Rational Participation: The Politics of Relative Power

Author(s): Robert Goodin and John Dryzek

Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 273-292
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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B.J.Pol.S. 10, 273-292 273
Printed in Great Britain

Rational Participation: The Politics of

Relative Power
ROBERT GOODIN AND JOHN DRYZEK*

Survey researchershave been reporting, for two decades or more, that a citizen's
decision to participate in politics is most strongly influenced by his subjective
sense of efficacy. Those who feel able to make a great impact tend to participate
vigorously, while those who feel impotent tend to withdraw.' According to the
conventional wisdom all this is mostly inside one's head, with few objective -
much less rational - referents. For example, social psychologists, and political
researchers under their spell, see subjective efficacy as a mere reflection of'ego
strength'.2 The more sociologically-inclined see psycho-cultural values (such as
'civic orientation') producing a sense of efficacy which, once again, bears little
relationship to one's real influence.3
What this conventional wisdom tends to ignore, and what we propose to
emphasize, is the possibility of some rational basis for perceptions of differential
efficacy.4Our aim, simply stated, is to explore the proposition that citizens might
* Department of Government, University of Essex and Department of Government and Politics,
University of Maryland respectively. This study draws upon data originally collected by Sidney
Verba and Norman Nie for their study of Participation in America and made available through the
Inter-University Consortium for Political Research. We are indebted to Norman Nie for providing
further data not in that file. We also gratefully acknowledge the advice and encouragement of Peggy
Conway, Dennis McGrath, Geraint Parry, Carole Pateman, Rich Rimkunas, UlfTorgersen and this
Journals anonymous referees.
1 Kenneth Prewitt, 'Political
Efficacy' in D. L. Sills, ed., InternationalEncyclopediaof the Social
Sciences (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1968), Vol. 12, pp. 225-8.
2 Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American
Voter (N.w York: Wiley, 1960), 516-I8; David Easton and Jack Dennis, 'The Child's Acquisition
of Regime Norms: Political Efficacy', American Political Science Review, LXI (1967), 25-38.
3 Gabriel Almond and
Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, I963); Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America (New York: Harper and
Row, 1972); Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie and Jae-On Kim, Participation and Political Equality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Psycho-cultural factors are increasingly played
down throughout this sequence: they figured centrally and conspicuously in The Civic Culture; the
'civic orientation' remained the crucial intervening variable in Participation in America; but by the
time of Participation and Political Equality most emphasis had shifted to socio-economic resource
levels as determining participation rates. While dropping out of the presentation, however,
psycho-cultural factors are still crucial to the logic of the explanation. Upper-class participation is,
according to Participation and Political Equality, p. I I, a result of 'issue-neutral' motivations' such
as 'a belief in one's political efficacy, general interest or involvement in public affairs, and a sense
of obligation to be a political activist. Each of these "civic attitudes" increases the likelihood of
political activity.' Verba, Nie and Kim tip their hand even more clearly with Table 4-4, which they
regard as crucial, showing 'psychological involvement' to be linked to socio-economic resource levels
even more tightly than is participation itself.
4
Perhaps the most clear-cut example of this thesis comes from development theory. Howard
Schuman, Economic Developmentand IndividualChange, Occasional Papers in International Affairs

0007-1234/80/2828-2470 $02.00 ? I980 Cambridge University Press

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274 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

be right in thinking that some people exercise much more influence than others
and that those others should, quite rationally, regard political participation as
a waste of time. Nearly a decade ago, Carole Pateman argued in this journal
that,
There is a simple and straightforwardexplanation for the low rates of political
participationof ordinarycitizens. Given their experiencesof, and perceptionof the
operationof the political structure,apathy is a realisticresponse,it does not seem
worthwhileto participate.This explanation,it shouldbe noted,is in termsof adult,not
childhoodexperiences,and in termsof cognitive,not psychologicalfactors.5
Here we propose to prove Pateman correct.
Our deeper motive is to establish a model of rational political action as a
superior 'research programme' to the social psychological orthodoxy. In making
this case, we will follow the three steps prescribed by Lakatos.6 To establish one
research programme as superior to another, it is first necessary to show that the
new programme can account for all the successes of the old. As evidence of this,
we show (in Section II) that the rational choice model offers at least as good an
explanation of participation in America as Verbaand Nie's, the most sophisticated
social psychological account to date. Secondly, it is necessary to show that on
at least one 'crucial experiment' the new research programme proves superior
to the old. As evidence of this, we show (in Section III) that the rational choice
account of the link between participation and social equality is decisively
superior to that offered by social psychology. Thirdly, it is necessary to show
that the new programme has broader implications than the old. As evidence of
this, we show (in Section iv) that the rational choice model can (in a way social
psychology cannot) account for the differential impact of frontiers and periph-
eries on the development of democracy in different nations. Thus we hope to have
demonstrated the superiority of a new (rational choice) researchprogramme over
No. 15 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Centre for International Affairs, I967) reports that the Comilla
project in East Pakistan promoted development by altering the social psychology of inhabitants,
most especially by encouraging a belief in their own 'efficacy' to improve their situation. What the
project actually did was to alter the objective power of the participants over their environment: it
provided them with easy credit, tractors, advisors, training, etc., the combined effect of which was
that participants were truly better able to control the environment after the project than before. Their
perceptions of their efficacy changed as a wholly appropriate response to changes in their real
efficacy - there was nothing psychological about it. Similar defences of the rationality of apparently
irrational behaviour by underclasses are found in: Alessandro Pizzorno, 'Amoral Familism and
Historical Marginality', in M. Dogan and R. Rose, eds., EuropeanPolitics (Boston: Little, Brown,
197I); Alessandro Portes, ' Rationality in the Slum: An Essay on InterpretiveSociology', Comparative
Studies in Society and History, xiv (1972), 268-86; and James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the
Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
5 Carole Pateman, 'Political Culture, Political Structure and Political Change', British Journal
of Political Science, I (197I), 291-305, p. 298. She expands upon this theme in her review essay, 'To
Them That Hath, Shall Be Given', Politics, ix (I974), 139-45, but Pateman never actually develops
the theme of relative power which lies at the centre of the present essay.
6 Imre Lakatos, 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes',
in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 91-196.

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 Rational Participation 275

the old (social psychological) programme for studying political participation.7

But before proceeding with this demonstration we must first discuss the central
role 'relative power' plays in the logic of rational choice. To this task we now
turn.

