Jack Dennis

The Child'S Acquisition of Regime Norms: Political Efficacy

In its broadest conception, a political system is a means through which the wants of the members of a society are converted into binding decisions. To sustain a conversion process of this sort a society must provide a relatively stable context for political interaction, a set of ground rules for participating in all parts of the political process. We may describe this context variously as a constitutional order, a set of fundamental rules, or customary procedures for settling differences. But however this context is defined, it usually includes three elements: some minimal constraints on the general goals of its members, rules or norms governing behavior, and structures of authority through which the members of the system act in making and implementing political outputs. To these goals, norms and structures we may give the traditional name “political regime” or constitutional order in the broadest, nonlegal sense of the phrase. We may hypothesize that if a political system is to persist, one of its major tasks is to provide for the input of at least a minimal level of support for a regime of some kind. A political system that proved unable to sustain a regime, that is, some relatively ordered and stable way of converting inputs into outputs, could not avoid collapsing. Each time a dispute arose it would have to seek to agree on means for settling differences at the same time as it sought to bring about a settlement of the substance of the issue, a virtually impossible combination of tasks for a society to engage in continuously.

The Child's Image of Government

To maintain a social construct as varied, exten sive, and demanding of social resources as government, a broad panoply of forces need to be set in motion to provide the requisite support. The political socialization of new members is one of the most far-reaching and most consequential of these forces. The political system must somehow provide a flow of information about and continuously create deep feelings of loyalty and obedience for its basic forms. One of these is its government or authorities. Government is a primary focus for the generation of politically supportive or disaffective orienta tions. The data here presented suggest that in the United States a supportive image of government is being widely and regularly reproduced for young new members. The average grade school child of the test group appears to experience some rather basic changes in his conception of government— changes which move him toward a cognitive image that con forms to the requirements of a democratic political system. We know as well, from what little evidence there is directly about support for government per se, that adult Americans are also highly supportive of their government. These explora tory data illustrate the growth of the deep roots of this sup portive sentiment.—Ed.

Support for the Institution of Elections by the Mass Public

The institution of elections is a significant feature of most present day political systems and is one of the most widely used of all of the political inventions of mankind. Rose and Mossawir have recently remarked that, “Elections are among the most ubiquitous of contemporary political institutions, and voting is the single act of political participation undertaken by a majority of adults in a majority of the nations in the world today.” The importance of elections is especially high in democratic systems. Both earlier and more contemporary discussions of the concept of democracy have employed elections as a primary definiendum and requisite feature of democracy. Indeed, if any single institution serves as popular democracys sine qua non , it is that of elections. The general argument that elections are “those most essential events in the democratic process” is often posed from the perspective of the importance of the functions they perform in the political system. The most widely remarked of these functions is to provide a mechanism by which the great mass of members of the system are able to choose their leaders—thus giving majority approval to the exercise of leadership. This is important both from the standpoint of solving the problem of legitimate leadership succession and as a means of potential relief from abuses or inadequacies of a present set of rulers. Secondly, elections may serve as an indication of public choice among government policies—although this function is probably less frequently performed than once was thought to be the case. In referenda, the function is direct; but even in the elections of candidates for public office there is on occasion a question of public decision among the broader aspects of policy programs. Furthermore, belief by future candidates in the possibility that voters may reject them at the next election because of their policies may lead them to anticipate public feeling, thus allowing indirect influence of elections upon policy formation. The latter may operate even in the absence of more direct control by the electorate. A third central function of elections is legitimation of a regime. An election serves as a device of public endorsement—or occasionally, of repudiation—of the system of government.

Support for the Party System by the Mass Public

Compared with most political institutions, the American party system has endured for a long time. The parties as organizations and symbols have become so much a part of our thinking about politics that we generally overlook the possibility of their eventual decline. One of the parties indeed has existed nearly as long as the republic itself; it thus antedates all but a few of the modern nations of the Western world. The basic form of the party system—two major, decentralized, ideologically diffuse parties—has remained generally intact throughout its lifespan. The system of parties as a principle of political organization has been extended in some form to every level and branch of government. When the persistence of the party system has been most in jeopardy—as in the period of the Civil War—it has managed always to reestablish itself. On the criteria of duration, constancy of form, degree of penetration of other political institutions and response to stress, the record of the party system has been one of marked success.This is not to say that there has been no variability in this performance. Constraints were present from the very beginning of party life in this country and have continued—with changing levels of severity—over the years. The failure of the parties to become part of the formal constitutional structure reflects a lack of full legitimation which has proved difficult to overcome.

