South Vietnam: The Symbolic Nature of Election Campaign Appeals

In a previous study, an attempt was made to determine the extent to which South Vietnamese provincial elites represent a transition or “bridge” between the national elites and the rural values of the majority population by comparing data on the social, educational, political and occupational backgrounds among political leaders and elites supportive of the GVN from both the national and provincial levels. In that study, the conclusion was that a comparison of social background statistics in isolation may be seriously misleading. Western-educated urban elites at the provincial level who are aware of and empathisize with traditional rural concerns can serve as a transitional cultural and political bridge. Indeed a fairly recent study of constituency influence on United States' congressmen indicated that a representative's perceptions of the attitudes held by the enfranchised population of his district was the intervening variable accounting for his electoral behavior as measured by his voting on roll calls. Thus, in the United States, “;;constituency influence is not provided by candidate recruitment but by elite cognitions.”