Comment: Riker's Rhetoric of Ratification
Over the past decade, William Riker has written a series of articles that reinterpret the founding of American politics in light of insights gleaned from theories of rational choice. In the course of these efforts, he has invented a new subject, “heresthetics,” having “to do with the manipulation of the structure of tastes and alternatives within which decisions are made.” With Evelyn C. Fink, for example, he has shown more systematically than previous analyses how the federalists structured the the ratification process by attaching an informal promise of future amendment to a formally unconditional ratification. In the present essay, Riker moves from heresthetics to rhetoric: “Rhetoric and heresthetic are both techniques of winning. But they are different kinds of techniques. Rhetoric is persuasion.… With heresthetic, on the other hand, conviction is at best secondary or not involved at all.” Riker describes federalist and antifederalist ratification rhetoric in an effort to display the persuasiveness of “negative” campaign appeals for those who wish to attract the support of marginal voters.