Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforeseen

4. Events as Causes: The Case of American Politics

Chapter 4 Events as Causes The Case of American Politics David R. Mayhew In explaining American politics, political scientists tend to follow a path that is normal for social scientists:1 We reach for causes that are seen to be basic, underlying, or long-term rather than ones that are proximate, contingent , or short-term. Institutions, social forces, and enduring incentives tend to win attention as factors. Thus a good deal of scholarship assigns causal status to such phenomena as economic self-interest,2 the interests of social classes,3 party identification,4 electoral realignment coalitions,5 the American liberal tradition,6 long-lasting party ideologies,7 social capital ,8 political decisions that are said to attain a kind of constitutional standing,9 congressional folkways,10 fixed institutions such as congressional rules,11 long-lived cleavage patterns in congressional roll call voting ,12 the American separation-of-powers system,13 political movements that take a long time gaining momentum,14 political party platforms that carry through many years,15 and political “moods” that exhibit considerable durability.16 The Significance of Events It would be a foolish political science that did not pursue causal factors like these. Yet as a collective explanatory enterprise, the profession may be under-investing in factors that are proximate, short-term, or contingent. I will make a case here for events as such explanatory factors. It may be answered that coverage of this sort of thing should be left to historians (of whom some, although not all, have emphasized short-term or contingent 99 Shapiro_pp097-202 7/17/07 3:12 PM Page 99 factors; imagine a dimension with A. J. P. Taylor at the short-term or contingent pole, Lewis Namier at the long-term or underlying pole, and Fernand Braudel making an appearance at both poles). Yet arguably the first aim of all us should be to provide satisfying causal accounts, regardless of our disciplinary locations or their boundaries. Let me offer an example of a blinkered explanation brought on by a focus on underlying or long-term factors. In 1940, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his associates undertook voter research that employed a pioneering panel study that ran from May through November of that year and emanated in The People’s Choice.17 To be probed were such matters as “cross pressures ,” an “index of political predisposition,” a “reinforcement effect,” “socio -economic status” (or “SES”), and “intentions at variance with their [the voters’] social environments”—that is, a variety of embellishments on an underlying theme of social determinism.18 Then in May of that year the Nazis invaded France, in June they defeated France, and in September they came close to defeating Britain. Here was a chance for the Columbia University researchers to tear up their interview schedule. They could have accommodated head-on one of the richest environments of politically relevant events imaginable. Americans, so far as one can tell from casual evidence (consider the lore about Edward R. Murrow’s radio reports) and single-shot commercial surveys, were riveted by the European disasters and their implications for this country. How do events of this nature and magnitude play into an election campaign? Undeterred, the Columbia researchers carried on to their social-deterministic conclusion for which The People’s Choice is well known. So far as one can tell, they did not ask any direct questions about voter reactions to these ominous events, the government’s handling of them, or the candidates ’ capacity to handle them.19 These were of course first-rate, serious scholars. They do present an event timeline for the 1940 campaign season, and they offer in passing some fascinating if scanty material: Voters apparently surged to President Roosevelt that year during June when France was falling—“mainly on the ground that the European crisis necessitated the continuance of an experienced administration in Washington.”20 But this result is presented as an aside rather than a fundamental finding, and it would probably be hard to find anyone who remembers it. Events are again off-message in the Columbia team’s work on the 1948 election, Voting ,21 where the authors do not take seriously, for example, the Berlin airlift . That gripping exercise of American triumphalism, which I can recall myself from newsreels showing the big planes taking off and landing, ex100 d av i d r . m ay h e w Shapiro_pp097-202 7/17/07 3:12 PM Page 100 [18.188.252.23] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...