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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 33. The American Pattern of Individual Leadership and Mass Passivity - 4. The Patterns Exemplified in Politics and throughout the American Social Structure
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Chapter 33. Leadership and Mass Passivity 717
European countries (including England), thereby widening political
participation and making politics more anonymous and less dependent on
outstanding leadership. Much more, not only of broad policy-making, but
also of detailed decisions are, in America, centralized in the offices of
salaried functionaries. Political farticipation of the ordinary citizen in
America is pretty much restricted to the intermittently recurring elections.
Politics is not organized to be a daily concern and responsibility of the
common citizen. The relative paucity of trade unions, cooperatives, and
other civic interest organizations tends to accentuate this abstention on the
part of the common citizens from sharing in the government of their
communities as a normal routine of life.® In this essential sense American
politics is centralized. The same is even more true of national politics.
The basic democracy, however, is maintained in spite of the extraordinary
power awarded to the individual officeholders and the equally extraordinary
lack of participation by the common citizens in the running of public
affairs. While American democracy is weak from the aspect of the citizens^
sharing in political action and responsibility,
it is strong in the ultimate
electoral controls. And there is logic in this. Several elements of what, from
the other side of the Atlantic, looks like “exaggerated democracy” in
American measures of popular central may be explained as having their
“function” in preserving for the common man the ultimate political power
in this system of government where he participates so little in its daily
duties.** It is this trait which prevents the delegation of such tremendous
power to leaders and the hero worship from degenerating into fascism.
It should be observed that this American pattern of nonparticipation in government)
the historical explanation of which we have hinted at above, does not have its roots in the
American Creed. The development came to run contrary to the hopes of I’homas Jefferson.
In his desire for a decentralized government there was an expectation of the growth of a
close and never ceasing democratic collaboration in community affairs. John Dewey has
recently pointed out:
^^iis project for general political organization on the basis of small units, small enough
so that all its members could have direct communication with one another and take care
of all community affairs was never acted upon. It never received much attention in the
press of immediate practical problems.” (^Freedom and Culture [1939], p. 159.)
“The great political power awarded the President of the United States is prescribed
in the Constitution. But this is a formal explanation. The head of the state in other
countries also often has, according to the constitutions, great powers, which in the course
of development he has not been allowed to retain. In America it has fftted well into the
general leadership pattern to let the President retain this great power. But he is elected
by popular vote—the device for indirect election provided in the Constitution broke down
nearly at the beginning. And—most important from our viewpoint—it became the tradition
o restrict the period of office to two terms. Both the power concentration in the Presidency
and the restriction of the power period to eight years are a direct outflow of the common
American attitude of leadership. Contrariwise, the actual development of this central
conspicuous power institution in American politics has undoubtedly had its influence in
molding attitudes in all other political spheres and in the entire American culture.
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