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Accepting the Election Outcome: The Effect of Participation on Losers' Consent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Richard Nadeau  and
André Blais
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Extract

Scholars generally agree that the electorate's reaction to an election outcome has important systemic consequences. As Ginsberg and Weissberg point out, ‘every election represents a test and potentially a threat to support for the political regime. Electoral conflicts may strain public acceptance of legal and institutional processes.’ The basic idea is that regime support among citizens in the aftermath of an election depends on the widespread belief that the electoral contest has been resolved in a legitimate fashion.

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Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 553 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Ginsberg, Benjamin and Weissberg, Robert, ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’, American Journal of Political Science, 22 (1978), 31–55, p. 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For similar statements, see Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi Sovereign People: A Realistic's View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960)Google Scholar; Easton, David, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar; Dennis, Jack, ‘Support for the Institution of Elections in the Mass Public’, American Political Science Review, 64 (1970), 819–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cigler, Allan J. and Getter, Russell, ‘Conflict Reduction in the Post-Election Period: A Test of the Depolarization Thesis’, Western Political Quarterly, 30 (1977), 363–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finkel, Steven E., ‘Reciprocal Effects of Participation and Political Efficacy: A Panel Analysis’, American Journal of Political Science, 29 (1985), 891–913CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by the same author, ‘The Effect of Participation on Political Efficacy and Political Support: Evidence from a West German Panel’, Journal of Politics, 49 (1987), 441–64.Google Scholar

2 This belief refers to what Weatherford, M. Stephen, ‘Measuring Political Legitimacy’, American Political Science Review, 86 (1992), 149–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has labelled procedural fairness, that is the sense that ‘the system [is] structured to ensure that issues are resolved in a regular, predictable way and that access to decisional arenas is open and equal’ (p. 150).

3 See Schattschneider, , The Semi Sovereign PeopleGoogle Scholar, and Salisbury, Robert, ‘Research on Political Participation’, American Journal of Political Science, 19 (1975), 323–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ginsberg, and Weissberg, , ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’, p. 31.Google Scholar See also Ginsberg, Benjamin and Weissberg, Robert, ‘Elections as Legitimizing Institutions’, in Fishel, Jeff, ed., Parties and Elections in an Anti-Party Age: American Politics and the Crisis of Confidence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978)Google Scholar and Ginsberg, Benjamin, The Consequence of Consent: Elections, Citizen Control and Popular Acquiescence (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1982).Google Scholar

5 See Blais, André and Carty, Ken, ‘The Effectiveness of the Plurality Rule’, British Journal of Political Science, 18 (1988), 550–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The agreement had been reached in October 1987 and was signed on January 1988. Both governments then prepared legislation that would enact the FTA in their respective countries. The American legislation was passed by the House of Representatives on 9 August, by the Senate on 19 September, and signed by President Reagan on 28 September 1988. The Canadian legislation faced greater difficulties. During second reading, the two opposition parties, the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP), made it clear that they were against the deal. After a long and acrimonious debate, the bill passed second reading.

The greatest obstacle, however, was the Senate, where the Liberals had a majority. On 20 July, John Turner, the leader of the Liberal party, instructed the Liberal majority in the Senate to hold up the proposed legislation until the issue was referred to the people in a general election. With the bill frozen in the Senate, the prime minister called the election on 1 October, to be held on 21 November 1988. Most of the information above can be found in Campbell, Robert and Pal, Leslie A., The Real Worlds of Canadian Politics: Cases in Process and Policy (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1992), chap. 3.Google Scholar

7 Johnston, Richard, Blais, André, Brady, Henry and Crête, Jean, Letting the People Decide: The Dynamics of a Canadian Election (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press and Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), chap. 4.Google Scholar See also Frizzell, Alan and Westell, Anthony, ‘The Media and the Campaign’, in Frizzel, Alan, Pammett, Jon H. and Westell, Anthony, eds, The Canadian General Election of 1988 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

8 Johnston, et al. , Letting the People Decide, chap. 5.Google Scholar

9 Johnston, Richard, Blais, André, Brady, Henry and Crête, Jean, ‘Free Trade and the Dynamics of the 1988 Canadian Election’, in Wearing, Joseph, ed., The Ballot and Its Message (Mississauga: Copp Clark, 1991), p. 321.Google Scholar

10 Campbell, and Pal, , The Real Worlds of Canadian Politics, p. 346.Google Scholar

11 Johnston, et al. , ‘Free Trade and the Dynamics’ (p. 321)Google Scholar, indicate that in the last week of the campaign, support for the FTA was slightly lagging opposition (42 per cent versus 45 per cent, with 12 per cent undecided).

12 Johnston, et al. , Letting the People Decide, chap. 5.Google Scholar

13 Harrop, Martin and Miller, William L., Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 Ginsberg, and Weissberg, , ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’Google Scholar, and ‘Elections as Legitimizing Institutions’. Here one can draw an analogy with the electoral cycle perspective where politicians exploit voters' sensitivity to short-term economic fluctuations.

16 Easton, , A System Analysis of Political Life, p. 268.Google Scholar

17 Easton, , A System Analysis of Political Life, p. 273.Google Scholar

18 See in this vein the finding by Clarke, Harold and Kornberg, Allan, ‘Do National Elections Affect Perceptions of MP Responsiveness? A Note on the Canadian Case?’ Legislative Studies Quarterly, 17 (1992), 183–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that it is essentially among winners that perceptions of MPs' responsiveness increases after an election.