I. THE RATIONALITY OF RELATIVE POWER

The central finding in Tingsten's pioneering study of Political Behaviour,
confirmed in virtually every replication since, is that there is a strong, positive
link between participation and socio-economic status.8 The explanation has
always been sought in social psychology. People who have been more rewarded
by the system are psychologically disposed to feel better about themselves and
about the system that has rewarded them. They are, therefore, more favourably
disposed towards system norms and institutions, among them the norm of
political participation. The emphasis has always been on 'absolute' rather than
'relative' indicators of social standing: the focus, after all, is upon how happy
one is with oneself.9
Studies of 'unorthodox' modes of participation - riots and revolutions-
escape this narrow focus upon absolute well-being but not from the larger social
psychological model. 'Relative deprivation' becomes psychologically important
when people compare their position with that of some better-off referencegroup
and feel frustratedin consequence. But there is no good, rational reason for them
7 The 'voter's paradox' is often (and we think
wrongly) said to settle the rationality of
participation: the chance of any one vote altering the outcome is very slight, so it is never rational
to bear the costs of voting. To explain why people do in fact vote, rational choice analysts such
as Anthony Downs, An Economic Theoryof Democracy (New York: Harper, I957), Chap. 14, impute
to voters an irrational belief in their power singlehandedly to save democratic institutions from
atrophy, or impute to them a sense of 'civic duty' strong enough to get them to the polls. But, as
Brian Barry (Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970), p. I6),
protests, that argument only pushes all the interesting questions back into social psychology - 'why
do some people have this kind of motivation more strongly than others?' We shall try a different
tack. The voter's paradox is predicated on the assumption that any one vote has little chance of
altering the outcome, and that in turn depends on the assumption that every vote counts equally.
We suggest instead that 'one man, one vote' is simply a legal fiction. Even as regards voting - and
certainly as regardsother modes of participation - some people count much more than others. Those
who are, in effect, casting multiple ballots may well have a good enough chance of altering the
outcome to outweigh the certain costs they will have to bear in voting. Bruno S. Frey, 'Why Do
High Income People Participate More in Politics?' Public Choice, XI(197I), 101-5 employs a similar
move in explaining why it is rational for rich people, whose time is objectively more valuable, to
spend more of it on politics.
8 Herbert
Tingsten, Political Behaviour (London: P. S. King, 1937); Lester Milbrath, Political
Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, I965).
9 Philip E. Converse, 'Change in the American Electorate', in
Philip E. Converse and Angus
Campbell, eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972),
263-337, pp. 322-7. The often discussed corollary is that economic development increases
political participation by raising the socio-economic status of people, since the higher a person's
(absolute) socio-economic standing the more inclined he is to participate in politics. Norman H. Nie,
G. Bingham Powell, Jr. and Kenneth Prewitt, 'Social Structure and Political Participation:
Developmental Relationships, I', American Political Science Review, 63 (I969), 808-32, pp. 819-25.
10-2

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276 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

to choose that group for comparison or, indeed, to make any such comparisons
at all, as Dahrendorf is quick to admit.10
Rational-choice theorists themselves reinforce the common presumption that
'relativities' have no place in their model of social life. Notice, for example,
the revealing remarks of John Rawls in specifying what he means by 'The
Rationality of Parties' to his social contract:
The assumptionof mutuallydisinterestedrationality... comesto this: the personsin the
originalposition try to acknowledgeprincipleswhich advancetheir systemof ends as
far as possible... The partiesdo not seek to conferbenefitsor impose injurieson one
another;they are not moved by affectionor rancor.Nor do they try to gain relative
to each other;they are not enviousor vain. Put in termsof a game,we mightsay: they
strivefor as high an absolutescoreas possible.They do not wish a high or a low score
for their opponents,nor do they seek to maximizeor minimizethe differencebetween
theirsuccessesand those of others.1l
When economists allow concern with relative position into their models of
individual behaviour, as they occasionally do, it is only with the explicit
understanding that any such preference is purely a peculiarity of taste and is in
no sense 'rational' in any larger terms.12
Wherever any form of power is concerned, however, it is entirely rational to
take relativities into account. Consider the case of economic power. When you
are bidding against others for a scarce commodity, it is entirely rational for you
to take note of their wealth.13The richer they are the more they can afford to
bid at less real cost to themselves for the commodity. Indeed, the richer they
are the worse off you will be, since their greater market power will enable them
to outbid you consistently for mutually-desired commodities. Obvious though
the point may be, its explanatory power has hardly been exhausted even within
orthodox economic history. In a brilliant re-analysis of the facts surrounding
the great Bengal famine of 1943, Amartya Sen concludes that the famine 'was
not the reflection of a remarkable overall shortage of food grains in Bengal' but
rather due to a dramatic shift in 'exchange entitlements':
The fall of Burmahad broughtBengalclose to the war front and Bengalsaw military
scale... Thoseinvolvedin militaryand
and civil constructionat a totallyunprecedented
civildefenceworks,in the army,in industriesandcommercestimulatedby waractivities,
10 Samuel Stouffer et al., The AmericanSoldier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949); Ted
Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, I970); John Urry,
Reference Groups and the Theory of Revolution (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973); Ralf
Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in an IndustrialSociety (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, I959), 217-I8.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I972), Sec. 25.
12 James S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949); Martin Shubik, 'Games of Status', Behavioral Science, xvi
(197), II17-29.
13 Unless the goods are naturally scarce, production will rise to meet the higher demand, at least
in the long term. But victims of the Bengal famine illustrate the truth of the Keynesian aphorism,
'in the long term we are all dead'. Short-term deprivations inflicted by reason of power relativities
might be severe, even if they are remedied in the long term.

