Preliminaries. The Sociology of Running to be Nominated

April 18th, 2008 Posted in Elections

Rules incorporate advantages. They also encourage the search for tactical advantages–finding the maneuvers that increase chances for success. Those who make the rules are projecting a fuzzy pattern for future actions. The current (2008) lengthy season for the selection of the nominee to campaign for election as president of the United States is the product of the prior construction of rules. The national committees of the two major political parties are the main recent rule factories but there are other players in state legislatures and among party functionaries. The developing process is under the invented impulse of the U.S. Constitution.

Go back 50 to 100 years and this four year cycle of struggle for winning the nomination is located in the few days of national conventions where the official final vote is cast and tallied. The drama used to be here. In 1924 the Democratic party convention required 103 ballots to choose among the candidates. Most of the voting delegates were followers of the dominant politicos in their several home states. A lot of the states placed the names of favorite sons before the convention as a ploy for later horse trading with other politicos in the famous smoke filled hotel rooms. A favored fantasy was the unexpected emergence of a dark horse (backed by the bosses) to whom the convention could turn in compromise if the front-runners couldn’t reach the necessary majority. (In 1924 there was a serious ideological confrontation whose pattern is still familiar but whose content will be shocking to most present day sensibilities.)

But today the action, contention and drama are in the state primaries and caucuses. The old time bosses are blocked out now and the people as voters are making the decision. Those who finally stand in the official election in November will arrive on a wave of the people’s votes. The intermediate convention will simply be a rubber stamp–all the elected delegates pledged to follow the directive of the people.

It is more complicated still. Each state has its own way of counting these primary and caucus votes and apportioning the delegates. The popular vote and the number of delegates are not precisely matched. Almost 20% of the delegates are ex officio–hold state and federal elected office or have a history of party service like ex-presidents and so on; and these participants in the convention are not pledged. So if the entire primary process does not lead to a decision, does not appoint an obvious nominee, the convention could again be open (not have a foregone conclusion).

So for the sociologist the initial question about this long drawn out, but riveting (even if a little exhausting), preliminary struggle before the ultimate final election in November has to turn to the concrete processes leading to the formulation and adoption of the current rules of the game. I won’t attempt it, but I will offer a few observations:

(1) Grossly, the change in the selection mode over time (over two centuries) has gone from the very narrow (congressional parties in caucus) through city and state parties dominated by bosses and their cliques to a closer approximation of appointment by the majority of the people. (Find a quick summary here.)

(2) The process of change responds in part to dramatic events. The 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago which was riotous both within and outside in the streets was followed by appointment of an investigative committee headed by Senator George McGovern that started the move toward the current way. So a very conservative era, which has negated much of the accumulated social order of the liberal-radical 1930s and 40s, finds itself using a social organization that bounced off the rad-con confrontations of the late 1960s.

3) The party system is not recognized in the constitution. Other ways of entering the general election exist. These require payment of fees to the several states as well as collecting a variable number of validated signatures of supporters in each state. This route is followed by minority (and usually very minor) parties and they frequently fail to have name and party on the ballots of all the states and territories. The cost can be considerable but men of wealth can make the run. H. Ross Perot is a notable example.

So this party and nominating process is vulnerable to considerable legitimate change. The variety of ways used to select leaders and to formulate policy in other fully democratic societies gives us some idea of the alternative ways available. (I am not advocating, merely pointing out.)

Another question: how the candidates who make the run are collected into the panel from among whom the final choice will be made? Against modesty, those put forward are self-selected. They need support though and begin to collect financial sponsors and advisers and staff. There is a door, a test of bona fides, by a social organization and place with which I am not familiar, but the candidates who show up at the debates are either political (have held high office) or well known in public circles. Evaluation of any concrete panel of candidates requires the usual full-court press of all sectors of knowledge; but it is also possible to approach the issue of the social source of candidates in the abstract. It is the same question that we may ask of all recruits to different occupations and professions or, for that matter, people entering any new activity. It is simply a matter of placing them in their appropriate grouping and then tracking back to their shared social places, situations and activities. For example, a large portion of those trying for the brass ring have trained in law, and they even tend to aggregate around a limited number of elite law schools.

I’ll forgo speculation here primarily because I barely have an inkling I think Ill try to approach this through the more general question of the social sources and careers of cadres. The social sources of presidents, prime ministers, and Mikados might fall out of this exercise like the leaves off a tree in autumn.

Watch for the main event.

Notes

A review of the current 2008 Democratic Party nominating process is here.