The Wisconsin Recalls and the Lifecycle of Democracy

Mgr. Mark Pharris, BA

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Using the recent 2012 Wisconsin recall campaign as a case study, this thesis explores how social actors conceive of and enact American democracy. Through the hermeneutically-driven textual analysis of a variety of editorials, columns, and letters concerning Wisconsin, I reveal how recalls disrupt a natural democratic “lifecycle,” forcing actors to contend directly with why and how democracy functions. I frame this emerging discourse as a struggle between two dominant conceptions of democracy: the “ideal” (the overarching moral structures that hold the system in place) and the “popular” (the collective will and desire of the people). Typically, the ideal and the popular are mutually supportive; voters express their will via elections, and the democratic structures of society legitimate that choice. However, recalls force the ideal and the popular into opposition—artificially imposed ideal boundaries threaten to stifle the voters’ inherent right to express their displeasure with officeholders, and disruptive popular outrage threatens to invalidate the officeholders’ inherent right to govern. Ultimately, actors attempt to maintain a careful balance between the ideal and the popular as a means of ensuring a healthy functioning democracy.

Keywords

Wisconsin, Scott Walker, recalls, democracy, elections, discourse analysis, cultural sociology, binary codes, structural hermeneutics

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 6. 5. 2013

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 29. 5. 2013
• Supervisor: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
• Reader: M.A. Dominik Bartmanski, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Master programme / field:
Sociology / Sociology (Eng.)