THE CURRENCY, POWER

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

To this point, this blog has reviewed what the political world looks like through the natural rights perspective.  As far as a theoretical view, the political systems model was central for political scientists during the decades of the mid twentieth century.    Shortly, this blog proceeds with an overview of the methodology this approach promoted and how those methods reflected the general adoption of an approach known as behaviorism.[1] 

This bias has further influenced the portrayal of government in American civics courses.  That is, it reflects the market orientation of how Americans have come to see governance and politics.  As described so far, the political system has multiple parts which interact in order to provide governmental services.  These services are distributed through a competitive process. 

Those who gain the benefits derived from those services do so because they can exert more power than others.  Educators who instruct students about this process, therefore, are teaching their students about the exercises of power.  Unfortunately, this effect does not extend to highlight this currency; it is assumed without giving its proper due.

So, the language they use might not be so blunt, but that is what they are teaching.  One can ask, what is power in this social sense?  The definition used here is:  power is the ability of a person or a group, A, to get a person or a group, B, to do something B would not do otherwise.[2] 

For example, if one, in an agitated way, walks into a room, sees another person sitting comfortably on a lounge chair and yells, “Get up,” and that person stands, that is an incident of power if one assumption is true.  The assumption is that the other person was not about to stand up on his/her own accord to, say, get a cup of coffee.  That is, that B was content to continue his/her rest. 

This silly example is important because it illustrates how potentially difficult it is to measure power – only the lounging person knows what is going on in his/her mind and what he/she wants to do or is about to do.  At its base then, this business of analyzing politics has a bit indetermination to it, but that does not seem to humble those who conduct much of what is called behavioral studies – more on this below.

With a definition in hand, a further step in conceptualizing power is to look at a categorizing scheme that identifies types of power.  John R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven identify five types based on the motivation that someone would have to do something he or she would not want to do otherwise – that is, the mental states that would lead one to yield to the wishes of someone else. 

This is bit ironic since behavioral studies claims to stand clear of such mental content – after all, they claim what is studied is what people do, not what they think and feel.  But when one wants to wield power, costs are involved and if certain strategies are geared to take advantage of what people are apt to acquiesce to, then one has to speculate as to motivations on the part of the governed or ruled.

So, there are mental perceptions or expectations of coercion, reward, legitimacy, expertise, or reference (known, in turn, as coercive power, reward power, legitimacy power, expert power, and referent power).[3]  This conceptualization is not only applicable to behavioral studies, but equally apply to either federal theory based-studies or the studies based on other constructs – power is that central to politics and political behavior.  It is the currency of politics.

For purposes here, this account reduces power to three types: avoidance of punishment, seeking reward, and a sense of duty.  One should consider, when utilizing the systems model, there are winners and losers and this, in turn, creates issues.  No matter how small in dimension a political engagement happens to be, those who are engaged in it are participating in a process of competition.  They conduct these competitive activities in the context of a system, a conglomeration of parts and actors that to some large degree, is organized and is intra-active.

There are actors who are in positions to make distributive decisions and there are actors who are vying for sought after gains in the form of policies, waivers, or payouts.  In the vying for gains (desired outputs), the engaged actors can very well hold and promote competing political values and aims in the form of the preferred policies they are seeking. 

Often, these actors, whether in positions of authority or not (some might enjoy highly influential positions without holding formal government office), hold a position of a relative level of power to influence or to make decisions that revolve around the differences between competing values and preferences.  This exercise in power usually reflects negotiating among the various interests the “players” in a competition might have.  The decision can be not to decide, to decide in favor of one or a combination of interests, or to compromise on a policy. 

The exercise of power determines which way it goes.  In the natural rights view, each participant is only concerned with extending that participant’s interest to the greatest extent possible at the least cost possible.  For better or worse, this is how the system formulates “consensus” and arrives at a policy decision. 

Players are apt to exercise power in all three forms.  It metes out rewards and punishments and it also solicits a sense of duty and obligation.  Therefore, central to this whole process are the authoritative decisions that determine whose values will be honored – catered to – and whose will not. 

