In the previous posting,
there was an overview of a model. That
model depicts an ideal view of how a polity engages in political
confrontations. The purpose of
describing this model is not to guide political science research, but to guide
civics educators in the choice of content material for classroom use. The model attempts to illustrate and
implement a construct that represents a federalist view of governance and
politics. A more detailed explanation of
the elements of the model follows starting with this posting which looks at the
community.
The community should
ideally be characterized as a “functioning community” where a certain tolerance
and inclusion exist. On the one hand, to
be able to enjoy a general level of legitimacy, there should exist among the
members of the community a pervasive congruence in opinions, values, and goals. Yes, there can be disagreements, they are
even necessary, but there should at least be an agreement on and an emotional
commitment for the ground rules and other mores under which those debates occur.
On
the other hand, minorities should be respected and encouraged to participate in
collective actions. Of course, this
includes legitimacy for the processes by which the minority can strive to be
the majority. In short, a community is
established in which the feeling of “the people as a whole” prevails.
As
such, there is an aversion to a raw majority rule being sufficient to reflect
the will of the people. More of a
consensus, at least among those affected, should be sought and secured before
collective action is initiated. Here, it
should be remembered that the model reflects an ideal. Federation theory does not demand a
consensus, only that establishing one should be the goal.
In
real life, it is also not practical or desirable to allow a small minority to
have veto power over collective action.
But those in the majority should design proposed policy with an eye
toward accommodating as many entities as possible while maintaining the principles
that motivate their political activities.
This process is what a lot of politics is made of.
The
second condition is that there should be a “cultural commitment to federalist
values in the community.” It has already
been pointed out that there are areas in the US that have inherited a
federalist, moral perspective from the tradition established in the New England
colonies. In short, those areas tend to see
politics as a moral expression and opportunity to advance the betterment of the
commonweal and being a politician is a calling to serve the community and its
interest.[1]
Overall,
federalist values do support and encourage an active citizenry not only from
the perspective that one’s self interests are involved, but also from the view
that there exists a set of duties and obligations that includes involvement in
the political processes beyond those that directly affect the citizen.[2] It should be noted: the extent of these duties and obligations
will become clear as the other elements of the model are reviewed.
The
third condition is a “set of functioning and interacting institutions.” This condition transcends governmental or
formal political settings and extends to the social sector of a community. This might include labor unions, trade
associations, religious organizations, and the like.
Robert
Putnam writes of the viable political role that social associations in Italy
played in the northern provinces of that nation in making a more civic minded
communal environment. This condition, in
turn, played a vital role in allowing the regional governmental structures of
those provinces to be significantly more successful than those of the southern
ones. Such social arrangements allow and
promote the levels of trust and friendliness necessary to encourage social
capital.[3]
The
fourth condition of a viable community is “community with a moral
primacy.” The inclusion of this
condition refers to the reality that societies are made up of kinships,
relationships, and historical patterns that define the nature of these communal
elements. Inherent in these conditions
are moral attributes that transcend the public and private context that
socially envelops the individual. Laws
which are enacted under the tenets of this moral condition are meant to perfect
these realities; i.e., laws give it tangible life.
This
morality is the basis by which a society is being able to claim that it is
“civilized.”[4] This moral primacy of a community, at times,
enforces its position on the fates of individuals. Conscription during war is such a case. Most often, there is an ongoing tension,
especially in environments where the natural rights perspective holds
predominant sway, between the claims of rights by the individual and the
community’s claim to moral primacy.
While
the traditional federalist perspective gave theoretical respect to the claims
of the individual, the history of the early republic is full of cases when the
majority engaged in tyranny. There was
not a more compelling case than the mistreatment of African-Americans, but
there were also ample examples of the mistreatment of Jews, Catholics, women,
and other minorities being the victims of such tyranny.[5]
The
federation theory model differs in that the balancing of individual rights and
the concerns of the majority are given higher priority than was the case when
traditional federalism was dominant. It
favors judicial review, although the history of court decisions has often
missed an appropriate balance between the rights of the individual and the
claimed authority of the majority. If
the reader is interested, see the example of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which was rectified by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
(1954).