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 Rational Participation 277

and almost the entire normal population of Calcutta covered by distribution arrange-
ments at subsidized prices could exercise strong demand pressures on food, while others
excluded from this expansion or protection simply had to take the consequences of the
rise in food prices. Agricultural labour did not in general share in the war-based
expansion...The abundance of labour in the agricultural sector made the economic
position of labourers in the agricultural sector weak. The weakness of their position is
... reflected in the fact that while the famine killed millions, with agricultural labourers
forming by far the largest group of those killed, Bengal was producing the largest rice
crop in history in I943.14
The effects of relativities, so dramatic in the case of the Bengal famine, are also
at work in the sort of 'dual economy' which increasingly typifies the developing
world even in peacetime. There we find 'modern islands in unmodern seas', with
the increasing economic power of the modernizing sector further impoverishing
those in the traditional sectors of the economy.15 The point is perfectly general:
the greater one person's economic power, the tougher a competitor he will be;
and the greater will be his capacity to outbid another for goods they both desire.
Any competitive situation operates according to a similar logic. Consider, for
another example, the labour market. Suppose, to simplify, that all positions were
filled according to strict meritocratic criteria awarding the position to whomso-
ever has the best educational qualifications. Then, clearly, my chances of winning
the appointment depend not upon my absolute merits but rather upon my
qualifications as they compare with those of other applicants. The stronger their
credentials, the less chance I have of securing the position.16 Indeed, if I know
that many better-qualified persons will be applying for a position, it is perfectly
rational for me not to bother doing so at all.
Much the same is true of the political market. It, too, is a competitive arena
wherein the distribution of a fixed quantity of scarce goods - policy outputs - is
determined by the relative influence alternative claimants can bring to bear.
Here, too, it is entirely rational for competitors to think in relativistic terms. It
does not matter at all how much political influence one has in absolute terms.

14
AmartyaSen,'StarvationandExchangeEntitlements: A GeneralApproachandItsApplication
to the Great BengalFamine',Cambridge Journalof Economics,I (I977), 33-59, P. 51.
15 Clifford
Geertz,'The Judgingof Nations', ArchivesEuropeennesde Sociologie,xvIII (1977),
245-61, p. 256.
16
RaymondBoudon, Education,Opportunity and Social Inequality(New York: Wiley, 1973);
Jon Elster,' Boudon,Educationand the Theoryof Games',SocialScienceInformation,xv (1976),
633-40;FredHirsch,SocialLimitsto Growth(London:RoutledgeandKeganPaul, I976),especially
Chap.3. Amongpoliticalanalysts,Converse,'Changein the AmericanElectorate'and, following
him,SamuelHuntingtonandJoanNelson,No EasyChoice(Cambridge, Mass.:HarvardUniversity
Press, 1976), p. 68, pause briefly to consider the comparative merits of models connecting 'absolute
educationalattainment'and 'relativeeducationalattainment'respectivelywith 'politicalefficacy'.
Theyuse a verydifferentrationaleinjustifyingthe straw-man'relative'model,however,supposing
that 'thereis a naturalpeckingorderin societies... whicharisesfroma varietyof individualtraits
and determinesthe ratio of wins and losses, includingsuccess at completingan education.'
(Converse,p. 326.) Relativelyhigheducationalattainmentdoes not causea personto havehigher
politicalefficacy,as it woulddo on ourmodel;rather,in theirstraw-manmodelthe sameunderlying
forcesthat help one completean educationalso makeone politicallyefficacious.

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278 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

All that matters is whether one has more or less political clout than those with
whom one will be competing for the policy decision. Those with more political
resources (provided they are willing to use them to back up their demands) stand
a far better chance of having their demands satisfied. In political markets just
as in economic ones, relative resources decide the outcome. Whoever is willing
and able to commit most resources to any particular contest of wills naturally
proves victorious.
This, in turn, determines the relative rationality of various people entering the
political contest. Those with relatively few political resources and little hope of
outbidding likely opponents should, if they are rational, save their resources for
another time or another market in which they might bring better returns. Those
relatively rich in resources, and who therefore feel they have a reasonable chance
of winning the competition, have a far better reason for entering.'7 Thus, it is
clear that political participation is more rational a choice for some - those
relatively rich in politically-relevant resources - than for others less advantaged.

II. PARTICIPATION IN AMERICA RE-ANALYSED

Here we propose to re-analyse the Verba-Nie data on Participation in America

from a rational choice perspective. Their basic model is a social psychological
one, with causal arrows proceeding from 'socio-economic status' through 'civic
orientation' to 'participation'. We propose instead an economic model
representing the participatory act as the consequence of a rational 'expected
utility' calculation. Two elements crucially enter into any such reckoning: one
is the probability of winning which, as Section I suggests, we view in terms of
relative power; the other is the 'utility' or payoff that would come from winning
a political struggle. In addition to these two independent variables there is also
a crucial intervening variable, 'information'. This variable occupies a role in our
model which is perfectly parallel to the social-psychological notion of 'civic
orientation' in Verba and Nie's. From Downs forward, analysts have recognized
that information should be entered as an intervening variable in rational choice
models of electoral behaviour. The greater the probability (or utility) of an
individual being successful in his electoral endeavours, the more rational it is
for him to bother to acquire information; and, once acquired, information
clearly facilitates rational political action. A utility maximizer, tempted to engage
in politics because his relative power makes him likely to win or because political
action has such great potential utility for him, should rationally acquire the
information required for him to use his power to best advantage. Thus, it is
expected that much of the influence of the probability (relative power) and
17 This
argument contains crucial presuppositions about alternative opportunities available to
both the poor and the rich. It presupposes that there are other arenas in which the relatively meagre
resources of the poor will yield better returns. It also presupposes that politics is the most lucrative
arena in which the rich might invest. Often neither is true, the poor having no other hope than politics
and the rich finding much more rewarding outlets for their energies. This, Ulf Torgersen advises
us, was the situation in Norway at the turn of the century.

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 Rational Participation 279

utility variables on participation will be channelled through the information

variable.18
The Verba-Nie data set was, of course, compiled with a very different model
in mind. Rarely do they ask precisely the questions we would have asked had
we designed the survey with our own model in mind. Their data set does'
nevertheless contain variables which reflect, albeit imperfectly, upon these three
rationalistic considerations. There is, however, one crucial omission from the
point of view of a rational choice theorist: the Verba-Nie survey contains no
indicator whatsoever of the costs of political participation, which are of course
vital elements in any proper expected-utility analysis of rational participation.
The Verba-Nie data are not peculiar in this respect. When re-analyzing the
Michigan SRC data set on the I964 presidential election from a rational choice
perspective, Frohlich and his colleagues found that it too contained nothing to
indicate the costs citizens incur in voting. Instead of resorting to possibly dubious
assumptions about the distribution of the costs of voting, we prefer to omit this
factor from our analysis altogether.19This is a radical omission, rendering the
rational choice model fundamentally incomplete. But it seems to be a necessary
one, pending re-design of the surveys upon which we are forced to rely for our
data.
Probability of winningis, in our expected-utility model, analysed in terms of
relative power. Section I shows that those who are relatively rich in politically-
relevant resources should find politicking more rational because they have a
better chance of winning such competitions. To apply this abstract principle to
practical politics, we must of course specify what are 'politically-relevant
resources'. While fully acknowledging the great variety of sources of political
power, we propose to narrow our attention to the one - economic power - where
relativities can most readily be assessed. There are many other resources equally
(if not more) important in politics, and we would argue that relative resources
decide matters there as well: of two orators, the one with relatively greaterpowers
of persuasion will win the argument; of two charmers, the relatively more
charismatic will prevail; etc. We exclude such resources from our analysis not
because we think them unimportant - and emphatically not because we believe
them to operate according to a different logic - but only because we can find
no good tools for measuring such relativities systematically, at least not in Verba
and Nie's data set. Relative economic power, in contrast, is easily measured as
the income of the respondent'shousehold (the only income variable reported by
Verba and Nie) dividedby medianfamily income in the city or country in which
the respondent lives.20
s1 Verba and Nie,
Participation in America; Anthony Downs, An Economic Theoryof Democracy
(New York: Harper, I957), Chaps. 11-14, esp. Chap. 13.
19 Norman
Frohlich, Joe A. Oppenheimer, Jeffrey Smith and Oran R. Young, 'A Test of
Downsian Voter Rationality: I964 Presidential Voting', American Political Science Review, LXXII
(1978), 178-97. Their implausible assumptions about the distribution of costs of voting mar an
otherwise excellent re-analysis.
20 U.S. Bureau of the Census,
I970 Census of the Population, Vol. I. Characteristics of the
Populations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, I973), Table 89.

