Why Negative Campaigning Is Rational: The Rhetoric of the Ratification Campaign of 1787–1788*

1. Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard K., and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944); Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1960); Flanigan, William H. and Zingale, Nancy H., Political Behavior of the American Electorate, 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1983); and Enelow, James and Hinich, Melvin J., The Spatial Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

2. Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1962); Page, Benjamin I., Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Aldrich, John H., Before the Convention: A Theory of Campaigning for the 1976 Presidential Nomination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Riker, William H., Liberalism against Populism (San Francisco, W.H. Freeman, 1982; Prospect Heights, Illinois, Waveland Press, 1989). Bartels, Larry M., Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Kessell, John, Presidential Campaign Politics, 3d ed. (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988).

3. Riker, Liberalism against Populism, chap. 8; Riker, William H., The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Axelrod, Robert, “Presidential Election Coalitions in 1984,” American Political Science Review 80 (03 1986): 281–84; Kingdon, John, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Boston: Little Brown, 1984); and Carmines, Edward G. and Stimson, James A., Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

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9. Of course, I maintain that this law, assumed for illustration, is not valid. If it were, some knowledge of persuasion would exist, contrary to my initial assertion.

10. W. Rhys Roberts, trans., Rhetoric, by Aristotle, bk. 1, chap. 9, 1367 b 7.

11. Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 1, 1377 b 25.

12. Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 2, 1380 a 1.

13. Housman, A. E., The Name and Nature of Poetry (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 46.

14. Doob, Leonard, Propaganda: Its Psychology and Technique (New York: Holt, 1935); and Kris, Ernst and Speier, Hans, German Radio Propaganda: Report on Broadcasts During the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1944).

15. McGuire, William J., “The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change,” in Lindzey, Gardner and Aronson, E, The Handbook of Social Psychology (Addison Wesley, 1969), pp. 136–314; and Sears, David O. and Whitney, Richard E., Political Persuasion (Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press, 1973).

16. Hovland, Carl I. et al. , The Order of Presentation in Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).

17. McGuire, William J. and Papageorgis, D., “Effectiveness of Forewarning in Developing Resistance to Persuasion,” in Public Opinions Quarterly 26 (1963): 24–34; McGuire, William J., “Inducing Resistance to Persuasion: Some Contemporary Approaches,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. Berkowitz, Leonard (New York: Academic Press, 1964), pp. 191–221; and Petty, Richard E. and Cacioppo, John T., “Forewarning, Cognitive Responding, and Resistance to Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1977): 645–55.

18. Festinger, , Leon, , A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1957); and Patterson, Thomas and McClure, Robert, The Unseeing Eye: The Myth of Television Power in National Politics (New York: Putnam, 1976).

19. Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel, “The Framing of Decisions and the Rationality of Choice,” Science 211 (1981): 453–58; Kahneman, and Tversky, , “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk,” Econometrica 47 (1979): 263–91; Slovic, Paul, Fischoff, Bernard, and Lichtenstein, Sarah, “Behavioral Decision Theory,” Annual Review of Psychology 28 (1977): 11–39; and Kahneman, Daniel, Slovic, Paul, and Tversky, Amos, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

20. Burgoon, Michael, “Empirical Investigation of Language Intensity,” Human Communication Research 1 (1975): 251–54; and Burgoon, Michael and Bettinghaus, Envin P., “Persuasive Message Strategies,” in Persuasion: New Directions in Theory and Research, ed. Roloff, Michael E. and Miller, Gerald R. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980), pp. 141–70.

21. My view of the shortcomings of the psychological approach is shared by some specialists in communication, like Miller, Gerald R., “On Being Persuaded,” in Persuasion: New Directions in Theory and Research, ed. Roloff, Michael E. and Miller, Gerald R. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980) pp. 25–26.

22. Kaminski, John and Saladino, Gaspare, Commentaries on the Constitution: Public and Private (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1981–1988), 5 volumes.

23. SirNamier, Lewis, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George the Third (London: Macmillan, 1929); SirNamier, Lewis and Brooke, John, The House of Commons 1754–1790, 3 vols. (London: Seker and Warburg, 1986); and Porritt, Edward and Porritt, Annie B., The Unreformed House of Commons, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909).

24. Brown, Robert E., Middle Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1780 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953); Brown, Robert E., Reinterpretation of the Formation of the American Constitution (Boston: Boston University Press, 1963); and Brown, Robert E. and Brown, B. Katherine, Virginia 1705–1786: Democracy or Aristocracy (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964).

25. Kenyon, Cecelia M., “Men of Little Faith: The AntiFederalists on the Nature of Representative Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 12 (1955), pp. 3–43.

