Party delegates in California Democrats

Transcription

1 Party delegates in California Democrats Patricia Correa Vila (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) Juan Rodríguez Teruel (Universidad de Valencia) Montserrat Baras Gómez (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) (Please do not quote without the permission of the authors) Paper presented at the XXII nd World Congress of Political Science Madrid 8-12 July Patricia Correa: Becaria FPI 2010 en la UAB. Miembro del GREP Juan Rodríguez: Ayudante Doctor en la UV. Miembro del GREP Montserrat Baras: Profesora Titular en la UAB. Miembro del GREP.

2 Abstract: The academic literature of political parties has shown that parties have been experiencing a decline in their levels of membership. It has been shown that one measure to solve this is to apply some mechanisms of intra-party democracy, and try to make more attractive the membership. The American parties have an organization few structured and developed and the concept of membership is different. Instead of this, the participation of activist is also relevant in many activities such as the processes of candidate selection. The National Conventions are important events for parties that are used to select their new leadership too. Recent literature about political parties activism analyse the existence of intra-party democracy whether this has experienced an increase and whether activists are conscious of that. In our paper, we try to show the specificities of activist from California Democratic Party, their political attitudes and their opinions about the party and the intra-party democracy. Introduction 1 The European academic literature has observed the decline in the levels of membership in most of the political parties in European countries (Mair and van Biezen 2001, Scarrow 2000, Seyd and Whiteley 2004, Whiteley 2011). As Whiteley (2011) argues, this topic continues being relevant because parties play a central role in politics in modern democracies and the level of activism that they receive from their bases has implications in the future of democracy. But not all the countries are experiencing this decrease in membership, the World Values Surveys of 1995 and 2006 for United States of America shows that the 50,2% were members in 1995 and the 20,3% of them consider themselves as active members, in 2006 were members the 51,3% and the 17,9% were active members. In other words, the level of membership has not decrease but the activism of those members has suffered a small decrease. One way to increase the levels of party activism that political parties have been applying is the implementation of more democratic or participatory mechanisms of intra-party decision-making, often as a respond to the demands of intra-party democracy for the own activists. There are some empirical studies about intraparty democracy in European literature but this aspect has not been developed deeply in American literature. As Layman et al. (2010) say political scientists have devoted little attention to empirical work about the American case (Gauja 2009, Wauters 2009, Baras et al. 2012, Rodríguez-Teruel et al. 2011, Layman et al. 2010). 1 This research has been possible thanks to the public funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science (Research Project CSO C02-03). The results of this research form part of the GREP (Political Elites and Political Parties Research Group). 2

3 As we said before, the analysis of party members is relevant for the scientific community and also for society since they are part of one of the core political actors in modern democracies. We want to contribute with the empirical analysis about party activism through an exploratory analysis of the activists from California Democratic Party, their political attitudes and their opinions about the party and the intra-party democracy. First, we want to introduce a brief review about some political activism studies in USA. Second, we are going to present the specificities of our case study and our data and finally, we will present the analysis and first conclusions. A brief review of party activism studies in USA As we said in the introduction, the levels of membership are not in decline in American political parties, although the concept of member is quite different from the typical European idea of party member. The literature defines as member those who vote in primaries or those who are members of local entities of the party, or those who made some economical contributions. Each study applies a different definition for members or activists; in our study we will consider as activists those who went as delegates to the California Democratic Party Convention in Part of the European literature about the decline of levels of party membership notes that the use of mechanisms of intra-party democracy as a solution to improve the situation. American parties use some mechanisms of intra-party democracies as the primaries to select their candidates but there is some aspects like the selection of party leaders and the policy setting that are decided by convention delegates. There are many studies about party activism in USA, the most of them were developed in the 80s and 90s decades but the requests of intra-party democracy are not deeply analyzed in them. The study of party activism seems to be less attractive in the last years and a few studies have been developed. We can analyse party activism from different point of views or analysing different aspects. Part of the literature has focused on the socio-demographic aspects of activist, or on the characteristics of some groups of activist like women, racial groups or elite groups or on the specificities of some States or Regions like Southern activists (Steed et al. 1998, Crotty 1990). Another set of studies try to explain the motivations or incentives to get involved in activism for these party members and others try to classified these activists regarding these motivations and also their levels of activism or the objectives that they pursue by being an activist. In other words, they propose a typology of motivations for activism in organizations and develop the concept of amateur and professional activist. Clark and Wilson (1961) introduce the typology of incentives in organization, classifying in solidary, material and purposive incentives. They define solidary incentives as those, which are basically intangible, that is, the reward has no 3

4 monetary value and cannot easily be translated into one that has. They derive in the main from the act of associating and include such rewards as socializing, congeniality, the sense of group membership and identification and the status resulting from membership. Material incentives are defined as those, which are tangible, that is, rewards that have a monetary value or can easily be translated into ones that have: wages or direct benefit from being part of the organization. And finally, purposive incentives are intangible, as the solidary ones, but they derive in the main from the stated ends of the association rather than from the simple act of associating. These inducements are to be found in the suprapersonal goals of the organization (Clark and Wilson 1961). There are other researchers that after applying the Clark and Wilson typology, they develop one with five categories classification: self-enhancement, purposive, sociality, allegiance and personalist (Constantini and King 1984). But, normally, subsequent investigations use the three types classification in their analysis. Regarding with the studies of the incentives of involvement, some researchers linked the incentives theory with Wilson point of view of the amateur Democrats. Wilson describes amateur activist like those who find politics intrinsically interesting because it express a conception of the public interest. The amateur activist thinks in politics more in terms of ideas and principles than in terms of persons. In contrast, the professional is preoccupied with the outcome of politics in terms of winning or losing, politics to him consist of concrete questions and specific persons who must be dealt with in a manner that minimizes the possibility of defeat at the next elections (Wilson, 1962). In that sense, Carsey et al. (2003) pointed that amateurs have long been seen as more ideological and idealist, by pursuing purposive incentives, than professional activists because the purpose of amateurs is promoting issues and principles in politics. On the other hand, the professionals were characterised more by solidary incentives, namely benefits from social interaction and the excitement of party politics. Also, professionals are characterised more by material incentives, such as patronage jobs, political preferment, business or professional careers, and developing a career in politics. As it is said, these studies relate purposive incentives with amateur activism and solidary and material with professional activism. But some researchers consider that there is not longer a division between amateur and professional, and both parties, the Republican Party and the Democrat Party have suffered an increase of amateur or purist activists. In the 70s political parties in USA changed the way of selection candidates and they started the process of primaries to select their candidates. That was a way to encourage the role of party activists, becoming more relevant for those candidates opting to nomination and also strengthen activist influence in the agenda by defending some issues and trying to link them with some nominees (Carsey et al 2010). As we have showed, there is a long scholarly tradition of studying national and state convention delegates, (see Herrera 1993,1994, Soule and Clarke 1979, Steed et al 1998, Crotty 1990) it is interesting in so far as conventions are still a good place to assess the operation and success of party institutions. The 4

5 development of the candidate-centered politics places the activists again in the focus of party politics. Although there is a relevant amount of studies about American party delegates, none of them tries to show if there is some demands of intra-party democracy and which type of delegates are in favour of it. In our paper, we will explain first some characteristics of our data and case study, then we will show some results about the traits of the delegates and finally we will try to expose if there are claims for more intra-party democracy. Case study and data: The California Democratic Party Convention 2011 California is one of the States with more population, there were inhabitants in 2010 (US Census 2010) and also the size of the Democratic Party Convention was enough to conduct a survey. Also the mechanism to select the delegates assures that the activist members will be at the Convention (Constantini and Valenly 1996). Moreover, the specificities of the political style of California, which was once thought unique but which is now increasingly becoming the national norm could help in a first analysis of intra-party democracy in American activists. As Ross (2000) explains, the key element of California s politics style is antipartyism. The state s voters prefer saying that they vote for the person and not for the party, also some candidates do not use their relation with their party during campaigns. Another aspect is the intra-party factionalism, there is groups inside of each party who have own interest towards policies, party principles and power within the party. Party activists are especially important because of the effort they put into campaigns and because they maintain the political party as an organization between elections. The ultimate in antipartyism would be the existence of elections free from party affiliation, or nonpartisan elections, which are what California holds at the city and county level. There are also nonpartisan elections for governing boards of special districts, judges, and the state superintendent of public instruction, which make difficult for parties to patronage jobs. But that not means that political parties cannot be found endorsing candidates or working behind scenes, it simply means that candidate s party affiliation is not revealed on the ballot itself. This results on campaigns running independently of the party and of another party candidates (Ross 2000, Culver and Syer 1991). Regarding with our survey, there were 2000 delegates at the Convention and we distribute almost 2000 questionnaires. Each questionnaire has 36 questions covering socio-demographical aspects, involvement, attitudes toward politics and Democratic Party and political values and opinions. We distribute the 5

