APPLYING THE MODEL TO ELECTIONS
Few scholars have extended the exit, voice, and loyalty model to the political process, beyond its role in shaping individual political organizations. An exception is Eva Sorensen, who recognizes the potential value of redefining "exit" in relation to a representative government:
If we take a closer look at political life, exit is limited by the obvious fact that it is difficult to exit from the nation-state. A "genuine exit" calls for a change of nationality. Nevertheless, exit plays a central role in political life in liberal democracies in which the primary means of empowering the citizens is voting. Through voting the individual is granted the power to exit one party to the advantage of another…. Voice channels … are available through membership of a political party and through participation in the public debate in the media.[28]
I go beyond the traditional exit, voice, and loyalty model in another sense. With only minor exceptions, the remainder of this book examines how citizens influence individual elected officials, as opposed to political parties, public agencies, or governments.[29] This shift from organizational behavior to the actions of public officials is substantial, because exit and voice are now understood to influence the behavior of individual representatives, rather than complex organizations. In practice, many elected officials operate as the heads of small organizations that include paid staff and informal advisers. In the interest of simple prose, however, I shall refer to these officials as individual actors who respond (or fail to respond) to the voice of the electorate.
If the main actors in this new model are elected officials, the central question is what causes representatives to experience what Hirschman might call "lapses from virtuous behavior." The democratic models reviewed earlier all agree that the first task of political representatives is to serve the public. Even the Madisonian model of democracy recognizes that the lay public should be the ultimate judge of whether its representatives are acting in the public's best interest. The variance in democratic theorists' confidence in the quality of public judgment is somewhat moot, as every democratic system uses elections of one kind or another to prevent representatives from becoming entrenched and unresponsive. In every democratic ideal, public officials must be held accountable for their actions as representatives of the citizenry. Whether one believes in a general will of the people or simply in an average interest among conflicting visions of the public good, it is important to
To influence the actions of their elected officials, voters can use exit, voice, or both response mechanisms. In this context, the terms exit and voice take on a different meaning, and in place of the former I shall speak of "electoral rejection." As I use the term throughout this book, attempted electoral rejection is voting for an alternative candidate when a public official seeks reelection. By backing an opponent, a voter seeks to discard the current official and replace him or her with a candidate perceived to better represent personal or collective interests. Just as a consumer switching products has no assurance that such a change will prove beneflcial, the voter takes a chance on a new official. Unlike the consumer changing shampoo brands, though, the voter cannot change officials autonomously; instead, the success of the individual's vote depends upon the votes of others. Only when the electorate is thought of as a body does electoral rejection carry with it the certainty of successful exit: thus, collective rejection is the successful election of an opponent who challenges an incumbent. I move from the individual to the collective level when I refer to electoral rejection, and I stress the uncertainty of the individual voter's attempt to reject an incumbent official or administration.
In part because of the limited influence of a single voter's electoral choices, the public's capacity for dissent is at least as important as its attempts at electoral rejection. As I use the term, voice is an attempt to influence the public decisions made by elected representatives. Hirschman's more narrow use of the term would equate voice only with the expression of dissent against actions that a citizen finds distasteful. I wish to use the term more broadly to include praise, neutral input on a specific issue, and requests for specific votes that are not sparked by the belief that the official will act otherwise. Any citizen's message to a public official may influence that official's actions in the future, whether or not the citizen intended to change the official's decisions.
Whether a given voter chooses to rely upon this voice or backs an opposing candidate
Without taking any other variables into account, one can see clearly the costs and benefits of loyalty in this model. If voters in a given city council district have very little loyalty toward their incumbent councilor, they will reject the incumbent in the next election so long as an opponent seems to have greater potential to represent their interests. A sitting councilor from this district may rarely hear constituents' voices, because of their unwillingness to voice concerns, and this lack of communication may decrease the councilor's chances for reelection even further. Over time, because of its readiness to reject imperfect officials, this district would also forgo the benefits of long-term incumbency. By contrast, a district with extremely high constituent loyalty would suffer the opposite fate. This second district would reelect councilors to many terms in office, but overreliance on voice would undermine the electorate's credibility and permit the incumbent to act with impunity. The sitting councilor might hear many complaints, but if the district's loyalty was blind, dissent would manifest itself only as voice and never as a real electoral challenge. Between these extremes, a healthy public develops a modicum of loyalty toward responsive elected officials but conditions that loyalty on actual performance.[30]