ABSTRACT
Two fundamental processes underlie political activity within democratic polities: elite competition and public reactivity. Competition within the elite stratum serves to regulate the behavior of elite actors; elite actions which violate norms of acceptability are brought before the public eye, with the intent of eliciting a negative reaction from the public. Segments of the public may react negatively to a variety of prompts, based on their own standards of the acceptability of elite actions. In such instances, the grievances of the public may become integrated into more conventional processes of elite competition. By contrast, public grievances that do not become integrated into normal politics may lead to elite constraint. The existence of such intermediate publics has served to generally intensify both elite competition and elite constraint. Processes of competition and constraint, therefore, would appear to exist in authoritarian states, but in a manner that is less publically visible.
