THE ENTITIES

This blog is currently reviewing the elements of a liberated federalist model.  This model is designed to guide civics curriculum in its choice of content material.  The second component of the model is the entities comprising a federalist union.  Entities can be persons, groups, sub-associations that comprise an association.

They can be both within and without government, be it a local government, state government, regional organization of states, the national government, or arrangements including the United States and other nations.  This posting’s aim is to describe the array of attributes that characterize entities.

To begin, entities in an association have constitutional integrity; i.e., they have moral worth which endows them with dignity and integrity as “autonomous” actors in the political arena.  They are autonomous in the sense that they can make decisions, act upon those decisions, and be held accountable for the consequences of those decisions.  They, therefore, have rights. 

Basically, at the individual level, entities are citizens, residents, and legal immigrants (illegal immigrants deserve special consideration). Entities, in terms of this model, are participants in some enterprise in which an arrangement with other entities has been formulated.  Arrangements are formulated for some purpose or purposes.  The entity is in a relationship with all other entities within the arrangement under the auspices of some agreement.

The agreement defines that relationship and can take the form of a verbal statement, a contract, or a compact or covenant.  For example, in the arrangement of a school, a teacher has a relationship with each member of the staff and the student body.  That relationship is defined by a contract.  In terms of a federalist union, what is here called an association, there is an agreement that uses a compact or covenant as the medium by which the agreement is formed.

Each entity has certain attributes within the context of such an arrangement.  There are three distinguishing attributes:  status, conscience, and practical attributes.  Together, these attributes allow other entities to define how any interactions will be conducted with the entity in question.

Status refers to the degree to which the entity can be considered an elite (e.g., a leader) or a non-elite (e.g., a follower).  Leaders of the arrangement have high status; followers have, to varying degrees, lower status; non-active participants usually have still lower status than followers.  In a more complex arrangement, there can be varied bases for status other than leadership.  For example, admiration at the societal level can be a basis for status. 

The second attribute is conscience.  The conscience refers to the individual’s or collective’s ideal domain which includes notions of what is right and wrong behavior.  If there exists an issue over right or wrong between or among members of an arrangement, the concern is what moralists call a moral issue.  If it is between or among members and those outside the arrangement and possibly unknown by either or both camps, it is an issue of ethics.  Of most relevance, in terms of morality, are issues that affect the association’s the reasons and purposes for the arrangement.

The third distinguishing attribute is practical attributes.  Practical attributes deal with many relevant characteristics which the entity brings to the efforts of the arrangement.  To expand, the categories of practical attributes include the following:  useful resources, character, interests, and role(s).

·        Useful resources – Resources includes political attributes (both practical and theoretical) such as power and authority, financial resources, physical resources, common sense, personal physical attributes such as health, attractiveness, location, time availability, skills such as listening skills, communication skills, physical dexterity, athleticism, research skills, and lobbying skills, and personality traits such as humor, friendliness, tolerance, an accepting disposition and, in some instances, assertiveness and decisiveness.

·        Character – Personality trait which includes reflective behavior and the courage to act out of conviction.

·        Interests – Related to conscience, includes relevant values which can be commitments, needs, and desires – short and, especially, long term.

·        Role(s) – These include first, leadership roles, second, follow-ship roles, and third, other strategic roles.

For any of these attributes, students can analyze the functionality of the attribute in an arrangement.  For example, in terms of roles, students can inquire as to the appropriate types of roles that an arrangement should have and what kinds of entities should fill them.  In determining which roles an arrangement should have and the persons who should fill those roles will primarily rely on the purpose(s) of the arrangement in making those decisions.

Within an arrangement there can be any number of entities.  Theory can be developed and a study can be conducted to determine the optimal number of entities given the purposes of an arrangement (beyond the scope of this posting).  But whatever the number, there needs to exist a relationship among the entities.  Federalist unions require that the entities, despite their varying statuses, enjoy equality among them; equality as defined by “regulated condition.”[1]

Donald S. Lutz points out a very important factor.  In the developing history of our nation, when parties joined an arrangement by agreeing to the provisions of a compact or covenant, the understanding, under American federalism, was that each party was equal to the other parties in that each equally gave his/her consent to the agreement and the resulting union.  This notion expanded so that, as part of the extended republic, all states were given equal standing when joining the federal union of the United States.[2]

Not all states enjoyed the same status of importance, but all were equal under the auspices of the association.  In like manner, the entities depicted within the model enjoy the same equality.  In both cases, federation theory explains this equality in terms of consent and one should keep in mind that the nation’s constitution was formed by the consent of its people and the consent of its states.

The relationship among the entities also has communal links tying them together.  The links can include the elements of the agreement, emotional ties, shared resources, shared interests, and mutual respect.  All or any of these links would make the entities closer and more committed to accomplishing the purposes of the arrangement.  This relationship relates to what Philip Selznick calls reciprocal advantage.[3]

This concern understands that a communal sense among the entities of an arrangement increases the chances of success; it is sensitive to the whimsical nature of fortune and fate, and it avoids the disruption that a lack of dignity and integrity can cause any collective effort.  Some of this can be obvious at times, but obscured at other times.  Its presence needs to be looked at seriously since a lot of what goes into accomplishing success depends on it.

The last aspect of the model associated with the entities is the relationship between them and the arrangement.  The entity has the obligation and duty to extend to the arrangement loyalty, trust, skills, and knowledge.  Of course, the nature of the arrangement will dictate the exact nature of these obligations and duties, but loyalty, trust, skills, and knowledge have the very practical consequence of making success and long-term satisfaction of interests appreciably more likely.

While any arrangement in which its member entities do not meet these obligations and duties to a minimal degree, it would find it very difficult to meet the purposes of its existence,[4] but the arrangement, in return, has certain responsibilities to the individual entities.  This return obligation has a couple of aspects.

First, the association has the obligation to guarantee the equal standing to which the entity is entitled.  This responsibility should be addressed by the arrangement’s policies and in its treatment of the entity as it pursues its goals and/or reacts to the challenges it faces.  In this aspect, one can take Kant’s sanctification of the individual to heart.

Second, in cases when an entity is lacking relevant resources and skills, the arrangement, in relation to its resources and purposes, should make special allowances by, if necessary, distributing some helpful subsidies or other policies that provide special accommodations.  The aim would be to “level the playing field” among the entities.  Of course, welfare in general falls under this area of concern.  More on this in a future posting.

The next posting will describe and explain the element of the liberated federalist model identified as the association.

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[1] Regulated condition believes that market processes or other competitive processes should determine basic distributive decisions, but that markets and other competitive processes can and do fail.  Therefore, these processes should be regulated so that all entities are afforded basic opportunities and minimum participatory status.  Mainly, the belief goes on to see skills as the result of arbitrary forces and that anyone can find him/herself in a significantly deprived state.

[2] Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism, (Baton Rouge, LA:  Louisiana State University Press, 1988).

[3] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community.

[4] Ibid. 

A FEDERATED COMMUNAL ENVIRONMENT

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.

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[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). 

[6] Phillip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community, 151.

[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.