6 questionnaires during the Convention, who was celebrated in april 2010 in Sacramento. At the end of the Convention, we had collected 523 completed questionnaires, that means that we collected the 26,15%, which is considered as a good sample to this type of surveys. Analysis of our California Democratic Convention Survey In this section we are going to describe first the results of our California Democratic Convention Survey in 2011 and then we are going to relate our results with the previous research in order to test if there exist clear divisions between pragmatic and idealist delegates and between the different motivations to be involved in the way that previous research suggest. Finally we will try to show if there are delegates who favour intra-party democracy. We are going to present our data group in different aspects: socio-demographical, involvement, activism and intra-party democracy. Socio-demographical aspects As we can observe in our data, the presence of men and women is quite balanced in the Democratic Party Conventions, the 50,1% was man and the 48,6% was woman. Moreover, the average age of delegates was 54 years, which implies that the most of delegates are in their active work age, about the 40%, with almost the 25% of delegates are older than 65 years. Observing, at the same time, the occupation of delegates, the 21,4% of delegates are retired, almost 7% are students but the presence of young people is a little bit higher, the 14%. % Sex Age Level of education California Democrats 2011 N Male Female Young (18-34) Middle Age (35-64) Senior (65- ) Basic Middle Higher 50,1 48, ,7 19,5 35,4 43,1 523 M 54,02 StDev. 16, Following the pattern of the results in another researches, the presence of delegates of another race or ethnic group is increasing, about the 20% of delegates are from a race different to White Caucasian (Abramowitz et al. 1983). As Rapoport et al. (1986) indicate, political activity is correlated with social class in United States, we observe that the most of the delegates of the Democratic Convention consider themselves as middle or upper-middle class (around 78%) and they have a high level of education (43% of the delegates are graduated). Despite they are well qualified; the university level is lower within 6

7 their parents, less than 18%. The level of education more common within delegate s parents is high school. % Ethnic group Social class California Democrats 2011 Black White Asian Latin Native American More than one Working Middle Upper 6,3 76,1 2,7 8,6 0,2 4,3 15,7 51,8 28,3 N % Work or occupation California Democrats 2011 Teacher and other educational employees Business owner or manager Government employee Office employee Public safety Construction or industrial worker Union employee Political or campaign professional 12,6 9,9 8,4 5 0,4 1,2 2,9 3,8 21,4 6,9 1,1 2,5 N 523 Retired Student Homemaker Unemployed Involvement In this section we are going to describe the reasons of be involved in politics and in the Democratic Party. Most of delegates got involved in the Democratic Party because they were inspired by a presidential campaign or by a political issue (38,8%). This is reinforced by the importance that delegates give to achieve the success to some of the candidates (51,8% consider extremely important this reason to be involved in politics) and the support to the values and issues that the Democratic Party defend (57,7% consider also extremely important this reason to be involved in politics). By contrast, the fact that their parents were active Democrats had not any particular effect; the 47,6% of delegates have not parents involved in politics, in that sense, there is not an effect of the primary sociology for being involved in the Democratic Party. 7

8 % Involvement fathers in politics California Democrats 2011 Father active Republican Mother active Republican Both active Republicans Father active Democrat Mother active Democrat Both active Democrats Father Rep, Mother Dem Father Dem, Mother Rep Active in other party 2,3 1,3 3,6 4,6 5,4 16,8 1,5 1 0,6 47,6 N 523 Non active % Involvement in Democratic Party Presidential campaign 26,6 California Democrats 2011 First reason to be involve Local or State campaign 5,4 Changing the Democratic Party 5,0 Union 3,8 Political issue 12,2 Family 8,2 Professional life 1,1 Socializing 3,1 N 523 Another aspect to consider is the reasons to be involved in politics, also named as motivations or incentives. Academic literature has classified the motivations or incentives to be involved in politics in three groups: material, solidarity and purposive. Material incentives will be those tangible rewards that can be translated into monetary values; solidary incentives are intangible, derive from the act rather than the ends of associating, and include such factors as socializing, group identification and enjoyment. And finally, purposive incentives are intangible as well, but are grounded in the overall goals of the organization, such as its demands for enactment of various public policies (Shaffer and Breaux, 1998). But like Constantini and Valenty (1996) tested, there is not just one type of motivation for activists and, often, they show more than one type of incentives, the motivations are not mutually exclusive (Shaffer and Breaux, 1998). In that way, the delegates of California Democratic Party select more than one type of incentive. In order to test it, we did a factorial analysis that proved that the delegates considered their motivations from more than one type, for example mixing material and solidarity incentives, as you can observe in the first group of our factorial analysis. 8

