Insulation and Responsiveness in Congressional Elections

Abstract

The 1974 congressional election is part of a crisis sequence in the current history of the American political system. The tremendous upheaval which has been going on in our electoral politics since 1964 has had a number of remarkable by-products. Chief among these has been the progressive weakening of the hold which party loyalties have had upon the voters in channeling their voting decisions. This growing dissolution of party-in-the-electorate entails a serious erosion of political parties as basic institutional components of the political system. Closely associated with this, a profoundly important electoral reinforcement of the constitutional separateness of our national policy-making institutions has occurred.The 1974 election has made its own contribution to these trends, and it seems clear that the policy-making vacuum which dramatically emerged in the spring of 1973, when the Watergate cover story fell apart, will continue unabated at least until 1977. Yet this election has some features which do not easily fit a simple model of party decay; and it has had consequences of importance, both substantively and analytically. There is justification, therefore, for giving it a close study.