19 Craig, Stephen C., Niemi, Richard G. and Silver, Glenn E., ‘Political Efficacy and Trust: A Report on the NES Pilot Study Items’, Political behavior, 12 (1990), p. 292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Cigler, and Getter, , ‘Conflict Reduction in the Post-Election Period’, p. 363.Google Scholar

21 Ginsberg, and Weissberg, , ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’, p. 51.Google Scholar

22 Dennis, , ‘Support for the Institution of Elections’, p. 833.Google Scholar

23 Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard G., Generations and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abramson, Paul, Political Attitudes in America (San Francisco: Freeman, 1983).Google Scholar

24 Moreover, because of their lower life expectancies, older citizens can less easily comfort them selves with the idea that future elections may turn to their advantage. The relationship between age and support is not always negative. In the Canadian context, in particular, Clarke, Harold D., Kornberg, Allan and Stewart, Marianne (‘Parliament and Political Support in Canada’, American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 452–69, p. 463)CrossRefGoogle Scholar found that ‘age exerts positive effects on support for Parliament and Canada’. It would seem that it is only with respect to electoral procedures that the young are more supportive.

25 Dennis, , ‘Support for the Institution of Elections’, p. 833.Google Scholar

26 Finkel, , ‘The Effect of Participation on Political Efficacy’.Google Scholar See also Clarke, , Kornberg, and Stewart, , ‘Parliament and Political Support in Canada’.Google Scholar

27 Bollen, Kenneth, ‘Political Democracy and the Timing of Development’, American Sociological Review, 44 (1979) 572–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inglehart, Ronald, Cultural Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

28 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968).Google Scholar

29 Blais, André and Gidengil, Elisabeth, ‘What Would Happen if We Stopped Having Elections? Support for Electoral Democracy in Canada’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, New Orleans, 1992).Google Scholar

30 Clarke, , Kornberg, and Stewart, , ‘Parliament and Political Support in Canada’, p. 456.Google Scholar

31 The principal investigators were Richard Johnston, André Blais, Henry Brady and Jean Crête. Fieldwork for the study was carried out by the Institute for Social Research, York University. The CES had three components: a campaign-period telephone survey with a representative sample of 3,609 Canadians; a post-election telephone survey with 2,922 of the campaign survey respondents; and a self-administered mailback questionnaire with 2,115 of the post-election survey respondents. All interviewing was completed from centralized telephone facilities using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) techniques. The response rate for the campaign-period survey was 57 per cent and the re-interview rate for the post-election survey was 81 per cent. Further detail on the sample and on other technical features of the CES can be found in Northrup, David and Oram, Anne, The 1988 National Election Study: Technical Documentation (Toronto: Institute for Social Research, York University, 1989).Google Scholar

32 We are tapping support for the existing electoral regime rather than for electoral democracy as such. Some may have believed that crucial issues such as the Free Trade Agreement should be settled by referendums rather than by elections. Others may have agreed with the principle of settling the issue through an election but disagreed with the specific rules, such as the use of the first-past-the-post system. For evidence on this, see Blais, André and Gidengil, Elisabeth, Making Representative Democracy Work: The Views of Canadians (Ottawa: Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, 1992).Google Scholar

33 This procedure was chosen because ‘the scale scores resulting from an additive approach are more readily interpretable than those based on factor scores’ (Jennings, and Niemi, , Generations and Politics, p. 405Google Scholar) and because a regression equation including the three separate variables produced similar coefficients for each of the three components, which suggests that merging the three does not distort the relative contribution of the components.

34 One potential drawback of our research is that acceptance of the election outcomes is obviously measured only once, after the election, while in previous studies individuals' attitudes are measured both before and after the election, thus allowing an assessment of the impact of the election (see especially Cigler, and Getter, , ‘Conflict Reduction in the Post-Election Period’Google Scholar, Ginsberg, and Weissberg, , ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’Google Scholar and, by the same authors, ‘Elections as Legitimizing Institutions’). We address this question in the conclusion.

35 These numbers exclude those without opinion, who represent 8 per cent of respondents.

36 Our participation scale (see the bottom of Table 1) distinguishes four degrees of participation (0, 0.33, 0.66,1). The percentage saying that the Conservative government had the right to implement the Free Trade Agreement rises from 42 per cent to 54 per cent, 60 per cent and 61 per cent, as one goes from the lowest to the highest level of participation.

37 Different versions of the model have been tested to take into account the relationship between language and religion in Canada (the great majority of francophones being Catholic). These additional estimations have left the above conclusion intact.

38 See Hanushek, Eric A. and Jackson, John E., Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (New York: Academic Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Petersen, Trond, ‘A Comment on Presenting Results from Logit and Probit Models’, American Sociological Review, 50 (1985), 130–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Blais, and Carty, , ‘The Effectiveness of the Plurality Rule’.Google Scholar

40 Cigler, and Getter, , ‘Conflict Reduction in the Post-Election Period’Google Scholar; Ginsberg, and Weissberg, , ‘Elections and the Mobilization of Group Support’Google Scholar, and ‘Elections as Legitimizing Institutions’; Ginsberg, , The Consequence of ConsentGoogle Scholar; and Stanley, Harold W., Vote Mobilization and the Politics of the Race (New York: Praeger, 1987).Google Scholar

41 Nadeau, Richard, ‘L'effet lune de miel dans un contexte parlementaire: le cas canadien’, Canadian Political Science Review, 23 (1990), 483–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Johnston, et al. , Letting the People Decide, chap. 5.Google Scholar