Harmon Zeigler

The Salience of American State Politics

Research emphasizing the correlates of state policy outputs and the performance of particular institutions has overshadowed the role of the citizenry in the drama of state politics. One question of basic concern is the relevance of state government and politics for the inhabitants of a state. At the level of public policy and institutional performance the answer to this is factual and straightforward. The nature, amount, distribution, and to some extent the quality of a states services and policies can be specified. Since states perform most of the traditional functions of governmental units and since these functions affect the fortunes of the citizens, state politics has an obvious, tangible, objective relevance for a states inhabitants. At another level, however, the answer is not so clear-cut. Here we are dealing with the idea of what is subjectively relevant. Large numbers of people apparently pass their lives being touched by political institutions in a variety of ways without becoming particularly interested in or involved with these institutions. Other people become intensely, purposively related to these same institutions. Still others fall along a continuum between these two poles. If substantial variations exist in the general salience of politics, there is little reason to doubt that the same conditions may be found in particular subsets of political matters. In the case at hand this subset consists of the cluster of institutions, actors, and processes known as state political systems.

Attitude Consensus and Conflict in an Interest Group: An Assessment of Cohesion

In America, interest groups operate within the democratic frame of reference. Like all political organizations, they are accorded more legitimacy when they can show that they are representative of the attitudes and values of a particular segment of the population. Consequently, the leaders of interest groups frequently spend a great deal of time explaining just how democratic their organizations are. If one examines the testimony of interest group leaders at state and national legislative hearings, he is likely to find that much of it is begun with an introductory statement explaining that the leadership of the testifying group is merely the voice of the membership. The personal values of the interest group leader are played down, and his function as representative (as distinguished from delegate) is exaggerated. On the other hand, relatively few political interest groups have systematic and formalized means of ascertaining the desires of members. We know that most of the devices used to solicit member opinion are not very effective. Truman has shown that the affairs of most interest groups are run on a day-to-day basis by a fraction of the total membership. The mass of the membership takes a relatively passive role with regard to the formation of public policies by the organization. Communication between leaders and followers is spasmodic and cannot provide efficient guidelines for the actions of leaders. Whether or not leadership of an organization seeks to become a manifestation of Michels iron law of oligarchy, the realities of communication within an organization suggest that most of the communication undertaken by leaders will be with other members of the leadership clique rather than with the larger body of followers in the group.

The Neutral in a Communication Network Under Conditions of Conflict

Two laboratory experiments are reported which describe the effects of the presence of a neutral in a communication network during the resolution of differences of opinion between two persons. The presence of a neutral was found to be associated with increased resistance to persuasion, increased number of messages between parties, and increased perception of difficulty in resolving the conflict. It was proposed that the neutral sustains conflict by prematurely rendering public the positions of the parties involved. Member tenure and power were found to be positively associated, suggesting that open groups in contrast to closed groups more readily incur conflict.

Exchange and Power in American Education

fundamental axiom of educational policy-making, as evidenced in the literature documenting the rationale for the formal structure of school district organization, rests upon a simple division of labor: the school board establishes policy and the superintendent administers policy.’ Such a division of labor is certainly not unique to education, but rather is firmly grounded in the general ideology of the municipal reform movement and is reflected in the division of responsibility between city council and city manager, for example. In addition to the formal division of responsibilities, educational policy-making is constrained by a more general ideological tenet: education and &dquo;politics&dquo; are an incompatible mixture (Eliot, 1959). Thus, educational government was separated from municipal government, school board members were