In addition, a study of this process (be it by decision-makers, competitors, or academics) entertains questions about how legitimacy is maintained even among the “losers” of a political competition.  After all, there is always tomorrow, and the system needs to maintain its players playing by the rules – rules that need to be of benefit to all. 

While this whole process refers to the organizational workings of groups and government, the systems approach focuses on the behavior of individuals within that structure who act from motivations of self-interest.  Obviously, irrespective of the systems model emphasis on the individual – basic unit of analysis – any study of politics must account for collectives such as groups, associations, organizations of varying formalities, and governing processes. 

But the political systems model, as it has already been emphasized, accommodates political analysis of these collectives under the demands of individual participants behaving in such a way as to advance each actor’s own individual interests.[4] 

One should remember that how a person defines his/her self-interest can vary from person to person.  A person can want monetary benefits or reputational accolades or artistic recognition or athletic prowess, etc.  But however, one defines it, the systems approach – much in line with Machiavelli thinking[5] – sees this as the determining motivator in how he or she behaves politically.

A vivid example at this point helps.  That would be New York City's legendary Robert Moses, who was the central official determining the winners of New York’s political scene from the 1930s into the 1960s.  An extended quote from an interview with Moses' biographer, Robert Caro, gives one a taste of what is being described:

[For a highway, bridge, tunnel, park, etc.] Moses gave the contracts, the legal fees, the insurance premiums, the underwriting fees, and the jobs to the individuals, corporations, and unions who had the most political influence.  So they all had a vested interest in seeing that his project was built.  Therefore, if the people of a neighborhood, or their assemblyman or congressman, or a mayor or governor, tried to stop one of his projects, they would find themselves confronted by immense pressure from the very system they were a part of.  A huge public work – a bridge or a tunnel or a great highway – is a source of raw power, if it is used right, and no one ever used power with such ingenuity, and such ruthlessness, as Robert Moses.[6]

Power is not limited to government.  Power is potentially exercised in any social institution – businesses, churches, schools, medical facilities, legal firms, etc. – or any individual.  Given this fact, one can begin to understand that politics is ubiquitous.  The former popular TV show, The Good Wife,[7] dedicates a lot of its story lines to the political power plays within a legal firm upon which the series is based.  But examples can also be seen in everyday life.

During a recent Christmas season, the postal service ran an ad which depicted a husband and wife trying to decide who was going to tackle which holiday chore.  The wife says she will go to the mall if the husband takes care of mailing the gifts.  The husband immediately says that he will go to the mall because dealing with postage and the post office is a nightmare. 

He grabs the keys and runs to the car for his trip to the mall.  Just then the postman walks up and explains to the wife that sending packages is easy.  She responds with a wink, “I know.”  The postman says, “Oh, you're good.”  Power comes in many different guises and being the recipient or the victim might often go unnoticed.

What the last various postings try to communicate is not how civics is taught.  Future postings will address that.  What they to do try is to communicate a view of politics that has served as an overall understanding of politics that civics educators, including textbook authors, have brought to the task of planning and implementing their curricular ideas.  How these images have been interpreted needs to be reviewed and will serve as topics of future postings.

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[1] This writer has also seen this term referred to as behavioralism.  Apparently, the term behaviorism refers to the analysis of behavior in psychology, while behavioralism is a term used in political science designating the study of political behavior.  Both terms are used here interchangeably.

[2] Andre Munro, “Robert A. Dahl:  American Political Scientist and Educator,” Encyclopaedia  Britannica, February 1, 2020, accessed February 12, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-A-Dahl .

[3] Coercive power occurs when a person does something to avoid a punishment; reward power occurs when a person does something to gain a reward; legitimacy power occurs when a person does something out of a sense of duty; expert power occurs when a person does something because he/she is told to by a person who he or she believes to have some expertise, such as a doctor or lawyer; and referent power occurs when someone does something to be associated with someone, group and/or something.

[4] To be clear, a lot of the analysis might very well study group dynamics.  The point is that even with this level of analysis, the basic assumption is that each participating actor will strive to advance his/her self-interest.

[5] See posting, “Foundations of the Natural Rights View,” March 10, 2020, accessed March 19, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/03/foundations-of-natural-rights-view.html .