Preadult Development of Political Tolerance1

This is a study of the levels and origins of political tolerance using a sample of 10- to 17-year-old Wisconsin preadults and theirparents. The respondents were interviewed by telephone three times from early 1980 to late 1981. In general, political tolerance was low, both for parents and their children. The preadults, however, exhibited greater political tolerance than did their parents. Indeed, they showed an age-related developmental pattern opposite to that of adults. For toleration of communists and of racists there were roughly the same patterns, but with some interesting differences. There were small, but significant, parent and child correspondences. Familial interpersonal communication patterns have an influence on the development of tolerance in children. Mass-mediated communication, however, is not significantly related to instilling tolerant values in children, although it is important for adults.

Political Socialization To Democratic Orientations in Four Western Systems

Pro f essor,~ Dennis, Lindberg, and McCrone are on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wiscomin (Madison). JACK DENNIS is currcnttt~ completing work with David Easton on American cbatdren’~ images of political authority. LEON N. LINDBERG is presently completing work on a book dealing with problems of quantitative measurement and theory construction in studies of regional integration. DONALD 1. McCRONE has published articlu, most recenti iu the American Pl~li~ical Science Review, orc cczusrd models and voting behavior. RODNEY STIEFBOLD is currently doiiig research in Austria, where he is Visiting Professor of Political Sci&tce at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna) and Visiting Professor of Political Sociology at the University of the Social Scie~~ces (Linz). Ile is preparing an ~r~ter-di~cipti~rt~ study of political socialization in Germany and related Western European countries.

Children's Images of the President and of Government in 1962 and 1974:

n the sixteen years since &dquo;political socialization&dquo; became a significant part of the working vocabulary of empirical social science (Hyman, 1959; Bulau et aI., 1959; Dennis, 1973), the term has connoted principally a device for building positive support for a political system. The usual model of the socialization process has been a maintaining one, in which the basic form of the political system is continuously reproduced in the minds of each maturing generation by those who immediately preceded it. But, as a colleague and one of the present authors have observed about political socialization theory: &dquo;We clearly require an approach which not only includes the possibility that socialization contributes to stability, but which also recognizes that change itself may be an equally frequent outcome of socialization&dquo; (Easton and Dennis, 1969: 47).

Political independence in America, III: In search of closet partisans

This study uses the 1980 NES questions on partisanship to investigate the question of the attributes of “closet partisans,” using a typology of partisans and independents developed from an alternative (PST) set of survey items to the usual ones. The study explores the application of four criteria to those learners most suspected of being undercover partisans. What is found is that those learners who are most like strong partisans on the criteria of political involvement and partisan commitment are nonetheless least like strong partisans on two further criteria: independence attitudes and affective response to the substantive content of elections. Thus, theAmerican Voter analysis, which assumes leaners are Independents, and the Wolfinger et al. critique ofThe American Voter, which concludes that leaners are partisans, both turn out to be oversimplifications of political reality.

Public support for congress

The present inquiry focuses upon recent levels and trends of public support and nonsupport of the U.S. Congress. The data are drawn from statewide surveys of Wisconsin adults in 1970–1978 and from such sources as CPS/NES, Gallup, and Harris. Measurement focuses upon four major types of public support for Congress—pure specific support (performance), pure diffuse support (including general confidence in the institution, sense of personal efficacy in relation to Congress, desire for institutional reform or maintenance and the amount of power preferred for Congress relative to other branches), and two mixed types of support, long-term performance assessments and confidence in congressional incumbents. With few exceptions, Congress has suffered a general erosion of public support over the past decade on most indicators.

PREADULT LEARNING OF POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE: Media and Family Communication Effects

This article addresses the question of the influence of mass media and interpersonal communication on the growth of partisan independence among American preadults; 3-wave panel interview data from Wisconsin preadults (aged 10-17 in early 1980) and their parents are used. New measures of political independence are introduced. Preadults become increasingly independent as they get older. Significant antecedent variables are the parents independence and education, and the preadults media exposure, attention and trust, and interpersonal political information seeking. None of these effects is large, and they are specific to particular measures of independence.