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Political Behavior

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30-10-2015 | Original Paper

The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of “Constitutional Veneration”

Authors: James R. Zink, Christopher T. Dawes

Published in: Political Behavior | Issue 3/2016

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Abstract

Some observers argue that excessive veneration of the U.S. Constitution has blinded Americans to its flaws and made them reluctant to consider necessary reforms. In this paper, we test the assumptions that underlie these claims. We report the results of two survey experiments that examine the existence and effects of constitutional status quo bias at both the state and federal levels. Our findings support the notion that a proposed policy involving constitutional change imbues the constitutional status quo with normative value and, in turn, disposes individuals to resist the proposal. These results hold even at the state level. In addition to the institutional obstacles to constitutional amendment, therefore, we find evidence of another, psychological barrier to constitutional change that is based specifically in a sense of constitutional attachment.

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See the AP-National Constitution Center Poll, August 2012, accessed 11/22/14, http://goo.gl/5NLzDe. For the years 2008 through 2012, the percentage of respondents endorsing the statement “The United States Constitution is an enduring document that remains relevant today” were, respectively, 70, 75, 74, 74, and 69 %.

“Americans Would Swap Electoral College for Popular Vote,” Lydia Saad, Gallup Politics, October 24, 2011, accessed 11/26/14, http://goo.gl/f1j5aC.

We conducted the experiments in Study 2 before those in Study 1, but we have chosen to present the studies in logical order rather than the order in which they were administered.

In fact, as Bailey (2012, 735) notes, Madison only two years earlier privately expressed sympathy for Jefferson’s 1783 proposal for periodic constitutional review—that is, the same proposal he rejected in Federalist 49.

Results from regression analyses including several control variables are presented in Online Appendix Table 2 and Fig. 1.

To compare average treatment effects we used a bootstrap procedure. We drew 1000 samples of support for the status quo in the treatment and control group for both the constitution and law conditions and calculated the difference in means for each sample. We then compared the distribution of mean differences for the constitution and law conditions. The p-value for the test of the hypothesis that the treatment effect associated with the constitution condition is larger than that for the law condition is the number of negative mean differences divided by 1000. We follow the same procedure to compare the federal and state constitutional treatments.

The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) found that in 1991 only 52 % of the population knew that their state had a constitution, with 11 % asserting definitively that their state did not have a constitution, and 37 % expressing uncertainty on the matter (accessed on May 15, 2013, http://www.library.unt.edu/gpo/acir/Reports/survey/S-20.pdf). Although we did not include any state constitutional knowledge questions in either version of the original experiment, we did include one in the Mturk follow-up study, described below. Following on the ACIR study, we simply asked respondents if their state had a constitution: 53 % correctly answered “yes,” 2 % answered “no,” and 45 % indicated they did not know whether or not their state had a constitution.

Results from regression analyses including several control variables are presented in Online Appendix Table 5 and Fig. 2.

Although our Michigan and California surveys test constitutional status quo bias across a range of substantive issues, one could argue that all of the issues involved are partisan policy issues that most of our respondents would view as too ephemeral or not important enough to warrant a constitutional amendment. As Dinan (2014) notes, however, citizens across the United States frequently approve policy-oriented amendments to their state’s constitution and are not generally any more biased against policy amendments than other amendment types. We thank the anonymous reviewer who drew our attention to this matter.

The initial random assignment for the collective bargaining proposal determined whether respondents received treatment or control questions for the other five proposals.

Since its current constitution went into effect in 1964, Michigan voters have considered 75 proposed constitutional amendments, ultimately approving 32 of them (43 %). During about the same timeframe, California voters have approved 171 of 263 proposed constitutional amendments (65 %). NCSL Ballot Measure Database, accessed 11/20/13, http://goo.gl/m2YZ8i.

Results from regression analyses including several control variables are presented in Online Appendix Table 8 and Fig. 3.

Dawson Bell, “Poll: Michigan Voters Skeptical about Collective Bargaining, Bridge Proposals,” Detroit Free Press, September 16, 2012, accessed 3/9/14, http://goo.gl/QlBK0l.

See “Protect Our Jobs!” campaign website, https://goo.gl/bJj2jO.

See report by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network based on data compiled from the Michigan Bureau of Elections, http://goo.gl/m9a8jq.

Uninformed voters in particular rely on the status quo as a reference point since they generally know more about the status quo than the uncertain and risky policy alternatives (Lupia 1994a, 1992; Bowler and Donovan 1998).

For the full regression analyses examining treatment effects across risk orientations and knowledge of the proposals, see Online Appendix Table 10.

The annual reports provided by the Book of States (http://goo.gl/MHnBdk) show that between 1968 and 2013, about 73 % of all legislatively-referred amendments were approved compared to just about 40 % of all initiated amendment proposals.

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Title: The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of “Constitutional Veneration”
Authors: James R. Zink
Christopher T. Dawes
Publication date: 30-10-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Political Behavior / Issue 3/2016
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-015-9325-5

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