[6] Ric Burns and James Sanders, New York: An Illustrated History (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 462.

[7] Robert King and Michell King (creators and producers), The Good Wife, CBS (a television series), 2009.

REQUISITE FUNCTIONS

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

This blog of late has been reviewing an approach to political science that originated in the 1930s but took hold in the fifties and sixties.  That is the systems model approach that attempted to incorporate a more natural science methodology to the study of politics.  Through what was called the behavioral revolt, the discipline took a decisively quantitative turn – with an extensive use of statistics – to see if political behavior could be predicted as well as scientists of natural phenomena had been able to provide. 

As the century approached its end, the practitioners of this behavioral approach became convinced that it could not be as predictable.  While the systems approach has not been totally abandoned, it has been modified as it is pursued through the study of more specific realms of political behavior and by using less or none-quantitative methods.  The last posting reviewed this turn.  This posting will continue with its review of the systems approach and turn to the work of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr. [1] 

For the general reader, this might be getting into the weeds a bit – and if the reader thinks so, he or she might skip this and the next posting – but the work of Almond and Powell adds richness to the systems model.  It also provides some insight into why the presentation of American government takes the form it does in civics textbooks.

The Almond and Powell model, the structural-functional model, provides this guidance in a more underlying fashion.  One will not find the term structural-functional anywhere in a civics textbook.  But a casual review of how the material of such a textbook is organized will readily demonstrate how the structure of the political system constitutes the main elements of such a text.  Those texts explain those elements by reviewing their functions.[2]

This model further enriches the political systems model by adding a more substantive view of what governmental decision-makers must take into account as they make their decisions.  Their model does this by adding a requisite dimension to the systems model.  These functional attributes of the model are reviewed in civics courses as commonsensical concerns government and the citizenry consider as they go about their political activities.

More explicitly, Almond and Powell describe how political systems need to satisfy certain functions in order to survive.  A political system not fulfilling these functions can be considered dysfunctional and to the degree that a system is dysfunctional it is creating damaging stress to that system.  Stress is mentioned in a prior posting which reports that Easton, the main theoretician of the systems model, expresses concern over stress, but Almond and Powell place a greater emphasis on this problem.

Sufficient stress can threaten the continuance of the system or, at least, affect its “health.”  For example, Almond and Powell identify the function of rulemaking as a requisite function and to illustrate, one can cite the years of the Obama administration.  During Obama’s years in office beginning in 2010, the US Senate fell under control of the opposition party.  Through filibustering, the rulemaking body of the government, the Congress, became stymied, resulting in the federal government not meeting the pressing problems facing the nation.[3]  That is, the situation became seriously dysfunctional. 

This inability to make necessary rules (laws), therefore, caused significant stress and led many citizens to view the central government as illegitimate to a meaningful degree.[4]  Over the subsequent years, the situation has not improved a great deal.  The last meaningful legislation to pass Congress was the enormous tax cut the Trump administration was able to get through since both the Congress and the presidency were controlled by the Republican Party.  That condition lasted for only two years and consequently the esteem that government enjoys continues to be very low as inaction prevails.[5]

Whether or not this is totally accurate, to the extent that it is true, the situation illustrates Almond and Powell's point.  That is, the functions they list are requisites for a healthy, surviving system because they allow the system to handle demands on government.  The list of functions these theorists include are the aforementioned rulemaking as well as rule-application, rule-adjudication (these first three align themselves perfectly with the three branches of government), interest articulation, and interest aggregation (the input elements of the political system). 

While civics textbooks are organized around the substances of these functions – they demonstrate the obvious structural elements of the government in relation to these concerns – they do not use the language of Almond and Powell.  They, the textbooks, also do not place any importance on the cultural environment of the system or the elements of the society that are not directly part of the political decision-making process (of which some elements reside within government and some without) which are elements of Almond and Powell’s model. 

That is, these theorists highlight the political culture of a political system.  This culture applies meaningful limits on what demands, and behaviors are acceptable.  Their devised list of functions can be generically applied to any political system, but their account of political culture allows scholars to tailor their research to the varying political realities of the differing systems around the world (Almond and Powell have been leading contributors to the field of comparative politics).

