CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND ELITE POLITICS: DISSENSUS AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA

• Date: 11 June 2003
• Published date: 11 June 2003
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)29003-7
• Pages: 67-95
• Author: Judith Randle

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND ELITE

POLITICS: DISSENSUS AND THE

DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA

Judith Randle

ABSTRACT

Drawing from televised debates over capital punishment on CNN’sCrossfire

from February 2000 to June 2002, I argue that Teles’s (1998) theory of

“dissensus politics” is useful in understanding the U.S.’s preservation of

capital punishment as well as current divisions in death penalty sentiment

within the U.S. I pose the retention of capital punishment as the product

of rival elites who are unwilling to forsake capital punishment’s moral

character (and often the political benefits it offers), and who consequently

ignore an American public that appears to have reached a measured

consensus of doubt about the death penalty.

As a part of the grim trivialization of public life, the American political campaign readily

distracts from the possible debate of national policy.

C. Wright Mills (1956),The Power Elite,p.253

Politics is a spectacle, reported by the media and witnessed by parts of the public. It attracts

because as an ambiguous text, it becomes infused with meanings that reassure or threaten.

Murray Edelman (1985),The Symbolic Uses of Politics,p.195

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 29, 67–95

Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1059-4337/PII: S1059433703290037 67

68 JUDITH RANDLE

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Politics as Symbolic Debates

Almost half a century ago, sociologist C. Wright Mills (1956) spoke of an

anti-democratic divide between the elite group who makes the laws and the

unorganized masses whom it purports to represent. “Public opinion has become

the object of intensive efforts to control, manage, manipulate, and increasingly

intimidate” (p. 310) by way of symbolic, and largely irrelevant, political

exchanges which subvert “reasonable and leisurely and human interchange of

opinion” (p. 344). Less than a decade later Murray Edelman (1964) further

revealed the figurative nature of elite discourse and the consequences symbolic

political messages spoken by persons in power render upon the unorganized

masses. Recognizing that “[p]olitical forms come to symbolize what large

masses of men need to believe about the state to reassure themselves” (Edelman,

1964, p. 2), he described the relationship between political leadership and its

constituency as one characterized by emblematic appeals. Elites, cognizant of the

public’s tendency to find comfort in intangible ideals and values, elude concrete

debate over policy in favor of symbolic threats and reassurances. Essential

to American political consciousness and deeply felt, unstable and ambiguous

concepts (e.g., “democracy,” “justice”) serve as the currency through which

elites promote their political positions in “passing parade[s] of abstract symbols”

(Edelman, 1964,p.5).

More recently, Billig (1991, 1996),Edelman (1977), and Gamson (1992)

discuss the “rhetorical” quality of political concepts (and of language more gener-

ally) that provides the basis for debate and characterizes political exchanges. The

ambiguity and “two-sidedness” inherent in categorizing1create disagreements

over defining language and events, hence creating political attitudes or stances

(Billig, 1996).2Moreover, as disagreement characterizes thinking itself (Billig,

1991, 1996), conflicting ideas, concepts, and values reside within those to

whom political messages are directed (Billig, 1991, 1996; Edelman, 1977).

Political messages aim to seize those ideas, concepts, and values which

frame an issue in a particular way, and political controversy becomes a mat-

ter of competing symbols and issue frames (Gamson, 1992). According to

Billig (1996),

[a]rguments frequently turn into disputes about language and the meaning of words...Instead

of talking about the “real issues,” participants find themselves trapped in semantic disagree-

ments...Once an argument starts, words which have been used non-controversially can sud-

denly find themselves in the forefront of controversy,as the momentum of the argument pushes

the disagreement into hitherto unsuspected areas (p. 55).