An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
The last posting left readers with a review of three orientations regarding
interest articulation and interest aggregation.
Interest articulation and interest aggregation are two of the functions
Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.’s structural-functional model identifies[2]; that
is, how Americans go about generating, communicating, and targeting their
demands at and supports of their respective political systems.
Of special note is what Daniel Elazar offers as
he identifies and describes three subcultures that have, in general terms,
characterized American politics and are aligned – coincidentally – with Almond
and Powell’s orientations.[3] The subcultures arose in the historical
development of the US. They are
·
The traditional
subculture that could and still can be found in the states evolving from
the Confederate states.
·
The absolute-value
(moralistic) subculture, in a more moderate form, in the “moralistic”
states which evolved from the New England, Puritanical tradition.
·
And the pragmatic
bargaining (individualistic) subculture which was most strongly prevalent
in the political/social orientation of the mid-Atlantic states that bolstered a
commercial outlook.
Overall, these subcultures were carried by settlers – east to west – as the
nation developed toward the Pacific Ocean.
Today, though, dominant orientation in the US is the individualistic
subculture.
Before continuing with
the rest of the functions of the political system, a word about interest
aggregation should be added. Excessive
stresses can be experienced if many diverse interests are not successfully
aggregated to a manageable number; even if they are narrowed, problems may
still be present. Even if there are few
alternative demands being articulated at a given time that are extremely far
apart in content, i.e., mutually exclusive and uncompromising, the ability to
find a suitable resulting policy might be impossible.
In such cases, any
decision might be very unacceptable and considered illegitimate by large
portions of the community. A current
issue that takes on this sort of division is abortion or abortion rights. Almond and Powell call this “fragmentation in
aggregation patterns.” These stresses
are most likely to occur in conditions or demand-sets associated with the absolute-value
oriented (moralistic) subculture.
Now it is time to move on
to the other Almond and Powell functions.
The next function from their model to be described here is
rulemaking. This function definitely
takes students of politics into the “black box” of policy decision making. Naturally, rules are part of the make-up of
any society. Certain questions or points
of analysis are designated by this structural-functional approach to analyze
rulemaking.
These include: What are the sources of a society’s
rules? What are their natures? How flexible are the society’s rules? What are the structures associated with
rulemaking and how do they interact or relate with each other? How does the rulemaking function relate to
the other functions of the system? In
the American system, of course, these types of questions lead to the processes
associated with the different branches of government at all levels of the
federal system.
Rulemaking is primarily associated with the
legislative branch in which Congress, at the national level, legislatures, at
the state level, or city or county commissions at local levels, basically
decide what government will do by the enactment of laws or ordinances. The interaction of the executive and judicial
branches with the legislative branches, from the central to local governmental platforms,
has a large role in what those laws or ordinances will be or how they will
actually function.
For example, more rules are added as
legislation is put into operation, mostly done by the executive branches or
interpreted by resulting court action in the judicial branches. So important are these last sets of
activities that they constitute separate functions in the Almond and Powell
model; that is, the rule-application function and the rule-adjudication
function.
Given the more secular character of rules,
these separate functions – with their separate structural elements – are more
suitable in modern societies. In
premodern societies, rules are usually intertwined with religious beliefs and
other institutional values, by which they enjoy high degrees of legitimacy and,
therefore, almost complete adherence. In
modern societies, this support is absent – or almost absent. Currently, with the overturning of Roe v.
Wade, there seems to be ample antagonism to what many see as religious
based policy to ban abortions.
If those sorts of policies were enacted – laws
against gay marriage, against the sale of contraceptive medication, along with
the sale and provision for end of pregnancy medications and procedures – due to
lack of legitimacy, they would necessitate large bureaucratic set ups to police
obedience. Add that to modern, pragmatic
bargaining induced policies such as Social Security, and such traditional
biases might make the affected governments overwhelmed or highly taxed.
The same can be said of the rule-adjudication
function. Questions associated with
whether rules are broken, who broke them, what should be done if they are
broken, or even if the rule or law is a legal rule or law to begin with, are all
issues that modern societies through their judiciaries must face. That is, the main structure to deal with
these questions is the courts, but there are other structures that share in
adjudicating activities.
These include police, regulation inspectors, and
regulatory commissions. Of special
concern with the adjudicating function is the issue of impartiality. It is essential that the function be
satisfied in such a way that the members of political systems believe them to
be fair. Impartiality, or the belief in
it, goes a long way in encouraging the trust that systems are fair. Autonomy, in turn, from other structures gives
adjudicating structures the advantage of not being unduly influenced by partial
(political) forces.
From these descriptions, readers can get a feel
for how interactive the parts of systems are – making them true systems. And this is without considering outputs. A lot happens within the “black box” and what
students should remember is that those processes are continually taking place. The next posting will focus on outputs and
further identify and describe these interactions.
[1] This presentation continues
with this posting. The reader is informed that the claims made in
this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this
blogger. Instead, the posting is a representation of what an
advocate of the natural rights view might present. This
is done to present a dialectic position of that construct. This series of postings begins with “Judging
Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.
[2]
Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little,
Brown. 1966).
[3] Daniel J. Elazar, American
Federalism: A View from the States (New
York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,
1966). He further develops this claim in this book’s
edition published in 1986. The subcultures,
a federalist view, Elazar identifies were theorized independently from the work
of Almond and Powell or even of that of David Easton.
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