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280 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

The utilityof political action is hereoperationalized, somewhat unsatisfactorily,

by an index combining two of the Verba-Nie variables. The first is simply the
number of government-providedbenefits an individual's family receives from the
following list: aid for the aged, medical aid, college financial assistance,
unemployment insurance, assistance in obtaining employment, housing loans
and a miscellaneous category. A second indicator of the utility of political action
takes into account the extent to which the respondent feels that it is the
responsibility of the government to solve the problems most important to himself
and his community. Verba and Nie included in their survey open-ended
questions asking respondents to name the most and second-most important
problems facing first themselves and then their community; then they were asked
who bore principal responsibility for solving these problems. Our responsibility
of governmentindex is simply the number of times these problems were said to
be the responsibility of government (either national or local) to solve.21 The
overall index of the utility of political action was constructed by standardizing
and adding the benefit and responsibility indices.
Our intervening variable is the amount of information an individual has or
is prepared to get. An index of past and current information-gathering was
constructed by factor-analysing four of Verba and Nie's variables: frequency of
watching television news broadcasts, number of magazines read regularly,
frequency of newspaper reading and the number of correct identifications of
certain public officials (local congressman, U.S. senators, state governor and
heads of local government units and school systems).22
The dependent variables used in our re-analysis are identical to those
developed by Verba and Nie themselves. These variables include four summary
measures representingvotingparticipation, campaigningparticipation, communal
participation through community groups and particular participation through
personal contacting of government officials. An index of overall participation
combines these four variables and is, therefore, called the summary measure.
Our methods of analysis, too, closely follow Verba and Nie. In particular, we
similarly use interval-scale techniques of statistical analysis on data that are,
strictly speaking, only ordinal level. The construction of our indices of infor-
mation and utility, for example, implies treating their component variables
as interval level, which clearly they are not. But we have done nothing Verba
and Nie have not themselves done and justified.23Multiple regressions and path
analysis will therefore be performed without apology.
The results of regression analyses of the five dependent variables on our
21 Two of these
questions concerned individual problems, and two concerned community
problems. For the two (most important, second-most important) community problems, the
respondent was asked about sources of aid both inside and outside the community. Hence the index
can take values from o to 6, corresponding to the number of times that the source of aid for the
problem should be some level of government.
22 Iterated principal factor analysis was used. Factor loadings were as follows: frequency of

watching television news, -136; number of magazines read regularly, '547; frequency of newspaper
reading, '532; number of officials named correctly, '498.
23 See Verba and Nie,
Participation in America, pp. 403-9 for a justification of such procedures.

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 1

Rational Participation 281

TA B L E I Rational Choice vs. Social Psychological Models of Political

Participation
Goodin-Dryzek Verba-Nie
Type of Pathanalysis Multiple R2 Multiple R2
participation R R

Individual
Voting:

Relative 09
power
*32
2 36-
18. Information- Participation -41 "17 -39 -15

Utility ---05

PersonalContacting:
Relative 01
power
32"--..
? I .08
nformation
<18 Information-0 *Participation .15 -02 -12 -01

Utility - *10

Collective
Campaigning:

Relative 12
power
_~ Information - 5 -35 -44 -19
.18 Participation -12

Utility 12

CommunalActivity:
Relative 17
power
'32 ,~ *28
18 ^ Information----- Participation .42 17 -48 -23
18Utility-
UtiIity

SummaryMeasure
Relative - 17
power
32
Information Participation *51 -26 56 31

Utility ----' 14

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282 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

indicators of relative power, utility and information are presented in Table i.

With the exception of personal contacting, the results are reasonably impressive
in terms of the percentage of variance explained in the dependent variables, with
R2 ranging from 12 to 26 per cent. As important, however, is the comparison
with Verba and Nie's social psychological model linking socio-economic status
to participation through 'civic orientation'. Comparing the variance explained
(R2) by each model, it appears that our expected-utility model performs slightly
better in explaining voting participation, somewhat worse in accounting for
campaigning, communal and overall participation and equally poorly in ex-
plaining personal contacting. In most cases, however, any differences - whether
in our favour or theirs - are rather slight. The variance explained by both models
always seems to be of roughly the same order of magnitude. Thus it is fair to
say that our model is at least as plausible an explanation as Verba and Nie's.
Indeed, it might well be superior, for we have had to operate with a handicap.
Whereas Verba and Nie collected exactly the data their model required, and
therefore presumably produced as strong correlations as can ever be expected
from such a model, we were forced to rely upon imperfect indicators borrowed
from the surveys of others to measure our variables. And one theoretically
important variable, the cost of participating, could not be measured at all. If
under these disadvantageous conditions our model fares as well as the social

TABLE2 Effects of Relative Power and Utility on Political Participation

Effects

Type of Participation Direct Indirect Total*

Individual
Voting:
Relative power 0o9 -12 21I
Utility o05 -o6 -I
Personalcontacting
Relative power 01I '03 '04
Utility ?io -oi ?i
Collective
Campaigning
Relative power 12 o08 .20
Utility I12 05 I17
Communal activity
Relative power -17 ' 09 -26
Utility .12 '05 17
Summary measure
Relative power 17 I2 *29
Utility 14 '07 .21

* Total effects = direct+indirect effects. Analysis based on path models in Table i.

