© 1985 by CSF Associates Inc.
Constitutional Change in America: Dynamics of Ratification Under Article V
University of Iowa
Although amendments to the U.S. Constitution have often wrought fundamental changes in American politics, there is little systematic or quantitative research on the dynamics of the amending process. The roles of interest groups and social movements in the amending process, as well as the very structure of Article V (states "adopt" or "reject"), suggest that one can treat constitutional change by amendment as an instance of the diffusion of innovations. This article focuses on how, when, and under what circumstances the states have chosen to accept or reject amendments proposed by the Congress. The article presents descriptive data on the speed of adoption for proposed amendments, develops three alternative models (constant-source, interactive, and mixed), and discusses the results of statistical tests of the models. Despite the "nationalization" of the mass media and American politics, the diffusion of constitutional amendments does not appear to have accelerated in dramatic fashion from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. In the final analysis, a mixed model, with elements of constant-source and interaction between states, provides the best explanation for patterns in the ratification of constitutional amendments.