¹ Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965), p. 341 Google Scholar.

² See Milbrath, Lester, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965)Google Scholar, and Flanigan, William H., Political Behavior of the American Electorate (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1968)Google Scholar, for a summary of this literature.

³ These include demonstrations, rent strikes, nonvoting, and threats of violence; and may be used by groups excluded from the electoral system. See Skolnick, Jerome, The Politics of Protest (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969)Google Scholar, and Mullen, William F., “Community Control and Black Political Participation,” in Participatory Democracy, ed. Cook, Terrence and Morgan, Patrick (San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1971), pp. 256–265 Google Scholar.

⁴ An early critique of the “rational-activist citizen” was provided by Lippman, Walter in The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925)Google Scholar. Flanigan, Political Behavior of the American Electorate, has reviewed survey and other data about the electorate's political intelligence. See also Key, V. O., The Responsible Electorate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ As Kenneth Prewitt and Norman H. Nie noted, “Rather than probe and probe into the rationality of the individual voter, it may be more fruitful to inquire about the choices available under present conditions.” “Election Studies of the Survey Research Center,” British Journal of Political Science, 1 (10, 1971), 493 Google Scholar. See also Sullivan, John L. and O'Connor, Robert E., “Electoral Choice and Popular Control of Public Policy,” American Political Science Review, 66 (12, 1972), 1256–1268 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Prewitt, Kenneth, “Political Ambition, Volunteerism, and Electoral Accountability,” Amerian Political Science Review, 64 (03, 1970), 5–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Different channels for citizen influence are discussed by Rokkan, Stein in “Mass Suffrage, Secret Voting, and Participation,” in Political Sociology, ed. Coser, Lewis A. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), pp. 101–131 Google Scholar.

⁸ This term was first used by Janda, Kenneth, “Democratic Theory and Legislative Behavior: A Study of Legislator-Constituency Relationships” (Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1961), pp. 169–179 Google Scholar. Cited in Eulau, Heinz, Micro-Macro Political Analysis: Accents of Inquiry (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), p. 99 Google Scholar.

⁹ Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman H., Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 44–81 Google Scholar. These modes, based on a factor analysis of fifteen participatory acts, are also described in Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., and Kim, Jae-On, The Modes of Democratic Participation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1971), pp. 15–19 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Verba and Nie, pp. 299–333.

¹¹ This index is described in Verba and Nie, Chapter 17 and Appendix I. A parallel measure will be used in this paper: see below and Appendix.

¹² The exact proportion of the variance in concurrence explained by participation depended on the mode of participation and on community consensus. See Verba and Nie, pp. 326–332.

¹³ Citizen consensus and the “responsiveness to whom?” question are discussed in Participation in America, chaps. 17–19.

¹⁴ See Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (University of Illinois Press, 1970), pp. 188–194 Google Scholar, and Verba, Sidney, Small Groups and Political Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 219–225 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Numerous examples of such activity are offered in Royko, Mike, Boss (New York: New American Library, 1971)Google Scholar, and Gosnell, H. F., Machine Politics: Chicago Model (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ As Dolbeare has suggested of the poverty program, “maximum feasible participation” of the poor may have been used as a device to give deprived groups a stake in the established system. Dolbeare, Kenneth M., “Public Policy Analysis and the Coming Struggle for the Soul of the Post-Behavioral Revolution,” in Power and Community, ed. Green, Philip and Levinson, Sanford (New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 106 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See LaPalombara, Joseph and Weiner, Myron, Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Verba and Nie considered some of these possibilities: they found that such aspects of the community setting as its wealth and its insulation from the larger society did not affect the association between participation and concurrence on community problems. Participation in America, pp. 329–330. See also Hansen, Susan B., “Concurrence in American Communities: The Response of Local Leaders to the Community Political Agenda” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1972), chap. 9Google Scholar, for a fuller discussion of the relationship between concurrence and community setting.

¹⁹ Lineberry, Robert L. and Fowler, Edmund P., “Reformism and Public Policies in American Cities,” American Political Science Review, 61 (09, 1967), 701–716 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Hawley, Willis D., Nonpartisan Elections and the Case for Party Politics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974)Google Scholar.

²¹ Eulau, Heinz and Prewitt, Kenneth, “Political Matrix and Political Representation,” American Political Science Review, 63 (06, 1969), 427–441 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See by the same authors The Labyrinth of Democracy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973)Google Scholar.

²² These dimensions of electoral competition are those used by Eulau, and Prewitt, in The Labyrinth of Democracy, pp. 229–235 Google Scholar. The importance of opposition is also stressed in Political Opposition in Western Democracies, ed. Dahl, Robert A. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

²³ See Rosenthal, Donald B. and Crain, Robert L., “Structure and Values in Local Political Systems: The Case of Fluoridation Decisions,” in City Politics and Public Policy, ed. Wilson, James Q. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968), pp. 217–242 Google Scholar, for a discussion of the importance of the mayor's office and of his role as a focus of local decision making.

²⁴ The importance of registration has been emphasized by Kelley, Stanley, Ayers, Richard E., and Bowen, William G. in “Registration and Voting: Putting First Things First,” American Political Science Review, 61 (06, 1967), 359–379 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kim, Jae-On, Petrocik, John R., and Enokson, Stephen N., “Voter Turnout among the American States: Systemic and Individual Components,” American Political Science Review, 69 (03, 1975), 107–124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ An example of this is offered by Vidich, Arthur J. and Bensman, Joseph, Small Town in Mass Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 20 Google Scholar. The local political leaders deliberately timed elections so as to discourage voting by people who worked in nearby cities and who had interests quite different from those of the local farmers and businessmen who dominated politics in Springdale.

²⁶ On “pseudo-participation,” see Verba, , Small Groups and Political Behavior, pp. 217–225 Google Scholar. Several researchers have suggested that citizen participation does have a rational basis, and that a decision to vote is predicated on the perceived probability of one's preferred candidate winning, the size of the difference between alternatives, and the costs involved. See Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar, and Riker, William E. and Ordeshook, Peter C., “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting,” American Political Science Review, 62 (03, 1968), 25–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ See Deutsch, Karl W., The Nerves of Government (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Different models and indicators of linkage have been reviewed by Key, V. O., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), pp. 411–431 Google Scholar; Pomper, Gerald M., Elections in America (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970)Google Scholar; Luttbeg, Norman R., Public Opinion and Public Policy: Models of Political Linkage (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1968), pp. 1–9 Google Scholar.

²⁹ These sixty-four communities include half of those under 60,000 that fell into a standard multistage area probability sample used by the National Opinion Research Center for its amalgam surveys. Within these communities, quota sampling was used (quotas based on census tract statistics on age, sex, race, and employment) to select interviews from the noninstitutionalized population over age twenty-one. Between twenty-five and thirty interviews were conducted in each community. See Verba and Nie, Participation in America, Appendix A, for a full description of sampling methods.

Because of the quota sampling used, sampling errors cannot be computed directly. Substantial correlations, however, were noted between sample and population data (the latter based on the census and on election statistics) with respect to voting turnout, age, race, income, education, percentage in white-collar occupations, and ethnic background. For this reason the citizen sample can be considered a fairly reliable estimate of the population.

³⁰ The elite sample is discussed in Verba and Nie, Appendix H, and in Hansen, dissertation, chapter 2. The N of 306 includes 56 heads of government, 77 school officials, 61 business leaders, 56 party leaders, and 56 newspaper editors.

³¹ See Polsby, Nelson W., Community Power and Political Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Jennings, M. Kent, Community Influentials (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964)Google Scholar.

³² See Appendix for more detailed description of the construction of the concurrence index.

³³ See Hansen, doctoral dissertation, chapter 4.

³⁴ The classic statement is E. E. Schattschneider on the “scope and bias of the pressure system,” in The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1960)Google Scholar. See also Cobb, Roger and Elder, Charles D., Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda-Building (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972)Google Scholar; and Gamson, William, “Stable Unrepresentation in American Society,” American Behavioral Scientist, 12 (November-December, 1968), 15–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ The original research design called for specific questions on policy dimensions. Several of these were inadvertently omitted from the elite questionnaire. Verba, and Nie, , Participation in America, pp. 267–285 Google Scholar, and Hansen, chapter 4, have reported on those that could be used to compare leaders' and citizens' opinions. Agreement on these was greater in participant communities with competitive political structures, the same setting that was associated with agreement on the salience of issues.

³⁶ See discussion by Lineberry, Robert L. and Sharkansky, Ira, Urban Politics and Public Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), chapter 2Google Scholar.

³⁷ Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” American Political Science Review, 57 (03, 1963), 45–56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ See Hansen, Susan B., “Citizen-Leader Concurrence on Community Problems” (mimeo, University of Illinois, 1974)Google Scholar for discussion of concurrence in different issue areas. Agreement on the salience of economic and welfare problems is more likely in competitive participant communities, while political factors are less important for concurrence on public services.

³⁹ Key, , Public Opinion and American Democracy, p. 410 Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See Hansen, chapter 4. The different types of leaders in this study did not differ significantly in levels of concurrence, although there were some minor variations among leaders across the three sets of problems considered.

⁴¹ Eulau and Prewitt, “Political Matrix and Political Representation.”

⁴² Pitkin, Hanna F., The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 224 Google Scholar.

⁴³ Reports of NORC interviewers and of the elite respondents were used as sources of information on the sixty-four communities in the study, as were the following published sources: The Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population 1960 and Census of Government 1962 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963)Google Scholar; The County and City Data Book (U.S. Bureau of the Census Statistical Abstract Supplement, 1967 and 1968).

⁴⁴ NORC interviewers were instructed to interview the “elected head of local government,” who could be the mayor, first selectman, justice of the peace, or township trustee. Eight of them were picked from the members of an elected board (councilmen, county supervisors), the rest elected directly by citizens. One might well argue that the Democratic and Republican party leaders should be considered together with the heads of local government; while the party officials are not officeholders, in many ways they must be sensitive to political processes and to elections. In contrast, the business, school and newspaper elites are further removed from accountability to voters.

The analysis reported here was repeated considering three groups of leaders instead of two: heads of government, party leaders, and other leaders. But political structure and electoral participation had less impact on party leaders' concurrence than on the scores of elected officials. In fact, there was little difference between party officials and nonelected leaders in these respects. A strict definition of electoral accountability was therefore adopted, and those officials whose jobs depended upon election were considered separately from the others.

⁴⁵ The election statistics for the most recent local election were obtained by NORC interviewers from the local government heads. For the sample data, each cross-section respondent was assigned a score on the four modes and an overall index of participation. The portion of each respondent's score that could be attributed to social class was then partialled out, and the averages for these residual participation indices were computed for all the respondents sampled in a given community. These procedures are described more fully in Verba and Nie, pp. 309–314.

⁴⁶ In communities with high voting rates, these nonelectoral forms of participation do make a difference in concurrence (Verba and Nie, p. 326).

⁴⁷ One such measure (the mean deviation of the vote among all candidates for city council across five elections) was used by Black, Gordon S., “A Theory of Political Ambition: Career Coice and the Role of Structural Incentives,” American Political Science Review, 66 (03, 1972), 147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A classic index of party competition is that suggested by Rae, Douglas W., The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 44–67, 114–132 Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Perceptions of competition for office by candidates may be as important as the actual level of competition. See Kingdon, John W., Candidates for Office: Beliefs and Strategies (New York. Random House, 1968), pp. 147–150 Google Scholar; Leuthold, David, Electioneering in a Democracy: Campaigns for Congress (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968), pp. 20–30 Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Eulau, and Prewitt, , The Labyrinth of Democracy, pp. 229–235 Google Scholar. It is possible for a community to be competitive in one sense (that there are at least two candidates for office in most local elections) but not in others (incumbents may very seldom be turned out of office, or the proportion of the vote received by the challenging party or faction may be quite small).

⁵⁰ Prewitt, “Political Ambition”; Schlesinger, Joseph, Ambition and Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ See Pomper, , Elections in America, p. 13 ffGoogle Scholar., for a comparison of long and short-term election effects.