By emphasizing requisite functions, an obvious consequence is that the system, to fulfill these functions, must establish and maintain appropriate structures – departments, agencies, offices – and institutionalized processes by its various structural elements – e.g., how interest groups go about their business.  The total of these structural and procedural elements become important parts of the system that is analyzed and studied by the implementation of this model. 

Again, civics instruction does describe some of these structural processes and other attributes but in a hit or miss fashion given the proclivities of a given textbook author.  One should remember that constructs function as a source of questions and concerns for those pursuing knowledge in a field of study.  In terms of secondary school curriculum, any textbook instruction, under a natural rights bias, is aimed at satisfying the perceived consumer demands of the typical citizen.

This overview of political systems can give one a sense of the types of questions political scientists ask when studying political behavior, such as questions relating to the inactivity of Congress just mentioned.  As this model is applied to civics and government instruction in the nation’s classrooms, though, a teacher and his or her materials, such as the textbook, can borrow those questions and inquiries for his/her resulting instruction. 

It has been noted that current efforts in this regard have been influenced by the perceptions of a consumerist view of governance, which, in turn, has been the targeted concern of the typical textbook.  That is, the main concern tends to be what a future consumer of governmental service needs to know in order to be a satisfied or, at least, a placated citizen in his/her interaction with government.

Michael Lewis provides a quote that reflects this view among the American public.  That is, he quotes a NOAA official, Kathy Sullivan.  Lewis writes:

The relationship between the people and government troubled [Sullivan].  The government was the mission of an entire society:  why was the society undermining it?  “I’m routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government,” she said.  “The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer.  The idea that government should serve the citizen like a waiter or concierge, rather than in a ‘collective good’ sense.”[6]

The upcoming review of the leading American government textbook will demonstrate this bias.  Oh, there are exceptions in that book, but they are few entries in a thick textbook and are easily lost and ignored.

“Traditionally ... civics courses in American schools have been more narrowly defined. They have focused almost exclusively on the structure and function of government, particularly at the federal level.”[7]  This blog will and has more fully critiqued this approach among American civics courses, but here it is useful to point out that this model was not designed to provide a foundation for educational purposes. 

It is offered by academics for purposes such as providing guidance for research.  While the judgment here is that it falls short of what Daniel J. Elazar sets out as the goals of political science, it also misleads what civics instructors of secondary courses should be aiming to accomplish. 

Nevertheless, it has been incorporated by educators to outline the structural and substantive content that comprises our civics curriculum.  While most civics and government courses of study at the secondary level do not present anything like a political science course, the systems approach does provide it an organizing template. 

The courses generally begin by looking at the overall theoretical/philosophic foundation of the system with a strong emphasis on individual rights.  Then the focus shifts toward certain sources of demands such as interest groups and political parties.  This is followed by looking at the formal system – the government – itself.  This latter coverage looks at the following in this order:  the Congress, the Presidency, the bureaucracy, the Supreme Court, and the court system. 

The course ends with a very abbreviated – and mirroring – version of the state governments.  This short overview is meant more to “cover the bases” then to add any substantive material.  In order to assist in this description, this blog will give the reader in the next posting a general description of one of its key concepts that further enriches this theoretical view.  That concept is power.

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[1] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).

[2] This blog in a future posting will review the best-selling high school text and that review will demonstrate this utilization of the structural-functional model.

[3] Thomas E. Mann Norman J. Ornstein, N. J.  “Finding the Common Good in an Era of Dysfunctional Governance,” Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 142, 2 (2013), 15-24.

[4] This dysfunction continues to the day of this writing (2020) but not through the filibuster.  Today the culprit is extreme partisanship.

[5] This might be altered by the demands of the coronavirus with which the system is currently dealing.

[6] Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 193-194 (Kindle edition).  NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

[7] William T. Callahan, Jr., “Introduction,” in Citizenship for the 21st Century, eds. William T. Callahan, Jr. and Ronald A. Banaszak (Bloomington, IN: Social Studies Development Center, 1990, 1-9, 2.