the party in power (see Figures 7.2 and 73). As a result, the incumbent effect, while noticeable, is swamped by the shifts in votes, and also by the incumbent deciding not to run again. The wider the eye open on Ottawa, the less secure the local candidate.

131

Table 7.2 % Change in Electoral Support in the Post War Elections Year

PC

1949 1953 1957 1958 1962 1963 1965 1968 1972 1974 1979 1980 1984 1988

23 13 8.0 14.6 163 -4.5 -0.4 -1.0 3.6 0.4 05 -3.4 17.5 -7.1

LIB 8.4 -0.6 -8.0 -73 3.6 4.5 -15 53 -7.0 4.7 -3.1 42 -163 4.0

Average change when not in power: Average change when in power: Overail average change:

NDP -22 -2.1 -0.6 -12 4.0 -03 4.7 -0.9 0.7 -2.3 25 1.9 -1.0 1.6

PC: 033% LIB: -0.7% PC: -3.05% LIB: -0.622% NDP: 0.34%

Source: Feigerl (1989). To get a good measure of the relation among these three mechanisms incumbency, voting shift, and drop out - let us consider the changes that occurred in the composition of the House of Commons after two different types of elections • a repeat election, defined as one where the aggregate level of support for the major parties remains roughly the same, and a disturbance election (one that may but need not signal a realignment), an election characterized by dramatic changes in the aggregate level of party support Let us take the election of 1965 as an example of a repeat elec­ tion, and that of 1984 as an example of a disturbance election (see Figures 7.2 and 7.3). Consider first the election of 1965, called after little more than two years in the life of the Parliament That repeat election, which produced one of the lowest number of new members, had a drop out rate of 3 per cent and a party change of 14.5 per cent for a total turn over of 17.5 per cent.

132

Consider now the disturbance election of 1984. In that year, 119 seats (44 per cent) changed party. In the remaining districts - those held by the same party - 19 per cent of the successful candidates were new. Adding these two effects results in 54 per cent of the MPs having changed. Without a positive incumbent effect, the rate of change would have likely been even higher.

0

>

O

f

l

)

0

)

G

D

0

)

0

)

0

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0

)

0

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0

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0

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0

« ------FC a— —

lib ndp

Figure 7.2 Post War Elections in Canada. Per Cent Support, by Party. Source: Parliamentary Guide 1990.

133

)

0

>

% Change in Popular Vote

% Change in Electoral Support from one Election to the Next in Post War Canadian Elections, by Party.

Source: Parliamentary Guide.

Figure 7.3 Per Cent Change in Electoral Vote in Canada’s Post War Elections

The high level of instability measured by this last set of statistics is not aberrant. Norman Ward’s data (Ward: 1963) indicate that for the 19 elections covering the period 1872-1945, the average turnover of MPs stood at 45.5 per cent, the lowest being 20.8 per cent in 1926, the highest 59.1 per cent in 1935. The turnover was higher in the 19th century (never under 40 per cent) than it has been in the 20th, but it remains extremely high. The Lovink study of the House of Commons between 1925 and 1972 shows that, on the average, 20 per cent of incumbents were defeated and 16 per cent retired for other reasons (Lovink: 1973). These voting shifts distinguish Canada not only from the United States but also from Britain. A volatility index measuring the absolute aggregate vote changes between elections, for all political parties, shows Canada to score at 8.5 on the average for the period 1949-1988; while, for the same period Britain scored 5.8 and the U.S. House of Representatives 33 - the maximums being respectively 16.7, 13.3, and 8.0; and the minimums 3.6, 1.7, and 0.7 (Blake: 1991).5 Seeking a seat in the Canadian House of Commons is a very uncertain affair. The number of "safe" constituencies is only one third what it is in Britain and in the United States (Lovink: 1973; Franks: 1987). The per­ centage of seats that did not change hands at least once between 1950 and 1965 stood at 78 per cent for the US House of Representatives, 77 per cent for the British House of Commons, and only 24 per cent for the Canadian House (Lovink: 1973).^ The parliamentary half-life of the Canadian members of the House of Commons was a little over five years in the early decades of Confederation; it declined to 3.5 years in the 1950s. The average number of years of service in the House, which stood at 7.5 in the 1870s, had declined to 5 in the 1950s (Casstevens and Denham: 1970). By the 1970s it had come back to what it was in the 19th century: between seven and eight years (Fleming: 1981,1982)7 The average Canadian MP is a kind of political tourist who is not in Ottawa to make a political career. In the House elected in 1988, only 11 per cent of members had served at least 14 years, and only 25 per cent had served eight years or more. Interestingly the statistics hardly vary by

135

party, although the parties’ electoral fortunes had been markedly different in the previous decade; the percentage of MPs with eight years’ experience was 30 per cent among Liberals, 25 per cent among Conservatives and 21 per cent among New Democrats. Only a minority of MPs move their families to the capital - 27 per cent in the sample interviewed by Hoffman and Ward in the 1960s (Hoffman and Ward: 1970). Most of the MPs with families commute on weekends**, including the present deputy prime minister, Don Mazankowski, though he has been in Parliament for the past 20 years. Not only are Canadian MPs transients and passers-by in Ottawa, they are amateurs (Franks: 1987; Atkinson and Doherty: 1992). Unlike their American counterparts, they do not typically make a political career that would lead them from the local to the provincial, then to the federal level. The 1988 House of Commons was well educated (80 per cent had gone to University) but not well politically trained - only 31 per cent of its mem­ bers had municipal experience and only eight per cent had served in a provincial legislature.^ As in the case of voting swing, drop out, and in­ cumbency effects, we meet here some deep and stable socio-political structure. The figures given by Ward for the period 1867-1945 are almost identical to those we just recorded for 1988: 35 per cent for municipal ex­ perience, and 9 per cent for provincial service. The statistics given by Komberg for the period 1867-1968 show provincial experience to have declined from 29 per cent in the 19th century to 10 per cent after World War II, while municipal pre-parliamentary experience varied between 10 and 20 per cent (Komberg: 1973). Taking a wider time-frame - 1867 to 1984 - Barrie and Gibbins (1989) find that only 22 per cent of MPs en­ tered the House with municipal experience, and that only seven per cent had served provincially. The pattern remains clear: a majority of MPs do not have any experi­ ence as legislators before coming to the House. It is remarkable that, since World War II, so few parliamentarians (less than 10 per cent) have served in provincial legislatures - the main political competitors of the federal government.

136

The disciplined party system, the frustrating inability of the back­ benchers to make a mark through private member’s bills, the need to work one’s initiatives through the caucus and, if one’s party is in office, through the cabinet and the bureaucracy; these constraints must have a dampening effect on long term commitments to a legislative career, but could not explain the difference between Canada and Britain. Two other characteristics of Canadian politics explain, to a large extent, the high proportion of new MPs that enter Parliament after each election: the electorate’s voting shifts and the localization of political careers. In a period of relative stability, the mid 1960s (see Figure 7.2), the percentage of Canadian electors who, from one election to the next, moved their support from one party to another was relatively high - 22 per cent in 1963, 21 per cent in 1965 - much higher than the proportions re­ corded in Britain at the time, but not markedly different from those re­ corded in the United States in comparable circumstances (Laponce: 1969). But, if the American voting shifts tend to cancel out, in Canada they often do not. Compare for example two Canadian elections close in time - that of 1962 (a disturbance election) and that of 1963 (a repeat election). In both years the overall percentage of people changing party (among those indicating a party preference) was roughly comparable (27 per cent in 1962, 22 per cent in 1963), but in 1963 the rate of compensa­ tory "migrations” was high, while in 1962 it was very low; with the result that, measured at the aggregate level, the total percentage point losses by all parties was 163 in 1962 but only 4.8 in 1963. It is not so much the total level of party to party "migrations" as the changes in the direction of these migrations that accounts for the high rate of incumbent casualties. Furthermore, Canadian parties do not have much control over the careers of their MPs. Occasionally a safe seat will be opened for a party leader - for example by appointing the incumbent to the Senate - but such mixing of the center into constituency affairs is relatively rare. The leaders, even the cabinet ministers, cannot normally expect to be assigned to safer seats, should their own be in danger.

137

6. Is there an incumbency problem? We can now return to our original question: does Canada have an incumbency problem? Is an average service of seven years (one more than needed to get an indexed pension) too much, too little or just right? The answer requires that we distinguish traditional from contemporary Canadian politics. In its old mode, roughly before 1982 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian politics operated within a subject rather than a citizen culture. The voters did their duty; the rate of electoral participation was (and remains) of the European, not of the American variety; but, their duty done, people turned away from politics, trusting the state to look after them; and that state, helped by a powerful bureaucracy, looked after them quite well indeed. The state had then a great deal of autonomy. I disagree with John Porter (1965:405-6) who thought that fast rotation in office caused the political system of the 1960s to be too weak to be able to make claims on behalf of the total society. That lack of strength however has become apparent in the new Canada the Canada of the Charter - a Canada that adopted what Alan Cairns calls a citizen’s view of the Constitution (Cairns: 1988a). That new Constitution invites individuals and groups to take an active part in the protection of their interests, it invites them to appeal to the courts, and by so doing to bypass parties and parliament. And once the habit of bypassing has been taken, what better way to the courts than by the short cut of the media? The new Canada is a mixture of the old trust in the powers that be, now made to look like apathy and lack of purpose, and a new adversarial style that do not blend well together in a traditional parliamentary system that continues to presume trusting electors and Burkean representatives. At a time of crisis (crisis because of the Quebec threat to separate, a threat that will remain credible even if the provincial referendum on independence does not take place or produces a negative vote) the fast turnover of parliamentarians in Ottawa has become dysfunctional. Porter was right for the wrong period. Now that the Canadian state is in danger of unraveling, it finds itself having a political elite that lacks both critical mass and experience.

138

What could be done to remedy the present incumbency problem? Let us list a number of possibilities: 1. Increasing the size of the House would, even if the speed of rotation remained the same, produce a larger group of experienced politicians from whom leaders could be selected, and a larger group of legislators linking the central state to the social system. If the 1867 population-torepresentative ratio had been maintained, the House of Commons should now have 1244 rather than 293 members. Smaller districts should also give minorities - at least those that are concentrated territorially - a better chance of being represented.^ 2. Creating an elected Senate • the triple E Senate advocated by some of the smaller provinces - a Senate that would be Elected, Equal, and Effective (effective at representing provincial interests), though not in­ tended to solve the incumbency problem, would provide a partial solution by adding to the number of experienced elected politicians in Ottawa and could lengthen the average political life of the members of Parliament, if the Senators’ terms of office were as long as those of their American counterparts. 3. Extending the life of a Parliament from five to seven years in the hope that this would lengthen tenure rather than discourage candidacy and the seeking of re-election. 4. Removing some of the equalizing constraints in the rules governing election financing and access to the media in order to give a marked advantage to the two major parties, in the hope that this would bring them closer together, thus reduce the amount of non-compensatory electoral migrations, and so reduce the size of the aggregate electoral swings. 5. Adopting a system of proportional representation that would enable the parties to protect their elites against voting shifts (Franks: 1987; McCormick et al: 1981). Most of these proposals have a desperate sound, that of tinkering. At the 1988 survival rates, tripling the size of the House would increase the number of members with at least ten years of service from 32 to 96. That would be an improvement since a typical cabinet "consumes" about 30 people. But would that be sufficient?

139

Lengthening the duration of a parliament could possibly add a year or two to the average length of parliamentary service, but might deter candi­ dacy and increase the drop out rate** if the life of the backbencher does not become more attractive than it is at present. Removing or setting drastically higher the cap on election spending at both the national and the constituency level would be politically unpopu­ lar, hence unlikely to be considered, since the effect of the reform would be to reduce the electoral impact of the NDP.^ But, even if feasible, that change might not have the effect of reducing the swing vote to any con­ siderable extent The swings pre-date the introduction of the present re­ strictive campaign regulations (see Paltiel: 1984, 1989a). It may also be that removing the cap would have the perverse effect of hurting the in­ cumbent if, as found by Heintzman (1991) in the 1988 election, the effect of spending peaks sooner for the incumbent than the non incumbent. A Senate and PR would have more profound effects, but a Senate does not appear at the moment to be in Quebec’s interests, and "Quebec" not "incumbency" is the major problem at hand. As for PR, provided one used large districts and a rigid list system, it should have the effect desired. But its major drawback is in its increasing the chances of governmental insta­ bility at the very time when the federal political elite needs strengthening (for the debate over PR see Cairns: 1968, 1970; Lovink: 1970; Irvine: 1979). At this juncture in Canadian politics, when regional parties are on the rise, PR would have more disadvantages than advantages. The incumbency problem, though serious, pales in comparison to the major problem faced by the Canadian state: transforming the existing federal structure to adapt it to the contradictory needs of two distinct societies, French Quebec and English Canada, that are both state and nation-building on different foundations. That major problem must be resolved first before one could possibly determine the appropriate strategy for increasing the length of time that the average MP serves in Parliament; but increased it should be. Canada suffers from an incumbency shortage.

140

Table 73 Profile of the Canadian 1988 Parliament, by Party (in per cent)

NPD Liberals Cons. X

Men

Univ. educated

88 85 86 86

77* 83 79 80

Cabinet exper. at federal level 0 15 26 19

Municipal experience

Provincial experience 12 11 5 8

19 34 34 31

Under 51 years old

Over 65 years old

Elected in 80 or before

Elected in 74 or before

53" 56 44 48

5** 0 4 3

30 21 25 25

7 13 10 11

* The education level of NDP MPs could not be determined in 14% of cases compared to less than 3% for the other parties. •• The age of NDP MPs could not be determined for 12% compared to 4% for the other parties. Source: Parliamentary Guide 1990, supplemented by MPs constituency office when the information was not provided by the Guide.

Table 7.4 Profile of the 1988 Parliament: Date of First Election to Parliament, by Party (in per cent)

NPD Liberals Conser­ vatives X

1988

1984

1980

1979

1974

1972

1968

1965

1963

1962

53 61

7 11

9 7

21 6

2 1

2 4

5 4

0 4

0 1

0 1

30 42

41 28

4 5

11 11

4 3

8 6

1 2

1 0

0 1

0 1

Source: Parliamentary Guide, 1990.

(N)

Notes

1 Only in 1991 was the rule of "immortality" removed in Taiwan. 2 The constitutional crisis of the early 1990s, a crisis caused by Quebec’s threat to separate and the related rise of new parties in both Quebec and Western Canada (the Bloc québécois and the Reform Party) may well put an end to that stability and may also put an end to the normal practice of monoparty government. I shall not speculate about the shape of the new Canada in the making; the interplay of too many factors is involved. 3 Following common practice I shall use MP to refer to the elected members of Parliament, the members of the Lower House. 4 Donald Blake indicates that between 1935 and 1988, the proportion of 5 percentage point marginal seats has never been lower than 12 per cent, fell only twice below 15 per cent, and went three times over 20 per cent. He notes however that there is a low correlation between marginality (10 per cent gap) and turnover (Blake: 1991). MPs, if aware of that fact, should feel unsure even in "safe" districts. 5 For the relationship between aggregate and individual electoral shifts see Laponce (1969). 6 The percentage of new members (20 to 25 per cent) given by Blondel in his comparison of Canada with other countries in the 1950s and 1960s underestimates the Canadian turnover rate (Blondel: 1973). The Canadian elections of 1963 and 1965 were exceptional in having had low turnover. The rates of change were: 41 per cent in 1953-57, 41 per cent in 1957-58, 45 per cent in 1958-62,21 per cent in 1962-63, 24 per cent in 1963-65, 40 per cent in 1968-72; the overall average being 35 per cent (Lovink: 1973). For 1963-65, my own analysis of the Parliamentary Guide gives only 17.5 per cent instead of the 24 per cent given by Lovink (1973). 7 Length of service varies by province. In the 1979 parliament, for example, Alberta had an average of 8.9, Quebec 6.6 years. It varies also, of course, by political seniority. In the parliament elected in 1988, 48 per cent of the cabinet or former cabinet members had at least eight years of consecutive parliamentary experience and 32 per cent had more than 14 years. For the other MPs, who comprised 81

142

per cent of the House, the percentages were respectively 18 per cent and 5 per cent. Sutherland finds that inexperienced ministers are more "accident prone" and more likely to resign (Sutherland: 1991) 8 They have a 52 free trip travel allowance per year. 9 Canadian MPs come mostly from the professions and business, from social groups that can afford and actually benefit from a political interlude in their careers. In the 1988 House, lawyers accounted for 20 per cent, business for 26 per cent, teachers for 18 per cent, the health professions for 5 per cent. For a comparison of American Senators and British MPs see Komberg (1973) and Komberg and Mishler (1976). For the 1988 House, see Tables 7.3 and 7.4. 10 The Act of 1985 sets the total number of members at 295, the elec­ toral quotient (the size of the ideal district) is thus 87,000 people (Franks: 1987). 11 And so would the providing of indexed pensions after nine or ten rather than after six years; and so would too, possibly, an increase in salary ($64,400 basic + $21,300 tax free expense allowance +$6,000 housing and meal allowance = $91,700 (Directory of the Government of Canada: 1991). 12 Formal registration is required if a party wishes to raise and spend money in a federal campaign. To be able to register the party must have at least 12 sitting members or field a minimum of 50 candidates. Total party spending, as well as spending locally by the candidates, is limited by the election Act. The purchase of radio and television time is also restricted. Part of the campaign expenses (22.5 per cent) are reimbursed out of public funds to the parties spending at least 10 per cent of their limit, as well as to the candidates receiving at least 15 per cent of the votes. In the case of the latter the reimbursement is set at 50 per cent. In 1984, the Conservative party reported spending 6.3 million dollars, the Liberals 6.2 and the NDP 4.7 respectively. Additionally, 23 million was reported to have been spent at the constituency level. While the Conservatives spent 97 per cent and the Liberals 85 per cent of their limit, the NDP spent only 68 per cent (Seidle: 1987, 1991a, 1991b). The regulations favor the incumbent parties, and more particularly the dominant parties, those that are expected to alternate in office (Paltiel: 1989a, 1989b). The spending

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regulations apply only to the election period that follows the issuing of a writ of elections. The regulation of election financing, as well as other aspects of the election rules, have been reviewed by a Royal Commission whose research reports, in 23 volumes, have been published by Dundum Press (Toronto and Oxford) in 1991. Author’s Note: For their assistance in searching the literature I am much indebted to Wendy Bancroft and Jas Sekhon. Additionally, Jas Sekhon prepared the graphs and tables.

References Atkinson, M. M. and Doherty, D. C. (1992), "Moving Right Along: The Roots of Amateurism in the Canadian House of Commons", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 25,2, pp. 295-318. Barrie, D. and Gibbins, R. (1989), "Parliamentary Careers in the Cana­ dian Federal State", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 22,1, pp. 137145. Blake, D. E. (1991), "Party Competition and Electoral Volatility: Canada in Comparative Perspective" in Bakis, H. (ed.), Representation, Integration, and Political Parties in Canada, Toronto: Dundrun. Blondel, J. (1973), Comparative Legislatures, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Blondel, J. (1985), Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, Beverly-Hills: Sage. Byrme, D. (1972), "Some Attendance Patterns Exhibited by Members of Parliament during the 28th Parliament", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 15,1, pp. 135-141. Cairns, A C. (1968), "The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921-1965", Canadian Journal of Political Science 1, 1, pp. 5580. Cairns, A C. (1970), "A Reply to J.A.A. Lovink ‘on Analyzing the Impact of the Electoral Systems on the Party System in Canada", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 3,4, pp. 517-521.

