JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, VIII

 

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.

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[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.

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, VII

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

With the last posting, this blog introduced the functional-structural model by Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell.[2]  That posting identified two functions – two elements of that model – that Almond and Powell highlight; they are interest articulation and interest aggregation.  Before going on with the other functions that this model deems important, a word on the other half of the model needs to be described, at least initially.

          Along with functions, it draws students’ attention on certain structural elements with their processes.  So, in the case of interest articulation, individuals or groups may engage in those processes that communicate the information they wish to convey to advance their demands and/or supports.  On rare occasions, some individuals are so powerful on their own that they find it more effective and profitable to operate by themselves.[3]  Usually, though, people find it more effective or even necessary to work the system through group affiliations.[4] 

These groups are known as interest groups or pressure groups.  Often, groups represent the interests of some economic or social constituency.  The bond between and among individuals involved can be occupation, socioeconomic class, education, or some other basis.  In Almond and Powell’s model there are four types of groups.

The first type is what they call anomic interest groups.  Anomic groups are so designated because of their spontaneous and informal nature.  Usually engaged in unstructured arrangements and activities, from unplanned demonstrations to violence, and assassinations (at times more structured groups participate in activities that are meant to seem spontaneous but are not and as such are not anomic group activities). 

Their activities – anomic groups – become more prevalent from time to time.  One such time was the anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the 1960s and more recently, Black Lives Matter demonstrations fall under this classification.  The current polarized political environment promises to encourage such activities and of course, the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has the outer appearance of such behavior, but there are investigations going on – including by a Congressional Committee – looking into how unspontaneous that demonstration was.

The second type of groups in Almond and Powell’s model is the non-associational interest groups.  These groups lack ongoing structures or set ways of making their wants heard.  They do have some bases of common interests such as class, race, ethnicity, or geographical localities.

Because they lack organization, they are usually not effective in the competition of placing their demands on political systems.  Without appropriate organization, problems these groups face have to do with how to handle internal dissimilarities among their memberships that can and often do overwhelm their similarities.

Institutional interest groups are Almond and Powell’s next type of faction.  These groups do enjoy significant levels of organization and their prime reason for existence is to pursue some aims other than interest articulations.  Examples of institutional interest groups include the churches, the bureaucracies, political parties, and the military. 

It is interesting to note that some of these groups are in government.  Another characteristic of these organizations is that interest articulation is not undertaken or accomplished by the rank and file of these organizations, but by “internal” factions (internal to the overall groups) or cliques.

When interests set up structures for the purposes of interest articulation with usual sophisticated organizations and permanent positions, then Almond and Powell consider these arrangements to be associational interest groups.  These types engage in very sophisticated, professional activities to assure success in their interest articulations. 

They hire full-time professional staffs to carry out these activities.  Some of America’s most successful institutional interest groups include such groups as American Medical Association.  Factors that tend to affect the level of success that these groups experience are wealth, appropriate skills in organizing efforts, a sense of togetherness, and a sense of purpose.

After demands are articulated to systems, the very important function of interest aggregation must take place if systems are going to be viable.  Central to this function are the activities of political parties – the main funneling entity within the system.  Through the processes of choosing candidates, with their platforms, a great deal of aggregating of demands takes place. 

When candidates propose a set of ideas and plans that they say will go into effect if elected, to be attractive to a significant number of voters, a great deal of aggregation has to take place.  This function is clearly performed, for example, when the major political parties develop their respective platforms at the national conventions every four years.  There, representatives of major interest groups try to influence the final platform statements.  Of course, this function does not stop with pre-election activities. 

The function is an ongoing concern in political systems.  The legislative phase of policy formation continues this aggregating function as well as during the execution of laws.  At all stages of governmental processes, decisions are made in which diverse interests of respective groupings are aggregated.

This model identifies three interest aggregating styles.  These styles – designated as different manners or modes by which particular structures carry out these functions – are pragmatic bargaining, absolute-value orienting, and traditionalistic preserving.  These styles, to a degree, draw readers to consider political systems other than that of the US.

In the pragmatic bargaining style, participants are willing to compromise and arrive at accommodations.  Noted for a subdued emotional tone, extreme or highly ideological demands tend to be disposed of or overwhelmed.  In two-party systems like that of the US, this style prevails.  American political parties can be seen as coalitions of diverse interest groups and serve to assist the compromising processes of diverse demands of various groups.  Consequently, these parties are referred to as brokerage parties.

In multiparty systems, usually a different style prevails.  In those situations, they tend to be more ideologically motivated and pursue more uncompromising positions.  That is, they follow an absolute-value oriented style.  Of course, under this style, compromises are much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  Also, totalitarian one-party systems are noted by an absolute-value orientation, but only single positions are tolerated or exist at viable levels.

But again, in multiparty systems, the prevailing absolute-value oriented style tends to make politics more unstable and stressful.  This is especially true when coalition arrangements are formed when no party gains the majority in legislative bodies – such as parliaments.  History has shown that in those situations, governments have difficult if not impossible abilities to institute broad policy endeavors.

Almond and Powell next identify a style that was more prevalent in premodern systems in which customs and traditions determined policies.  These traditionalistic systems are found where there are low levels of institutionalization of separate political practices and structures.  The political practices and structures that exist tend to be intermixed with other social institutions. 

The political orientations of involved participants tend to be diffused by these other institutional orientations.  Other institutions, such as religion or kinship, tend to have more pronounced roles in the business of articulating or aggregating demands than the political system.  Other elites very possibly have higher status in social and political matters than political authorities do. This sort of system seems to be a good part of the story with America’s involvement in Afghanistan.

The next posting will begin with the application of these styles in American history.  Their leanings match three subcultures that Daniel Elazar identifies as characterizing the American system.  Such a review helps students apply some color or granulation to the study of governance, politics, and of course civics.  Otherwise, that study would be overly objectified and lack a lot of the drama these aspects of life inherently have.

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[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] Well-endowed factions – in terms of money or other assets – cannot only be successful on their own, but they need not share in any spoils that success might render.  See E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[4] In his recently published book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics, this blogger argues that the current political landscape in America will influence even well-endowed political actors to seek and establish political alliances with other citizens.  See Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022), available through Amazon.