No Way to Run a Government : POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS The Declining Importance of Elections in America <i> by Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter (Basic Books: $19.95; 226 pp.; 0-465-01973-0) </i>

On one of the Sunday morning talk shows recently, the house conservative made a vigorous case for Ronald Reagan’s support of the Nicaraguan contras by referring to the mandate he said had been conferred upon the President by his two decisive election victories. One of his commentator colleagues scoffed. Effective government, he said, was “more than polls and popularity contests.” Whether he considered the quadrennial classic a poll or a popularity contest seems immaterial to the broader and completely accurate implication that elections do not have the decisive impact on policy that they once did.

The decline of elections, and by inference the accountability of our leaders, are the themes of “Politics by Other Means” by Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter. Those readers who have the inchoate sense that even more than the usual amount of energy has been spent in Washington lately in a frivolous and unconstructive way should particularly appreciate this study. In the diligent and unemotional language of their fraternity, these two Cornell University professors of government are telling us that the American political system is hardly working.

Since the 1960s, when the major parties’ ties to their traditional postwar constituencies began to break down over such issues as Vietnam, civil rights and the management of the economy, the Republicans have become entrenched in the executive branch and judiciary and the Democrats in Congress, the regulatory agencies and the Federal bureaucracy. Republicans have a virtual lock on the Electoral College because of their bedrock strength in the South and West, while the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House persist through members’ exploitation of the powers of incumbency.

The authors concede that “voters expect presidential candidates to articulate national interests (and) want their representatives in Congress to protect their particular interest.” One could therefore argue that a victorious presidential candidate should have more authority than Congress to guide national policy. But the fact remains that the Democrats, kept from the White House in five out of the last six elections, have found other accommodations in Washington and won’t soon be dislodged. In the process, “the constitutional separation of powers,” the authors conclude, “has been transformed into a system of dual sovereignty.”

From their secure redoubts at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats and Republicans wage vigorous combat, interrupted only occasionally by inconveniences known as elections that no longer “confer the capacity to govern.” Meanwhile, the parties have become estranged from the American people as they tend their exclusive blocs of voters and interest groups. America’s eligible voters find the situation so alienating, or perhaps just so discouraging, that half, generally the economically worse-off half, stay home.

Checks and balances imposed by the Framers upon institutional power are one thing. Guerrilla war among institutions that have been captured by partisan cadres is another thing altogether. “(T)he ‘winners’ in the electoral process do not acquire firm control of the government,” they write, “and the ‘losers’ are not deprived of power.” And that is no way to run a government.

Wail though they may about the decline in voter turnout, politicians are actually quite content with it, since more of those pesky, unpredictable voters could deprive them of their privileged piece of the action. Republicans recoil from reaching out to blacks, for instance, for fear of losing the whites who comprise the GOP’s new Solid South, while the upper-middle-class public-interest types who have found a home in the new Democratic Party disdain the less-well-educated working-class whites who once formed the backbone of F.D.R.’s coalition.

In this new, “postelectoral” setting, both liberals and conservatives have been practicing democracy in a disturbingly undemocratic way. Democrats will nod with haughty approval as Ginsberg and Shefter describe the way that Reagan turned to a shadowy band of semi-accountable aides and profiteers to execute in Iran and Nicaragua policies that he knew Congress would not endorse. Conservatives will waggle their own accusing finger at the accounts of how liberal opponents of Reagan’s policies used “the iron triangle of congressional investigation, media disclosure and judicial process” to circumvent policies that the President had promised approving voters that he would implement. Both sides have celebrated the growing power of the Federal judiciary when their kinds of judges were on the bench, and bemoaned it when the other kind took their seats.

The authors’ term for politicians’ principal non-electoral weapon is the fitting acronym RIP, for “revelation, investigation and prosecution.” The technique’s most fruitful application was in the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon’s efforts to expand the President’s power over Congress and the national media “animated their attack upon (him) in the Watergate controversy.” Lawmakers institutionalized the RIP process through the Ethics in Government Act in 1978, from whose provisions they tellingly exempted themselves. Washington has resembled a sixth-grade cafeteria brawl ever since. Democrats who did not like Reagan’s environmental policies turned RIP on Environment Protection Agency Administrator Ann Burford Gorsuch, while Republicans who didn’t like House Speaker Jim Wright’s power grabs RIPped Wright. Democrats who didn’t like Rep. Newt Gingrich’s persecution of Wright RIPped Gingrich, while irritated Republicans raised questions about the personal life of Rep. Barney Frank.

Shouldn’t wrongdoers be punished? Yes, but for the sake of justice, not bigger offices. Politicians are increasingly resorting to kneecapping their enemies to achieve what they have failed to achieve by kissing babies. “(B)oth the issue of government ethics and the growing use of criminal sanctions against public officials have been closely linked to struggles for political power,” the authors write. “When scores of investigators, accountants and lawyers are deployed to scrutinize the conduct of a John Tower or a Jim Wright, it is all but certain that something questionable will be found.”

Ginsberg’s and Shefter’s outlook is grim indeed. “When they relay mainly on (weapons of institutional combat) to compete with one another, politicians provide voters with little opportunity or reason to participate in politics.” Meanwhile, “a good deal of the difficulty America has recently faced in maintaining its position in the world is attributable to its politics.”

The only solution is for one of the parties to attempt to mobilize millions of now disenfranchised voters--but such an initiative would pose enormous risks to the Republicans’ hold on the Electoral College and the Democrats’ dominance of local, state and congressional races.

So for the foreseeable future, our politicians will continue to draw lines in the sand while our international rivals run rings around us.