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Cairns, A. C. (1988a), Constitution, Government, and Society, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Cairns, A. C. (1988b), "Citizens (outsiders) and Governments (insiders) in Constitution making: the case of Meech Lake", Canadian Public Policy 14, Sept., pp. 121-145. Canadian Parliamentary Guide (1990), Toronto: Info Globe. Casstevens, T. W. and Denham, W. A. Ill (1970), "Turnover and Tenure in the Canadian House of Commons, 1867-1968", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 3,4, pp. 655-661. Clarke, H. D. and Price, R. G. (1977), "A Note on the Prenomination Role Socialization of Freshmen Members of Parliament", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 10,2, pp. 392-406. Clarke, H. D. and Price, R. G. (1981), "Parliamentary Experience and Representational Role Orientations in Canada", Legislative Studies Quarterly 6,3, pp. 374-390. Clarke, H. D. and Price, R. G. (1980), "Freshmen MPs’ Job Images: The Effects of Incumbency, Ambition and Position", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 13,3, pp. 583-606. Clarke, H. D., Jenson, J., LeDuc, P. and Pammett, J. (1984), Absent man­ date: the Politics o f Discontent in Canada, Toronto: McGraw-Hill. Créte, J. (1973), "Analyse stratégique du choix d’un candidai dans une circonscription urbaine", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 6, 2, pp. 255-270. Cunningham, R. (1971), "The Impact of Local Candidate in Canadian Federal Elections", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 7, 2, pp. 287291. Davis, M. (1964), "Did they vote for party or candidate in Halifax" in Meisel, J. (ed.), Papers on the 1962 Election, Toronto: Toronto Univer­ sity Press. Davis, M. (1967), "Ballot Behaviour in Halifax Revisited" in Courtney, J. (ed.), Voting in Canada, Scarborough: Prentice Hall. Directory o f the Government o f Canada (1991), Toronto: Financial Post. Dobell, P. (1985), "Some Comments on Parliamentary Reform" in Aucoin, P. (ed.), Institutional Reform for Representative Government, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 41-70.

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Drummond, R. J. and Fletcher, F. J. (1980), "Political Communication and Orientation to Legislators Among Ontario Voters" in Clarke, H. D., Campbell, C., Quo, R. Q. and Goddard, A. (eds), Parliament, Policy and Representation, Toronto: Methuen, Chapter 6. Dyck, R. (1983), "A profile of the candidates in the 1977 and 1981 Ontario Provincial Elections", paper read at the CJPS annual meeting of 1983 in Vancouver. Erickson, L. and Carty, R. K. (1991), "Candidate Selection in Canadian Political Parties", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 24, 2, pp. 331350. Feigerl, F. (1989), Canada Votes, 1935-1988, Durham: Duke University Press. Fleming, R. J. (1981), Canadian Legislatures: the 1981 Comparative Study, Toronto: Office of the Assembly at Queen’s Park. Fleming, R. J. (1982), Canadian Legislatures: the 1982 Comparative Study, Toronto: Office of the Assembly at Queen’s Park. Franks, C. E. S. (1987), Parliament o f Canada, Toronto: Toronto Univer­ sity Press. Hall, P. A. and Whashbum, R. P. (1979), "Elites and Representation: A Study of the Attitudes and Perceptions of MPs" in Gaboury, J. P. and Hurley, J. R., The Canadian House of Commons Observed, Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, pp. 293-325. Happy, J. R. (1989), "Economic Performance and Retrospective Voting in Canadian Federal Elections", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 31, 2, pp. 377-387. Heintzman, D. K. (1991), "Electoral Competition, Campaign Expenditures and Incumbency Advantage" in Seidle, F. L. (ed.), Party and Election Finance in Canada, Toronto: Dundrun Press. Hoffman, D. and Ward, N. (1970), Bilingualism and Biculturalism in the Canadian House o f Commons, Ottawa: Queen’s Printer. Irvine, W. P. (1982), "Does the Candidate Make a Difference? The Macro-Politics and Micro-Politics of Getting Elected", Canadian Jour­ nal o f Political Science 15,14, pp. 755-782. Irvine, W. P. (1979), Does Canada Need a New Electoral System?, Kingston, Ont.: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations of Queen’s University.

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Kay, B. J., Brown, S. D., Curtis, J. E., Lambert, R. D. and Kornberg, A. (1967), Canadian Legislative Behaviour: A Study o f the 25th Parliament, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Kornberg, A (1973), Legblatures and Social Change: the Case o f Canada, Beverly Hills: Sage. Kornberg, A and Mishler, W. (1976), Influence in Parliament: Canada, Durham: Duke University Press. Krachinsky, M. and Milne, W. J. (1985), "Additional Evidence on the Effect of Incumbency in Canadian Elections", Canadian Journal o f Poli­ tical Science 18,1, pp. 155-165. Krachinsky, M. and Milne, W. J. (1986), "The Effect of Incumbency in the 1984 Federal and 1985 Ontario Elections", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 19,2, pp. 337-343. Krachinsky, M. and Milne, W. J. (1991), "Some evidence on the Effect of Incumbency in the 1988 Canadian Federal Election" in Seidle, F. C. (ed.), Election Finance in Canada, Toronto: Dundrun Press. Laponce, J. A (1966), "An Experimental Method to Measure the Tendency to Equibalance in a Political System", American Political Science Review 40,4, pp. 982-993. Laponce, J. A (1969), People vs. Politics, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Leduc, L. (1985), "Canada" in Crewe, I. and Denver, D. (ed.), Electoral Changes in Western Democracies: Patterns and Sources o f Electoral Volatibility, London: Crown Helm. Lovink, J. A. A (1970), "On Analyzing the Impact of the Electoral System on the Party System in Canada", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 3, 4, pp. 497-516. Lovink, J. A. A. (1973), "Is Canadian Politics too Competitive?", Canadian Journal o f Political Science 6,3, pp. 341-379. McCormick, P., Manning, E. C. and Gibson, G. (1981), Regional Repre­ sentation: The Canadian Partnership, Calgary: Canada West Foundation. Meisel, J. (1972), "Howe, Hubris and 1972: an Essay on Political Elitism" in Meisel, J. (ed.), Working Papers on Canadian Politics, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Paltiel, K. Z. (1989a), "Canadian Election Expense Legislation 1963-85: a Critical Appraisal or was the Effort Worth it?" in Alexander, H. (ed.), Comparative Political Finance in the 1980s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 51-75. Paltiel, K. Z. (1989b), "Political Marketing, Party Finance, and the Decline of Political Parties" in Gagnon, A. and Tremblay, B., Canadian Parties in Transition, Scarborough: Nelson Canada. Paltiel, K. Z. (1984), "The Control of Campaign Finance in Canada: A Survey and an Overview" in Thorbum, H., Party Politics in Canada, Scarborough: Prentice Hall. Patterson, S. (1978), "The Semi-Sovereign Congress" in King, A. (ed.), The New American Political System, Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. Porter, J. (1965), The Vertical Mosaic, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Potocka-Hoser, A. (1967), "Experiments on the tendency to equibalance in a political system: the Polish case" paper read at the IPSA congress in Montreal. Riker, W. (1962), The Theory o f Political Coalitions, New Haven: Yale University Press. Seidel, F. L. (1987), in Fox, P. W. and White, G., Politics in Canada, Toronto: McGraw Hill. Seidel, F. L. (1991a), Comparative Issues in Party and Election Finance, Toronto: Dundrun. Seidel, F. L. (1991b), Issues in Party and Election Finance in Canada, Toronto: Dundrun. Spafford, D. (1970), "The Electoral System of Canada”, American Political Science Review 64,1, pp. 168-176. Sutherland, S. L. (1991), "The Consequences of Electoral Volatility: Inexperienced Ministers, 1949-90" in Bakis, H., Representation and Political Parties in Canada, Toronto: Dundrun. Terry, J. (1977), "Support for Incumbent Governments: a Cross-Provincial Analysis" paper presented at the CPSA annual meeting in Fredericton. Thompson, F. and Stanbury, W. T. (1984), "Looking out for No. 1: Incum­ bency and Interest Group Politics", Canadian Public Policy 10, 2, pp. 239-244.

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Ward, N. (1963), The Canadian House o f Commons: Representation, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Williams, R. J. (1981), "Candidate Selection" in Penniman, H. (ed.), Canada at the Polls, Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, pp. 86-120. Wilson, J. (1987), "Voting Behaviour" in Fox, P. (ed.), Politics: Canada, Toronto: Graham White. Wilson, J. (1986), T he Myth of Candidate Partisanship: the Case of Waterloo South", Journal o f Canadian Studies 3,4, pp. 21-31.

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8 Parliamentary Incumbents in Germany: No Matter of Choice? BERNHARD BOLL

German legislators live a paradoxical life: they enjoy the respect of their constituencies as "their representative", suffer from the omnipotent influence of their party leadership on their parliamentary work, and are, nevertheless, poorly regarded politicians. For an individual candidate, a seat in the Bundestag is hard to win, but even harder to lose. Several things, interwoven and interdependent, account for that. The legal regula­ tions as codified in the electoral law for a candidacy seem fairly easy to fulfil. However, the moment the main procedures of selection are trans­ ferred to the parties’ responsibility, difficulties begin. This chapter attempts to shed some light on the position of German legislators and their situation within the parliamentary system of the Federal Republic. In particular, it focuses on the structures and factors that influence the selection, nomination, and election of the members of the German Bundestag. Eventually, an answer is attempted to the question: to what extent is the duration of incumbency a problem in the country. And if there is such a problem, what proposed remedies are at hand?

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Some preliminary remarks about the German political regime may be illuminating. First, the role of the Bundestag and its situation within the constitution is discussed, followed by some insights into the internal struc­ ture of its work and the general public’s perception of this constitutional body. It is obvious, finally, that some light needs to be shed on the party system as well, in order to provide the reader with at least some basic ideas and insights concerning the German case. The Bundestag is the only federal body in the political system chosen by direct election, and is therefore the center of the political system of the Federal Republic. * Besides having a legislative function, the presently 662 Bundestag members elect the head of government, the chancellor. As the central legislative body in the political system, the Bundestag also controls and checks all activities of the executive, the German goverment. In addi­ tion, the Bundestag participates in the election of the president of the Federal Republic and votes also upon the half of the members of the constitutional court (Bundesverfassungsgericht). Aside from the Bundestag, there is also the Bundesrat, the representa­ tive body of the Länder. The Bundesrat is not only a symbolic body by which the existence of a federal structure of the Federal Republic and the interests of the Länder are to be represented. The Bundesrat has as well the power of legislative initiatives and votes upon federal laws that touch the powers and responsibilities of the Länder governments. Since, how­ ever, the members of the Bundesrat are not directly elected but delegated by their respective Land governments, the Bundestag will remain the only body dealt with in this paper.

Parliamentary organisational structures The internal structure of the Bundestag is highly differentiated and corresponds to the model of a "working" rather than a "speaking" parlia­ ment (Steffani: 1969), i.e. most of the legislative work of the parliament is done in the now twenty-three standing committees of the Bundestag; less work is done on the floor, where, in general, only final legislative decis­ ions about legislative initiatives and the pros and cons of the legislation are discusssed. As the political parties are very powerful actors within the

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German political system and in control of almost all important public sectors and institutions, it is clear that the scope of individual parliamen­ tary activity is also highly dependent on the hierarchical organisation of the parliamentary parties within the Bundestag. The organisational structure and the extent of control of individual members depends on the size of the party but also on the party’s philoso­ phy. Clearly, all the parties couldn’t pursue their parliamentary work suc­ cessfully without some organizational structure; however, it also limits the range of individual parliamentary action and puts effective control into the hands of the parliamentary party executive committees (Fraktionsvorstande). Parliamentary party executive committees lead and organize the parties’ policy and membership in the standing committees of the Bundes­ tag.^ Each party’s executive committee nominates, for example, the party’s share of standing committee chairpersons and deputy chairs; it designates membership for certain members of the party in every single standing committee; and even determines the list of speakers who repre­ sent the party’s point-of-view in parliamentary debates. And, perhaps most important of all, it usually "recommends" how the individual member should vote on legislative issues. This is plain routine in consensual cases. However, if controversial issues are to be decided upon, the disciplinary power of these recommendations are revealed: then the decision of the parliamentary party on any given legislative subject is an almost compul­ sory voting recommendation to all individual members.-* This aspect is known as the "Fraktionsdisziplin" which, though in rare cases, subordi­ nates individual political opinion to a common corporate partisan behav­ iour on the parliamentary floor. Although no such formal hierarchical organisation was run by the Green parliamentary party, the party had established something similiar. Stemming from peace and ecology movements with a high appreciation of grass-root democratic structures, even the Greens could not work without at least a functionally equivalent body. Until the failure of West German Greens to return to parliament during the first all-German election in 1990, a collectively led executive comittee (Gesch&ftsfuhrender Fraktionsvorstand) was established, since an oligarchical parliamentary party

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executive committee was to be avoided. Virtually without political power, the party’s executive committee was merely in charge of unavoidable administrative and technical matters (Poguntke: 1987). During the current Bundestag, the party’s eastern successors, Bündnis ’90/Grüne, continued this tradition with somewhat leaner organisational structures in parliament and increased political competence of the "managing executive committee" (Geschäftsführender Ausschuß) (Geschäftsordnung Bündnis ’90/ Grüne: 1991). It goes without saying that a parliamentary party executive committee, in charge of these crucial parliamentary decisions, not only manages many different tasks but also carries out important functions and powers that concern the activity of an individual incumbent in parliament. The standing orders of the parliamentary parties are often said to be too big a limitation on individual parliamentary action (Röper: 1983, Hamm-Briicher: 1989). Since the Basic Law provides a "free mandate" to the individual representative that guarantees the independence of his/her parliamentary work, this conflict is a continuing topic of intraparty discus­ sion and academic analysis (Dichgans: 1974; Fromme: 1978).

Public perceptions of parliament Incumbents on the whole enjoy less respect than the Bundestag itself, as was recently confirmed by a 1991 poll conducted by the German poll institute EMNID. When asked for an evaluation of the most respected professions in the country, a representative sample of Germans ranked the profession of a member of the Bundestag, among the 25 listed, at the very bottom of the chart.^ It is important to note, though, that the percep­ tion and evaluation of the members’ work is highly dependent on how the question is phrased. When asked in general terms about "the politicians", respondents reply more negatively than if one inquires about an individual member of the Bundestag. When the performance of the incumbent from the respondent’s own constituency is at issue, ratings are much higher (Schuttemeyer: 1986).

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The institution "Bundestag" holds a middle position in public favor between a general scepticism towards politics on the one hand, and the positive evaluation of the individual legislator’s work on the other (Schuttemeyer: 1986). Herzog et al. (1990) obtain similiar results on the general perception of the Bundestag’s performance and the reputation of its members. As can be seen in table 8.1, the central representational body of Germany is clearly not at top of the list when it comes to an evaluation of the representation of political interests by the population. As can be seen, the Bundestag ranks 6th out of ten. Only 9.7 per cent of all respondents feel themselves effectively represented by the Bundestag and its members. Other public institutions, such as political parties (10.4 per cent) or the national government (11.0 per cent), are perceived better than the Bundestag. More than the representation of its political interests, the salary paid to members of the Bundestag (see below), strongly affects Germany’s popular interest in its political representatives. There is no other issue related to its political representatives, such as the debate about term limi­ tation in the United States, that could similarly agitate the German public. Recently, public indignation was caused by the attempt of the Hamburg parliament to excessively increase the allowances paid to its members. Although this attempt was finally defeated, the incident provoked a broad public debate. Eventually, the issue brought back the problem of office-holders raising their own salaries, an old but still unre­ solved question in Germany, back on the political agendas of the Land parliaments and the Bundestag. Finally, in June 1992, an independent commission was launched to evaluate the amount of German legislators’ remuneration.

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Table 8.1 Civic Perception of Representation Institution/Group Representation by National Government Bundestag with Repr. Newspapers and Media Political Party Church Administration Courts of Justice Trade Union Professional Associations Civic Movements Number of interviews

Strong Rank % 11.0 9.7 10.5 10.4 10.9 9.6 12.5 9.2 7.7 6.3

2 6 4 5 3 7 1 8 9 10

Average Rank % 45.6 43.3 50.8 46.1 27.1 45.5 35.8 29.4 29.1 26.5

4 2 1 3 9 5 6 7 8 10

Weak Rank % 29.3 26.6 23.1 26.7 34.5 26.9 22.7 28.9 26.4 29.3

2 7 9 6 1 5 10 4 8 2

No particular expectation % 14.0 153 15.5 16.8 17.5 18.0 28.8 32.7 36.7 38.0 2009

Source: Herzog. D. et al. (1990). "Abgeordnete und Biirger". Opladen, p. 54. Question: "Many public institutions take care of various types of public interest. Can you please say to what extent you feel effectively represented by the following institutions. "1" should indicate that you don’t feel adequately represented at all. "7" that you feel yourself well represented by this institution”.

The electoral system The rules and regulations of an electoral system strongly influence the structure of the legislature, the party system and the extent of political participation by the electorate. In Germany, all this is codified in the federal election law (Bundeswahlgesetz) and in the party law (Parteiengesetz). For the national elections that take place once every four years a system of a personalized proportional representation is in operation.** According to a 1953 provision of the electoral law, parties must win at least three "direct” seats (see below) or gain at least five per cent nationwide of all valid votes in order to get seats in the Bundestag.^ As suggested above, every voter has two votes; both are cast at the same time. The first vote determines, by plurality, the candidate directly elected in each of the 328 constituencies. The second vote elects via a "Land list" another 328 representatives. On the basis of proportion, these votes for a party’s Land list determine the parties’ size in terms of seats won for the new Bundestag.®

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In addition, parties can gain surplus mandates (Uberhangmandate). If a party gains more direct seats than it would - overall - be entitled to fill according to its second vote result, these seats are not lost. They are added to the proportional share of seats. Apparently, these additional seats have never tipped the scales, i.e. their number never decisively changed parliamentary majorities in the history of the Bundesrepublik (Nohlen: 1986).

Power and influence of political parties With the exception of the early years of the Federal Republic, three parties have traditionally been represented in the Bundestag. The party system has been dominated by the following three parties: (1) The conser­ vative "Christlich Demokratische Union" (CDU) and her sister-party "Christlich-Soziale Union" (CSU) which together form the parliamentary party CDU/CSU since 1961. (2) The second major party is the "Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" (SPD), which, together with (3) the liberal "Freie Demokratische Partei" (FDP), took over government for the first time from 1969 until 1982. These three parties have characterized the West German party system for more than three decades; all three parties have had realistic chances to become members of government on both the national and the Land levels. In 1983, the three-party-system changed its structure to a four-party-system when the Green party came to be repre­ sented in the Bundestag for the first time. Additionally, the German unifi­ cation brought a fifth party into the national parliament. The party of de­ mocratic socialism (PDS), successor of the former stalinist party of East Germany, the SED, entered the Bundestag after the first all-German elec­ tion on 2 December, 1990. Parties in Germany participate in shaping public opinion. The role of the parties rests on Article 21 of Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law. This article is most often quoted when parties need to justify their enor­ mous power and influence in the country. Parties always cite this article when members of the Bundestag, whatever their party, complain about the "Fraktionsdisziplin" that makes it almost impossible for any individual to deviate from the party line (Hamm-Brucher: 1989). Nowhere can this

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influence be seen better than in the fact that German parliamentarians always vote unanimously along party lines, even though - if controversial matters are to be voted upon - their respective individual opinion is in clear contrast to the party’s voting recommendation. Additionally, the party’s power and influence on its parliamentary personnel becomes particularly clear in the local party organizations’ control of the selection of its Bundestag candidates (see below). Not only is the German parties’ influence dominant in the Bundestag; there is, in fact, hardly any public institution today that is not in one way or another controlled by these parties. The continuous extension over time of the parties’ influence and the fact that parties receive huge public subsidies by a complicated reimbursement procedure is the subject of harsh critical scholarly review. Critics have attacked both the overly generous financial aid the parties receive and the overall control of virtually every sector of public life (von Araim: 1980, 1990). This growth of the parties has been accompanied by institutional, organizational and programmatic shortcomings (Raschke: 1982). Due to this development, a general mistrust and reluctance of the German population towards the parties and political activity within them as a result of this process has often been debated, ever since the early eighties (Doring and Smith: 1982; Wildenmann: 1989; Stoss: 1990; Westle: 1990).

