At present, this blog has been reviewing a
model of governance and politics not suitable for political science research,
but for guiding curricular efforts in the study of civics and American
government. The model is entitled
liberated federalism and is composed of three main components: the community, participating entities, and the
studied association. The model is ideal
– how things should work, and in which societies should strive to achieve its proposed
relationships.
The
last posting shared two conditions the model points out that the community
should exhibit: “functioning community”
and “cultural commitment to federalist values.”
This posting will move on to a third condition; it will describe and
explain a “set of functioning and interacting institutions.”
This
condition transcends governmental or formal settings and extends to the social
sector of a community. This has a
universal quality as Robert Putnam describes the viable political role the
social associations in Italy have played in the northern provinces of that
nation. They have made the social life
of those areas enjoy more civic minded communal environments.[1] 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, at least until
the last years of the last century.
Such
social arrangements allow and promote the levels of trust and friendliness
necessary to encourage social capital: a
community marked by citizens willing, in a spirited fashion, to take an active
part in citizenry duties, believe in egalitarian relations, and maintain a
trusting and cooperative mode of political intercourse. Again, this condition is applicable to
different levels of society, from small associations to the national community.
The
fourth condition of an ideal 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 natures of these
communal elements. Inherent in these
conditions are moral attributes that transcend the public and private social
context that entangle the individual.
The creation of laws, in Lockean terms, is meant to perfect these
realities.
This
morality is the basis of the society’s claim to being “civilized” as Philip
Selznick would point out.[2] This moral primacy of a community, at times,
enforces its position on the fates of individuals. As stated earlier in this blog, conscription
during war time is such a case. Most
often, there is an on-going 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
parochial/traditional federalism perspective – an earlier version of federalism
that was dominant in the US until the years after World War II – gave
theoretical respect to the claim of the individual, the history of the early
republic is filled with cases where the majority engaged in tyranny in
different forms.
There was not a more compelling case than the
mistreatment of African Americans with the institution of slavery and the highly
discriminating practices which are practiced to this day, but there were also
the ample examples of the mistreatment of the indigenous population, Jews,
Catholics, women, and other minorities being the victims of such tyranny.[3]
The
liberated federalist model differs in that the balancing of individual rights
and the concerns of the majority are given high priority. It favors judicial review, although it
questions certain decisions the courts have rendered as being too much in favor
of individuals. The fulcrum for
balancing the claims is shifted from the strong individual position, which is
currently the case under the natural rights view, to a more communal position
in which the individual is expected to play an active role and is central to
federalist thinking.
Under
the liberated federalist model, the individual is not left to his or her
devices to engender the high levels of cognition necessary to formulate a moral
system of thought. The nation’s recent
history under such a regime suggests that the result is an individual
bewildered by the moral questions of the time.
This federalist perspective, on the other hand, expects individuals to
engage in communal moral questions by an active participation in such issues.
These
types of 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
[the sought after ends] 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.[4]
Due to the centrality within the liberated
federalist perspective of developing a moral person, rights become paramount. Selznick goes on to point out that morality
is a product only within a free person, one who chooses, through rational
decision-making, to do moral things.
And
one can add, with the strength of the current natural rights view, it would
seem extremely impractical to attempt to retreat to a time when there was
callous disregard for individual rights.
The lasting contribution of natural rights is the clear foundation it
laid down for enduring respect for individuals and their rights.
Of
particular concern is the treatment of ethnic minorities. The argument is made in this account that
federalist arrangements are a viable and promising way of handling significant
ethnic diversity. These arrangements
allow heterogeneous populations to work out functional and viable interactions
by allowing each group to maintain its purposes, that its members acquiesce,
through respect and appropriate behavior, those values that legitimize the
union of a community and define its basic procedures – or what one can call the
US’ Constitutional formula.
In
terms of an arrangement that encompasses the union of a nation, such an
acquiescence entails seriously felt value issues, but this is judged a matter
of national cohesion on which the system of toleration depends. For example, immigrants who come to this
nation from non-modern, traditional societies will most likely bring with them
values that are antithetical to values central in a modern industrial economy.[5]
Alex
Inkles writes on this point:
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. With exceptional
regularity, increasing individual modernity is associated with voting, joining
public organizations and participating in public actions, interacting with
politicians and public figures, taking an interest in political news, and
keeping up with political events … [S]tudies in the United States … found
modernity to be strongly associated with lack of alienation and non-anomic
feelings.[6]
Inkles, though, 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. In most cultural concerns, there is no legitimate
reason to sacrifice cherished beliefs, customs, or norms.
The
point is that under a federalist arrangement that heavily encourages individual
participation in political processes, it would not interfere with the
individual in his or her dealings in other realms of his or her living
arrangements and, therefore, other connections as ethnic affiliations can be (even
encouraged) to be maintained.
As
a matter of fact, the alliance to subcultural groups could promote
associational memberships that are seen as desirable in a federalist
atmosphere. When those groupings, in
turn, see the advantages of the entailed equality inherent in federalist
arrangements, they might more readily favor the political values upon which such
arrangements are founded or at least give them lip service as they provide the
basis for their legitimate participation in the communal democracy.
These
activities are seen under the liberated federalism model as meaningful, as they
are described in transcending language.
That meaningfulness is enhanced as real political gains are experienced,
and demands are satisfied. And with that,
this account completes its review of the component, community. It will next address participating entities.
[1] Robert D.
Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic
Tradition in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993).
While this citation is dated, this recent quotation from a travel site
indicates the differences between north and south Italy are pretty much still
the case: “They’re so different that you might as well be comparing two
entirely different countries!” See “North
Italy vs. South Italy: A Complete
Comparison (n.d.), accessed July 22, 2023, https://travelsnippet.com/europe/italy/north-italy-vs-south-italy/.
[2] Philip Selznick, The
Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and
the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1992).
[3] For example, see Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent (New York,
NY: Random House, 2023).
[4] Selznick, The Moral
Commonwealth, 151.
[5] Dinesh Bhugra and Matthew A. Becker, “Migration,
Cultural Bereavement and Cultural Identity, World Psychiatry, 4, 1
(February, 2005), accessed July 22, 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414713/.
[6] Alex Inkles, Exploring Individual Modernity
(New York, NY: Columbia University
Press, 1983), 21-22.
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