CRITIQUE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, II

 

With the last posting, this blog has resumed its posting schedule of Tuesdays and Fridays.  With this posting, the blog picks up its critique of the natural rights view.  As a quick review, the natural rights mental construct is the dominant view of governance and politics in the US.  In the last posting (the first after a three-month break), this critique was introduced by outlining a list of points it will develop. 

 The first was:

 

The construct has a limited view of decision-making.  This is important because the construct’s position on decision-making is narrowed to transactional aspects of governance and politics.  The position on decision-making serves as one of the construct’s basic operating assumptions.

 

Let this posting describe and explain this shortcoming. 

A political systems model is an extensive and comprehensive view of the political life one finds in a nation.  As the mode by which the natural rights view encourages students to go about studying politics, it is exceedingly useful if a student makes an assumption that there are extensively shared goals and values within the political system.  If these exist, then a further assumption or prior condition is possible.

          In such a nation, behavioral studies’ reliance on people being apt to make rational decisions will be the normal course of decision-making.  That is, when people are confronted with a decision, they will basically ask themselves what choice affords them the most benefit for the least cost.  Choices will be made toward those possibilities in which the marginal benefits exceed marginal costs.

            For example, should one turn on the TV?  Does what is on TV accrue more benefit than expending the energy to turn the set on or to do something else?  Of course, calculations come into play as to the possibilities for benefits and costs with alternative choices in an uncertain world.

This analysis can be highly involved, but the mind handles the calculations fairly efficiently given the complexity of the choice and the information a person has at the time of the decision.  But in any event, certain stable conditions need to prevail for this type of calculation to be possible and should be considered.

          So, how is this relevant?  Theoretical work in the field of political studies which has been based on these considerations is advanced by Anthony Downs.[1]  In his writing, the concern is focused on the role the above mentioned marginal or rational thinking has in political systems study.  The judgement here is that the rational assumption is a basic one for those students who employ the political systems approach.  Or if one wishes to delve a bit further, what is assumed are those elements of a political culture to be present and viable when such decisions are being made.[2]

          Daniel Moynihan shares this view:  “… American social science had pretty much settled on a utilitarian model in which behavior is explained by expectation of things yet to happen.  Rewards and punishments.”[3]  This critique is not that political systems and other derived models are crude behavioral efforts – all of them have taken pains to address other factors beyond rewards and costs – but the biases toward that sort of calculation are entrenched in systems theorizing and in their derived research. 

And therefore, their concerns for the formulation of goals and values – normative factors – seem wanting.  This is so if one considers that there are two sides to decision-making.  One side is the way the individuals see the benefits and costs before them, and the other is the development of the goals and values that establish what is judged to be beneficial and costly. 

This latter part of decision-making is mostly ignored in the political systems approach to the study of politics.  In most analyses, these aspects are taken as given, yet this critique deems these concerns essential if understanding and predictability are the ultimate goals of any given study.  The approach, by so assuming, adds to its reductionist tendency of only taking those factors immediately present when such decision-making takes place.

Money plays a role in these considerations.  Money is not an end in itself.  It is converted into many different things and conditions of life.  When one says, “it’s only money,” one does not do money justice.  Money can mean peace of mind or a child’s health.  It can convert into recreation or education.  It can mean an untold number of things.  As such, it can represent goals and values.

To add to this situation, money can be counted in equal units.  Therefore, there is a tendency for money to create an illusion.  The illusion is that money can represent goals and values.  It can be seen in different guises as a won contract or a promotion at work.  Money then seems to be the universal goal or value.  In capitalist economies, the attainment of money seems to permeate all aspects of life.  Sports, religion, and education seem to be measured in monetary terms. 

But upon reflection, people know that not all is for sale or measurable by a monetary value.  The significance of this is that systems’ view of counting on benefits and costs is further entrenched by the role of money.  Not only are all people after money, or so the assumption goes, but one can measure how much money – reward or benefit – it takes to get people to do something.  There is a certain theoretical cleanliness about this view.

In short, what is being suggested is that human behavior, much less human thinking, emoting, planning, and other non-observable human “actions” are highly complex and involved and that doesn’t even consider what is at the subconscious level.  This posting ends with this introduction to decision-making and will continue with this point of contention in the next posting with a quote by Philip Selznick.

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[1] Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, NY:  Harper and Row Publisher, 1957).

[2] See Jurgen R. Winkler, “Political Culture,” Britannica (n.d.), accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-culture.   Winkler writes,

American political scientist Lucian Pye defined political culture as the composite of basic values, feelings, and knowledge that underlie the political process. Hence, the building blocks of political culture are the beliefs, opinions, and emotions of the citizens toward their form of government.

            … The classic study of political culture is The Civic Culture (1963) by American political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba.

He goes on to point out that some studies look closer at subcultures within nations, but the effect is the same; it provides the landscapes by which decision-making can proceed as described here.

[3] Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandemonia:  Ethnicity in International Politics (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993), 30.

CRITIQUE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, I

 

[Note:  As regular and ongoing readers of this blog might know, this blogger has since November 1, 2022 taken a break.  This is in line with the history of this blog; the blogger has taken a break after every four hundred postings.  He did so after 400, 800, and 1200 postings.  It’s time to pick up the blog with the next 400 offerings starting with this posting.  As of his counting, the posting below is number 1201.  This blogger’s initial plan is to resume the twice a week schedule in issuing new postings on Tuesdays and Fridays.  This is tentative in that he is dealing with other projects so he will see what can be maintained.  REMINDER: this blogger, Robert Gutierrez, has two published books, TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION & FROM IMMATURITY TO POLARIZED POLITICS.  The first offers a suggested future for civics education, and the second reports on what the obstacles to that future are.  These books are available online through Amazon and other booksellers.]

 

So, here this blog resumes, and its first topic is to critique the natural rights view of governance and politics.  When it comes to these concerns, that view has been dominant in the US since World War II and that dominance has grown in the ensuing years.  Actually, it has grown to such a degree that current writers, pundits, and scholars have been highlighting its influence more and more.  They might not use the term natural rights, but the concern over a lack of citizens expressing and behaving themselves with a sense of obligation and duty has become recurring in the national media.

          One such effort, a book, is by Richard Haass entitled The Bill of Obligations:  The Ten Habits of Good Citizenship.[1]  The focus of that book is how Americans have become deficient in terms of even identifying the need for having such obligations and duties.  He writes that due to that deficiency the following has resulted,

 

The most urgent and significant threat to American security and stability stems not from abroad but from within, from political divisions that for only the second time in U.S. history have raised questions about the future of American democracy and even the United States itself.[2]

 

It is the position of this blog that the dominance of the natural rights view is the prime factor that has led to this state of affairs.

          While this blogger considers himself as a guarded, limited supporter of the natural rights view, he believes, overall, as apparently Haass does, that that view, as a dominant one, is highly detrimental to the health of the national commonwealth.  This posting begins a critique of that view in which this blogger will outline the detrimental effects the natural rights view has had on the health of the nation’s governance and politics.

          That is, while the overall usefulness of this construct is acknowledged, the perspective is judged to have serious and even dysfunctional elements.  This and the following postings review the negative aspects of the perspective.  By way of previewing this critique’s content, the following points will be explained:

 

·       The construct has a limited view of decision-making.  This is important because the construct’s position on decision-making is narrowed to transactional aspects of governance and politics.  The position on decision-making serves as one of the construct’s basic operating assumptions.

·       The construct’s tie-in with the market view of political decision making presents a reality that is highly and unnecessarily cynical of republican governance.

·       There exists a contradictory argument within the natural rights perspective about the quality and sanctity of individual rights and the perspective’s mechanistic view of decision-making.

·       In its expanded version of the view’s account of the political system, one that encompasses the concerns over requisite functions offered by Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, there is nothing inherently definitive over the functions identified in the Almond and Powell’s model.[3]

·       Systems approaches, derived from the natural rights perspective to problem solving, produce fragmented, elemental strategies.  This implies that it is better to proceed politically under the pragmatic bargaining mode in negotiating solutions with conflicting parties.  That is, it is better not to have strongly held, emotional positions and one should be willing in all cases to compromise.  The result might be that nothing is beyond compromise.

·       Due to the overemphasis on individualism, as encouraged by the natural rights perspective, the organizing factions, as interest groups or political parties, have become more difficult to formulate among the general population – each while encouraged to compromise hold its interests as unassailable.  This is true because faction formulation and action presuppose compromise with others’ interests.  Since the system responds to factions, not individuals for the most part, cynicism results from the perceived lack of demand accommodations to individual participants.

·       While essentialism – as the encouraged educational philosophy – supports teacher (adult) authority, its glorification of market values has led to a consumer attitude toward schools.  Parents, along with their children, define schools as consumer suppliers and themselves as consumers, as opposed to partners in the educational process.

·       This construct does not adequately address how subgroups – racial, ethnic, aged, sexual oriented minorities – might not share generally in their legitimate standing within the polity.

·       And, of course, there is the excessive focus and promotion of individualism that undercuts American society from generating the adequate levels of community, cooperation, and collaboration.

 

And with that, this blog takes up with where it left off …

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[1] Richard Haass, The Bill of Obligations:  The Ten Habits of Good Citizenship (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2023).

[2] Ibid., xi.

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