9 Matrix components Component I like the fun of conventions and campaigns 0,728 0,004-0,357 I enjoy the friendships and social contacts I have with other people in politics 0,714 0,052-0,401 I like the feeling of being close to people who are doing important work 0,672 0,043 0,157 Party works gives one visibility and recognition 0,651-0,263 0,219 Party work helps me make business or professional contacts 0,579-0,464 0,099 Party work gives me a sense of fulfilling civic responsibility 0,54 0,313 0,294 I want to have a personal career in politics 0,517-0,541 0,205 I believe strongly in the values and policies of the Democratic Party in general 0,403 0,536-0,369 I want to see particular candidates elected 0,282 0,591-0,011 I want to get the party and its candidates to support the policies I believe in 0,192 0,518 0,662 Extraction method: Analysis of principal components. a 3 components extracted A more clear way to present this existence of mixed incentives is like we show in the next table. As our frequencies show, most of the delegates have more than one incentive to be involved in politics. Between those who only choose one type, purposive incentives are the most popular, and the combination with purposive and solidary incentives is the bigger group with almost the 30% of the delegates, followed by the combination of aspects of the three incentives. Another aspect interesting that the data shows is the low presence of delegates who only manifest material incentives, with less than the 1%. This material incentive is more popular when it is combined with solidary incentives and in lesser extent with purposive incentives. Incentives to be involved in politics Solidary Material Purposive Solidary + Material Material + Purposive Solidary + Purposive Solidary + Material + Purposive 6,5 0,8 12,4 7,6 2,5 29,1 18,7 N 523 9

10 Activism and attitudes toward the party In this part we analyze political and party activism. First of all, as it is known, the role that interest groups and the organizations play in U.S. politics and, specially, in California, classified with an antipartyism political style is really relevant, being key elements in American politics (Ross 2000). For that reason, is relevant to know if the party activist have join to other types of political organizations and if they participate actively in them. Our data shows that Democrats delegates are really active in the party, the average of seniority is almost 27 years, and the 35% of delegates has been active in politics for more than 35 years, and almost three quarters of the delegates have always supported the Democratic Party. This was not the first convention for the majority of the delegates. For those who was the first one represent the 32,9%, that means that almost the 70% had been in a State Convention before, we are dealing with expert activists, not just had been involved in politics during a long time, also have a great experience in State Conventions, almost the 66% participate in more than two conventions and around the 16% in more than eight conventions. Nevertheless, when the convention it is at national level (USA level) just the 11% has attended sometime. Most of the delegates have not been an elected office or are holding one, just the 20% held a public office. % Activism in politics and other types of organizations California Democrats 2011 Years in politics (average) Religious Service Labour Unions Environmental Peace Student Women s Racial or ethnic Professional School and schoolrelated Occupationallyrelated 26,81 22,2 11, ,1 19,3 17,8 8,4 16, , N 523 Social % Attendance to Conventions Relevance of activism in the Democratic party from activism in other organizations California Democrats 2011 N State Convention National More relevant Equal relevant Less relevant First and more Yes 32,9 49,1 16,4 11,8 39,6 40,9 5, However, the level of activism in other types of organization is not really high, organizations related with environmental or religious issues and social groups 10

11 are more common within delegates. Instead, voluntary and students organizations present low ranks of activism. When delegates have to compare their level of involvement in the party and in other organizations, almost the 40% consider more relevant the party activism, and the 40,5% consider as equal. % Campaign activity 2010 State election campaign 2008 Presidential campaign N Clerical or office work 29,6 29,3 523 Telephone canvassing 54,5 53,5 523 Door-to-door canvassing 48,6 44,0 523 California Democrats 2011 Yard sign/bumper sticker 57,6 55,6 523 Contributed $100 or less 20,7 20,5 523 Contributed more than $100 46,7 49,1 523 Wrote a letter of support to a magazine or newspaper 24,5 25,2 523 Drove voters to the polls 10,3 9,8 523 Active in any way other than contributing money 48,6 45,7 523 The literature always reflects the relevance of activists during elections and after that. Campaigning, often, is one of the moments when delegates are more active and most of the delegates participate in one or other way, most popular ways to collaborate are telephone canvassing, yard sign and economical contribution without a distinction between state elections and presidential ones. The only way of collaborate during campaigns participation that is not really popular within Californian Democratic Delegates is to lead voters to the polls, only the 10% of delegates did that in 2010 State elections or in 2008 Presidential elections. Attitudes to the party (1 disagree 4 agree) Average StDev. It is more important for the Democratic Party to stay true to its core values than to win elections 3,09 0,86 A candidate should express her/his convictions even if it means losing the election 3,24 0,77 I d rather lose an election than compromise my basic philosophy 3,21 0,87 The Democratic Party should avoid issues that are very controversial or unpopular 1,39 0,68 The Democratic Party is too far from the mainstream of American public opinion, and should focus on presenting a moderate face to voters 1,53 0,82 11

