Socioeconomic Status and Political Participation

• Published date: 01 December 1964
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296401700402
• Date: 01 December 1964
• Author: John H. Lindquist
• Subject Matter: Articles

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND
POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
JOHN H. LINDQUIST
Arizona State College
HE
ADVANCE of the democratic process in the United States has been a
major goal of our society. As the nation has developed, the franchise has been
widened to include groups previously excluded for reasons of race, religion, or
sex. But the franchise is only one part of the democratic process. Of equal importance
is participation in an active way in government. This aspect of the democratic proc-
ess has not kept pace with the advances made in widening the franchise, and has in
fact been on the decline. While more people are enfranchised and entitled to vote,
this relatively passive contribution to democracy has come to be the main contribu-
tion toward politics and government of a large segment of our population.’ Active
political participation as a party or governmental office-holder has become differen-
tiated on a social class basis, with the upper classes holding the offices and the lower
classes providing the votes. And there is apparently a trend toward a greater rather
than lesser class orientation, as the decades pass.
Being granted the franchise has not increased office-holding, as an index of
political participation, among the lower socioeconomic groups. These lower groups
are to a considerable extent unimportant partners with the upper classes in an elec-
toral process of which the latter are in control. As late as the late nineteenth century,
members of the lower socioeconomic classes participated actively in all aspects of the
democratic process; voting, campaigning, nominating candidates, and serving as
candidates and office-holders.2 Today, their participation has become to a great ex-
tent confined to that of voting and serving as unpaid and usually unrewarded (except
psychologically) campaign workers. The selection of candidates and the candidates
themselves have come to be the special province of the upper socioeconomic classes.
The findings of Warner and Lunt3 in their Yankee City research are substanti-
ated and extended by research conducted by this writer of political participation in
Syracuse, New York, over an eighty-year period, 1880-1959.~ Not only do those of
high socioeconomic status participate in a disporportionate way in local politics, but
there is also a clearly defined trend toward greater participation in office-holding on
their part and a concomitant drop in office-holding on the part of representatives
1
Wendell Bell and Maryanne T. Force, "Social Structure and Participation in Different Types
of Formal Associations," Social Forces, 34 (May 1956), 345-50; John M. Foskett, "Social
Structure and Social Participation," American Sociological Review, 20 (August 1955),
431-38; Paul Meadows and Charles Brauchers, "Social Composition of the 1948 National
Conventions," Sociological and Social Research, 36 ( September 1951), 31-35; Bernard
R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1954); Paul F. Lazarsfeld, The People’s Choice (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1944).
2
John H. Lindquist, "Businessmen in Politics: An analysis of Political Participation in Syracuse,
New York, 1880-1959" (D.S.S. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1961).
3
William Lloyd Warner and Paul S. Lunt, The Social Life of a Modern Community (New
Haven : Yale University Press, 1941), p. 366.
4
Lindquist, op. cit.
608

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of the lower socioeconomic classes. This is illustrated by an examination of two
accepted criteria of social class, occupation and residence.
Occupation has come to be accepted as one highly significant variable in deter-
mining social class, by those who make this subject their specialty.5 When the politi-
cal participantS6 of Syracuse, New York, are divided into three broad occupational
classes -
business and professional, clerical and sales, and blue-collar -
and studied
over an eighty-year period, two things become clear: the business and professional
classes dominate local politics, and their domination is becoming...