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 Rational Participation 283

psychological model fares under optimal conditions, we might well expect that
at its best the expected utility model would do significantly better than its
competitor.
The question of causality may be explored through path analysis of a simple
model with a causal ordering going from relative power and utility through
information to participation. Table I also gives the results of such a path
analysis for each of the five types of participation. These results are consistent
with the postulated intervening nature of the information variable - the willing-
ness to purchase information seems fairly strongly affected by one's relative
power and somewhat influenced by the utility one would receive from winning.
The path analysis thus adds support to our hypothesis that information should
act as an intervening variable.
The thrust of our discussion in Section i was to suggest that considerations
of relative power should have pride of place in models of rational participation.
Using the Lewis-Beck and Mohr procedures for assessing direct and indirect
effects, we see that this emphasis is justified.24As Table 2 shows, relative power
is usually rather more important than utility in determining nearly all forms of
political participation.

III. PATHS TO POLITICIZATION

Cross-national studies of development occasionally commit the same error of
focusing upon absolute rather than relative well-being as the crucial impetus to
political participation. Converse, Nie, Powell and Prewitt all suppose that people
automatically participate more as they become wealthier, and that this effect is
independent of whatever might be happening to others around them.25This is
demonstrably false. Dealing in the crudest possible terms of national aggregates,

TABLE 3 Regression of GNP Per Capita and Inequality on Voting Turnout

Dependentvariable:percentageof total qualified

electorsvoting in nationalelections
(circa 1957, N = 38)
Independent
variables Coefficient Standarderror T

GNP per capita 0-0162 0-00416 3898

circa 1957
Gini index of -5'2339 2-079 2.517
incomeinequality
Constant 49-826 4-528
R2 = 04I13 R2 = 0-379 F= 12-314

24 Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Lawrence B.

Mohr, 'Evaluating Effects of Independent Variables',
Political Methodology, 111(1976), 27-47. 25 See fn. 9.

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284 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

Table 3 shows that a significant link between turnout rates and inequality
remains even after the expected correlation between per capita GNP has been
taken into account.26Thus it seems that people are not indifferent to the standing
of others, and do not look exclusively to their own economic position, when
deciding whether to vote.
Most students of comparative politics have been more sensitive to the need
to take such relativities into account. They have, indeed, regarded 'inequality'
as the crucial factor in determining which of two alternative paths nations take
in their development of participatory institutions. The 'mobilization' path starts
from a position of social inequality, proceeds to a breakdown of traditional ties,
and then to the awakening of a new group or class consciousness which is the
crucial causal antecedent to the ultimately collective political act. The 'liberal'
path, in contrast, is regardedas a benign sequence of development running gently
from social equality to free and equal individual participation.27Each path has
been identified on the basis of impressionistic historical accounts, but each is
also backed by more systematic empirical evidence. For the liberal path, the
evidence includes strong correlations between stable democratic government and
equality (in land distribution and intersectoral and personal income) and from
correlations, sometimes reaching -0.80, between turnout in American com-
munities and the Gini index of income inequality.28For the mobilization path the
evidence includes similarly strong correlations between political participation
(either through channels or outside them) and perceptions that one's problems
have systemic sources and can be overcome by group or class action. Verba and
Nie, for example, find that blacks (with their 'group consciousness') participate
much more frequently than whites of comparable socio-economic status.29
While students of comparative politics have thus come to recognize the
importance of relative rather than just absolute well-being in generating political
26 Data on turnout and GNP per capita are from Bruce Russett, World Handbook of Social and

Political Indicators (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964), Tables 24, 44. Gini indices
of personal income inequality are reported by Felix Paukert,' Income Distribution at Different Levels
of Development: A Survey of Evidence', International Labour Review, cvIII (1973), 97-125,
Table 6.
27 Alessandro Pizzorno, 'An Introduction to the Theory of Political Participation ', Social Science
Information, Ix (1970), 29-6I, p. 57; Huntington and Nelson, No Easy Choice.
28 Bruce M. Russett, 'Inequality and Instability: The Relation of Land Tenure and Politics',
World Politics, xvI (I964), 442-54; Phillips Cutright, 'Inequality: A Cross-National Analysis',
American Sociological Review, xxxII (I967), 562-78; Richard Rubinson and Dan Quinlan, 'Demo-
cracy and Social Equality', American Sociological Review, XLII (I977), 6II1-23; Thomas R. Dye,
'Income Inequality and American State Politics', American Political Science Review, LXIII (I969),
157-62; John M. Foley and Homer R. Steedly, 'Trends and Determinants of Local Pluralism: An
Econometric Examination of U.S. Communities' (Department of Sociology, University of South
Carolina, mimeo).
29 Portes, ' Rationality in the Slum'; Wayne A. Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico

City (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 97; Joel D. Aberbach, 'Power
Consciousness: A Comparative Analysis', American Political Science Review, LXXI (1977), 1544-60;
Verba and Nie, Participation in America, Chap. 10. In their larger cross-national sample, Partici-
pation and Political Equality, Verba, Nie and Kim find that 'group consciousness/mobilization' is
an important intervening variable upsetting the ordinary correlation between socio-economic
resources and participation.

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 Rational Participation 285

participation, they neverthelesscling to social psychological models in explaining