Selection of Bundestag candidates a) General considerations The selection of Bundestag candidates is a twofold process and is subject to complete party control. There are different methods for the selection of constituency candidates and for those who run for election on the party’s Land List. The election law merely prescribes the procedures and sizes of the bodies which elect the candidates on both the constit­ uency level and the Land list. Before the constituency and Land list nomi­ nations are discussed, however, some of the intraparty strategies behind the formal process are considered.

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Seniority or prominence is generally a safe ticket to nomination, though some exceptions are well known (Kaack: 1971; Herzog: 1990). New candidates or young members automatically find themselves in a much worse position because of their bad placement on the party’s Land list. An example will clarify this aspect. Suppose the party gains ten seats via the land list; that means that the first ten candidates ranked on the respective Land list of the party are elected to the Bundestag. Usually, however, these (hypothetical) ten people are also running in a constitu­ ency. If candidates win their constituency seat, they are automatically taken off the Land list, making seats available to those candidates who - in our example - ranked eleventh onwards on the list. On the other hand, however, if all of these ten people should fail to win their constituency, they will nonetheless be elected to the Bundestag, because of their excel­ lent ranking on the party’s Land list. Generally, younger candidates can be found at the bottom of the list only, since promising ranks on the list are usually occupied by the party’s upper echelons. This fact additionally reduces a junior or first-time candidates’ chances of becoming elected. Hence, for a party to do poorly during elections means that the chances of junior and new candidates being able to enter the Bundestag are minimized, since they are normally ranked towards the bottom of the list. Therefore, even if a party does poorly in the election, the "big shots" of that party will enter the Bundestag in any event via the Land list at the cost of the juniors’ electoral chances. As a result, parliamentary seniority increases while new candidates or members with less seniority are the usual victims of unsuccessful elections. Thus, if voters decide in significant numbers not to vote for a given party, party juniors are both the targets and victims of voters’ anger. In this way, the results of the nomination processes and the strategies behind them are clearly functions of highly organized and differentiated party hierarchies.

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b) Constituency nominations Due to the peculiar nature of the German electoral system, constituen­ cies are frequently represented by more than one MP. One will be directly elected by the first vote, a second or even a third candidate will be elected via the Land list. Nevertheless, the latter will act like "normal" constitu­ ency representatives throughout a legislative period in order to enhance their chances of winning the seat directly during the next election. For the purpose of our argument, all these representatives are regarded as incum­ bents. German incumbents enjoy the advantage of their intra-party and local popularity, experience and reputation. The selection criteria for the constituency therefore depend to a great extent on the decision of the cur­ rent incumbent’s political plans. If the incumbent decides to run for reelection, renomination is virtually a certainty (Zeuner: 1970; Kaack: 1971). However, if the incumbent decides not to run for re-election or is not very likely to be renominated, selection processes begin, often initia­ ted by the local party leadership. Candidates can be proposed by parties, or groups and individuals as long as they have the signatures of at least 200 residents of the constitu­ ency (§20,2 election law). The selection of candidates is valid only if a party membership assembly or a party’s delegates’ conference has directly voted upon the proposed candidates. In principle, there are three ways to nominate a constituency candidate. Generally, delegates of the local party organizations within the constitu­ ency meet and vote for the party’s nomination for the Bundestag. Although the national party has the right to veto the suggested nominee, local party organizations are highly independent in recruitment matters, because the national party’s veto can be rejected by a second nomination procedure. In this case, the constituency party organization has to meet again to vote upon the nominee. Whatever the result of this second nomi­ nation process, this decision is final and not subject to any further rejec­ tion or revision. Though the national party rarely vetoes a nominee, it often recom­ mends and supports a certain candidate. But even so, local party organiza­ tions have sometimes rejected recommendations of the national party in

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favour of their own preferred local nominee (Kaack: 1971; Herzog: 1990). Another situation arises in the nomination procedure if the incumbent decides to run, but is challenged by a party member of the same constitu­ ency. If the candidacy is contested in this way, incumbents have several advantages. Even if a contestor is equally popular in the constituency, party communication to and within the constituency is usually controlled by the incumbent. Among the most important criteria for (re-)nomination are: the ideology of the candidate, attachment to the constituency, repre­ sentation of its needs in the national parliament, parliamentary compe­ tence, success and experience (Zeuner: 1970; Kaack: 1971; Gau: 1983). These are criteria which are valid for both incumbent and contestor. But even so, the advantage rests with the incumbent - since the incumbent is vested with all powers, privileges and the reputation of an MP, it is fairly easy for him or her to demonstrate these qualities.

c) Land list nominations Land lists, which bring another 328 parliamentarians to the Bundestag, are sometimes also called party lists, because the party itself determines the ranking of its candidates. Voters are not allowed to change the lists; that is, to alter the ranking of preferred candidates. In accordance with the election law, an assembly of delegates from every district of the Land party votes in secret elections upon the place­ ment of the Land party’s candidates. Procedures for the selection and placement of candidates on the Land lists must be described in the party statutes. The list serves different functions and meets different criteria. It may ensure a seat to those of the party in "risky" constituencies. Furthermore, Land lists are used by the parties to ensure proportional representation of the different groups within the Land party. The placement process involves much backroom bargaining. Criteria are: previous rank on the list, whether the individual is also a constituency candidate, the geographic region represented, the representation of speci­ fic interest groups within the party, and, finally, the age of the candidate, i.e. whether he is perceived as too young or too old (Kaack: 1971). For

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reasons of reputation, party leaders and the most celebrated party members are always found on top of the list, since the first five names of every Land list are printed on the slate. As seniority, in addition, is as well among these important factors that determine the ranking on the list, it is hardly astonishing that - with the usual exceptions to the rule - younger or first-time candidates can particularly be found towards the end of the list. The emphasis on proportional representation of all party factions and regional organizations virtually means cutting one common Land list into several smaller ones. These smaller segments of the List are determined by lower party organization levels and the party factions within them. After the decisions have been made by lower party bodies, the list and the highly formalized procedure of its structural set-up are, not surprisingly, almost impossible to modify significantly during the meeting of the dele­ gates from the entire Land party. Hence the structure of the Land list becomes highly stabilized with only little change over time by such a procedure. This is because of the complex distribution of segments of the list to different party groups, which of course claim these sections, once they have gained them, as their unchangeable protectorate. The capacity of the national party to influence the Land list is very limited. While Land delegates try to take into account recommmendations by the national party, these suggestions are nevertheless subordina­ ted to the specific Land party circumstances (Kaack: 1971). The smaller the chances for a party to win a seat directly, the more crucial is the composition of the Land list for that party. This is particu­ larly valid for the smaller parties of the Federal Republic. Clearly, it is most important for the liberal FDP, which recruits almost all of its MPs via the Land lists. That means, in turn, that a very small number of party members of the FDP determine 100 per cent of their national parliamen­ tary personnel. Since the FDP has almost never won a direct seat, voters are excluded from a specific selection of candidates. Consequently, if the voter casts a second ballot for the FDP, the voter accepts the fact that it is the party which decides upon party representatives in the Bundestag. In summary, the selection of party candidates is plainly oligarchical (Zeuner: 1970; Kaack: 1971; Henkel: 1976), since most of the time candi­ dates are indirectly nominated by a small number of constituency dele­ gates who are often party functionaries themselves (Kaack: 1971). How­

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ever, easy access to local party functions and the difficulties German parties have in recruiting suitable candidates for even local mandates contradict this evaluation of oligarchical tendencies. Moreover, all this is aggravated by a general passivity of those party members who are not prepared to participate actively in the party or the political process (Niedermayer: 1989). The critical point here is the very small minority which selects and nominates candidates. Only 1,800,000 (=3.75 per cent) of the entire German electorate (about 48 million in the western part of the country^) are members of one of the parties; out of these, only a fifth of the total membership (Niedermayer: 1989) actually participates actively. As a result, only about 0.75 per cent of the total electorate can participate in the selection of parliamentary candidates. However, if one considers that selection is most often done by a relatively small number of delegates, the selecting circles are again reduced and the actual number of deciding persons is reduced even further. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the second vote for the Land list does not only determine, as already mentioned, the overall strength of the parties in the Bundestag. It also decides, in most cases, the fate of the individual candidate. This is because parties usually "back up" constitu­ ency candidates on Land lists. Hence, in the German context, the overall performance of the party carries far more weight for most individual candidates’ success than their own campaign efforts. It follows from this that, in the German political system, we must look for the incumbents’ advantages in the process of re-nomination rather than for advantages during the national election campaign.

Incumbency in Germany With these complexities of selection in mind, one would expect an exceptionally high rate of re-election among members and hence also, in longitudinal terms, a considerable average length of Bundestag member­ ship. But the data do not necessarily support this expectation, nor is there any pattern to be found which might lead to any (mono-) causal correla­

162

tion explaining the development having taken place. There are additional important factors which need to be looked at. The size of the respective party is clearly one of these factors, as can be seen in the case of the FDP. The overall turnover of new members and re-elected incumbents over time needs to be evaluated as well. Any longitudinal analysis suffers to some extent from certain unavoidable shortcomings. Every election has its own special historical context. That context, which cannot be covered here, can be expected to bring about peculiarities in the distribution of seats. A change in the number of seats by itself does not necessarily account for a higher or lower rate of new or re-elected Bundestag members of the party. The data being presented here only go back to 1953, and not to the first Bundestag in 1949. They end with the election to the eleventh Bundestag in 1987. The reasons for the limitation are both systematic and qualitative. First, the Bundestag was elected in 1949 for the first time. Hence the basis for a comparison of re-election quotas is 1949, considered as 100 per cent new Bundestag members. Re-election and seniority analysed for the 1949 Bundestag would make no sense. Second, the electoral system was changed in 1953, and data for 1949, though available, would clearly make a misleading comparison. In addi­ tion, only parties which were at least represented twice in the Bundestag are considered. In 1953, the party system changed from an initial multiparty-system to a stable three-party system, which lasted until 1983, when the Green party was represented in the Bundestag for the first time. This development extended the system to four parties. Finally, the reason for terminating the analysis with the eleventh Bun­ destag has to do with historical circumstances that clearly modify both the basis and the conditions of the analysis. Even before the first joint German election on December 2,1990, a delegation of 144 Volkskammer members (the former parliament of the GDR) was sent as full members to the Bundestag on October 3, 1990. Since developments before and after the German unification would obviously alter the terms of analysis, this development is also left out for the sake of both the argument and the longitudinal analysis.

163

TheFDP

It would seem reasonable to suppose that the better a party’s election result, the better the chances for an increase of the number of its new Bundestag members. But this suggestion can only be ambiguously recog­ nized in the data. It is clearly borne out only in the case of the FDP. The FDP was (aside from the 1983 appearance of the Green party) the only smaller party that successfully ran on a national scale and had virtually no chance of winning a direct seat. The number of FDP seats ranges from a low of only 30 in 1969 to a high 67 in 1961. In the party’s graph, the number of seats fluctuates more than that of any other party. This is caused by the fact that the FDFs chances of parliamentary representation rest entirely on second votes won by the party. The case of the FDP therefore gives us a good opportunity to corroborate the abovementioned suggestion that better election results alone do not necessarily increase the number of new incumbents of a party. Obviously, our generalization that new candidates almost always occupy marginal list positions is not true in all cases. Context-specific factors like new ideological reorientations, intra-party decisions, etc. also affect the situation. However, these factors cannot be covered in detail in our analysis. If the FDFs election result in 1961 (12.8 per cent of the votes) is considered, the ratio between re-elected incumbents and new members is seen to be almost evenly split; a similiar distribution is to be found in the case of the party’s 1980 election results, when about a third of the party’s representatives were new to the Bundestag. Towards the other end of the FDP record, the worst election results are clearly those of 1969 (5.8 per cent) and 1983 (7.0 per cent). At the same time, the number of new members dropped significantly to the lowest level, where only 30 (20.0 per cent of the party’s representatives) and 34 (11.8 per cent) were new to the Bundestag. Here, the above-mentioned generalization finds support, and the crucial role of the list placement strategies can clearly be seen: the more new candidates enter the Bundestag, the better the election results are for the party; conversely, the worse the party’s election results are, the less are chances of new candidates becoming members of the Bundestag.

164

Number of Party Saata 70

67

60 50 40 30

20 10

0

1953

1057

1961

1965

1969

1972

1976

1960

1963

1967

Laglalatlva Parlod B % of Raalactad

E3% of Naw Mambara

Barlln Rapraaantatlvaa not Includad

Figure 8.1 FDP: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents Even if these figures support the thesis, one has to account for the al­ most equal 1957 and 1972 results of the party. But even these results do not weaken the thesis. Considering the fact that both the 1957 and 1972 election results were above average for the party, they additionally give some support to the argument. The data demonstrate that, as a rule of thumb, only better than average results for a party bring a bigger number of new candidates to the Bundestag; by contrast, poor results account for a lower proportion of new Bundestag members. In other cases, different results, as well as similar results, can be observed. The idea of ensuring the candidacies of certain parliamentarians via a good placement on the list can be seen at work in the continuing high percentage rates of re-elec­ ted incumbents. But in addition, all other parties but the FDP had good chances to win seats via the first vote as well. This makes an analysis en­ tirely analogous to the FDP impossible because one cannot differentiate from the graph the ratio of directly won seats from those seats gained via the Land list.^ However, the data in table 8.2 show the respective pro­ portions of constituency seats and list seats for all parties over time.

165

Table 8.2 Direct Seats, Land List Seats and Election Results Year 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1972 1976 1980 1983 1987

D 130 147 114 118 87 65 94 81 136 124

CDU L ER%

D

61 70 78 78 106 112 96 93 55 50

42 47 42 36 34 31 40 40 44 45

36.4 40.1 35.7 38.0 36.6 35.2 38.0 34.2 38.2 34.5

CSU ER% L 10 6 8 13 15 17 13 12 9 4

8.8 10.1 9.6 9.6 9.5 9.7 10.7 10.3 10.6 9.8

D

SPD L

ER%

D

45 46 91 94 127 152 114 127 68 79

106 123 99 108 97 78 100 91 125 107

28.8 31.8 36.2 39.3 42.7 45.8 42.6 42.9 38.2 37.0

14 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

FDP L ER% 34 40 67 49 30 41 39 53 34 46

9.5 7.7 12.8 9.5 5.8 8.4 7.9 10.6 7.0 9.1

D

Greens L ER%

0 0

D: Direct Mandates. L: Land List Mandates. ER: Election Result Second Vote. Numbers do not include Berlin representatives. Due to the special status of Berlin before unification, they were al­ ways delegated by the Berlin Lana parliament; i.e., neither Land nor Direct seats as indicated in the table would be appropriate. Sources: Election Results: Poguntke, T. with Boll, B. (1992), "Germany" in Katz, R. S. and Mair, P. (eds), The De­ London: Sage, Chp. 6. Number of Direct and Land Seats: Statistisches Bundesamt (ed.) "Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit", Sonderheft, 40 Jahre Wahlen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Fachserie 1, Stuttgart: Metzler-Poeschel.

velopment o f Party Organisations in Western Democracies, 1960-1990: A Data Handbook,

27 47

5.6 8.3

Even so, the described correlation cannot be demonstrated as clearly as in the FDP case. Using the respective party’s data, an analysis of both the ratio of seat distributions among re-elected incumbents versus new candidates in the party’s graph, and, additionally, the ratio of direct seats, Land list seats and respective election results in table 8.3, does not adquately easily reveal the expected findings.

The CDU

Data in the CDU graph show the highest rate of new incumbents in 1953, though the election result was not the best ever gained by the party. The fact, however, that a couple of smaller parties were absorbed by the CDU or joined the party during that time, explains a good deal of this phenomenon. Thus, a first "normal" election for the party in 1957 again demonstrates support for the presented thesis. But if the data from 1965 (38.0 per cent), 1976 (38.0 per cent), and 1983 (38.2 per cent) are con­ sidered, the ratio of new members to re-elected incumbents is similiar in only two of the three cases. Although in 1965 (29.1 per cent new members: 70.9 per cent re-elected incumbents) and 1976 (28.4 per ce n t: 71.6) these ratios were almost the same, a similar distribution cannot be found in 1983 (14.6 per cent : 85.4 per cent), though the total election result for the party differs by 0.2 per cent only. Two aspects emerge from a consideration of these cases. Even though both the election results and the distribution of new members versus re­ elected incumbents are taken into account in 1965 and 1976, no clear correlation can be found that would support the assumption that good results for the party means a good chance for new candidacies. On the contrary, the 1972 election brought one of the worst election results for the CDU, but the number of new members was among the highest ever during a national election. One could even find more support for this reverse causality: after the 1983 election, the party received its secondbest result during a national election, while the rate of new members was one of the lowest ever within the CDU.

167

Only an analysis that takes the political circumstances of the time into consideration will help to understand this development: When the party with chancellor Helmut Kohl took over government in autumn 1982, the campaign period for the upcoming election day was significantly abbrevia­ ted compared to previous national elections. Thus, the nominating party locals either may have found no time for a substitute, or the party organizations saw no reason for doing so in advance of the upcoming 1983 election. The conclusion seems to be that, as far as the CDU is concerned, neither being in power nor earning good electoral results enhances the probabilities for new successful candidacies. Numbar of Party Saata 250

200

150

100

50

1953

1957

1961

1965

1969

1972

1976

1980

1983

Laglalatlva Parlod B % of Raalactad E3% of Naw Mambara Barlln Rapraaantatlvaa not Includad

Figure 8.2 CDU: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents

168

1987

The SPD

SPD’s data lead to related findings. In 1972 the party achieved its best election result (45.8 per cent), paralleled by considerable numbers of new incumbents. However, almost equally high election results in 1976 (42.6) and 1980 (42.9 per cent) produced simultaneously smaller (1980) and big­ ger (1976) proportions of new members versus re-elected incumbents. Thus, additional factors besides merely gains and losses during elections seem to influence the respective parties’ ratio of re-elected and new members of the Bundestag. In terms of the ratio of direct versus Land list seats, it is interesting to note that the SPD’s and CDU’s distribution alternate in size simulta­ neously with their periods of governmental power. Before the SPD took over in 1969, a majority of direct seats were won entirely by the CDU. During the SPD government up to 1982, when the CDU returned to power again, the picture shows the opposite: the SPD gained the majority of its seats directly, whereas the CDU secured the majority of its seats via the Land list votes. This development does not simply reflect the up and down of electoral results for parties either in power or in opposition. It also reveals the salience of a promising list placement and the importance of ensuring safe seats for the party’s core parliamentary personnel. Here, the logic of the list placement strategy becomes empirically evident. If the 1969-1980 period is considered in table 8.2 for both the CDU and the SPD, this seat-guaranteeing strategy can clearly be seen. The period covers the time of the great coalition, through the take-over of government by the Social Democrats (and the Liberals), up to the end of that governmental period. The point to be made here is valid for both parties: during oppositional times, the Land list placement becomes more important in order to guarantee safe seats for the core parliamentarians of a party. In the case of the CDU this is particularly evident. The party never had more "Land-list-MPs" than during the time of the Grand Coalition and the succeeding oppositional period. Conversely, the SPD almost never had lower numbers of "Land-list-MPs" in the Bundestag than during the same period.

