I explained earlier the stunning phenomenon of the “Will of the People”.
Now it is time to question the phenomenon. How does it work?
I see three elements:
transmission, resilience and sense of justice.
The issue of transmission is best answered by observing the U.S. in the 1966-68 period. The young population was marching in the streets against the Vietnam War, in favor of sexual freedom and supporting self indulgent drugs. The anti-war message was acceptable to the mass media of the time, TV, local newspapers and national magazines. That was the only message carried by the pervasive (and stultifying) mass media. The public saw the other parts of the message.
Yet Richard Nixon was elected president against the demands of the entire media. I pick this era to show that the medium of transmission for the popular will was not talk radio, the Internet or Fox News. The medium was citizens talking privately to their trusted friends who held the same or similar views and together they reinforced these views on a mass scale. A verbal Samizdat.
Resilience is a
stunning characteristic of the Will of the People. Very few subjects
in the daily news cycle last for more than a few weeks, whether it is
O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Obama criticizing the Cambridge police....
It doesn't matter. As in the case of Governor Gray Davis of
California interfering in the Republican primary campaign in January
of 2002 to knock out the strongest likely opponent, the Will of the
People followed the matter, watched Davis win a general election
because of his crooked behavior. Fifteen months later a petition
drive was started and 21 months later Davis was recalled.
Resilience.
Lastly, the sense of justice. What I see as the consistent and universal and totally surprising element of the Will of the People is that it is a sense of outrage that is evoked whenever the norms of a truly democratic society are violated. It is engaged when a judicial decision countermands the popular government whether legislative or electoral. It is engaged when democratic election processes are foiled. And it occurs when an appointment process is used to subvert or distort an elective process.
Is the pseudo field of political science ever likely to take up this issue? No.