each path. This is obvious in the case of mobilization theorists, who deal
explicitly in terms of social mobilization breaking down traditional psychological
ties, generating feelings of relative deprivation and paving the way for a new
group or class consciousness.30 Social psychology stands equally, if slightly less
obviously, behind the liberal analysis. The crux of that explanation, pioneered
by de Tocqueville, is that if democratic values pervade social and economic life
they will invariably spill over into the political culture as well. Advancing what
would today be called an 'ethos theory', de Tocqueville notes the remarkable
equality of social conditions in America and adds, 'The first and most intense
passion which is engendered by the equality of conditions is, I need hardly say,
love of that same equality... It is impossible to believe that equality will not
eventually find its way into the political world as it does everywhere else.'31
Recent liberal overlays on this older theme deal in the similarly social psycho-
logical terms of cognitive dissonance and cross-pressures. The former points to
the difficulty of believing another is your equal for some purposes but not others.
The latter more plausibly points to the tendency for people under conflicting role
demands (as they are likely to be where inequality is pervasive) to withdraw from
action.32
Although it is possible, in these various ways, to build relativities into the
social psychological model, the model of rational participation can offer a more
parsimonious and more readily falsifiable explanation of the diverging paths
to politicization. The rational-choice model interprets both liberal and mobili-
zation paths as manifestations of the same rational logic at work under different
social conditions. In our model, just as in the empirical data, the presence or
absence of equality is what causes the paths to diverge. The explanation,
however, is very different from the social psychological one sketched above. Two
variables in the model of rational participation are of relevance here: if they are
30 Karl W.
Deutsch, 'Social Mobilization and Political Development', AmericanPolitical Science
Review, LV (1961), 495-514. Even Verba, Nie and Kim, whose account of the 'group-mobilization
process' is more issue-based than most, still cling to psychological language at the crucial step in
the argument: 'Mobilization comes from a preference for policies relevant to a social category of
which one is a member. This implies consciousness of one's membership in such a social category
and of the way government impinges on or could benefit the group.' (Participation and Political
Equality, pp. I - 12; emphasis added.)
31 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. G. Lawrence (New York: Harper and
Row, I966), Bk. 2, Chap. I and Bk. I, Pt. I, Chap. 3; Huntington and Nelson, No Easy Choice.
32 Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (New York: Doubleday, I960), Chap. 6, and Milbrath,
Political Participation, pp. I I9 ff., report evidence that political participation is greater in
homogeneous societies. There is nothing necessarily irrational about this effect of cross-pressures,
as shown in Robert Goodin, 'Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Social Conflict', British Journal of
Political Science, v (1975), 516-I9. Furthermore, where people of different socio-economic status
are segregated, either residentially or organizationally, the tendency for higher status people to
participate more is reduced, as reported in Lipset, Political Man, Chap. 6; Tingsten, Political
Behaviour,pp. 170-2, and Stein Rokkan and Angus Campbell, 'Norway and the United States of
America' in 'Citizen Participation in Political Life', in Part I of InternationalSocial Science Journal,
xni (I960), 69-99, p. 85. Social psychologists have no good explanation for this, but in terms of
relative power the explanation is simple: lower status people participate more fully where they are
in less of a minority because there they have a better chance of influencing the outcome.

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286 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

rational, citizens should participate more fully in politics (I) the greater their
chances of winning or (2) the greater their utility from winning. A high value
on either variable can make participation rational. Basically, the liberal path
plays on the probability variable while the mobilization path plays on the utility
variable.
Under conditions of approximate social equality, people should participate
more fully in politics. If the probability of winning a political struggle is fixed
by one's relative power, then where everyone has roughly the same power
resources everyone has roughly an equal chance of winning. Were politically-
relevant resources concentrated instead in the hands of a few, it might be rational
for the powerful few to participate (knowing they can win) but it would be daft
for the powerless masses (who can only lose) to try challenging them.
Whereas the liberal explanation of participation focuses primarily on the
probability of one's winning the political struggle, the mobilization path focuses
primarily on the utility of winning. What makes mobilization a rational response
to conditions of inequality is the size of the stakes for the underclass. Other things
being equal, there is always more for the poor to gain from levelling policies
where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few than where wealth is more
dispersed. Again, other things being equal, rational actors should be more
interested in a course of action the more they stand to gain from it.33 Having
decided to engage in politics primarily on the basis of the value of winning, the
rational underclass must then choose between political strategies on the basis
of their probability of success. They would naturally settle on collective rather
than on individualized modes of participation, not for any social psychological
reasons but rather because they are the most rational, i.e., the most likely to
succeed. Man for man, the relatively poor cannot hope to compete with the
influence of the relatively rich; but since there are more of the former than of
the latter, their resources if pooled might overcome those of the rich. Where this
is the case, it is clearly in the interest of the underclass to organize.34As the poor
organize, of course, so too must the rich to resist them.
The model of rational participation, then, predicts that conditions of social
33 Scott, Moral Economy of the Peasant points to another perfectly rational reason for mobil-
ization: where the underclass is pushed below the subsistence level, then even if politicking is a
poor investment they have no other hope and undertake it anyway.
34 Thus we should repudiate Verba and Nie's suggestion to limit participation to voting, on the

grounds that the vote is the one resource which is roughly equally distributed. Far from being
egalitarian in its effect, as they clearly hope, this reform would deprive the underclasses of the
mechanisms most useful to them to overturn seriously inegalitarian arrangements.
Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
I965), Chap. 4 supposes that the 'free rider' problem prevents the proletariat from organizing
however much it might be in their interest to do so. But in most revolutions there really are selective
incentives: those without a good record of service to the revolutionary cause are purged, cut out
of the rewards of a successful revolution at a minimum or, at worst, actually exterminated. Such
participation is therefore better represented as what A. K. Sen (On Economic Inequality (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 96-9) calls an 'Assurance Game' than as a 'Prisoner's Dilemma'.
Everyone is willing to participate, provided only each can be assured that enough others will do
likewise.

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 Rational Participation 287

equality encourage people to participate in an individualistic mode (by voting

or contacting officials, in Verba and Nie's terms), whereas inequality, if
sufficiently desperate, encourages collective participation (campaigning or com-
munal activity, to use Verba and Nie's categories). This prediction is broadly
consistent with the empirical and historical findings surveyed above. But much
the same results would also have been predicted (although not uniquely) by the
social psychological model.
For a 'crucial test' differentiating rational and social psychological models,
let us focus upon their respective rationales for linking general social equality
and increased individualistic participation. The social psychological model
supposes that equality works its influence through the psyche of the individual,
making him feel good in a community characterizedby an egalitarian democratic
ethos. Aggregate participation is higher in a community of approximate equals
because each of its members internalizes its ethos and is individually more
inclined to participate. The rational-choice model, in contrast, anticipates no
such individual-level link between living in a more equal community and
participating more fully in politics. This model portrays people as reacting to
their relative standing in the community power structure; and it predicts that,
on aggregate, more people will participate more fully in communities of
approximate equals because in such communities power differentials will be less
dramatic and more people will have a better chance of influencing the outcome.
This suggests a strong negative correlation, at the aggregate level of the
communities as a whole, between inequality and individualistic participation.
But, at the same time, the rational model denies any necessary link at the
individual level. In the social psychological model, just living in a community
with low levels of inequality is enough to make people participate more - they
internalize the positive affects derived from the general egalitarian ethos. In the
rational model, just living in a community with low levels of inequality is not
enough - people are influenced if and only if they are themselves beneficiaries
of these levelling norms. Those who are unfortunate enough to be relatively poor
and powerless citizens of otherwise egalitarian communities should, on the
rational model, participatejust as little in their societies as they would have done
had they been equally poorly placed in the pecking order of a more hierarchical
society. Hence, the social psychological model predicts a strong negative
correlation between inequality and participation, both on aggregate for the entire
community and for each citizen individually; and the rational choice model
predicts instead that the community-wide correlation between participation and
inequality should disappear when analysing the data in terms of individuals
rather than entire communities.
In Table 4 we revert to the Verba-Nie data on participation in America to
perform this 'crucial test'. The left-hand column displays the correlation
between the Gini index of income inequality and the mean levels of political
participation in the community.35Both social psychological and rational choice
35 Data on
participation are from Verba and Nie's survey and on the Gini index for Standard
Metropolitan Statistical Areas are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of the