26. Storing, Herbert, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, vol. 1 of The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

27. Farrand, Max, ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, revised edition, 1964).

28. Main, Jackson T., The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution (1961; rept. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), chaps. 6–8; and Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, chaps. 2–4 and 6–8.

29. Incidentally over half of the weight of the Federalist is five subjects: standing army, 77,246; national defense, 76,069; advantages of federation, 121,764; advantages of union, 130,121; and separation of powers, 39,181; or 494,381 weighted words, about 55% of the Federalist in my sample.

30. Main, Anti-Federalists.

31. Ford, Paul Leicester, Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States (1888 rept. New York: Da Capo Press, 1968); Ford, Paul Leicester, Essays on the Constitution of the United States (1892; rept. New York: Burt Franklin, 1970); and MacMaster, John Bach and Stone, Frederick D., Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution 1787–88 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1888).

32. Main, Anti-Federalists, p. 127.

33. Storing, What the AntiFederalists Were For, p. 6 (emphasis in the original).

34. Ibid., p. 22.

35. Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967).

36. Ibid., pp. 62, 112–19.

37. For an excellent discussion of the difference between positive and negative campaigning, see Doron, Gideon, “A Rational Choice Model of Campaign Strategy,” in The Elections in Israel, 1981, ed. Arian, Asher (Tel Aviv: Ramot, Tel Aviv University, 1983), pp. 213–31.

38. Friedman, Milton and Savage, L. J., “The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk,” Journal of Political Economy 56 (1948): 279–304.

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41. Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel, “The Framing of Decisions and the Rationality of Choice,” Science 211 (1981): 453–58.

42. Allais, Maurice, “Le Comportment de l'Homme Rationnal devant le Risque: Critique des Postulats et Axioms de l'Ecole Américaine,” Econometrica 21 (1953): 503–46; and Allais, Maurice, “The So-Called Allais Paradox and Rational Decisions under Uncertainty,” in Expected Utility Hypothesis and the Allau Paradox, ed. Allais, Maurice and Hagen, O. (Boston: Reidel, 1979).

43. Lichtenstein, Sarah and Slovic, Paul, “Reversals of Preference Between Bids and Choices in Gambling Decision,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 89 (1971): 46–55; and Lichtenstein, and Slovic, , “Response Induced Reversals of Preference in Gambling: An Extended Replication in Las Vegas,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 101 (1973): 16–20.

44. Slovic, Paul and Lichtenstein, Sarah, “Preference Reversals: A Broader Perspective,” American Economic Review 73 (1983): 596–605.

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47. Tversky, and Kahneman, , “The Framing of Decisions” Kahneman and Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47 (1979): 263–291; and a collection of essays by many writers: Kahneman, , Slovic, , and Tversky, , Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)

48. Ellsberg, Daniel, “Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 75 (1961): 643–69.

49. Einhorn, Hillel J. and Hogarth, Robin M., “Decision Making Under Ambiguity,” in Rational Choice: The Contrast Between Economics and Psychology, eds. Hogarth, Robin M. and Reder, Melvin W. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

50. Ferejohn, John and Fiorina, Morris, “The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretic Analysis,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974): 525–36.

51. When the number of other voters (n − 1) is even, there are n possible divisions of those (n − 1) voters—(n − 1) to zero, (n − 2) to one, …, zero to (n − 1)—of which exactly one is a tie that the nth voter can break in his or her favor. When the (n − 1) other voters is an odd number, there are n possible divisions of which exactly one permits the nth voter to change his or her loss into a tie. So, assuming even and odd are equally likely, the voter has 1/n chance of being decisive, either to win or to tie.

52. Note that, when voting, the voter is expected to get(b − c) with a chance of 1/n and ( −c) with a chance of (n − l)/n. Summing these terms gives E(v) = (b − c)/n + (n − 1)(−c)/n = (b − cn)/n.

53. Kaminski and Saladino, eds., Commentaries on the Constitution vol. 3:386–87

54. Main, The Anti-Federalists, Appendix A.

55. MacKuen, Michael, “Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 372–91.

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59. Popkin, Samuel L., The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

60. Main, Anti-Federalists.

61. Mansbridge, Jane J., Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

* NSF grant SES-8410092 supported the work on this article. I am deeply indebted to several students for help in summarizing and interpreting rhetorical themes: Patrick Fett, John Huber, William Kubik, Thomas O'Donnell, Margaret Raymond, and especially Evelyn Fink. Also several colleagues have given me important insights, especially Peter Aranson and Norman Schofield.