12 Broad electoral appeal is more important than a consistent ideology 1,86 0,83 Regarding with the attitudes toward the Democratic Party, our data reinforce the statement that the level of purist or idealist activist in political parties has been increased, the index of pragmatism - idealism shows that the 98% of delegates are more closer to idealism than pragmatism. We calculate an index with a 10 points scale, where 1 is total pragmatic and 10 total idealistic, the average of our index is 8,2. Thus means that the Californian Democratic Delegates are more idealistic or purist than other delegates, literature results about Democrats present averages around 6 (in a 10 points scale like ours) (Prisby 1998). Taking into consideration that the majority of elections for public office in California are free of party affiliation, and, normally, are other nonpartisan organizations, which endorse the candidates, activism in political parties is not the best way to access to a public office. In that way, we can expect that those individuals who choose to become involved in a political party have purist or idealist attitudes. Linking this with the incentives presented before, there would be few delegates with material incentives, as is the case in Californian delegates. Intra-party democracy European literature has dealt more this phenomena than American literature, where we cannot find studies analysing that. In that sense, we try to show first if there is a demand for more intra-party democracy. As we said, European literature has developed several hypothesis about which variables affect the levels of support toward intra-party democracy, as per example ideology, factionalism, seniority, holding public offices, involvement in party life, involvement in other organizations, idealist attitudes and others (Gauja 2011, Wauters 2010, Baras et al. 2012). Our data shows that even though delegates feel that the role that their local party plays is quite relevant in some typical party activities like recruiting candidates and positioning the party or their candidates in issues, they also think that their local party should play a more relevant role in those activities. In that way, we have develop an index of intraparty democracy, considering the differences between the role that the local party plays in some aspects and the role that should play, this index is an scale of 10 points were 1 is the lowest support to intra-party democracy and 10 the highest support. The average is 6,93 and that suppose a stronger support of intra-party democracy (the standard deviation is 1,26). 12

13 Requests for intra-party democracy Average index intra-party democracy (0-10) StDev Requests for less intra-party democracy 3,8 6,93 1,26 Requests for more intra-party democracy 53,2 Don t request for more or less 20,1 N Taking into consideration that, in comparison with some European parties, American parties have applied mechanisms of intra-party democracy since long time ago, and the levels of intra-party democracy are, in that way, higher, the fact that political parties are less structured organizationally and caucus and activists have an important role in the selection of candidates and policies, the requests of intra-party democracy could have different explanations that European literature has given. We tested those typical explanatory variables as seniority, ideology, idealist attitudes, holding public offices and we discovered that they do not explain the demands of intra-party democracy or the explanation is not strong enough. Conclusion The study of the delegates at the California Democratic Party Convention has put some light in the knowledge about delegates in American parties, our results have shown that the socio-demographic profile has not change a lot in comparison with other studies of State delegates or another studies about political elites, men, in their active age, the majority race is white Caucasian, in a job, with high levels of education and belonging to middle and upper-middle social class. The results more interesting are those related with the incentives of involvement in politics and the attitudes toward the party. The data reinforce the idea of mixed incentives in delegates; there is not anymore a clear division between material, solidary and purposive incentives. Regarding with the attitudes through the political party is important to point the high presence of idealist delegates. This predominant presence of idealist could be really important to analyse and to know more about what influence the way that political parties act and also the way that they recruit their members and candidates. The literature has shown us that the political culture of California has effects in political parties and our results show that also could influence in the presence of idealist activist in political parties. Another interesting aspect, which we should pay more attention in future research is the claim for more intra-party democracy and the failure of the typical explanations to predict the increase of support to intra-party democracy for different types of activists. 13

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