Q. In the past 25 years, since you've been here, have you seen changes in this political culture?

Yes. Politics has become less party- oriented — parties being the traditional vehicles for winning and for handing out jobs — and more candidate-centered. So the classic individualistic political system doesn't work as well. That doesn't mean we're becoming Wisconsin. It does mean that the mechanisms for coordination and control are not nearly as strong as they used to be.

Q. But you've said legislative elections are still highly controlled — by the legislative leaders.

Right. But I don't know whether the configuration we've got in Illinois in terms of the leadership-dominated electoral process — control of the campaign money, dominance of the legislative process — is a permanent reaction to the fragmentation we began to get in the '70s and early '80s when every candidate became a free agent.

A perfect example of the change in the '70s was Dan Walker winning the Democratic primary and getting elected governor. In traditional individualistic politics, the party recruits the candidate, raises the money, runs the campaign, gets out the vote. Walker was a change in that he was a self-recruited, self-financed candidate who ran against the party organization. Now, he had a terrible time governing. And part of the reason was because there was no party structure behind him after he got elected. He brought nobody with him. He didn't totally kill the party — it defeated him in the next primary — but that's an example of the breakdown of the traditional party basis of Illinois politics.

Of course, we're also talking about an aggregation of wards —there have always been strong and weak wards — and an aggregation of counties, strong and weak counties. Springfield, Sangamon County, still has a very strong Republican organization. Maybe that's because they're well organized. Maybe that's because they can still maintain the relationship of party to jobs in a place like Springfield that they can't in other places. In Chicago and DuPage County, they certainly can. And Springfield, probably.

That's clearly one of the factors in the changes of the last 25 years. The legal assault on patronage [jobs as political spoils] means the political system can't work in the way that it has traditionally worked.

Q. So we have a political system that can no longer deliver as well, can't provide discipline or rewards as well. And we have self-selected candidates, free-lance political entrepreneurs, if you will. What ultimate effect, if any, does that have on Illinois' political culture?

If people run as free agents, but that free agency is tied to constituencies, it makes them, to a certain extent, hyper-representative.

As candidates are more dependent on getting elected without the backing of a party, they have to be more responsive to their constituents in the short term. They can't afford to take a hit on a

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short-term bad vote that might be long- term good policy because the party is not there to protect them.

Q. But is it such a bad thing to be hyper-representative, as you call it?

One of the pluses of strong party control is that it provides candidates with some support and some leeway in terms of how they represent and relate to their districts. On the negative side, the Chicago legislators on local government committees that I staffed back in the '70s had no connection at all to their constituencies. The ward committeemen did all the constituent services and had all the contact with people in the districts. The legislators didn't say, "Is this a bad vote for my constituents?" This just isn't an issue in that kind of system. The arrows go up, the arrows go down in terms of the little sheet from the chairman. There's no connection at all to constituents.

That's one extreme. The other extreme is the lawmaker who says, "I got here on my own, without the help of a county or a state party or the speaker of the House, by being able to convince my constituents to send me here. If I want to come back, I have to be cognizant of where they're going and think in very short terms."

So the shift from party-centered to candidate-centered elections makes it more difficult to reinforce the traditional political culture.

It also makes the political system less conservative. Individualistic political culture is inherently status quo-oriented. It's risk-averse. "We won by doing what we're doing. Being in power is more important than making good policy. So we want to be careful how we solve problems." That's why Illinois has traditionally been a follower rather than a leader in terms of solving problems. We came to welfare reform later than other states. And charter schools. Lots of things seem to have played out in California, Minnesota or somewhere else sooner than they do in Illinois because we tend to be more risk-averse and more status quo-oriented.

Candidate-centered politics tends to promote entrepreneurship, risk-taking. "I'm not getting elected as a Democrat. I want to get elected as a tax-cutting, education-funding candidate." Whatever. You get more candidates who are interested in ideas. Sometimes they're interested in ideas because they think they're in the public interest. But other times, they are interested in ideas and policies because that's a way to make a splash. Or they simply think that's what their constituents want.

Q. I've never heard an Illinois politician give a speech in which he or she said, "I'm not going to serve the public interest I'm going to play to win and make sure I get re-elected." They say they're serving the public interest by what they're doing. Are you saying the public interest is not being served?

No. No. Whether or not there even is a discoverable "public interest" is an empirical question to a certain extent that is very difficult to resolve. But in the individualistic political culture, the touchstone is still about winning. It's about control and power and jobs. And there's a predisposition to solve problems narrowly. You never get to the social problems that are divisive —what do we do about race, what do we do about housing, what do we do about poverty? Those are issues that you can't build consensus on, or coalitions. They're not popular.

So the question is, does the culture encourage risk-taking, does it encourage being proactive or innovative?

Reflections on a quarter century of Illinois political change He's the author of Cash Clout: Political Money in Illinois Legislative Elections and a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, where he was the principal investigator for the Illinois Campaign Finance Project. He now directs the Sunshine Project. He began his career in Illinois in 1975 as a legislative analyst with the Democratic staff of the state House of Representatives. Redfield, who continues to be a critical observer of the political process, talked with publisher Ed Wojcicki and editor Peggy Boyer Long. This is an edited version of that discussion.

Q. And you would say no.

Because in Illinois' political culture, the emphasis is on jobs, on winning, on power and control.

Q. Who benefits from this more fragmented political culture we have now?

Organized groups and money play a bigger role.

Even the legislative leaders who are interested in winning legislative races and use the system to dominate the process have to have the support of groups. And they have to have money. They play it to their advantage, but the tendency of legislatures is to serve the organized. And an individualistic political culture with a fragmented party structure creates even more opportunity for people who have money, people who are organized, to have a greater advantage over people who are unorganized and don't have money.

So the status quo still benefits.

I think citizens as a whole are probably marginally better off because there are more opportunities for innovation. Change is more possible because of the political entrepreneurs. But the advantage still lies with the interest groups and the money.

Q. As a political scientist are you OK with that?

There are two things a political system ought to be doing. One is providing governance, shaping policies for the public good, solving problems, addressing issues. The other thing the political system ought to be doing is building individual citizens. People should be welcome to participate. They should want to participate. There ought to be benefits and rewards for individual participation in the civic culture.

The current more fragmented system still falls short in addressing policy issues and in governing. And it is even worse at citizen involvement, at making people feel they have a stake, and a role and a right and a privilege to participate. 

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