Political Linkage and Public Policy: Attitudinal Congruence Between Citizens and Officials

Abstract

HE NATURE of representation in a democratic political system has long interested political scientists. Without consciously rejecting the Burkean notion of a representative as trustee, recent democratic theorists have increasingly accepted a model of electoral accountability which holds that politicians are made responsive to their constituents by fear of the ballot box.' However, recent research on the urban political process in the San Francisco Bay area suggests that the electoral accountability model hardly operates at the local level.2 Instead, many city council members operate on the basis of their own self-defined images of the community's needs with almost open disdain for the will of the majority and with little concern for voter retaliation. Such a situation has serious implications indeed for representative theory as applied to the local polity. The Bay area research, however, offers no evidence that this norm of volunteerism, as it has been called, results in community policies that are out of harmony with local desires and needs. The research reported here attempts to deal with this question and suggests that in one area, at least, nonprofessional local governing bodies may be adhering rather closely to the policy views of the larger community. In effect, an attempt will be made to test a belief-sharing model of political linkage which in certain situations may replace the electoral-accountability model propounded by many contemporary democratic theorists.3