169

Number of Party Seats 250 230

200

150

100

50

0

^

1953

1957

1961

1965

1969

1972

1976

1980

1983

1987

Legislative Period H % of Reelected H % of New Members Barlln Representatives not Included

Figure 8.3 SPD: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents To be sure, additional aspects need to be mentioned. First, the de­ scribed phenomenon is of course a consequence of the electoral system. But nevertheless, the figures clearly demonstrate both the strategic weight of the list placement and its instrumentalization as a parliamentary personnel planning tool. Hence, secondly, the dependency of an individual candidate on the party is also evident, as the party organizations, and only for a limited extent the candidate himself, determines the ranking on the list and thus his/her individual parliamentary fate. Obviously, both parties utilized the Land lists to ensure the survival of their most important parliamentary personnel through what were perceived to be "bad" political times for theparty. Moreover, if one considers the relatively high level of re-elected incumbents in the respective parties’ graphs, the other side of the coin is equally interesting to note: though there is no clear correlation between good election results and a high rate of new members, it is striking that this rate becomes

170

minimal during times of poor election results. A fairly provocative sum­ mary therefore suggests itself: new candidates do not necessarily profit from the parties’ good electoral performance, but they pay more of the partisan bill during bad political (parliamentary) periods. Number of Party Saata

12.2

8 7 ,0

1953

1957

1961

1965

1969

1972

1976

1980

1983

1987

Laglslatlva Parlod 1 % Reelected Incumbanta

E3%

New Membera

Figure 8.4 CSU: New Bundestag Members and Re-elected Incumbents The figures for the SPD, CDU and particularly for the CSU generally reflect a high level of re-elected incumbents, though in different dimen­ sions. Taking the entire period from 1953 to 1987, CSU Bundestag members enjoyed the greatest likelihood of being re-elected. On average, 75.82 per cent of its Bundestag members were re-elected. Taken together, all parties show a 1:4 probability over time, i.e. one out of four parliamentarians was elected to the Bundestag for the first time during each of the 10 Bundestag elections considered here. Nevertheless, even over time, there is a development towards re-election, though not a generally steady or continuous one. The overall growth of the average length of incumbency may be used as an indicator of a growing seniority and re-election in parliament. However, even an average of 25 per cent

171

MPs entering the Bundestag for the first time during each election cannot compensate for another development, which can be seen in table 8.3. The almost continously growing average length hides the fact that re-election is obviously a normal matter and seniority is therefore constantly growing. The idea of ensuring a certain number of crucial parliamentary personnel within each party to guarantee the party’s position and continued Bundes­ tag work is certainly a major factor that accounts for this development and again shows the scope of partisan control and the importance of list place­ ment strategies. It seems plausible that the members of the parties’ parliamentary executive committee, the chairmen of important commit­ tees or, generally, the parties’ highly-esteemed policy specialists enjoy this luxury of "guaranteed" seats in the Bundestag. Table 83 Average Length of Incumbency Per.

53-57 57-61 61-65 65-69 69-72 72-76 76-80 80-83 83-87 87-91 53-91

CDU CSU SPD FDP All

1.92 1.48 2.31 2.42 1.94

3.9 6.27 3.73 6.16 4.59 5.87 2.56 338 4.03 5.73

6.59 7.29 6.63 5.8 6.6

6.55 7.42 5.93 7.53 6.41

5.46 8.04 5.28 4.75 5.56

5.97 8.35 7.04 5.64 6.7

6.89 7.52 7.04 5.3 6.76

6.72 9.15 8.02 7.61 7.17

7.52 11.89 8.47 7.59 8.17

5.7 7.1 6.1 5.2 5.8

Averages based on the data at the beginning of each legislative period. Source: Schindler, P., Datenliandbuch zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundcstages 1949-82 (3-1984), 1980-84 (1986), 1980-87 (1988), and own computations.

The respective parties’ incumbency graphs and table 8.3 add therefore different colors to the same picture. Two different phases, from 1953 through 1972 and from 1972 through 1987 show steady though different trends towards longer incumbencies and thus higher numbers of re-elec­ ted incumbents. Doubtless, the parties’ election results account for this trend. To understand this trend, contextual factors need to be taken into considera­ tion again. The 1972 election took place after an unsuccessful vote of no confidence against the Social Democratic chancellor Willy Brandt, who took over government in 1969. During these elections, which were highly polarized, the voters confirmed the coalition of liberals and Social Democrats. All parties but the CSU experienced significant changes in their 1972 election results.

172

The overwhelming FDP drop of average membership length was a function of an extraordinarily high number of new members of the parliamentary party which was, in turn, brought about by very good elec­ tion results: eleven additional seats increased the portion of new members to 43,9 per cent of the entire parliamentary representation of the party. The politics during these days provide much of the explanation of this development. The political agenda during this time was completely filled with highly controversial discussions about the new foreign policy concept and the Federal Republic’s opening-up to Eastern Europe on the basis of the so-called "Ostvertr&ge". This concept was rejected among the conservative representatives of the FDP and even accompanied by cross­ overs of FDP representatives to the CDU. Thus, it may have well been the case that those members of the conservative wing of the FDP who stayed with their party, failed or rejected renomination before the election because of their reluctant attitude towards the new foreign policy, resul­ ting in an extraordinarily high number of new FDP members of the Bun­ destag. Accordingly, the SPD again gained votes during the election and sue additional seats in the Bundestag. These additional seats, however, may not entirely be taken as the only cause for the decrease in the party’s average Bundestag membership length. Rather, another aspect accounts for the 1972 decrease. Since the SPD had an unusually large number of new members already as a result of the 1969 election, not only the 1972 but also the 1969 election results with their relatively high portions of new members are the cause for the significant decrease in the SPD’s average membership length figures. Finally, the CDU’s drop needs to be related to both the 1969 and 1972 election results. Though the party lost significantly, the ratio between new members and re-elected incumbents even increased in favour of new members after the 1972 election, even though the party’s result was amongst the worst ever experienced. But this time, new candidates were obviously not the victims of the voter’s evaluation of the party’s parlia­ mentary performance. Considering the smaller number of party seats on the whole, an even slightly greater portion of new members might there­ fore account for the decreased seniority level of the party in the 1972-76 legislative period.

173

The Green Party

Till now, the Green party has been left out of the analysis, since no longitudinal developments - the party was represented in the Bundestag in 1983 for the first time - are as yet available. In addition, the Green party introduced a unique policy in terms of its parliamentary membership, which does not allow for any general evaluation of the problem we are concerned with here. In an attempt to further intraparty democracy and the likelihood that its representatives will remain faithful to the party’s basis, the Greens introduced a process called "rotation". In this process all but two of the party’s 1983-87 Bundestag members were substituted ("rotated") by their successors during or after the party’s first national parliamentary period, depending on the decision of each MP’s Land party organization. On the Land level the number of Green party representatives, as well as the precise duration of their parliamentary membership, was subject to deci­ sion by the respective Land parties. Rotation was seen as a demonstration of the Greens’ different approach to politics. As they saw it, grass roots democracy would result in better intraparty democracy, broader represen­ tation of social groups - workers, disabled, women, gays - and would also counter a trend towards technocratic parliamentary personnel. Rotation, however, was performed on a national level only for the 1983-87 legislative period. The following term, only the four MPs from the Hamburg and Berlin Land parties continued the practice. The reason for its abolition was that the rotation principle had been found to be imprac­ tical and there was a need for continuous, effective parliamentary work by the Green Bundestag parliamentary party (Muller-Rommel and Poguntke: 1990). After having looked at the empirical data, we will now turn to factors which favour incumbents during election campaigns and more important - when it comes to their re-nomination.

Individual candidate campaigning1^ Campaigns in the Federal Republic are usually designed and coordina­ ted by party national headquarters. The national party’s campaign budget

174

covers only those campaign activities that feature the party’s national image and actions. Activities at lower party levels are financially suppor­ ted only to a limited extent. By far the larger part of an individual campaign budget rests on the fund-raising capacities of the candidate. Though modem communication systems are widely used to quickly update the lower-level party units on a nationwide scale, conventional and traditional styles still dominate national campaigns (Boll and Poguntke: 1993). Though individual candidates, whether incumbent or contestor, are largely on their own in financial terms, they receive a good deal of strate­ gic and organizational support from the party headquarters. Towards this end all national party headquarters provide personal support for candi­ dates. Particularly in special seminars, the essentials of campaigning are discussed. These seminars, which are offered by the headquarters of all major German parties, are open to both incumbents and new candidates, but often only newly nominated candidates participate. Candidates are taught basic strategies of an individual campaign and learn about the national party’s political position on the most important campaign themes. In addition, candidates are trained in rhetoric, psychology and how to act and speak effectively during TV press conferences on talk shows, etc. On a more material basis, the national party headquarters prepare for Land distribution leaflets and small newspapers, in which one page is left to feature the local candidate. All that is needed to produce this item is some photographs of, and the money from, the candidate. Also, the head­ quarters either itself provides huge posters of the candidate and all sorts of additional small candidate campaign items the candidate can purchase, or at least will supply the candidate with addresses of producers of these items in the respective region. All of this is not just an altruistic service of the party to its candidates. The campaign training transfers a certain technique and know-how - and the image and arguments of the national party as well. From this per­ spective this full service support can be looked on as a certain "remote control” of the individual local party candidates by the national party headquarters. Hence, if an incumbent decides to run for re-election but ignores the offer of a campaign training by the national party, it might not only strengthen the individual campaign style by the more independent

175

management of his or her campaign. Even more so, such a decision can as well save some precious time which can be used to keep the local cam­ paign machineiy more efficiently running; that is by focusing more inten­ sively on individual and local incumbent campaign themes and images rather than on those issues and topics of a more national concern which are provided through the national (but distant) party headquarters’ services.

Electoral finding and the structural advantages of incumbency Financial support for national representatives has long been the subject of scholarly legal discussion as well as general public scrutiny.^ Article 48 (3) of the Basic Law guarantees all members of the Bundestag "ap­ propriate compensation" in order to safeguard their parliamentary in­ dependence. This means that incumbents today receive a taxable income of 10,128 DM per month plus a tax-free expense allowance of 5,765 DM per month. But it is important not only for the fact that the latter tax-free amount is more than the income of an average German job-holder before taxes; in addition it is important to realize that representatives debate and decide on their remunerations annually by themselves. Furthermore, the article grants free travel by any means of transportation under the author­ ity of the German railways or the federal mail agency. Hence, being a member of the Bundestag provides an intra-party advantage, both be­ cause of the generous parliamentary compensation (and of other benefits to which we will return) that comes with the office and, even more im­ portant, because it opens the door to substantial funds from non-parliamentary sources. But even if the financial potency of both the incumbent and the contestor is a considerable factor, it is not the crucial one in the German con­ text. For the selection of the candidates for a direct seat, a politician’s capacity to raise funds is obviously an important factor. Also, a candi­ date’s capacity to raise money even during non-election-years for general services activities of the local party organization is more important than the candidate’s personal financial background (Zeuner: 1971). Never­ theless, it should be emphasized that unless a seat is directly won, a can­

176

didate’s chances of being elected are more dependent on the list place­ ment and the party’s overall election results than on individual economic background. More problematic are donations to individual representatives. Despite the risks and dangers implied, incumbents are obliged to report to the Bundestag president the source and size of only those donations that exceed 10,000 DM within a given year. Donations to individual represen­ tatives seem to be rather common. Landfried (1990) reports donations1* ranging from 5,000 DM up to 50,000 DM given to individual incumbents, particularly for their campaign and re-election activities. Industrial companies do not even refrain from clearly describing the size and purpose of donations they make to political parties. For example, a letter has come to light that lists both the account numbers of selected incumbents and also the respective size of the transfers being made (Landfried: 1990). On the other hand, incumbents themselves are not reluctant to curry favour with generous industrial enterprises, hinting that contributions made directly to themselves can be more effectively employed than donations to their respective parties (Landfried: 1990). Rankings on the Land lists are affected by similiar pressures. Industrial organizations sometimes attempt openly to buy particular positions for their favored candidates. Though unconcealed activities of this sort are generally unsuccessful, other approaches can be more promising. A more subtle method for these companies, associations, trade unions etc. is to assure their preferred candidate of ample political and financial support (Zeuner: 1971). In general, the conservative CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP are more susceptible to external candidate funding and selection than are the Social Democrats (Zeuner: 1971). Yet the source of this problem is identical in all cases: the alleged financial weakness of all German parties.^

Improving the situation Suggestions on how to improve the situation have been vast in number and, at the same time, witnesses to the underlying realities and indicators of political reality, since none was set in motion; or at best they are still

177

the subject of discussion. Therefore, since the framework here does not allow for detailed discussions of all the supposed remedies, an overview, necessarily concise and incomplete, is all that is attempted. Moreover, only those reform suggestions that are meant to tackle both the vast influ­ ence of the parties on recruitment matters, or suggestions that focus on voter participation, are discussed. The political and academic electoral system debate from the early 1960s up to 1969, when the Social Democrats finally took over the government, reached its high point during the mid 1960s. The background of the discussion was the argument that the existing system would not allow for stable government, i.e. would encourage fractionalization in the parliament and, as a consequence, decrease the chance that another stable government could be formed as the direct result of an election. As a result of the political situation in the Federal Republic during this time, the debate concentrated especially on the consequences of the plurality system versus the proportional electoral system. The question at issue was how to guarantee stable, though alternating majorities within a two-party system. Incumbency rates were neither publicly nor academically at issue. Merely the presentation of Zeuner’s study of the candidate selection for the national elections in 196S provoked an academic debate. His proposals had a general democratization strategy in mind. Without concrete structural proposals, he called for a general emancipation from even local party authorities in order to increase the conflict potential within the party and thereby foster an intraparty discussion about candidacies. By this means, more individual candidacies, not only those endorsed by the local party authorities, would be encouraged and this would eventually lead to more democratic selection processes. Moreover, Zeuner saw a need to motivate intraparty opposition groups to permanently provoke the incumbent to an ongoing debate on his political behaviour and activities. Nevertheless, even if the first roots that later came to be known as the hope for a participatory revolution can clearly be observed in Zeuner’s suggestions, the principal difference between party members nominating and voters electing a candidate was not addressed. An independent commission established in the late 1960s by the Minister of the Interior recommended the introduction of primaries into

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the electoral system to guarantee more general opportunities for voter participation during the selection processes. The advisors of the commis­ sion, Durig (constitutional law), Ellwein (public administration) and Scheuch (electoral systems) strongly favoured the idea of primaries to make the selection of candidates accessible to every voter. ^ The alteration of the electoral system and with it the suggestion of primaries were still in debate when the SPD took over government in 1969. This change of government, however, resolved the debate in two ways at the same time: first, it answered the question of whether a change of government, which hadn’t taken place since the existence of the Federal Republic, was possible. Moreover, it put an end to the electoral system-debate, which was, for obvious reasons, soon neglected during the following years of the first Social Democratic government and finally disappeared completely from the political agenda. In 1975, the question as to whether party candidates should be selected by mail ballot was debated. ^ Four different variations of the proposal, none of which was ever approved, were discussed; they were meant to offer the parties the chance to make use of postal candidate selection procedures to facilitate a greater participation by party members. Finally, the most recent proposal to strengthen the influence of the voter, is the model of "semi-open" lists. The model refers to the electoral system of Land elections in Bavaria, where one ballot is cast for a direct candidate and a second for a multi-member constituency list. Though one cannot add new names to the list, voters can change the rankings of the candidates on their preferred list. Bavarian voters make heavy use of this option. Only fewer than 3 per cent of all constituency lists were left unchanged during the recent Land elections (Schultze and Ender: 1991). Critics of the system of "semi-open" lists have fundamental and organiza­ tional reservations. First, it has been argued that it would undermine the parties’ responsibility for their candidates and moreover decrease the attractiveness of party membership. Second, a major function of the current list system would be endangered. The parties’ intention to guaran­ tee that the party maintains a balanced and working structure would, it is argued by the parties, be jeopardized. But there seems to be more than only the parties’ touching care for their endangered "balanced" list struc­ ture: obviously, they would, as a matter of fact, lose their actual personnel

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recruitment monopoly. Only recently this monopoly was subject of a major attack on the parties’ enormous influence by the president of the Federal Republic, Richard von Weizsäcker, who launched a controversial discussion about greater political participative opportunities for the German public (Die Zeit: 1992). On the the national level, a change of the federal election law accord­ ing to the Bavarian system would allow the voter at least to a limited extent to vote for a preferred candidate on the Land lists as well. This aspect would provoke the question as to what geographical size the list should comprise - and would possibly lead again to a controversial debate on whether to have a single national list, as Adenauer had already sugges­ ted during the 1950’s. One of the latest proposals (Jesse: 1987) completely rejects the current two-vote-system. According to the accompanying critique, the current system does not support the democratic process, but even invites mani­ pulation. Since the system simply expects too much from the voter (a remarkably large proportion of the electorate doesn’t regard the constitu­ ency ballot of secondary importance nor, in turn, the Land list ballot of more importance), Jesse suggests a simple return to the single-ballot system of 1949, modified by an additional alternative vote. The latter would guarantee the recognition of the vote in case the originally prefer­ red party should not have managed to pass the 5 per cent-hurdle. This would at least make sure that all voters could vote for their preferred party without risking wasting their votes. Voter participation would not be increased nor decreased by this change; but it would in any case both clarify the voter’s preference and simplify the voting procedure. In summary, each of the different suggestions tackles a different conse­ quence of the electoral system or a different shortcoming of the current recruitment procedure - but none dealt with the aspect of incumbency rates, re-election quotas, or the increasing seniority in parliament. Nevertheless, if one is to look for latent public demand for term limita­ tions or a higher rate of change in parliamentary membership in Germany, it has to be kept in mind that the Green party’s rotation attempt found little public favor or resonance. Instead, it was met by much skepticism in the broad public and the typical German reflex to

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consider whether the action would be in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law (Hohm and Rautenberg: 1984; Kasten: 1984; Jung: 1984).

Conclnskm Does Germany have an incumbency problem? To answer this, there are several factors and perspectives that need to be taken into account. If the turnover rates for the entire Bundestag periods are the measure, one simply has to note that there is an average rate of roughly 25 per cent. Whether this rate, on the whole, is acceptable, is a relative question. Compared to the United States, Germany's re-election rates are not a serious problem. Overall re-election rates for the Bundestag between 1953 and 1987 allow consistently for about 25 per cent new members in the Bundestag during each election. Also, in contrast to the Japanese case, German legislators to a rather limited extent enjoy the luxury of building up a safe and secure personal vote, with personal election machinery operating during electoral off-seasons as well, that provides a guaranteed re-election. Instead for that matter, if the huge control of the party on its parliamentary membership structure is considered, it is then the parliamentary party’s elites who supposedly enjoy the highest re-election rates. Hence, it needs to be emphasized that it is more the party organization, less so the individual German politician, that matters in terms of individual nomination, candidacy, and election. It is thus the overwhelming power and influence of the political parties that needs to be taken into account in this context, which makes the difference in the German case in particular and for parliamentary systems in general. Moreover, the average length of Bundestag membership between 1953 and 1991 has increased constantly over time to presently 8.17 years for the 1987-1991 legislative period. That means, ignoring re-election rates for the moment, that average membership in the Bundestag lasts now on average only a little more than two legislative periods. However, seniority is nevertheless growing steadily and cannot be "compensated" for by the current rate of new Bundestag members, as the continuing increase of average membership demonstrates.

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Even so, incumbency is not a controversial issue in the Federal Repu­ blic. Also, in an international comparison, the Bundestag seems to hold a fairly middle, hence tolerable, position. By contrast, much more has been written about oligarchical tendencies of the parties in Germany. Certainly the parties could give the selection of candidates a broader and a wider democratic basis. Undoubtedly current procedures, in their quantitative dimensions, reveal a strong discrepancy between the democratic basis of the parties and the political conse­ quences. Since the German Basic Law, however, guarantees an important role to the parties, it is to some extent natural that the parties should attempt to maximize the potential of their constitutional tasks. This becomes obvious when the selection of candidates becomes more depen­ dent on the hierarchical status of the candidate in the party and on his/her capacity for fund-raising, and less on his/her personal experience and political talent. At the same time, party membership in Germany is traditionally low, party activists are rare and intraparty participation limited. This accounts for the low rate of democratic involvement, which would presumably not dramatically improve even if the parties were indeed to open up selection procedures. Nevertheless, this development would clearly be a step towards a more democratic process. No doubt the party’s power during the selection of candidates and the structural discrepancies between incumbent and contestor are serious problems which, as of now, have remained untouched. The key to solving these problems, however, is not to be looked for in the hands of the parties alone. More flexibility and a widening of the democratic character of the elec­ toral process could be gained by a change of the electoral law itself, forcing the parties to think about and eventually reform their recruitment processes. Here the proposal of "semi-open" Land lists, seriously debated, would mean greater freedom of political and preferential choice for the voter and less complete control for the parties. Whether direct individual support should be looked at as a peril of cor­ ruption is another question. Clearly more important is the decisive advan­ tage which exclusively comes with the office. In addition, the capacity to raise funds for the constituency is a noteworthy aspect of the nomination decision, which can favor renomination over first-time nomination. Both

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these aspects bear dangerous implications for the problem of how to make a candidacy equally open to all. But so far no public outcry is evi­ dent concerning this particular matter. In retrospect, the attempted "rotation" of the Green party can be seen to have been nothing more than an idealistic parliamentary experiment and a curious aberration in German parliamentary history. And yet the Green party’s measure leads to the crucial point: nothing less than a reasonable level of MP turnover on the one hand, and simultaneously a dependably effective and continuous level of parliamentary achievement on the other. But Germany is also facing other, no less serious, problems. At the center of the German public’s interest is the generous compensation for parliamentary jobs. Together with extra-parliamentary sources of additio­ nal income which are virtually hidden from the public, individual parlia­ mentary work is generally perceived to be less successful and less repre­ sentative of people’s interests than should be the case. In turn, the MPs’ work is held to be extremely expensive for the public and to be a basis for additional individual economic power and influence. This disillusionment is aggravated by the voter’s sheer isolation from the selection process and accompanied by powerful local and regional party organizations. The latter seem to leave the voters in a sort of para­ lysed state, unable to change things individually nor to have the chance of being heard by those who are politically responsible within the parties or the parliament. Since, however, Germany’s electoral law enjoys wide public acceptance and political support, there seems to be no need to fix things that needn’t be fixed. In addition, the tools for a reform are clearly in the hands of the parties, which are not very likely to begin chopping down the tree on which they are sitting. When these aspects are considered, it seems to be not incumbency but the German parties’ power in the political system in general and during the recruitment of political personnel in particular that provokes a scepti­ cal, a rather frustrating question for both rank-and-file as voters as well: German legislators - no matter of choice?

