Symbols and Political Quiescence

Few forms of explanation of political phenomena are more common than the assertion that the success of some group was facilitated by the “apathy” of other groups with opposing interests. If apathy is not an observable phenomenon in a political context because it connotes an individual's mental state, quiescence is observable. It is the purpose of this paper to specify some conditions associated with political quiescence in the formation of business regulation policies. Although the same general conditions are apparently applicable to the formation of public policies in any area, the argument and the examples used here focus upon the field of government regulation of business in order to make the paper manageable and to permit more intensive treatment. Political quiescence toward a policy area can be assumed to be a function either of lack of interest—whether it is simple indifference or stems rather from a sense of futility about the practical prospects of securing obviously desirable changes—or of the satisfaction of whatever interest the quiescent group may have in the policy in question. Our concern here is with the forms of satisfaction. In analyzing the various means by which it can come to pass, the following discussion distinguishes between interests in resources (whether goods or freedoms to act) and interests in symbols connoting the suppression of threats to the group in question. Few political scientists would doubt, on the basis of common sense evidence, that public policies have value to interested groups both as symbols and as instruments for the allocation of more tangible values. The political process has been much less thoroughly studied as a purveyor of symbols, however; and there is a good deal of evidence, to be presented below, that symbols are a more central component of the process than is commonly recognized in political scientists' explicit or implicit models.