⁵² See discussion by Rossi, Peter H., “Power and Community Structure,” in Political Sociology, ed. Coser, , pp. 132–145 Google Scholar. Rossi suggests that patterns of community power (caucus rule, polylithic, amorphous, or pyramidal) may be related to coincidence of party, class, and ethnic cleavages.

⁵³ Neither the presence of these organizations in the community nor leaders' membership in such organizations proved to bear any relationship to concurrence. More complete data on organizational membership or activity, of course, might show some relationship to concurrence. The scale used here is a simple count for each community of the number of local organizations (business, labor, farm, professional, or nationality groups) which took stands on local issues or backed candidates.

⁵⁴ The indices of party activity were computed from information supplied by local party leaders on party resources (money, staff, volunteers); efforts to recruit candidates; and activity in local elections. Fifty-five per cent of the partisan communities in this sample have one or both local parties active, as compared with only thirty-four per cent of the nonpartisan communities.

⁵⁵ This measure was used by Verba, and Nie, , and is described in Participation in America, chapter 19, p. 320 Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Gamma correlations between frequency of contested elections and other political factors are .59 for partisanship, .42 for direct election of government executive, .32 for organizational involvement, and .21 for party activity.

⁵⁷ Charles F. Cnudde has examined linkages between policy outputs and public opinion structures in the American states: he also notes a curvilinear relationship with party competition. “Public Opinion and State Politics,” in State Politics: Readings in Political Behavior, ed. Crew, Robert (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1968), pp. 165–184 Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Some of the relevant literature is reviewed in “Political Participation as a Function of Political Setting,” chapter 4 of Political Participation, by Milbrath, Lester W. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965)Google Scholar; and Alford, Robert R. and Scoble, Harry M., “Sources of Local Political Involvement,” American Political Science Review, 62 (12, 1968), 1192–1206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Robert R. Alford and Eugene C. Lee noted correlations between voter turnout and partisanship ranging from .28 to .43 in their sample of American cities over 25,000 in population. “Voting Turnout in American Cities,” American Political Science Review, 62 (09, 1968), 1192–1206 Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Leuthold found this to be the case in his comparison of competitive and non-competitive congressional districts: Electioneering in a Democracy, p. 120.

⁶¹ Alford and Lee and others have found turnout to be higher when local elections are held at the same time as state or federal elections. This holds for these communities as well: even controlling for overlap with other elections, local political environment still affects participation. This problem is discussed in “Citizen Participation, Political Parties, and Democratic Theory. An Analysis of Local Politics in England,” by Paul E. Peterson and Paul Kantor (paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention, Los Angeles, Sept., 1970), pp. 3–5, 17-20.

⁶² Other models could be postulated that might apply to these data. Concurrence between leaders and citizens might encourage participation, or might affect political structure. Without time-series data, these alternative models cannot be fully evaluated. The models discussed here are more logical in temporal sequence: political structure and participation rates are relatively stable features of community life, while the substance of local issues, and citizen-leader agreement on them, may vary considerably over time. As Arther S. Goldberg has suggested, “Scientifically relevant causal explanations inhere only in our theories.” “Discerning a Causal Pattern Among Data on Voting Behavior,” American Political Science Review 60 (1966), 913 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Duncan, Otis Dudley, “Path Analysis: Sociological Examples,” American Journal of Sociology, 72 (07, 1966), 1–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This and several other articles explaining techniques applicable to social science are included in Causal Models in the Social Sciences, ed. Blalock, Hubert M. Jr. (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971)Google Scholar. The technique developed by Blalock, (Causal Inference in Non-Experimental Research, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Simon, Herbert M. (Models of Man, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1957)Google Scholar, relies on partial correlations.

⁶⁴ See Forbes, Hugh D. and Tufte, Edward R., “A Note of Caution in Causal Modelling,” American Political Science Review, 62 (12, 1968), 1258–1264 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a critical analysis of multicollinearity and the reporting of assumptions as conclusions.