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Notes

1 For a general discussion of the Bundestag and the governmental system of the Federal Republic see Ellwein (1977), esp. p. 232 ff. and Conradt (1989). 2 Membership of a parliamentary party executive committee depends primarily on the seniority, experience, or political importance of the individual members (see Grube, Richter, Thaysen: 1970). 3 Not surprisingly, the aspect of a free vote versus a directed vote is therefore one of the most controversially discussed issues (Thaysen: 1972; Kaltefleiter and Veen : 1974; Lohmar: 1975; Hamm-Briicher: 1986,1989). 4 The power of the parliamentary party executive committee is rather encompassing and was therefore often subject of inquiry (Wildenmann: 1954; Kaack: 1971; Roper: 1982). 5 The sample consisted of 1037 West Germans and 926 East German respondents. Out of 25 professions, "member of the Bundestag" was ranked 19th in the West, 22nd in the East. See EMNID (1991). 6 For a detailed discussion of the German electoral system see Kaase (1984). 7 In 1949, every voter had one ballot; one directly won constituency gauranteed a seat in the Bundestag. Both were changed in 1953; ever since, two ballots can be cast by a single voter and at least three seats directly won by a party seats are required for representation in the Bundestag. 8 Before unification, the total number of constituencies was 248, Land lists entitled also 248 candidate-elects to access the Bundestag. In ad­ dition, due to the special status of Berlin and the allied powers’ regu­ lation, 22 Berlin representatives weren’t allowed to be directly elec­ ted by the electorate but chosen and sent from the Berlin parliament, thereby leading to a total of 518 seats in the national parliament. 9 Either of the two bodies is eligible to vote on the nomination of a candidate. 10 Data are of course available for East Germany. However, as even membership numbers are not yet very reliable nor analyses about in­

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11 12

13

14 15 16

17

traparty participation available, it seems to be sound advice to stick to the western data for the time being. So far, exact data that provide a breakdown of this ratio have not been collected. Data of the subsequent section are based on a compilation of inter­ views by the author with the following party headquarters staff. CDU: Walter Brückmann, public relations department head. CSU: Ulrich Körner, public relations department staff. FDP: Klaus Pfnorr, organi­ zation department head. PDS: Norbert Gustmann, public relations staff of the parliamentary party. Greens: Gerhard Lippe, public rela­ tions staff. The discussions of larger allowances for representatives encompasses both Land and national levels. Only recently, the scandalous case of the Hamburg representatives demonstrated the dimensions of the issue (see Der Spiegel, 1991, No.37:112). On the national level, the pros and cons were symptomatic of the discussion. (See Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1991, No.234:l and Die Zeit, 1991, No.43:48) Matthias Wissmann, CDU, received 50,000 Deutschmarks for his election activities, see Landfried (1990), p. 149. For an introductory overview into the topic see Landfried (1990), von Amim (1989), Naßmacher (1989). See "Stellungnahme der Professoren Dürig, Ellwein, Scheuch zur Ein­ führung einer Vorwahl (primary)"(1968). In: Zur Neugestaltung des Bundeswahlrechts, Bericht des vom Bundesminister des Inneren einge­ setzten Beirats für Fragen der Wahlrechtsreform, S.63ff. See the suggestions of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Enquête Kom­ mission Verfassungsreform des Deutschen Bundestages, 16.1.1975 and the discussion in the 13th session of the Commission Jan. 13-15, 1975, p.50-68.

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von Arnim, H.-H. (1990), "Entmündigen die Parteien das Volk?", Aus Po­ litik und Zeitgeschichte, B 21,1990, Bonn. von Arnim, H.-H. (1989), Die neue Parteienfinanzienmg, Wiesbaden: KarlBräuer-Institut. Bagehot, W. (1872), The English Constitution, London, 2nd ed. Baker, K., Dalton, R. and Hildebrandt, K. (1981), Germany Transformed. Political Culture and New Politics, Cambridge: Harvard Universtity Press. Boll, B. and Poguntke, T. (1993), "The 1990 All-German Election Cam­ paign" in Farrell, D. and Bowler, S. (eds), Election Strategies and Politi­ cal Marketing, London: Macmillan, pp. 121-143. Conradt, D. (1989), The German Polity, New York. Dichgans, H. (1976), "Mehr Freiheitsraum für die Abgeordneten", ZParl, Heft 1, pp. 127-138. Döring, H. and Smith, G. (eds) (1982), Party Government and Political Culture in West Germany, New York. Dyson, K. (1977), Party, State and Democracy in Germany, London. Ellwein, T. (1977), Das Regierungssystem der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 5th ed. Emnid-Institut (1991), Das Image von Berufen. Vergleichende Repräsenta­ tivbefragung in West- und Ostdeutschland, Bielefeld. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (1990), Bundestagswahl 1990. Eine Analyse der ersten gesamtdeutschen Bundestagswahl am 2. Dezember 1990, Mann­ heim. Fromme, F. K. (1978), Der Parlamentarier: ein freier Beruf? Gemeinwohl, Bindung, Unabhängigkeit, Zürich: Edition Interfrom. Gau, D. (1983), Politische Führungsgruppen auf kommunaler Ebene, Mün­ chen. Grube, F., Richter, G. and Thaysen, U. (1970), "Das Management des 6. Deutschen Bundestages", Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, Vol.l., 2, p. 152. Hamm-Brücher, H. (1986), "Gescheiterte Parlamentsreform. Über die Ohnmacht der Abgeordneten.", Evangelische Kommentare, Vol. 18, pp. 139-142. Hamm-Brücher, H. (1987), Der Abgeordnete und sein Gewissen, München.

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Hamm-Brücher, H. (1989), "Ist unser parlamentarisches System in guter Verfassung?", Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 37-38/39, pp. 7-12. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Henkel, J. (1976), Die Auswahl der Parlamentsbewerber, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Herzog, D. et al. (1990), Abgeordnete und Bürger, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Hohm, K.-H. and Rautenberg, T. (1984), "Mandatsrotation und Grundge­ setz", Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, Vol.37, No.31, pp. 1657-1712. Jesse, E. (1987), "Die Härte der Fünf Prozent. Ein provokativer Vor­ schlag, das Wahlrecht zu ändern.", Die Zeit, Nr. 2, p. 14. Jung, D. (1984), "Das Rotationsprinzip der Grünen", Die öffentliche Ver­ waltung, March, No.5, pp. 197-204. Kaack, H. (1971), Geschichte und Struktur des deutschen Parteiensystems, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Kaack, H. (1971a), "Personelle Mobilität des Deutschen Bundestages 1949-1969", Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, Vol.l., 4, p. 387. Kaack, H. (1980), "Vom Einstieg in die Abgeordneten-Laufbahn. Zur so­ zialen Zusammensetzung des Bundestages" in Klatt, H. (ed.), Der Bun­ destag im Verfassungsgefüge der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Beiträge zum dreißigjährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Bundestages, p. 55, Bonn. Kaack, H. (1981a), "Die personelle Struktur des 9. Deutschen Bundesta­ ges - ein Beitrag zur Abgeordnetensoziologie", Zeitschrift für Parla­ mentsfragen, Vol. 12,2, p. 165. Kaase, M. (1984), "Personalized Proportional Representation: The "Model" of the West German Electoral System" in Lijphart, A. and Grofman, B. (eds), Choosing an Electoral System, p. 155-164, Praeger. Kaltefleiter, W. and Veen, H.-J. (1974), "Zwischen freiem und imperati­ vem Mandat. Zur Bindung von Mandatsträgern in der Verfassungs­ wirklichkeit der Bundesrepublik", Zeitschrift für Pariamentsfragen, Vol.5, 2, p. 246, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Kasten, H.-H. (1984), "Rotation contra Grundgesetz", Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, Vol.37, No.49, pp. 2793-2796. Klatt, H. (1980), Der Bundestag im Verfassungsgefüge der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Beiträge zum dreißigjährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Bun­ destages, Bonn.

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Landfried, C. (1990), Parteifinanzen und politische Macht. Eine verglei­ chende Studie zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Italien und der USA, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Lohmar, U. (1975), Das Hohe Haus, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. Mintzel, A. and Oberreuter, H. (eds) (1990), Parteien in der Bundesrepu­ blik, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Müller-Rommel, F. and Poguntke, T. (1990), "Die Grünen" in Mintzel, A. and Oberreuter, H. (eds), Parteien in der Bundesrepublik, Bonn: Bun­ deszentrale für politische Bildung. Naßmacher, K.-H. (1989), "Parteifinanzierung im Wandel", Der Bürger im Staat, Vol.39, No.4, p. 27Iff, Stuttgart: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung. Niedermayer, O. (1989), "Innerparteiliche Partizipation. Zur Analyse der Beteiligung von Parteimitgliedern am innerparteilichen Willensbil­ dungsprozess", Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Bll/89, Bonn: Bun­ deszentrale für politische Bildung. Nohlen, D. (1986), Wahlrecht und Parteiensystem, Leverkusen: Leske und Budrich. Poguntke, T. (1987), "The Organization of a Participatory Party: The German Greens", European Journal o f Political Research, Vol. 15, pp. 609-633, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Poguntke, T. and Boll, B. (1992), "Germany" in Katz, R. S. and Mair, P. (eds), The Development of Party Organisations in Western Democracies, 1960-1990: A Data Handbook, London: Sage. Raschke, J. (1982), Bürger und Parteien. Ansichten und Analysen einer schwierigen Beziehung, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Röper, E. (1982), "Weitere Mediatisierung der Abgeordneten", Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, Vol. 13, 2, p. 304, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Sartori, G. (1990), "A Typology of Party Systems" in Mair, P. (ed.), The West European Party System, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schindler, P. (ed.) (1984), Datenhandbuch zu Geschichte des Deutschen Bundestages 1949 bis 1982, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Schindler, P. (ed.) (1986), Datenhandbuch zu Geschichte des Deutschen Bundestages 1980 bis 1984, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Schindler, P. (ed.) (1988), Datenhandbuch zu Geschichte des Deutschen Bundestages 1980 bis 1987, Baden-Baden: Nomos.

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Schüttemeyer, S. (1986), Bundestag und Bürger im Spiegel der Demoskopie, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schüttemeyer, S. (1987), "Der Bundestag im Urteil der Bürger", PVS, Vol. 28, special issue No. 18, pp. 409-421, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schultze, R. O. and Ender, J. (1991), "Aus aktuellem Anlaß: Bayerns Wahlsystem - verfassungpolitisch bedenklich?", Zeitschrift für Parla­ mentsfragen, Vol.22, No.l, p. 150ff, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Smith, G. (1989), Politics in Western Europe, London: Gower, Sth ed. Steffani, W. (1969), "Amerikanischer Kongreß und Deutscher Bundestag ein Vergleich" in Kluxen, K. (ed.), Parlamentarismus, Opladen: West­ deutscher Verlag. Stöss, R. (1990), "Parteikritik und Parteiverdrossenheit”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Heft B 21,18.5.1990, pp. 15-24. Thaysen, U. (1972), Parlamentsreform in Theorie und Praxis, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Westle, B. (1990), "Zur Akzeptanz der politischen Parteien und der De­ mokratie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland" in Kaase, M. and Klin­ gemann, H. D. (eds), Wahlen und Wähler, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Wildenmann, R. (1954), Partei und Fraktion. Beiträge zur Analyse der poli­ tischen Willensbildung und des Parteiensystems in der Bundesrepublik, Meisenheim: Verlag Anton Hain. Wildenmann R. (1989), Volksparteien - Ratlose Riesen?, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Die Zeit (1992), "Wo bleibt der politische Wille des Volkes?" Gunter Hofmann und Werner A. Perger im Gespräch mit Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker, June 19th, p. 3. Zeuner, B. (1970), Kandidatenaufstellung zur Bundestagswahl 1965, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Zeuner, B. (1971), "Wahlen ohne Auswahl - Die Kandidaten zum Bundes­ tag" in Steffani, W. (ed.), Parlamentarismus ohne Transparenz, Vol3, p. 165ff, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

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9 Incumbency in France: Electoral Instability as a Way to Legislative Turnover COLETTE YSM AL

Recent American concerns over excessively high re-election rates for incumbents have not yet been expressed in France. This is not to say that the French people are entirely satisfied with their political system. Distrust in politics has grown in the late 1980’s and public opinion polls make clear that more and more voters feel that politicians form a privi­ leged "ruling class" more or less cut off from their constituents and insu­ lated from the reality of the day-to-day problems (unemployment; urban violence; social marginality) faced by ordinary people. Recent scandals relating to the financing of political parties and the conviction of three deputies on charges of having used their offices for personal gain have increased this trend. However, in a country with a strong antiparliamentary tradition and with a strong extreme-right party, the slogan is not, as it was in the 1930’s or at the end of the Fourth Republic, "throw the rascals out".* To a large extent this is due to the fact that the National Assembly l’Assemblée nationale - is no longer the most powerful body in the French political system.^ The main features of the Constitution of the Fifth

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Republic are the reinforcement of the power of the Presidency and of the government subordinate to the President. Thus, the current French debate is not about limiting the term of the MPs but the term of the President.^ Furthermore, although French voters have strong negative feelings about politicians in general, they have positive feelings about their own mayors, their own local councillors and their own member of Parlia­ ment. The major explanation for this present ambivalence regarding the deputies seems to be the electoral law adopted in 1958. Since 1945, France has experienced two electoral systems: strict list proportional representation in departments during the Fourth Republic; a two-ballot system in single member districts from 1958 to 1981 and in 1988 and 1993; a brief return to departmental proportional representation for the 1986 election/* The Socialist government’s decision to restore pro­ portional representation was unpopular among voters: in April 1985, 58 per cent of them did not agree with the Socialist proposal while 60 per cent of the interviewed people in November 1986 supported the rightwing government’s decision to return to the two-ballot system in single member districts. In large part, voters’ attitudes were linked to the unpopularity of the Fourth Republic and to the assumption that propor­ tional representation favors political instability. However, voters were also responsive to the change introduced in electoral choice by proportional representation. Proportional representation favors a party choice to be made since the electorate has nothing to say in determining the composi­ tion of the party lists (see Arian and Boll in this volume). A contrario, the single member district system provides opportunities for both party and candidate-oriented choices to be made. When chosen in 1958, the single member district system was said to prevent "party dictatorship" over the political process in general and over the National Assembly in particular. In fact, other constitutional rules, such as the direct election of the President by popular vote (adopted in 1962) and run-off elections have changed the party system and given the parties great influence. Because the presidency is so strong an office, it is important for every party to have a leader who is "présidentiable" and can attract the masses. Therefore, the parties, as strong electoral machines, have become better organized.

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The two ballot system forces the parties to enter into alliances. In the case of parliamentary elections, any party may present a candidate for the first ballot, but only candidates receiving 12.5 per cent or more of the registered voters may compete in the run-off. Therefore, in order to gain seats, parties have had to search for partners and to conclude electoral and/or political alliances. Allied parties may run on the first ballot with a single candidate or may compete with two candidates. In the latter case, once the results are in, alliance partners pragmatically combine, with­ drawing candidates in each other’s favor according to which party did better in each constituency. More centralized and more personalized, the parties have increased their control not only over their rank and file but also over their own elites, including their deputies. In general, with the notable exception of questions regarding personal moral preferences (e.g. abortion; the death penalty), the decision of the party on a legislative subject is a compulsory voting recommendation to all the members of the parliamentary party. Given that the parties keep the candidate selection process under strict control (Thi6bault: 1988), there is no room for personal strategies: every candidate must support the party manifesto and its alliances and must toe the party line on controversial political issues. Nevertheless, the single member district system limits the national party power since it favors candidates who are well-known in the constitu­ ency. The path to a national career is still to begin at the local level and to go up to the National Assembly (Dogan: 1960, 1965). Most of the candi­ dates chosen by the political parties either are or have been mayors, city councillors or county councillors. In 1981, only 19 per cent of the French deputies had no local mandate. Elected in their city or county, they are known to make (or are perceived to make) a "good" candidate. The con­ ception of what it is that makes a "good" candidate is not very clear. It could be having done favors for individual constituents or occupying high positions in the government; it could be services for the constituency or the ability to take voters’ expectations into account. It could simply signify an instinctive attraction to a person who is well-known, born in the constituency and living and working there. Whatever the public might consider as the qualifications for a good candidate, voters appear to be responsive to candidates’ images and qualities (Lindon and Weil: 1974;

192

Converse and Pierce: 1986). In any case, once the choice has been made, they are supportive of their own deputies who are considered to be doing a good job.