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288 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

TA B L E 4 Correlations between Inequality and Political Participation

Correlations

Type of Community-wide Individual

participation (N = 42) (N = 1852)

Individual:
Voting -0- 326I* -0- 1520*
Personal -0-39I I* -0-o975*
contacting
Summary measure: -0.2402 -0 I057*

* Significant at 0-05.

models predict that these correlations should be high, and they are in fact
reasonably strong. The right-hand column displays the correlation between an
individual's participation and the Gini index of income inequality in the
community in which he is resident. The social psychological model predicts that
this correlation, too, should be high; the rational-choice model predicts that this
correlation should be low. The data bear out this prediction of the rational-choice
model: correlations have been more than halved. On this crucial test, then, the
model of rational participation clearly demonstrates its superiority.
Our conclusion can only be tentative at best. There may be other experiments
that both models would acknowledge as 'crucial tests', and the social psycho-
logical account might prove superior on some (or, indeed, all) of them. But until
these other tests are devised and performed, the results of our present test will
have to be taken as decisive: on at least one crucial test, the rational-choice model
beats social psychology.

IV. FRONTIER DEMOCRACY

We have now taken two of the three steps necessary to demonstrate the
superiority of the rational choice model as a research programme for studying
political participation. Section II has shown that this model can explain
everything the social psychological orthodoxy traditionally explains, and Section
Population, Vol. I: Characteristicsof the Populations, Table 89. Collective modes of participation
are omitted from this table on the grounds that the model of rational participation, just as social
psychology, expects individuals to take the general characteristics of the community into account
before opting for collective participation. If you are relatively badly off, you might look around for
others similarly situated hoping to join together in a united front; but you would not actually try
getting together a coalition of the disadvantaged unless you were sure there were enough people
in that category to overcome the influence of the powerful. When taking this into account, the
rational actor in effect internalizes community-wide inequality, so a rational model would expect
no disjunction between individual-level and community-wide correlations where collective modes
of participation are concerned.

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 Rational Participation 289

IIIhas shown that on at least one crucial test the model of rational participation
demonstrates its clear superiority. All that remains is for us to demonstrate that
the rational-choice model offers more 'running room'-that it has broader
empirical implications - than the social psychological alternative. This we shall
illustrate by showing how the rational-choice model of participation goes far
towards solving one of the most persistent puzzles in the comparative history
of democratic institutions.
The puzzle is this: sometimes, as in the case of the American West, frontiers
serve as 'the cradle of democracy'. Elsewhere, as in the North and East of
Norway, the periphery is a place of cultural isolation which democratic reforms
penetrate only slowly and imperfectly. And occasionally, as in the case of
Australia, frontiersmen are positively antithetical to democratic reforms which
have to be forced upon them from the metropolitan centre.36Why the frontier
experience should have such very different effects has long remained something
of a mystery.
It would be something of an exaggeration to say that social psychology has
no explanation for these tendencies. It has been used to explain either tendency.
Where frontiers promote democracy, this is said to be because frontiers attract
the sort of sturdy, self-reliant individualists given to a democratic way of life.37
Where frontiers are slow to adopt democratic institutions, this is said to be
because they are peripheral,culturally as well as spatially. All the creative activity
of the society - including autonomous political activity shaping social values -
occurs elsewhere, at the centre, and only filters out to the peripheries slowly.38
But while social psychologists could explain away each of these opposing
tendencies associated with the frontier experience, they cannot predict which will
predominate in any given case. Ex post, either outcome is consistent with their
model; ex ante, there is no predicting which it will be. By trying to 'cover' both
outcomes without trying to specify one in advance as the most likely, the social
psychological account expands the 'protective belt' insulating it from empirical
disconfirmation in a way Lakatos would immediately recognize as signalling a
degenerative shift within the research programme.
Once again, our model of rational participation offers a more satisfactory
account. Such differences as are observed in democratic development in
peripheral, frontier regions can plausibly be attributed to the economic structure
36
Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
i966); Stein Rokkan and Henry Valen, 'The Mobilization of the Periphery', Acta Sociologica, vi
I
(1962), 1-58; Stein Kuhnle, Patterns of Social and Political Mobilization, Sage Professional Papers
in Contemporary Political Sociology, o6-oo5 (London: Sage, 1975); Fred Alexander, Moving
Frontiers. An American Theme and Its Application to Australian History (Victoria: Melbourne
University Press, I947). Our discussion conflates two categories-'frontiers' and 'peripheries'-
which, although usefully distinguished for other purposes, display identical properties so far as our
model of rational participation is concerned. Since the issues here discussed are almost always raised
under the heading of' frontier democracy' we continue to use that heading, although strictly speaking
'periphery' is the more general of the two notions: all frontiers are peripheries; not all peripheries
are frontiers.
37 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1920).
38 Edward Shils, Center and
Periphery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I975).

