Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics
American voting behavior has long been paradoxical. Although levels of voter participation increase with age, income, and education, middle- and upper-class voters—those who profess to hold the electoral process in the highest regard—still tend to cast their ballots by "image" rather than issue.

Beyond the Electoral Connection provides a comprehensive analysis and systematic explanation of this fundamental paradox. Kim Ezra Shienbaum's unusually broad perspective leads her to conclude that the nature of American democracy has been altered in fundamental ways over the past thirty years. She asserts that voters have rationally adjusted their political behavior to cope with a system in which public policy outcomes are determined largely by judicial and bureaucratic politics rather than through electoral politics. Shienbaum concludes that for the average "smart" voter, a trip to the polls is little more than an act of political ritualism: a demonstration of support for the status quo.

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Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics
American voting behavior has long been paradoxical. Although levels of voter participation increase with age, income, and education, middle- and upper-class voters—those who profess to hold the electoral process in the highest regard—still tend to cast their ballots by "image" rather than issue.

Beyond the Electoral Connection provides a comprehensive analysis and systematic explanation of this fundamental paradox. Kim Ezra Shienbaum's unusually broad perspective leads her to conclude that the nature of American democracy has been altered in fundamental ways over the past thirty years. She asserts that voters have rationally adjusted their political behavior to cope with a system in which public policy outcomes are determined largely by judicial and bureaucratic politics rather than through electoral politics. Shienbaum concludes that for the average "smart" voter, a trip to the polls is little more than an act of political ritualism: a demonstration of support for the status quo.

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Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics

Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics

by Kim Ezra Shienbaum
Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics

Beyond the Electoral Connection: A Reassessment of the Role of Voting in Contemporary American Politics

by Kim Ezra Shienbaum

Hardcover(Reprint 2016 ed.)

$95.00 
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Overview

American voting behavior has long been paradoxical. Although levels of voter participation increase with age, income, and education, middle- and upper-class voters—those who profess to hold the electoral process in the highest regard—still tend to cast their ballots by "image" rather than issue.

Beyond the Electoral Connection provides a comprehensive analysis and systematic explanation of this fundamental paradox. Kim Ezra Shienbaum's unusually broad perspective leads her to conclude that the nature of American democracy has been altered in fundamental ways over the past thirty years. She asserts that voters have rationally adjusted their political behavior to cope with a system in which public policy outcomes are determined largely by judicial and bureaucratic politics rather than through electoral politics. Shienbaum concludes that for the average "smart" voter, a trip to the polls is little more than an act of political ritualism: a demonstration of support for the status quo.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780812279160
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date: 06/29/1984
Series: Anniversary Collection
Edition description: Reprint 2016 ed.
Pages: 208
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Kim Ezra Shienbaum is Emerita Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, Camden.

Read an Excerpt

From the book:

The distinguishing feature and central argument of this book is that U.S. citizens exercise rationally not in choosing between political candidates but in deciding whether to vote at all. The evidence suggests that those able to benefit from (or at least comfortably within) a political system in which tangible benefits are obtained for the most part outside the electoral process tend to make a rational choice to give the political system symbolic support by voting—and that those who are miserable and unable to use the system to better their state refrain from such a symbolic act, also rationally.

The argument should not be stretched too thin. Nor all have-nots abstain. Some do vote. Possibly those who are aspiring haves or who subjectively define themselves as such will be more likely to go to the polls. Conversely, not all the haves vote, but more of them do than do not.

Voters are not the mass of have-nots duped into political quiescence by the illusion of participation and the promise of tangible benefits never received. Rather, voters are the haves—the beneficiaries of the system who rationally choose to vote as an expression of their support for the system. Since these people constitute a plurality of citizens not only by income but also by temperament and inclination, we can surmise that their support is sufficiently broad-based to ensure the stability of the system, at least for the present.

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