Political Recruitment and Participation: Some Suggested Areas for Research

“One may surely give oneself up to a line of thought,” Freud once observed, “and [follow] it up as far as it leads, simply out of scientific curiosity … without, however, making a pact with the devil about it.” In this paper I suggest that both psychoanalysts and political scientists assume such detachment—and that we follow up hypotheses about political recruitment and participation derived from psychoanalytic theory as applied to the pathogenic defensive function of social roles.1 The specific objective is to specify what individual unconscious “needs” (mechanisms of defense) tend to be “attracted” and “satisfied” by political roles. Put differently, interest centers on equilibria between particular intrapsychic systems and particular political roles.

Political recruitment, as herein used, differs from political participation in that the former is the result of the anticipation of need satisfaction, based on role visibility, whereas the latter is the result of ongoing satisfactions provided by a role. A useful frame for the analysis of recruitment and participation, cast in terms of a theory of organizational equilibrium, is presented by Simon, Smithburg and Thompson: