Walter Dean Burnham

Insulation and Responsiveness in Congressional Elections

The 1974 congressional election is part of a crisis sequence in the current history of the American political system. The tremendous upheaval which has been going on in our electoral politics since 1964 has had a number of remarkable by-products. Chief among these has been the progressive weakening of the hold which party loyalties have had upon the voters in channeling their voting decisions. This growing dissolution of party-in-the-electorate entails a serious erosion of political parties as basic institutional components of the political system. Closely associated with this, a profoundly important electoral reinforcement of the constitutional separateness of our national policy-making institutions has occurred. The 1974 election has made its own contribution to these trends, and it seems clear that the policy-making vacuum which dramatically emerged in the spring of 1973, when the Watergate cover story fell apart, will continue unabated at least until 1977. Yet this election has some features which do not easily fit a simple model of party decay; and it has had consequences of importance, both substantively and analytically. There is justification, therefore, for giving it a close study.

Rejoinder to “Comments” by Philip Converse and Jerrold Rusk

Professors Converse and Rusk have replied to my present paper in two different ways: the former by a short, sharp rejoinder and the latter by a longer and more diffuse article. For space reasons alone, my commentary on their remarks must be concise; and while there is much which I should like to discuss further, there comes a time when the case must be sent to the jury. It is best, I think, to confine most of my comments on Philip Converses Note to the last half of it. We begin with The American Voter and the SRC “paradigm” as I see them. Having also reread this book, I will go even further in my praise of it than Converse has. It is not only a meticulous piece of scholarship; it is also truly a classic, a seminal work which justly gives permanent professional honor to those who wrote it. A seminal work is one which not only contributes to knowledge but permanently reorganizes the shape of a scholarly field. This can be done only by providing a conceptual framework for the myriad nonseminal but essential scholarly activities which take place in that field thereafter. As a meticulous piece of work, The American Voter was indeed qualified and judicious in its statements and generalizations. It also had at least as much sensitivity to the time dimension as could be expected for 1960.