1. Measuring the incumbency effect Nevertheless, if there is no organized "term limit" movement or no actual debate on incumbency in France, this is not to say that crucial ques­ tions of democratic theory or of representative government are not at stake. Modem democratic theory requires that office-holders submit to periodic free elections. One meaning of free elections is that different parties are able to compete. Opposition parties and their candidates compete with the parties in power and try to throw their incumbents out of office. However, free elections may also be understood as a free competition, within each party, between members, activists and elites for the right to choose or to be a candidate. In the first case, the last word is in the voters’ hands; in the second, it is mainly in the hands of the parties and/or of the candidates since, in the French system, the voters cannot intervene directly into the nomination process. The parties decide what candidate they think is most likely to succeed; the candidates try to fit this profile or to offer more important qualifications. These two aspects will successively be taken into consideration. However, it is necessary first to give a picture of the incumbency effect in France. Figure 9.1 provides an indicator of the turnover within the Assemblée Nationale (AN) since 1945. As the time frame of the study is 1945-1993, all the AN members elected in 1945 were considered to be new. This is not really the case, but those who had been elected before were not quali­ fied by their previous parliamentary experience but by their attitude during the war vis à vis the Vichy Regime and the Résistance. The mean rate of re-election of incumbents appears to be low since it is only 61 per cent^ Besides some unusual years (at the beginning of the Fourth Repub­ lic or in 1958), about a third of the Assemblée Nationale is generally new after each election. France held elections fifteen times between 1945 and 1993. The number of seats varied from 544 during the Fourth Republic to 465 at the beginning of the Fifth Republic and to 555 at the 1986, 1988

193

and 1993 election when the change in the electoral law provided an opportunity first, to, increase the number of seats and, second, to modify the balance between rural areas over-represented in the 1970’s and new urban areas under-represented in the same years.** In fact, the total number of seats submitted to elections was, from 1945 to 1993, 7632 and the number of people occupying these positions, was 2906. Most AN members served more than one term (58 per cent) and the average number of terms served is 2.6. The length of the terms was never the same, due to the high number of advanced elections. The normal term of a legislator is five years. How­ ever, it was shortened in many circumstances. In May 1946, the Constitu­ tional draft adopted by the Assembly elected in November 1945 was re­ jected by the voters at a popular referendum and a second Constituent Assembly had to be elected (June 1946). This Assembly disappeared with the adoption of the Constitution of the Fourth Republic (October 1946 referendum) and replaced by the first Assemblée Nationale of the Fourth Republic (November 1946). The foundation of the Fifth Republic short­ ened the term of the deputies elected in 1956. The Constitution of 1958 gives the President the power to dissolve the Assemblée Nationale when it does not support his policy or is unlikely to do so. De Gaulle dissolved the AN in 1962 and 1968; so did Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988 in order to obtain a Socialist majority in the Assembly. Therefore, French deputies served, on average, less than 7 years. As is documented in table 9.1, the legislative career is not veiy long and there is no strong tendency for French legislators to continue in office over time. Ten years after the beginning of the Fourth Republic, only 30 per cent had ten years of seniority; the figures are lower in 1968: ten years after the foundation of the Fifth Republic the rate has dropped to 18 per cent. In 1978, only 28 per cent of the elected deputies had served ten years or more, and the survivors of the two Republics represented only 3 per cent of the Assemblée Nationale. Ten years later, only 29 per cent of the 1988 Assemblée Nationale had a seniority greater than ten years and only 9 per cent had "survived" more than twenty years. In 1993, only a very small group (8 people) had served more than 9 terms. Only one person, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, mayor of Bordeaux and Prime Minister in 19691972, had been continously re-elected since November 1946. But many

194

deputies had only one term (33 per cent). Shortness of legislative career seems to be linked to the low age of the legislators: 47 years for the entire population (table 9.2). Legislators elected during the Fifth Republic were a little older than those of the Fourth Republic. Nevertheless, the variations are weak among the different legislatures and the trend is not towards an ageing of the deputies. However, figure 9.1 makes clear that the high degree of turnover within the Assemblée Nationale is more linked to popular suffrage than to incumbent choice. From 1945 to 1993, 25 per cent of the deputies were defeated in elections and only 11 per cent had dropped out either by their own decision or by a party decision made during the nomination process.^ The percentage of those who voluntarily gave up their career varies from 3 per cent in 1968 (an early election taking place just one year after the preceding one) to 21 per cent in 1978 and 1986. These two years appear to be exceptions but the reasons are very different. In 1978, one can refer to a kind of "generational reliving": 77 per cent of the "retiring" deputies had been continously elected since 1958 or 1962 (20 or 16 years of legislative career) and 31 per cent were 65 years or older. This reliving affected incumbents of right-wing parties propelled to power in 1958 (64 per cent) more than those of left-wing organizations. In 1986, only 14 per cent of the "retiring" incumbents were 65 years and more old; 44 per cent of them were elected in 1981 (just one term) and 63 per cent were Socialists, winners of the 1981 presidential and parliamentary elections which swept their party into power. In 1986, the choice not to run again was a consequence of, first, the visible loss of confidence of the French elec­ torate in the Socialists and, second, of the change in the electoral law.® In some strongly left-oriented departments, Socialist incumbents were sure that their party would lose its monopolistic representation due to the simple effect of proportional representation ; in others, the score of the Socialist Party, as predicted by electoral polls at the end of 1985, seemed to show that many of the Socialists elected in 1981 would be defeated. When they were not sure to be high enough on the list or not sure to be re-elected whatever their placement, some of the Socialist incumbents simply preferred not to be a candidate.

195

percent

100

-

90

-

80

-

70

-

60

-

50

-

40

-

30

-

20

-

10

-

0

-

Reelected H

Died in office Stopped running

|

Election years

Figure 9.1 Indicators of Turnover: The French Assemblée nationale 1946-1993

| Defeated in elections

Table 9.1 The Distribution of Legislative Seniority (in per cent)*

None Less than 5 years 5-10years 10-13 years 15-20 years 20-25 years 25 years and more

1956

1958

1962

1967

1968

1973

1978

1981

1986

1988

34 17 19 30

67 11 7 15

40 35 9 9 7

31 25 23 8 7 6

21 19 42 8 5 5

27 18 16 29 5 3 2

39 21 12 10 15 2 1

41 23 16 9 6 3 2

36 26 16 11 6 3 2

26 22 23 13 10 3 3

* The data have no sense before 1956 since we consider legislators elected in 1945 as totally new. vO

-J

Table 9.2 Sex (in per cent) and Average Age (in years) of the French MP’s 1945

1946.1 1946.2 1951

1956

1958

1962

1967

1968

1973

1978

1981

1986

1988

1993

Total

Sex -Male - Female

94 6

95 5

93 7

95 5

96 4

99 1

99 1

98 2

98 2

98 2

96 4

94 6

94 6

95 5

% 4

% 4

Average Age

45

45

44

49

50

49

51

53

52

53

51

50

51

51

52

47

2. The reproduction of incumbents

Given the choice, most of the Assemblée Nationale members wish to continue in their roles as members of parliament. In 1985, only 14 per cent of the French deputies answered that they did not want to continue whereas 62 per cent said that they desired to remain in office.^ There are no differences among the parliamentary groups and, not surprisingly, those who want to "resign" are the oldest deputies either in terms of age or in terms of number of terms served. It is true that, according to the same survey, 90 per cent of those interviewed said that "the job of member of Parliament is interesting" and that 78 per cent of them were sure that "they know very or quite well the desires of their constituency". These data make clear that, individually, there is a tendency for the incumbents to continue in office and to feel very qualified to do so.

a) The candidate selection process Candidate selection is, in France, considered to be a party affair. The procedures are generally governed by rules set forth in party constitutions, charters and "statutes". As pointed out by Ranney (1979) or Thiébault (1988), there is a great deal of variation in candidate selection procedures from party to party. Even if, by American standards, all the systems seem highly centralized, they differ, at least in theory, either by the degree of centralization or by the degree of participation of the party members. In the Communist party and the Front national, a national agency is given the power to choose the candidate with occasional suggestions from sub­ national party bodies. The party membership - through their delegates to the Central Committee (Comité central) - merely ratifies the party choice. In the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) or in the Union pour la Démocratie française (UDF), a commisssion under the control of the national organization is convened to prepare the candidate nominations for the elections. Party members’ participation is very limited but the commissions do have to take the demands of their parliamentary groups and of their local leaders into account. The pattern of candidate selection within the Socialist party is very different. According to the statutes, the

198

process begins at constituency level where party members are given the power to choose the candidates via a vote in the most local branch of the party - the section. However, the central organization of the party has veiy important supervisory powers. It not only has the power to solve any conflicts between different candidates but it can override a decision taken at the local level if, according to Article 49 of the party statutes, party cohesion might be threatened. Nevertheless, centralized or not, democratic or not, the procedures do not really change incumbents’ advantages in the candidate selection process. In fact, incumbents are in a strong position to achieve reselection due to the simple fact that they occupy high positions in their party organization either at the national or at the departmental level. Many of them, even within the left-wing parties where the tradition is to limit the number of deputies in the party bodies, are members of the national executive or legislative bodies and/or have great influence in the local organizations. Therefore, they can control the designation process at each level and are protected against deselection since either they decide themselves or they can use their connections. An appeal for new candidates is possible only when an incumbent decides not to run for reelection. For example, in preparing for the 1993 parliamentary election, all the French parties sent candidate "forms" to their departmental federations asking who would be the candidates; however, this form concerns only the non "reserved" cases where incumbents have explicitly stated they do not wish to run or where the seats are not in the hands of the party. One particular consequence of this preselection is the continuous re­ production of men as legislators. As incumbents are men and as they oc­ cupy the most winnable seats, women, even if they win a party’s candidacy with a great deal of difficulty, do not obtain a desirable constituency. As it is documented in table 9.2, the French Assemblée Nationale was never composed of more than 7 per cent women. This is not to say that the de­ puties of all parties are equally male: it is noticeable that female legisla­ tors are in greater number when leftist political parties are domi- nant (at the beginning of the Fourth Republic or in 1981). However, if female le­ gislators are often communist or socialist, they do not represent a large part of the communist or the socialist parliamentary group.

199

b) The best candidates In all other cases, the parties are very likely to renew the candidatures of outgoing deputies. Incumbents are normally viewed as better candi­ dates than newcomers and often have more resources than challengers.

c) Electoral Funding It is impossible to prove that the main resource in incumbents’ hands is their ability to raise funds. Party financing has been a completely private and secret affair until laws passed in 1988 and 1990 which, first, establish state funds for political parties; second, limit gifts from individuals and business; and third, set a maximum for campaign expenses. Since the beginning of the Third Republic, parties have been considered as financed by their membership even if, since the end of the 1960s, the increased cost of party activities and of electoral campaigns has made it clear that political parties must seek other ways of fundraising. It is wellknown that private enterprises have given very important funds to parties of the right; the Communist party has created numerous enterprises linked to the party, such as publishing and book-selling, travel and leisure agencies, import-export companies for commercial relations with former Eastern Europe and USSR, cooperatives and mutual aid companies etc. A recent scandal involving the Société Urba-Technique made clear that the Socialist Party has also organized private companies. In this case, a company formally providing expertise for Socialist local governments was in fact serving to launder party monies. What is known is that, private or public, legal or not, electoral monies are collected by the parties and redistributed to the candidates - as confirmed by all the parties and by many of those interviewed - equally to incumbents and to challengers. Incumbents’ structural advantages appear to be weak not only in elec­ toral funding but also in mobilizing resources linked to their status. Many of the deputies are "professional politicians" who receive an appropriate compensation but are not allowed to continue their original professions.1® A member of the Assemblée Nationale cannot accept, paid "advisory contracts" during his mandate, with public or private companies or

200

membership in boards of directors. Therefore, most of them have only a F 360 000 annual income ($70 000), now entirely subject to taxes and they enjoy no favorable retirement plan. Individual staff provided by the AN are limited to two parliamentary assistants, one in Paris and one in the constituency. The greatest benefits are free travel from Paris to constitu­ encies and free mailing. When belonging to major parties, challengers are not so handicapped. First, many of them are mayors or local councillors: they have services provided by the Town hall, the Conseil général or the Conseil régional at their disposal. Second, free mailing, in theory reserved to individual Assemblée Nationale members, is used by the parties and made to serve to all party candidates. Third, it is perhaps less necessary in France to collect large amounts of money for campaigning in parliamentary elec­ tions. Modern campaigning techniques such as telephone marketing are not largely used since they are strictly controlled by the Commission Informatique et Liberté and forbidden in the three months preceding the vote. ** Paid advertising is forbidden on TV where parties are guaranteed free time for campaigning in the two weeks preceding the election; and, since 1990, during the final three months preceding the election it is illegal to place paid advertising in newspapers, to put up posters in com­ mercial locations, to cany out private polls and to hold "social events” for individual candidates that could be interpreted as advertising for past activities. Last but not least, the candidates may count on public financing: the state pays for all official posters and for the cost of putting them up as well as for candidate declarations sent to the voters (including the mailing costs). Futhermore, candidates are reimbursed for up to fifty hundred francs if they obtain five per cent and more of the vote on the first ballot.

d) Political advantages The incumbent’s political advantages seem to appear more important. Some of them are related to their greater visibility. Incumbents are better known to the voters, in large part due to their exposure in the media, especially in regional and departmental newspapers. Every week-end, in their constituencies, they receive the voters, organize "social” events

201

(festivals, dinners, meetings with some social groups) and inaugurate schools, day-nurseries, sport halls etc. On Monday, such activities are mentioned in local newspapers with photographs and frequent quotes from the deputy. During the campaign, local newspapers try to keep a balance between the different candidates but incumbents’ activities inevi­ tably receive better coverage. Newcomers from the same party are not as strong or credible in such a context. Name identification, favors for individual constituents and credit for public programs are all electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents. Therefore, even when polls show a party losing an election nationally, incumbents are expected to be able to escape their party’s unpopularity. Objective data confirm subjective assessments. Generally speaking, our study of parliamentary elections from 1974 to 1981^ indicates that, measured in percentage points, an incumbent has, over a new candidate running for the same party, an average advantage of 4.70 and varying from 2.70 to 10.8 when incumbents have been very long in office, mayor of a big city, leader of the party at the national and/or local level and when newcomers are less qualified. The incumbency effect is never insignificant and may be important when seats are won or lost by a small margin. On the other hand, incumbency appears to be an advantage for indivi­ duals and for parties when electoral support goes down. According to Platone and Ranger (1981), renominated candidates of the Communist Party lost, between the 1978 and 1981 elections, less votes than other parties’ candidates. They suggest that the Communist party survives - in terms of votes - thanks to its incumbents. In the same way, incumbents limited the electoral defeat of the right-wing parties in 1981 and 1988 (Ysmal: 1986, 1990). Nevertheless, the incumbency effect is unlikely to be sufficient to save a party in decline from electoral defeat. The general political climate and the likelihood of a dramatic change in the distribu­ tion of the votes will also be important factors. 3. Incumbency and electoral turbulence The singularity of the French case is the high degree of "critical elec­ tions”. Times of relative stability are so rare and so short that most legis­ lators have to expect to meet temporary or permanent defeat. During the

202

1945-1993 period, the mean rate of defeated incumbents, calculated on the basis of those who run for a new term (those who died in office or resigned are excluded) is 30 per cent but this mean is exceeded five times: 31 per cent in 1951; 73 per cent in 1958; 43 per cent in 1962,35 per cent in 1981 and 39 per cent in 1993 (table 9.3).^ The 1958 electoral "earthquake”, linked to the beginning of the Fifth Republic, is not enough to explain the high mean rate of electoral defeat for incumbents. If one does not take into account the 1958 percentage, the mean rate is 26 per cent. This unstable situation has to do with electoral volatility but also with changes in the party system.

a) A high degree o f turnover Table 93 shows that it was easier to be re-elected by the voters at the beginning than at the end of the Fourth Republic. This was a consequence of 1) the fast tempo of elections and 2) the stability of electoral behavior linked to the stability of the party system. Elections took place in October 1945, June 1946, and November 1946, and parties had no time for organizing a competition between their elites. The dominant parties were the Communist party, the Socialist Party and the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP), the former two re-legitimized by their participation in the Résistance and the latter emerged as a new party able to inaugurate a new style of political life.14 There was no room for other parties. However, the continuation of the incumbent’s career was endangered as soon as new parties appeared or old parties disappeared and electoral volatility increased. The 1951 and 1956 elections were characterized by both a fragmentation of the party system and electoral realignment. On the right of the party spectrum three parties were created in the 1950s. First, right-wing groups refered to as modérés (something like conserva­ tives) were unified in 1950 into the Centre National des Indépendants et des Paysans (CNIP) which won 80 seats in 1951. Second, the Rassemble­ ment du Peuple Français (RPF), created in 1947, won 107 seats in 1951 but was shut down in 1953 and the Gaullists, no longer permitted by de Gaulle to use the RPF label, lost electoral support in 1956 and gained only 16 seats. ^ Third, the winner of the 1956 election (with 42 seats) was

203

a new party, the Union et Fraternité Française, popularly known as the Poujadists after its leader’s name. The change in the party system un­ leashed electoral volatility between the different right-wing parties includ­ ing the MRP (Converse and Pierce: 1986) but there was also an electoral shift in 1951 when the right won 47.1 per cent of votes cast (compared to 40.8 per cent in November 1946) followed by another shift in 1956 as the left took 56.6 per cent of the vote (as compared to 50.5 per cent in 1951). The impact on turnover of the 1951 and 1956 elections is documented in tables 9.3 to 9.5. In 1951, the Communist Party with 46 per cent of its outgoing legislators defeated was the main victim of the alliance between the Third Force parties while the MRP (40 per cent of incumbents not re­ turned) was the victim of the RPF success. ^ In 1956, the Gaullist Party collapsed at the polls and 57 per cent of the 1951 parliamentary group were defeated. Even more significant are the rates of "newcomers" not elected at the previous election (41 per cent in 1951 and 40 per cent in 1956) and of "freshmen" without any parliamentary experience (39 and 33 per cent, respectively). All the RPF and Poujadist legislators were completely new to the body ; in 1951, as a consequence of the success of the right, many of the Radical and CNIP legislators were without experi­ ence. The same situation prevailed in 1956, as a consequence of the suc­ cess of the Front Républicain - an alliance between the Socialists and the Radicals led by Pierre Mendès France - for the Radical Party (table 9.5). The landslide of 1958 was certainly linked to new institutional arrange­ ments, i.e a new electoral law and a dramatic decrease in the number of seats (from 544 to 465) forcing many incumbents to run in the same district. However, it was as well a consequence of political change. The return to power of de Gaulle was accompanied by the restoration of a Gaullist party able to compete with the old MRP and CNI whereas the Poujadists suffered a complete electoral collapse. Most striking of all, the electoral support of the left-wing parties fell below 50 per cent for the first time since the war: Communist support dropped sharply (from 25.7 per cent in 1956 to 18.6) and so did that of the Radicals who lost half of their 1956 strength. All in all, 73 per cent of the 1956 legislators were defeated in 1958. However left-wing incumbents were hit harder than their right-wing counterparts. The impact on turnover of that watershed event was

204

considerable: 72 per cent of the incoming Assemblée Nationale members were newcomers and 67 per cent were freshmen. With the exception of the Communist Party (of which there were only 10 members in the new Assembly), all the parties renewed their deputies (Tables 9.4 and 9.5). However, the 1958 situation, with de Gaulle back in power and political parties expecting him to formulate a policy for Algeria, appears to be a sort of parenthesis. In 1962, after the Algerian War had ended and Algeria had become independent, De Gaulle’s proposal to amend the Constitution to provide for the direct popular election of the President did not gain legislative support: the deputies censured the government and the Assemblée was dissolved. Submitted to a referendum, the amend­ ment, however, was popular with the voters who approved by 62 per cent The 1962 election, taking place one month after the referendum, was characterized by the antagonism between the non-Gaullist parties and de Gaulle and was a new "earthquake". The parties of the left did not in­ crease their total share of the vote but took the first steps toward building a leftist electoral coalition. More importantly, the Gaullist party became the dominant party in the party system while the CNIP split into two different groups and lost a great deal of electoral support as did the MRP. As table 9.3 shows, 43 per cent of all incumbents were defeated but MRP and CNIP lost more than the norm (52 and 64 per cent respectively). For the second time in a row, legislative newcomers constituted a large part of the body (49 per cent) not only within the Gaullist parliamentary group (49 per cent) but moreover, due to the alliance between the leftwing parties, within the Communist, Socialist and Radical groups (Table 9.4). Nevertheless, the different parties did not renew their political personnel in the same proportion. Where nearly all of the incoming Gaullist legislators were without parliamentary experience, the Com­ munist Party drew on its elites’ réservoir (table 9.5): only 55 per cent of its newcomers are really freshmen since many Communist newcomers had previously been elected in 1956.

205

Table 9.3 Incumbents Defeated in Elections (in per cent)*

1946.1 1946.2 1951

206

Communist Party Socialist Party Radical Party Christian Democrat! Independant Party2 Gaullist Party3 Poujade Movement Front National Total

1956

1958

1962

1967

1968

1973

1978

1981

1986

1988

1993

6 16 29 13 16

3 20 5 6 9

46 16 10 40 16

9 19 33 33 28 57

94 78 66 59 46 40 93

10 33 29 52 64 33

8 11 23 39 22 28

56 53 42 31 2 1

4 12

14 19

54 0

42 21

61 20

39 75

20 22 36

31 26 17

39 53 40

0 7 5

13 16 17

15 4 4

13

8

31

28

73

43

24

25

28

20

35

19

94 30

100* 39

* The per cent basis is incumbents who run for a new term (retired and died excluded). 1 Christian Democrats: MRP 1945-1965; Centre démocrat 1966-1976; Centre des Démocrates sociaux (since 1976). 2 Independant Party: small groups 1945-1950; CNIP 1951-1967; Républicains indépendants then Parti Républicain (since 1967). 3 Gaullist Party: RPF 1947-1953; Républicains sociaux 1956; Union pour la Nouvelle République 1958-1967; Union de Défense de la République 1967-1976; Rassemblement pour la République (since 1976). *• There was only one Front national deputy elected in 1988.