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290 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

of the region. When speaking here of'democratic development', of course, what

we really mean is the growth of individualistic participation. This, Section IIIhas
shown, should rationally depend upon how egalitarian or inegalitarian frontier
society is. Where everyone has roughly the same politically-relevant resources,
everyone stands a roughly equal chance of winning the political struggle. Hence,
everyone has a good reason for participating under conditions of approximate
equality. Where politically-relevant resources are instead concentrated in the
hands of a few, they alone can hope to win and the relatively powerless masses
should, if they are rational, stay at home. Under conditions of inequality, then,
participation should be low since most people have no rational reason for
participating, at least not in the individualistic ways which get coded under
'democratic development'.
This effectively accounts for such differences as have been observed between
American, Norwegian and Australian frontier experiences. The frontier had a
democratizing tendency in the American West because, as Turner himself
emphasized, 'free land' made available largely through the Homestead Act of
1862 produced a substantial (if imperfect and oft exaggerated) equality of land
holdings. When, in contrast, the periphery is characterized by structured
inequalities (as in Galtung's 'feudal periphery' or Pizzorno's model of' historical
economic marginality'), individualistic democratic development should ration-
ally lag.39 This certainly was the case in Norway: once universal manhood
suffrage was enacted into law, actual participation grew much less rapidly in the
hierarchically-structured North and East than in the egalitarian South and
West.40 Similarly, the pattern of colonization set by the Wakefield scheme
guaranteed that the Australian hinterland became a 'big man's frontier'
populated primarily by giant sheep ranchers and wealthy irrigationists on the
one hand and their wage-labourers on the other.41Given this, it is only to be
expected on our model of rational participation that participatory fervour should
be lacking among the powerless masses.
In all these cases, our analysis of the impact of frontier equality (or inequality)
upon frontier democracy (or its absence) is extremely sketchy. It can afford to
be: our task here is simply to illustrate the range of our model of rational
participation rather than to prove its interpretation correct in these particulars.
Nevertheless, it might be useful to comment briefly upon how these points might
be proven and how the evidence already available seems to bear upon them.
39 Johan Galtung, 'A Structural Theory of Imperialism', Journal of Peace Research,Vlll (1971),
8I-I i8; Pizzorno, 'Amoral Familism and Historical Marginality'.
40 Stein Rokkan and Henry Valen, 'Regional Contrasts in Norwegian Politics', in E. Allardt and

Y. Littunen, eds., Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems (Helsinki: Transactions of the
Westermarck Society, Vol. x, I964), I62-238, pp. 174-83; Rokkan, 'Electoral Mobilization, Party
Competition and National Integration', in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner, eds., Political Parties
and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, I966), 241-65, p. 254.
41 Paul F. Sharp, 'Three Frontiers: Some Comparative Studies of Canadian, American and
Australian Settlement', Pacific Historical Review, XXIV(1955), 369-77. See also the comments on
the Wakefield system contained in Karl Marx, 'The Modern Theory of Colonization', Capital, trans.
S. Moore and E. Aveline (New York: International Publishers, I967), Vol. I, Chap. 33.

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 Rational Participation 291

Methodologically, the problem could be approached from either end. One

approach would be to undertake a series of case studies of particular frontier
communities. If the model of rational participation were correct, we should find
frontier equality preceding frontier democracy in time and leading to it in some
sort of clear causal fashion; on the alternative social psychological account,
frontier democracy would be part of the psycho-cultural baggage frontiersmen
brought with them and should be an ever-present feature of the frontier. Merle
Curti, in the most careful study of this sort to date, shows that in at least one
early Wisconsin settlement social equality did indeed precede and lead to
political equality, which was not an ever-present feature of the social landscape.42
Such case studies can be suggestive, but eventually they must give way to the
second approach: thorough cross-national exercises in aggregate data analysis.
Here again the thesis would be that social equality comes first and causes
political equality (i.e. democracy). The correlation has been long-established, but
the direction of causality has only recently been explored in any rigorous fashion.
Rubinson and Quinlan use a very clever 'instrumental variable test' to detect
the direction of the causal arrows and conclude that they run, just as our model
predicts, from social equality to democracy.43 The final results are not yet
in - Rubinson and Quinlan themselves emphasize the tentative nature of their
findings - but preliminary indications look promising for our model of rational
participation as an account of frontier democracy.
Relative power is the dominant force in our model of rational participation,
as Section I argues and Table 2 demonstrates with respect to the Participation
in America data. People's relative power - and hence their motive for participat-
ing in politics - is generally higher for more of the population where there are
conditions of broad social equality, as Section II has shown. Hence it is
appropriate that in our account of frontier democracy the emphasis should fall
upon the link between 'participation' and 'social equality', standing in for the
' relative power' variable. That, however, is not the whole
story. Utility - the size
of the potential payoff- exerts an independent influence upon participation
rates. Its influence is usually weaker, as Table 2 indicates. But it is nonetheless
interesting because, as Section III suggests, this factor tends to attract into
political activity precisely the opposite sorts of people. Whereas the relative
power variable tends to attract the strong to participate in individualistic ways,
the utility variable tends to attract the weak to participate in collectivistic ways.
Comparative histories of the development of democratic institutions contain
evidence of this latter influence as well as of the former. Billington, for example,
remarks upon the fact that several of the older Eastern American states
liberalized their suffrage laws considerably before these 'democratic' reforms
appeared in the frontier states and territories.44This is puzzling on the simple
42 Merle
Curti, The Making of an American Community (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1959).
43 Richard Rubinson and Dan Quinlan,
'Democracy and Social Equality', AmericanSociological
Review, XLII (I977), 611-23.
44 America's Frontier
Billington, Heritage, pp. 118-20.

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292 GOODIN AND DRYZEK

Turner 'frontier democracy' thesis. But it is entirely explicable on the present

model as the result of pressures from urban masses attracted to politics by the
'utility' variable. Here again, our account is necessarily sketchy but hopefully
it is suggestive of the range of our model.

V. CONCLUSION

We have now developed a model interpreting political participation as rational

action. Its central tenet might be summarized: 'Don't play if you can't win.'
More precisely, those for whom political victory is very certain or very important
or very cheap have much better reasons (speaking strictly rationally) for
participating. For the rest, it is perfectly rational to refrain from participating.
We have demonstrated that this rational choice research programme is superior
to the social psychological orthodoxy for studying political participation: it
seems to match the successes of the old, at least as far as explaining Participation
in America is concerned; on one crucial test, the rational choice model is
decisively superior to social psychology in its explanation of the connection
between participation and social equality; and the new programme seems to have
broader implications (e.g., for the explanation of frontier democracy) than the
old. To shift to a research programme which demonstrates its superiority in all
these ways is to yield to the dictates of reason, not of mere fad or fashion. Of
course, no one expects the shift to be as quick or painless as reason would dictate.
The profession collectively has heavy 'sunk costs' of various forms in the old
orthodoxy. But the logic and methodology of the old orthodoxy, already
discredited by Popkin's devastating critique, has here again failed the test.45
Political science must soon come to realize what economics has long understood
- 'bygones are bygone forever'.
45 Samuel
Popkin, John W. Gorman, Charles Phillips and Jeffrey A. Smith, 'What Have You
Done For Me Lately? Toward an Investment Theory of Voting', AmericanPolitical Science Review,
LXX (1976), 779-805.

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