This posting will address another
concern of Eugene Meehan’s criteria as they are applied to the social construct,
the liberated federalism model.[1] This blog has been applying that criteria to
describe the viability of that construct.
The sixth Meehan criterion asks: does the construct align with other
responsible models explaining the same phenomena? That is, does it have compatibility?
There is nothing in this
proposed model that either contradicts the parochial/traditional federalism model
or the political systems model and its offshoot models that have, to some
degree, been previously reviewed in this blog.
What follows is a description of how liberated federalism is compatible.
From this perspective, the model offered here can be seen
as an open-ended one in which all of these models and theories are called into
play by the activities of the deliberative process which the model in question
highlights. The federalist model of
government is a more encompassing one.
These other models – those that have emanated from the political systems
model – are mid-range models that describe and attempt to explain how political
actors work their processes for a given context.
As such, the mid-range
models are useful in understanding political conditions, given specific
political challenges, and in devising effective strategies. As stated in an earlier posting, the model that
has the closest overlapping content to liberated federalism is group
theory. Roy C. Macridis writes:
… [T]hey [group theorists] tell us that in
order to understand how groups behave and how they interact, we must study the
political system, the overall behavior patterns, the values and beliefs held by
the actors, the formal organization of authority, the degree of legitimacy,
etc., etc. Without realizing it, they
reverse their theoretical position. They
start with groups only to admit the primacy of the political phenomenon and
suggest that in order to explain group behavior we must start with what group
behavior purported to explain – the political system![2]
In a similar way, if the liberated federalism
model were presented for purposes of generating hypotheses which would lead to
empirical studies, this criticism would similarly be a serious one in terms of
the model’s usefulness. But that is not its
purpose.
The
model is presented as a foundational construct for the study of American
government and civics and, therefore, the Macridis statement is seen as having a
functional quality because these are exactly the types of concerns that one
wants secondary students to tackle in their study of government and civics.
The
literature about groups has been concerned mostly with the actions of interest
groups, i.e., groups that have the on-going role of bringing demands to the
political perspective of group behavior.[3] While this type of group concern is not
excluded from the liberated federalism model, it, liberated federalism, is not
limited to that concern. Besides, the
emphasis is not limited to questions of effectiveness, although also included,
but the emphasis is also heavily concerned with the communal interaction of
entities with arrangements/associations and the moral quality of their actions.
Therefore,
the judgment here is that for pedagogical reasons, liberated federalism is not
only compatible but also solicits a functional role for systems-based models in
guiding civics instruction at the secondary level. The next criterion to be addressed is
predictability.
[1] That is, this posting continues the blog’s review of
Eugene Meehan’s criteria by which to evaluate social science theories and
models. For readers wishing to read the
previous postings relating these viability claims that the blog is making, they
can read the last five postings found in the online site http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/. As for Meehan’s
criteria, see Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary
Political Thought: A Critical Study
(Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1967). To date the blog has reviewed
comprehensiveness, power, precision, consistency/reliability, and isomorphism.
[2] Roy C. Macridis, “Groups and Group Theory” in
Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings,
edited by Roy C. Macridis and Bernard E. Brown (Chicago, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1986), 281-287, 286.
[3] Current academic political thinking concerning group
theory has a mixed opinion as to its viability.
See “Political Group Analysis,” Encyclopedia.com (n.d.), accessed August
23, 2023, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/political-group-analysis AND for a more positive view, see Robert A. Heineman,
Steven A. Peterson, and Thomas H. Rasmussen, American Government (New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995).
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