Table 9.4 Newcomers or Legislators not Elected at the Previous Election (in per cent)

1946.1 1946.2 1951 Communist Party Socialist Party Radical Party Christian Democrats1 Independant Party2 Gaullist Party3 Poujade Movement Front National Total

1956

1958

1962

1967

1968

1973

1978

1981

1986

1988

1993

8 14 44 31 39

21 10 34 9 26

18 33 47 11 45 100

48 27 41 27 34 7 100

20 60 50 58 63 90

78 60 53 33 15 49

54 52 11 29 39 25

9 4

65 65

43 46

9 65

44 20

50 43

41 16

18 31 36

57 19 13

36 59 30

13 15 12

45 67 57

27 32 26

32 41 54

23

18

41

40

72

49

36

28

39

42

43

97 46

0* 36

42

1 Christian Democrats: MRP 1945-1965; Centre démocrat 1966-1976; Centre des Démocrates sociaux (since 1976). 2 Independant Party: small groups 1945-1950; CNIP 1951-1967; Républicains indépendants then Parti Républicain (since 1967). 3 Gaullist Party: R rF 1947-1953; Républicains sociaux 1956; Union pour la Nouvelle République 1958-1967; Union de Défense de la République 1967-1976; Rassemblement pour la République (since 1976). * There was only one Front national deputy elected in 198«.

Table 9.5 Freshmen or New Legislators Without any Previous Experience (in per cent)

1946.2 1951 Communist Party Socialist Party Radical Party Christian Democrats1 Independant Party2 Gauilist Party3 Poujade Movement Front National Total

1956

1958

1962

1967

1968

1973

1978

1981

1986

1988

1993

18 7 33 7 24

15 29 47 11 45 95

29 23 37 24 31 7 100

20 55 46 53 60 83

43 46 47 25 15 44

31 35 26 26 41 28

15 18

34 48

37 43

9 62

25 20

25 29

29 12

9 33 23

47 19 12

37 59 27

12 13 10

31 54 39

24 28 23

28 32 47

15

39

33

67

40

31

22

27

39

41

86 36

0* 26

35

1 Christian Democrats: MRP 1945-1965; Centre démocrat 1966-1976; Centre des Démocrates sociaux (since 1976). 2 Independant Party: small groups 1945-1950; CNIP 1951-1967; Républicains indépendants then Parti Républicain (since 1967). 3 Gauilist Party: RPF 1947-1953; Républicains sociaux 1956; Union pour la Nouvelle République 1958-1967; Union de Défense de la République 1967-1976; Rassemblement pour la République (since 1976). • There was only one Front national deputy elected in 1988.

The 1962 conflict between de Gaulle and the non-Gaullist conservative parties, the electoral law placing a premium on electoral alliances, and the establishment of direct election of the President, all propelled changes in the party system occurring in different stages. First, parties which remained hostile to de Gaulle (the MRP and the CNI) were reduced to small groups, losing electoral support election after election even when they attempted to enter into anti-gaullist electoral coalitions. Second, the electoral system encouraged the building of alliances. In 1962, a group of Independants, led by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and called Républicains Indépendants, decided to join the Gaullists and remained allied with them until the election of its leader to the presidency in 1974. Impressive efforts at partisan regrouping were carried out on the left with the forging of an electoral coalition including Communists, Socialists and leftist Radicals and with the re-unification of the non-Communist left in the Socialist party at the beginning of the 1970s. At the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, the party system evolved from high fractionalization toward a quadripartite character: two large electoral blocs (left versus right), each consisting of two main partisan groups - Communists and Socialists; are Gaullists and Liberals or Christian Democrats unified, after the 1974 presidential victory of Giscard d’Estaing, into the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF). In the 1970s, the French party system took on the basic characteristics it displayed in the 1980s even though, due to the change in the electoral law, the Front Nationale gained many seats in 1986. However, since the late 1960s, France has experienced an astonishing gamut of political events: the crisis of May 1968 and the Gaullists’ electoral triumph in June 1968; de Gaulle’s defeat at a referendum in April 1969 followed by his resignation and the election of Georges Pompidou to the presidency; the death of the President in 1974 and the election of the non-Gaullist Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to the Elysée; the increasing gain in electoral support of the left-wing parties in the late 1970s leading to the victory of François Mitterrand at the 1981 presidential election and to the Socialist triumph in June 1981; the electoral recovery of the rightist parties at the 1986 elec­ tion; the re-election of François Mitterrand in 1988 and a leftist majority at the parliamentary elections organized a month after the presidential

209

election; and last but not least, the decline of the Communist Party, a party that had been the dominant force of the left since War II. In such an unstable period, incumbents never sought re-election without a serious danger of being defeated. As table 9.3 makes clear, only two elections (1967 and 1978) could be considered "peaceful" with a low rate of incumbents willing to serve again defeated, and with a rate of defeat nearly equal in all parties. In all the other cases, large proportions of incumbents were defeated depending on which party fell into decline: leftist parties in 1968; right-wing formations in 1981; the failure of the Front national to gain admission in a coalition system in 1988; and the continuous decline of the Communist party from about 20 per cent in 1978 to about 15 per cent in 1981 and to only 10 per cent in 1986, 1988 and 1993.1^ In 1993, the Socialists’ defeat (with only 19 per cent of the votes cast compared with 34 per cent in 1988) caused 75 per cent of their incumbents running for another term to lose their seats. Turnover measured either by newcomers or freshmen remained high, as the balance of votes between the left and the right changed frequently and as the two electoral blocs became more effective at polling their strength at the first ballot or in concluding electoral alliances in order to win seats at the run-off. The game advantaged the leftist parties in 1967, from 1973 to 1981 and 1988; it worked for the right-wing parties in 1968, 1986 and 1993 (table 9.4 and 9.5). Such a sequence of electoral change contributed strongly to periodic structural renewal of the legislators. The Assemblée Nationale was never composed of fewer than 22 per cent freshmen (in 1968, an "advanced" election taking place one year after the previous one), and four times consisted of more than 30 per cent freshmen (in 1978,1981,1986 and 1993, table 9.5).

b) Safe seats? A legend

Incumbents believe that the political visibility they have achieved in their district by providing services to the constituents or to the constitu­ ency will make them not totally fearful of defeat but able to oppose their individual qualities to their party fortune. As seen before, incumbency does give an electoral advantage but when electoral turbulence becomes

210

the rule the bonus is too low to assure re-election. In fact, in France, incumbents have much to fear and there are very few "safe seats" resistant to "critical elections", i.e to an important change in a party’s electoral support or to change in the party system. During the years 1958-1981, 99 constituencies (21 per cent of the total) have been in the hands of the same party or of the same coalition. Objective data show that a seat may be considered as "safe" only if the incumbent won the last election by 60 per cent or more at the second ballot.^ Such scores are secured only in departments where the left or the right have been strongly dominant since the beginning of the Third Republic (Siegfried: 1913; Goguel: 1970). Furthermore, an incumbent can never be sure the other party within the alliance will not put forward a more appealing challenger. The number of safe seats declined so drastically in the 1970-1990 era that one might, paraphrasing Mayhew (1974), talk about a "vanishing safe seat” phenomenon and offer some hypotheses regarding the reasons behind it. One is the end of de Gaulle’s personal influence which had "frozen" the political system in the 1960s and given the parties that sup­ ported him more votes than they would have won without the General’s umbrella. Once de Gaulle had definitively withdrawn from politics, the Gaullist coalition lost votes and the right found itself back in its tradition­ al and limited bastions. More important, in France as in other democratic countries, was the growth of electoral volatility in the 1970s and the 1980s at the time that the party system became more stable and less fragmented. In the 1950s and the 1960s, as pointed out by Rose and Urwin (1970), the French instability mean - as measured by their index of instability of voter support for the sue French parties selected - is more than 50 per cent bigger than the next most unstable democracy of the nineteen countries they analysed. In the 1970s and the 1980s electoral volatility increased because, according to the literature (Lavau: 1986; Ysmal: 1990), class, party and left-right affiliations became less determinant in electoral choice and voters were more responsive to issues, to party ability to rule, and to party and candidate proposals or strategy. Votes are more determined by the electoral context and the electoral swing tends to increase. However, this trend - i.e. the increase in electoral volatility - also appears to be linked to the specificity of the current electoral context in a

211

period of economic crisis. The French economy has not yet recovered from the mid-seventies oil crisis: unemployment with the concomitant problem of how to maintain a minimum income for eveiyone, the role of the state in conducting economic and social policies, the threat of excessive foreign intervention due to the 1993 establishment of the European Single Market and to the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, have become the main issues of the time. Different medications - from pragmatic RPR-UDF solutions at the end of the 1970s to pragmatic socialist policies (since 1983) via traditional socialism (1981-1983) and Reaganian liberalism during the period of cohabitation (1986-1988) have been experienced. However, when all the medicines fail to rescue the patient, the voters’ temptation is change for the sake of change. The majority party incumbents pay for what they have not done but the new majority party incoming legislators have to fear for what they will not be able to do.

Concluding remarks

In such a context, characterized by traditional but also increasing elec­ toral turbulence, the lack of a French incumbency problem appears to be normal. The rate of turnover within the Assemblée Nationale appears to be high and there is no trend towards an increase in the length of legisla­ tive careers. Only a few French deputies enjoy the luxury of building a safe and secure seat and most of them are subject to change in voters’ moods. As to philosophical considerations, one can first note that elector­ al accountability seems to function as billed in democratic theory. The incumbent officeholders may wish to continue in office and plan their careers and their party may organize the candidates’ selection process in order to favor them; but, even if incumbents conduct their relations with their constituents with an eye toward their re-election prospects and even if a high number of them, confident in their own qualities, are not really fearful of defeat, they are nevertheless always held responsible by the voters for whatever mess occurs in French politics. Therefore, elections play an important role in legislators’ recruitment and have a great impact on the turnover.within the Assemblée Nationale. Furthermore, in the

212

French context, elections provide for meaningful electoral competition since political parties and leaders make issues controversial enough to attract the citizens’ attention. Nevertheless, as pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, French people are less confident in their political system than they used to be and they do not believe that democracy is working well. However, this "democracy problem" is never directly linked either in newspapers or in academic literature, to the legislators or to the power in the Assemblée. Political parties and the presidency are, by contrast, questioned. The length of the presidential mandate and the balance between the Presi­ dent’s and deputies’ power are problems now widely debated. In a country where party membership is traditionally low, party activists rare and intraparty participation limited, and where the Constitution guarantees only a limited role to political parties, parties have always appeared to be closed machines far from the day-to-day preoccupations of the voters.2® Their present supposed inability to solve the most important national problems has certainly strengthened the citizens’ tendency to consider parties as oligarchies or as syndicates of political elites. This is not to say that voters are clamoring for broader and more democratic candidate selection procedures. The UDF and RPR proposal to organize "primaries'' open to right-wing voters in order to nominate their single candidate for the next presidential election received so uninterested a reception that they have to return to designation by the parties’ elites and elected office­ holders! In fact, in the voters’ mind, what political parties have to do is very simple: give jobs and security to all. This is another story, one which has little to do with the problem of incumbency.

Notes

1

2

The Front National has gained, since 1984, more than 10 per cent of the votes cast at each national election (Parliamentary, Presidential or European). There also is a 321 member Senate. A third of the seats are renewed every three years in indirect elections from departmental electoral

213

colleges consisting of national and local elected representatives (mayors, city and county councillors). 3 The term of the President is seven years and there is no limit for reelection in the Constitution. Different proposals are in the fore: a single term of seven years ; two terms of either six or five years. The question is still pending. 4 Reintroducing proportional representation has been included in the Socialist program since 1971, with the assumption that an electoral system has to favor the representation of all the opinions and not to produce a majority. However, the decision taken by the Socialist-led government in 1985 was also determined by the political context. As the 1983 local and 1984 European elections made it clear that the Socialist Party could not win the 1986 parliamentary election, the government decided to change the electoral law in order to preserve the presidency and to limit the victory of the rightist parties. In October 1986, the incoming rightist government came back to the majority system in single member districts. However, it kept the same number of seats (555). 5 Total number of re-elected incumbents x 100 Mean rate: --------------------------------Total number of seats 6 We consider only Metropolitan France without Overseas Departments and Territories. 7 Unfortunately, available data do not allow any distinction. Our obser­ vation of the nomination process in recent years seems to show that there are few cases of non voluntary "retirement". On the other hand, conflicts between incumbents and parties generally worked to the advantage of the incumbents when they decided to compete with the party candidates. They were re-elected and more or less quickly re­ integrated into the parliamentary group and the party. 8 See note 4. 9 Survey initiated in January 1985 by Jean-Luc Parodi and Colette Ysmal. 10 Only farmers, shopkeepers, craftsmen, businessmen and professionals are not subject to this regulation. However, they represent only 15 per cent of the body.

214

11 The Commission Informatique et Liberté has to protect individual freedom against the use of public (as Social Security lists or tele­ phone directory) or private (as newspapers or magazines subscribers) computer files. It is forbidden to choose via those files any category of the population by names, occupation or residence. Parties are reluctant to get around the law since they can be brought to trial by any citizen who claims to have been bothered in his privacy or charac­ terized by private affiliations. 12 Calculations done for this paper. 13 Total number of incumbents non returned by the voters x 100 Mean rate: ------------------------------------------Total number of incumbents running 14 It is difficult to characterize the MRP in 1945 and 1946. Created in December 1944 by people coming from a Christian-Democratic tradi­ tion, the party did not want to be a Christian-Democratic party. It was close to the Socialist party on the questions of both the organization of the Economy and the Welfare State. However, its electorate was more right-wing oriented. 15 De Gaulle, who criticized the Constitution of the Fourth Republic, formed the RPF in 1947 in order to build electoral support in favor of bringing him back in power and establishing a new Constitution. The RPF failed as it did not succeed in gaining enough electoral support to accomplish de Gaulle’s aim. In 1952, many RPF legislators were absorbed in the parliamentary game and voted for the successive governments. Therefore, de Gaulle dissolved the RPR (May 1953) and withdrew from public life. 16 At the 1951 election, parties "condamned to live together" and op­ posed to both the Communists and the Gaullists - namely the Social­ ist Party, the radical Party, the MRP and the CNI - concluded elector­ al alliances in order to present a single or only two lists in the departments. This manoeuvre limited the Gaullist and Communist success. 17 With the notable exception of the 1986 election. The high rate of re­ elected incumbents is due to the change in the number of seats.

215

18 Parties are said to be in coalition wben they present a single candi­ date at the first ballot. 19 Close (Le. left-wing and right-wing) political parties coodude al­ liances and withdraw candidates in each other’s favour according to which parly did better in the district. 20 The French Constitution guarantees parties the limited role to "participate in the making of votes" (article 4).

RífílTifíl Cayrol, Parodi, J.-L. and Ysmal, C. (1973), Le diputé fiançais, Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques. Converse, P. E., and Pierce, R. (1986), Potitiad Représentation in France, Cambridge: Harvard Univcrsity Press. Dogan, M. (1960), "Changement de régime et changement de personnel”, in Le référendum de Septembre et les élections de novembre 1958, ed. Association française de Science politique, Paris: Presses de la Fonda­ tion nationale des Sciences politiques. Dogan, M. (1965), "Note sur le nouveau personnel parlementaire”, in Goguel, F. (éd.), Le référendum d ’ Octobre et les élections de novembre 1962, Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques. Goguel, F. (1970), Géographie des élections françaises sous la troisième et la quatrième République. Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques. Lavau, G. (1986), "L’électeur devient-il individualiste?”, in Bimbaum, P. and Leca, J. (éd.), Sur l’Individualisme, Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques. Lindon, D. and Weil, P. (1974), Le Chou d ’un député, Paris: Editions de Minuit. Mayhew, D. R. (1974), Congress: The Electoral Connection, New Haven: Yale University Press. Platone, F. and Ranger, J. (1981), "L’échec du PCF aux élections de 1981." Revue française de Science politique, 31, pp. 1015-1037.

216

Ranney, A. (1979),"Candidate Selection", in Butler, D., Penniman, H. R. and Ranney, A. (eds), Democracy at the Polls, Washington: American Enterprise Institute. Rose, R. and Urwin, D. (1970), "Persistence and Change in Western Party systems since 1945.", Political Studies, 18, pp. 287-319. Siegfried, A. (1913), Tableau politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la troi­ sième République, Paris: Armand Colin. Thiébault, J.-L. (1988), "France: Impact of Electoral Change System" in Gallagher, M. and Marsh, Michael (eds), Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspective: The secret garden o fpolitics, London: Sage. Ysmal, C. (1986), "D’une droite en sursis à une droite défaite" in Lancelot, A. (ed.), Les élections de Taltemance, Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques. Ysmal, C. (1990), Le comportement électoral des Français, Paris: La découverte.

217

10 Incumbency Success and Defeat in Times of Electoral Turbulences: Patterns of Legislative Recruitment in Denmark 1945-1990 MOGENS N. PEDERSEN

"....the governing elite is always in a state of slow and continous transformation. It flows on like a river, never being today what it was yesterday. From time to time sudden and vio­ lent disturbances occur. There is a flood - the river overflows the banks. Afterwards the new governing elite again resumes its slow transformation. The flood has subsided, the river is again flowing normally in its wonted bed." (Pareto: 1963, 1431 (par. 2056)).

1. The problem in the Danish context According to democratic mythology - or to that part of it which Johan P. Olsen has baptized the "Folk Theory of Parliaments" (Olsen: 1983) voters ought to be able to hold elected representatives responsible for their actions and replace those representatives, who have failed in one way or another. The individual voter should be able to exercise this right not only by changing his party vote, but also by making a genuine choice among candidates within each of the parties.