The
fulcrum for balancing these claims under federation theory would shift from the
strong individual position, which is currently the case under the natural
rights perspective, to a more communal center, but more protective of
individual rights as compared to when traditional federalism was dominant. Decisions would place the common good above
all concerns, but with the understanding that an unreasonable restriction of
individual rights would negatively affect the common good. And, actually, the common good has little
“tolerance” for such abuses.
Under
federation theory, the individual is not left to his or her own devices to
engender the sophisticated levels of cognition necessary to formulate a moral
system of thought. Recent hesitancy in
providing reasonable guidance, for example, through civics instruction, to
assist individuals in dealing with moral questions has instead promoted an
individualistic culture where an individual is apt to be bewildered by the
moral questions of a given time.
The
liberated federalist perspective expects that the individual engage in the
communal moral questions by an active participation in such issues, but not in
an isolated fashion. These types of more
socially structured experiences provide the opportunities to develop morally.
Without
appropriate opportunities and supports, the quest for moral well-being may be
confused, frustrated, and aborted; the telos [what is sought] may be
experienced as dim and incoherent rather than clear and compelling. Therefore, the injunction to follow nature
must be sustained by a worked-out theory of what the natural end-state is and
why it is worthy of our striving.[6]
Due
to the centrality within federation theory of developing a moral person, rights
become paramount. Morality, under this
construct, is a quality only possible within a free person, one who chooses,
through rational decision-making, to do moral things.[7] A reasoned approach to such questions demands
a respect for the individual and to diverse ethnic and racial groups.[8]
These
federally inspired arrangements allow heterogeneous populations to work out
functional arrangements by allowing each group to maintain its cultural biases
for the most part. The arrangements,
though, insist that, in terms of their purposes, their members acquiesce,
through respect and appropriate behavior, to those values that legitimize the
union and define the union’s basic procedures.[9]
For
example, immigrants who come to this nation from non-modern, traditional
societies will most likely bring with them values that are antithetical to
modern values, particularly those central in either an industrial or
post-industrial economy:
One
fact seems unmistakable; indeed it seems to come as close to being a law as
anything to be observed in social science.
As individuals move up the scale of individual modernity, whether judged
by objective status characteristics or by psychological attributes, they
regularly become more informed, active, participant citizens.[10]
The
author of these words, Alex Inkeles, goes on to point out that while an
individual’s behavior in an industrial-bureaucratic system might be somewhat
affected by a participatory environment (in the political realm), it does not
necessarily have implications in other social realms. The point is that under a federalist
arrangement that heavily encourages individual participation in political
processes, such a bias will not necessarily affect other dealings or
arrangements such as ethnic affiliations and other ethnic based proclivities.
That
concludes the review of the model’s element, the community. The next posting will delve into the element,
the entity.
[1] Daniel J. Elazar, American
Federalism: A View from the States,
(New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell
Company, 1966).
[2] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American
Republic 1776-1787, (New
York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company,
1998).
[3] Robert D. Putnam, Making
Democracy Work: Civic Tradition in
Modern Italy, (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
[4] Phillip Selznick, The
Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and
the Promise of Community, (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1992).
[5] Robert H. Wiebe, Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy,
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1995).
[7] Ibid.
[8] James MacGregor Burns, J. W. Peltason, Thomas E.
Cronin, and David B. Magleby, Government
by the People, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1993).
[9] Daniel J. Elazar, Constitutionalizing
Globalization: The Postmodern Revival of
Confederal Arrangements, (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998) AND Robert
Gutierrez, “A Case for Centered Pluralism,” Curriculum
and Teaching Dialogue 5, no. 1 (2003):
71-82.
[10] Alex Inkeles, Exploring
Individual Modernity. (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 1983), 21-22.
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