Rock the vote--but don't tip it over

Pateman refers to Berelson's revised theory of democracy, in which the distribution of participants is such that there is a "cushion" against the "shock of disagreement, adjustment, and change" (7). I take Berelson's point that an impassioned electorate might cause the established norms to shake, but I would argue that if the electorate seeks "adjustment and change," in a democracy, that is what they should receive. The fascist and totalitarian regimes adopted by European democracies, to which Berelson's revised theory is responding, would be an unlikely result of an increase in political participation, due the Constitutionally established systems of checks and balances on majority power. In fact, the many social movements that have taken place in our own country have depended on the ability to overturn accepted social norms by mobilizing voters.

Schattschneider, on the other hand, calls for a complete reworking of the system, now that voting rights have likely reached their farthest extent. He encourages the participation of the 40 million non-voters who are have been granted the right to vote, but who do not see the incentive to participate in politics. He contends: "The whole balance of power in the political system could be overturned by a massive invasion [of these 40 million non-voters]" (96). To Schattschneider, the political system has become too complacent its Democrat-versus-Republican agenda, and needs to be reworked in order to include the opinion of the vast number of non-voters; an upset of this system is necessary in order to meet the demands of all of the American people. Such an upheaval certainly has the upside of being more representative, but perhaps this representation is not worth the complete restructuring of our modern political system.

Where Berelson sees the stability of the American political system as a virtue, Schattschneider sees it as the unfortunate result of an "automatic, unconscious, and thoughtless" (106) disenfranchisement of a certain group of Americans. So we are left with the question: is the stability of both politics and society the goal of American democracy, or is it responding to the demands of its people?