218

This "folk theory" calls for procedures that would facilitate the entrance of new politicians onto the public arena as well as specific devices geared towards the regulation of the removal of failed politicians. No hindrances ought to exist against the flow of personnel into and out from the legisla­ tive elite. In short: legislative popular accountability not only requires adequate procedural mechanisms for change in the personnel composi­ tion of the parliament, but also a certain and reasonable likelihood of defeat, if accountability is to be truly effective. It is a well known fact that real political life looks different from this idyllic picture. Legislative elites everywhere are protected in various ways. The "haves", the incumbents, are favored, be they parties or individual politicians. The reason for including the small Danish polity in a study of incum­ bency may not be obvious to everyone. Isn’t Denmark just one among a number of European cases - even belonging to the less-studied circle of "Smaller European Democracies"? Does anything at all warrant inclusion of this case in a comparative study? It will be argued in the following pages that the Danish case does indeed have its own intrinsic features that may be of interest in a wider comparative perspective. In Denmark a peculiar mix of recruitment variables and a peculiar developmental pattern can be found. To be more precise: in Denmark we will be able to observe, first, a long and uninter­ rupted existence of a democratically elected legislature and a rather harmonious unfolding of a modern party system. Thus it is possible to study long term trends in relevant variables. Second, and most important, because of a particular historical incident, the "Earthquake"-election of 1973 with its dramatic effects upon the functioning of the political system, an almost "quasi-experimental" case is at hand that makes it possible to study close-up the disruptive as well as the stabilizing forces that are probably at work to some extent in all democratic regimes. Accordingly Denmark will be treated as a peculiar case of a general problematique. For all the peculiarities of this case the reader has to be reminded right from the beginning that the Danish political system shares a lot of charac­ teristics with other systems. It belongs to a larger family of Continental European systems. Like most of these it operates with an electoral system that provides proportional representation, even a PR system of extremely

219

high "accuracy". It has to pay a price for this quality. Some will even say a high price. First, the "mechanics" of the electoral system are among the most complicated in the Western world, and very few voters will under­ stand, how it works. Second, it is often alleged that the unstable nature of the party system is a consequence of its electoral system. In the context of an analysis of the incumbency problématique it should be mentioned that highly organized - and quite disciplined - parties are in control of the nominations. These nominations are mostly taking place in smaller districts within the constituencies. The voters are given a possibil­ ity to cast preferential votes, either for the candidate nominated in their own "local" district or for a candidate from the constituency at large. The voters may also choose to cast their votes for the party, i.e. without indicating a preference for any of the candidates. ^ During the last two-three decades some new tendencies have become visible in this complex system. Thus voters tend more and more to vote for individual candidates of their own liking, whereas they were more prone to cast their vote for the party and/or its local candidate in earlier times. As a result of this tendency an increasing intra-party competition among candidates has also been noticed. Partly as a result of this tendency the distinction between "safe" and "unsafe" seats has become blurred. Women and young candidates in particular are sometimes being "marketed" - or are themselves campaigning - quite vigorously. In recent elections, comparisons have sometimes been drawn to "the American way" of campaigning. Television personalities have started to make an inroad even on the "safe" seats. These new strategies are met with criticism from the traditional party organizations, and for good reasons, since these organizations will of course lose control if the emer­ gent tendency becomes the normal way of conducting elections and elec­ toral campaigns. The American reader should, however, not jump to hasty conclusions about the character of the Danish nomination process and electoral cam­ paign. It is still highly regulated, as is mostly the case in the Continental European mass party sytems. Party activities and candidate activities are mainly financed by public money; all such activities are frequently scruti­ nized by the press, and public accounts have to be made about the use of public funds; the electronic media will only allow parties and candidates

220

to present themselves in extremely regulated programmes etc. The nation­ al parties and their leaders are still pretty much in control.^ After these brief remarks about the institutional context we might as well start presenting some basic facts about Danish legislative recruitment in recent times, i.e. the period since the late 1940s, see Table 10.1. Table 10.1 Basic Data on Parliamentary Turnover in Denmark 1947-1990 Election

RETIRING DEFEATED RE-ELECTED NEWCOMERS INCUMBENTS* INCUMBENTS INCUMBENTS

(N)

1947

16

30

102

46

148

1950

11

32

105

44

149

1953.1

10

16

123

26

149

1953,2

5

8

136

39

175

1957

26

8

141

34

175

1960

22

30

123

52

175

1964

29

17

129

46

175

1966

11

24

140

35

175

1968

15

20

140

35

175

1971

35

24

116

59

175

1973

19

60

96

79

175

1975

5

44

126

49

175

1977

20

40

115

60

175

1979

19

34

122

53

175

1981

16

29

130

45

175

1984

20

31

124

51

175

1987

14

28

133

42

175

1988

6

20

149

26

175

1990

11

31

133

42

175

Note: * "Retiring Incumbents" comprise all those, who voluntarily gave up their career, but also a few who were removed by their constituents during the nomination process. Available statistics (Statistiske Meddeietser) unfortunately do not make any distinction. (N) * Number of seats in the FoIketing (excl. members from the Faroe Islands and Green land).

221

A first look at the four central recruitment indicators may give the impression of considerable fluctuations, if not randomness. Undoubtedly any tabular presentation of raw data, based upon singular election periods and data pertaining to a relatively small legislature, will be difficult to interpret due to the smallness and instability of the individual data sets.^ Even if that may be the case, it is easily seen that the election periods between 1968 and 1973 constitute a passage from one recruitment pattern to another. Before the 1970s incumbents tended to be re-elected in great­ er numbers than during the 1970s. During the latter decade more MFs (members of the Folketing) were outrightly defeated, and more newcomers entered the parliament. In the tabular presentation the 1973 election stands out as something particular, but even the 1971 election deviates considerably from the trend. By presenting the data in a slightly more condensed form it is possible to highlight these differences, but also to bring to the attention that not only disruptive, but also stabilizing forces have been at work in Denmark in recent times, see Table 10.2 and Table 10.3. Table 10.2 Basic Data on Parliamentary Turnover in Denmark 1947-1990. Grouped Data: Averages Over Three Election Periods. The 1990 Election Tabulated Separately Elections

RETIRING DEFEATED RE-ELECTED NEWCOMERS INCUMBENTS* INCUMBENTS INCUMBENTS

(N)

1947-53

12

26

110

39

148

1953-1960

18

15

133

42

175

1964-68

18

20

136

39

175

1971-75

20

43

113

62

175

1977-81

22

34

122

53

175

1984-1988

13

26

135

40

175

1990

11

31

133

42

175

Note: * "Retiring Incumbents" comprise all those, who voluntarily gave up their career, but also a few who were removed by their constituents during the nomination process. Available statistics (Statistiske Meddelelser) unfortunately do not make any distinction.

222

Table 10.3 Three Indicators of the Legislative Incumbency Situation Elections

Retirement Rate (*)

Incumbents* Success Rate (**)

Turnover Rate (***)

1947-53

8

81

26

1953-60

10

90

24

1964-68

10

87

22

1971-75

11

72

35

1977-81

13

78

30

1984-88

7

84

23

1990

6

81

24

Note: The values in the table are averages over three elections. Legend:

(*)

Retirement Rate: No. of Retiring Incumbents x 100 RR = df

tr a \ [y o

)

No. of Parliamentary Seats (**)

Incumbentsr Success Rate: No. of Re-elected Incumbents x 100 ISR = df

(%) tfO \

No. of Incumbents Running

(***)

Turnover Rate: No. of Newcomers x 100 TR = df

(%) No. of Parliamentary Seats

On the basis of this simplified picture it will be suggested that the elec­ tions of the early 1970s created a shock-wave in an otherwise stable system of legislative recruitment, but also that the impact was of a temporary nature. At least the figures suggest that the pattern of personal circulation was about the same at the end of the 1980s as it had been twenty years ago.'* We notice, first, that the retirement rate at the end of the 1980s was lower than ever. Second, that the risk of electoral defeat for incumbents at the end of the 1980s was as low as it was around 1960.

223

Third, that the renewal/turnover rate of the Folketing also was down to the "normal" level of 20-25 per cent As a matter of fact it looks as if - after the wild fluctuations of the 1970s - the recruitment system gradually stabilized once again. The first impression is that the political system had just for a while been upset by a disequilibrium and then had recuperated and reinstated its traditional behavioral patterns.^ In order to develop this argument we will have to characterize the recruitment patterns as well before as after the critical 1970s. In the following section 2 the "normal" state of the recruitment pattern will be mapped by means of a more comprehensive set of indicators, and it will be demonstrated how this seemingly "natural", "normal" - and stable - pattern of recruitment gradually emerged during the 20th century as a corollary to the "freezing” of the party system. During the period 19451970 turnover reached a nadir, most incumbent members of the Danish Folketing could expect to remain as legislators for as long time as they wished, especially if they belonged to one of the bigger parties. In section 3 a closer look will be taken at the turbulent period in the early 1970s. In a few years’ time relative stability changed into an utterly unstable situation in which most legislators had to expect to meet tem­ porary or permanent defeat. Recruitment instability started at the begin­ ning of the 1970s, and it lasted throughout that decade, even if it culmi­ nated in the infamous "earthquake"-election of 1973. Since this change was dramatic and had far-reaching effects on Danish politics it is a natural task in section 4 to discuss the reasons for this shift. Evidently it had to do with the considerable increase in electoral volatility and with the appearance and disappearance of political parties. It will, however, be argued that the changing patterns of recruitment also had a basis in other factors which are, to some extent, unrelated to electoral turbulence. Most important in this respect will be the generational factor. It will be argued that this factor also goes a long way in providing an understanding of the stabilization of the recruitment system during the 1980s. The next questions to be addressed - in section 5 - are much more diffi­ cult to deal with. They deal with the probable effects of, as well as the evaluation of, the varying levels of incumbency success. How did the recruitment system and the party system in the Folketing operate during

224

"normal" conditions? What were the effects on these systems of the upheaval during the 1970s? In this section a discussion is carried out that by necessity - has to be based upon the author’s general knowledge, more than on systematic research. In a brief concluding section 6 a few comparisons will be made between the developmental patterns of legislative recruitment in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

2. From open to closed legislative elite Since it has already been made clear that the 1970s was the most tur­ bulent decade in the history of the Danish party system and that it also constituted a kind of watershed in terms of the chances and risks of in­ cumbent legislators and political neophytes, it seems appropriate to pro­ vide a brief portrait of the Danish legislator of the previous period, the 1960s, the era of "normality", if such a term should ever be used in this context. This collective profile will be used as a benchmark, not only by comparing it with the profiles of earlier periods, but also with subsequent period-profiles. The MF entering the Folketing during the 1960s would typically have had to go through a tough and enduring cursus honorum. On average he (only approx. 10 per cent of the members were women in those days) would have had to run in 2.2 electoral campaigns before his first election. In quite a few cases he would also have had to campaign in more than one constituency (average: 1.3 constituencies). He would in most cases have had a previous career in municipal politics and/or in the apparatus of a political party or a major interest organization (only 18 per cent did not have such a career background). No wonder that the newcomer to the Folketing was a mature person: the average age at first election was 45 years. If it was difficult to enter the legislative career it was, however, equi­ valent to entering an exclusive and rather closed circle. At each election only about one fifth of the membership was renewed. The newcomer could expect to stay on for a dozen years - or four election periods.** At least 80 per cent of all newcomers to the Folketing could expect to survive

225

the next election. Most of these members could also expect to have a legislative career without disruptions, although quite a few would have to seek nominations in new constituencies in order to safeguard their position. The legislative career was not only relatively safe and long. It also tended to end in a rather undramatic way - almost as if the legislators had been appointed to a tenured position. The average age of departure from the Folketing was 60 years, but no less than 40 per cent of all legislators would only end their service after they had reached the age of 65 years. In most cases parties had set an age limit of 70 years. About 40 per cent were not leaving because they were defeated, but due to death or old-age retirement. These were the highlights of the legislative career of the 1960s - from recruitment to derecruitment. If we next ask to what extent this profile constituted an over-time stable pattern, the answer can be given quickly by means of a summary table, see Table 10.4. Recruitment patterns before the 1970s have been analysed in great detail by the author of this chapter as well as by other scholars (Pedersen: 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977; Eliassen and Pedersen: 1978; Johansen and Kristensen: 1979). In earlier studies it was demonstrated that the long term trend in Danish legislative recruitment offers a splendid illustration of the institutionalization of a legislature as this concept was introduced and used by Nelson Polsby (1968). Since 1849, 120 years of a basically non-interrupted development of procedures and unwritten norms apparently produced a rather rigid pattern of institutionalized recruitment. Pre-legislative careers tended to become longer; turnover de­ creased; the average age of entry into parliament increased, and so did the continuity and duration of the legislative career; the proportion of members who left the parliament for non-political reasons like death or old-age retirement, rose from less than 10 per cent in the 19th century to the 40 per cent of the 1960s. In short, the parliamentary elite changed from being relatively open to becoming increasingly closed. By way of conclusion it was at one point stated that "when the elite was relatively open, its membership constituted a closed social circle: as the dominance of the social elite was broken, its membership at the same time tended to become more of a closed circle in another sense" (Pedersen: 1977).

226

Table 10.4 Eight Indicators of Personal Circulation of the Folketing Period 1. No. of times nomin­ ated before First Election (Nos.)

1849-1881

1881-1920

1920-1960

13

1.8

2.6

42.0

44.0

46.0

30.0

21.0

21.0

4. Average Seniority of Departing Legislators (Election Periods)

2.7

43

43

5. Legislators Returned after First Election Period (Pet)

66.0

79.0

82.0

6. No. of Constituencies in which nominated during Career (Nos.)

13

13

13

7. Average Age at Career Termination (Years)

50.0

56.0

59.0

8. Career terminated due to Death, Retirement or for Other Non-Political Reasons (Pet)

12.0

28.0

38.0

2.

Average Age at First Election (Years)

3. Turnover (Pet.)

Notes: (1) Calculations performed on same data set and using same definitions as in Pedersen. 1977. The reader should note that due to minor differences in definitions the values of indicators 3, 5, and 8 should not be compared with the - conceptually somewhat similar - indicators used in Table 3. (2) Each of the three periods aggregates sixteen election periods. All values in the table thus are (rounded) averages over the period in question.

227

In the same paragraph it was even said that "for those whose ideal is to minimize the distance between elector and elected in every respect it cannot be very comforting to find that socio-economic equalization ap­ parently goes hand in hand with institutionalization." Previous research thus suggests a "natural" and stable state of affairs in a political system of the Danish type. Change in recruitment patterns will be incremental, slow, uni-directional and thus fairly predictable. Institu­ tional stability and political tranquility go - as Putnam has said (1976) together with low turnover, but is also connected with low rates of change in other recruitment-relevant variables. Why did the recruitment pattern develop in this way? An answer is suggested - or hidden - in the periodization used in Table 10.4. The decades after 1849, when democratic representation was intro­ duced, is the period in Danish history when parliamentary factions slowly crystallized in a "left" and "right" in the Folketing, without, however, having either local nor national party organizations to support them. During the four decades around the turn of the century the modern party system gradually came into existence, in parliament as well as in the country. The dictum of Stein Rokkan, according to which the party system "froze" around 1920, is approximately correct in the case of Denmark (Elklit: 1988; Pedersen: 1989a, b). The third period from 1920 until the end of the 1960s is the era of the "classical" Danish party system with its four "old" parties. At the beginning of the period the Social Democratic Party was already the second-biggest party. Soon it became by far the major party in the party system, reaching an electoral peak in 1935 with 46 per cent of the vote. The three other "old" parties (Conservatives, Agrarian Liberals, and Radical liberals) were much smaller, but they, as well, were blessed with stable organizations.^ It was during this long and virtually uninter­ rupted period® that the institutionalization of recruitment patterns hap­ pened.

228

3. The critical election of 1973

The election of December 1973 provides an unparalleled opportunity to study recruitment and derecruitment during a crisis of leadership accountability. From an empirical-analytical point of view this election provides us with a situation in which fluctuations in several recruitment variables should be expected to be highly visible. In a critical election the continuation of the career of the incumbent legislator is endangered. The 1973 election is a critical election (Pedersen: 1983a, b, 1988). It brought an end to continuity and tranquility in Danish politics. As an election it has been termed a land-slide, even an electoral earthquake (e.g. Sartori: 1976). To put this election in perspective its main results are presented below in Table 10.5 against the background of a sample of other elections. Table 10.5 The Distribution of Seats in the Folketing before and after the 1973 Election: 1960,1971,1973,1981 and 1990 (Excl. Greenland and Faroe Islands) Party

1960

1971

1973

1981

1990

11 76 11 38 32

17 70 27 30 31

11 46 20 22 16

21 59 9 20 26

15 69 7 29 30

Communists Justice Party Center Democrats Christian Peoples* Party Progress Party

0 0

0 0

-

-

6 5 14

0 0 15

0 9

-

-

7 28

4 16

4 12

Other Parties

7

0

0

5

0

175

175

175

175

175

Socialist Peoples Party Social Democrats Radical Liberals Agrarian Liberals Conservatives

Total No. of Seats

_

0

229

A brief look at the election results as they were translated into a new distribution of parliamentary seats should be enough to substantiate this dramatic description. The 1973 election stands out among other European elections since 1945 in terms of aggregate electoral volatility (Pedersen: 1983b). It is also fairly well documented that individual electoral volatility readied an all-time high, as did political interest, protest sentiments, distrust etc. (Borre: 1985). V.O. Key would definitely have used the term "critical election” about this event (Key: 1955, 1959). The lasting result of the 1973-election was fragmentation and realignment: from a moderate pluralist party system with 4-5 parties, Denmark changed overnight to a fragmented party system in which about 10-15 parties compete for votes, and in which 8-10 parties are becoming represented at the elections which have even become more frequent than before. The impact on turnover of the critical 1973 election was clearly docu­ mented in Table 10.1 above. The simultaneous defeat of the five older parties and the corresponding victory of five more or less new parties produced a totally new collective profile of legislators. Only 55 per cent of the members of the outgoing parliament were returned by the voters, a situation not often seen.^ And among those who were not returned, the major portion simply were defeated in the election. Even more significant is the fact that 40 per cent of all members after the election had never set their feet in the Folketing chambers before December 1973, and 28 per cent of all members were not only new in politics, but so were their parties.

4. Electoral turbulence and cohort stabilization In the first section of this chapter it was suggested that some general lessons can be extracted from an analysis of the Danish case. It was even suggested that this case may offer the best data available in any Western country for this purpose, since new as well as old parties are involved, destabilization as well as stabilization. If the recruitment system, as the Danish system evidently has done, in the long run returns to the "normal" state, even when the party system has undergone realignment, such a finding should be of interest beyond the borders of this small democracy.

230

What happens to the legislative elite during a critical election? In the briefest of terms the following sequence of events is set in motion: When voters revolt they will either switch parties within the existing party system and in the process elect new political representatives; or they will withdraw their support by abstaining from voting; or they will vote for new parties with new political leaders and representatives. Whatever they do, voters’ increasing individual electoral volatility will produce an increase in the aggregated electoral volatility. This is a well documented fact, espe­ cially so in Danish election studies from this critical period. Depending upon the electoral system in question, this movement will in itself produce an increase in what may be termed the parliamentary volatility, i.e. the net change of parliamentary seats among parties. ^ This alteration, in turn, will produce an increase in personnel turnover. It is logically possible to find high personnel turnover in an election in which volatility is low; nevertheless it is well-documented in Danish empirical research that a positive relationship exists.^ Turnover as well as the broader phenome­ non of personal circulation of the elite is a critical variable because its variations over time tend to constitute the limiting value for the variations in the social background variables related to the legislators and to the legislature as a political institution.^ It is thus established beyond doubt that the observed fluctuations in recruitment variables during the 1970s were closely related to the increase in the electoral volatility during that period. The simple model postulating a linear relationship between electoral volatility and turnover of legislative personnel would also lead us to expect the somewhat lower levels of electoral volatility during the 1980s to be reflected in the recruitment variables. The data presented in Tables 10.1-10.3 support this expectation as well. It would nevertheless be premature to conclude that fluctuations and trends in recruitment variables are just reflections of factors pertaining to the electorate. The reader will only need to study the changing recruit­ ment pattern in connection with the otherwise non-dramatic, low-volatility election of 1971 in order to come to this conclusion. The recruitment system is also characterized by a kind of development that is basically autonomous. To be more precise: besides the electoral factor a generational factor is at work, and only when the impact of the latter is

231

taken into account is it possible to understand trends as well as fluctua­ tions in recruitment variables. It is thus my contention that a satisfactory understanding of the "normal" state of the recruitment system is made easier by the introduc­ tion of the notion of the legislative cohort. Even more so is the analysis of the impact of a critical election upon recruitment patterns facilitated by the use of this concept. In the following discussion the technical notion of legislative cohort will often be used as a synonym for the more complex notion of generation. A few words of conceptual clarification are in order. At any given moment a parliament will display a certain generational distribution of its members, ranging from the incoming electoral cohort and way back in time until reaching the electoral generation of the Nestor of the parliament The generational profile thus will consist of a number of cohorts, interspersed by a certain amount of "irregulars", i.e. members who entered parliament between elections for one reason or another. Several metaphors have been used to describe this layered structure which, by the way, is a general phenomenon characterizing all sorts of elites.14 For Mattei Dogan the image implied drifting sand and sand dunes (Dogan: 1961). More speed was suggested by the apt military meta­ phor of Philip W. Buck, who likened British politicians between 1918 and 1959, to a marching parade (Buck: 1963).^ The generalized cohort or generational structure will look like a multi­ layered structure with a fairly big cohort of first generation members. Each cohort will become smaller and smaller over time as it loses a number of its original members, and consequently the "layers" in the struc­ ture will tend to be thinner and thinner. Since, however, the "decay" of any generation will gradually tend to slow down, the patterned decaying process will produce a characteristic generational profile of the "normal" legislature: at any given moment it will look like a layer-cake - the young­ est generations will, ceteris paribus, be the most numerous, and the older generations will only contain a relatively small number of "survivors". In order to visualize the "layer-cake" idea an approximation of the generational profile structure of selected parliaments is presented in Table 10.6.16

232

Table 10.6 The Distribution of Seniority. Selected Legislative Sessions. Legislature Seniority (years)

1960

1971

1973

1981

Freshmen(*)

45

52

71

31

28

0 =*