⁶⁵ Blalock has argued that unstandardized regression coefficients may offer certain interpretive advantages (“Causal Inferences, Closed Populations, and Measures of Association,” American Political Science Review, 61 [03, 1967], 130–136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Duncan, (“Path Analysis”) and Sewall Wright (“Path Coefficients and Path Regressions,” in Blalock, , Causal Models in the Social Sciences, 1971, pp. 101–114 Google Scholar) prefer beta coefficients. I have reported both here, but because I have used a variety of scales and dummy variables, the beta coefficients can be more readily interpreted for these data. See also Hansen, Susan B., “Participation, Political Structure, and Concurrence” (paper presented at the American Political Science Association conference, New Orleans, 1973 Google Scholar), where a path analysis of these data is reported.

⁶⁶ The indices of electoral competition and organizational activity have been described earlier. Because of the curvilinear relationship noted between parly activity and concurrence, dummy variables could have been used for different categories of party strength. But to reduce the number of variables required, a unidimensional party scale was used (both parties absent, both weak, one strong, both strong).

⁶⁷ Citizen voting (the residual factor index based on cross-section sample data) was used to indicate participation rates in communities. The relationships observed here do not depend upon the indicators of political structure or participation that are used. If the percentage of votes received by the runner-up is taken as an indicator of competition, and if overall participation or campaign activity is used as an indicator of community participation, the same pattern holds. Modes of participation other than voting explain less of the variance in concurrence, however.

⁶⁸ Interaction could also be demonstrated by using dummy variables or interaction terms within the multiple regression equations. Because of the number of variables, large number of potential interactions terms, and relatively few cases, this was not feasible. If a simple model was used (voting and rates of competition, plus a product of these terms to indicate interaction), the resulting beta coefficients were voting, −.29; competition, .11; interaction term, .71; R ² = .25. Thus the interaction between participation and competition explains more of the variation in concurrence than either alone.

⁶⁹ Lineberry and Fowler, “Reformism and Public Policy.”

⁷⁰ Key, V. O., Southern Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1949), pp. 307–310, 655–661 Google Scholar.

⁷¹ See Verba and Nie, chapter 17, for a fuller discussion of the relationships among social class, participation and concurrence; and chapter 19 for a more detailed discussion of the “who benefits” problem with reference to types of participators.

⁷² Verba and Nie, pp. 320–327. There they describe the measure of consensus used here, analogous to the concurrence index, but indicating agreement between those ranking in the top third on overall participation and other citizens. Electoral participation shows about the same relationship as that reported here. Non-electoral forms of participation have a negative effect on concurrence in low-consensus communities. But since that relationship was not affected by political structure, only voting has been reported here.

⁷³ Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven. Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Motivations and strategies of community leaders are discussed in Banfield, Edward C., Political Influence (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1960)Google Scholar; Long, Norton, “The Local Community as an Ecology of Games,” American Journal of Sociology, 64 (11, 1958), 251–261 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cobb and Elder, Participation in American Politics.

⁷⁴ Evidence presented by the controversial 1971 CBS television documentary, “The Selling of the Pentagon.”

⁷⁵ McGuinness, Joe, The Selling of the President, 1968 (New York: Trident Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Wolfinger, Raymond E. has summarized the ongoing debate over the utility and practicability of analyzing nondecisions in “Non-Decisions and the Study of Local Politics,” American Political Science Review, 65 (12, 1971), 1063–1080 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ The relationship between leaders' activities and concurrence was discussed in Verba and Nie, p. 331 ff., and in the author's dissertation, chapter 6.

⁷⁸ See author's dissertation, chapter 8, for further dicussion of leaders' attitudes toward participation.

⁷⁹ Verba and Nie, pp. 329–330, found that neither wealth nor community isolation “explained” the association between participation and concurrence; controlling for these did not significantly diminish the original relationship. The author's thesis, chapter 9, considered several elements of the community setting (population size and stability, communications, ethnicity) that contributed to concurrence. But these factors also did not diminish the relationships observed between concurrence and political structure.

⁸⁰ G. Bingham Powell has developed several models of electoral aggregation which demonstrate the importance of political structure for representation. “Citizen-Elite Linkages in Austrian Communities” (paper presented at the 1974 APSA annual meeting, Chicago, Illinois).

⁸¹ Prewitt, “Political Ambitions.”