THERE ARE SMALL TOWNS AND THERE ARE SMALL TOWNS

In teaching about the opioid crisis as an issue suitable for civics’ instruction, a lot of attention is given to the factors that lead to people becoming addicted.  One set of factors, this blog has described, has been the economic downturn certain areas of the country have experienced.

The reasons for this economic distress are due to a plunging demand for coal, generally, but from the Appalachian area, specifically, the loss of jobs to foreign manufacturing countries with cheaper labor, and to automation.  And one can still see how the remnants of the Great Recession have meaningful effects within certain regions of the country.

Another way to study this topic is not to look at where economic problems have materialized but to look at areas where they have not.  One town that Beth Macy[1] highlights, one that is geographically not far from hard hit areas but that did not suffer from the above developments, was Woodstock, Virginia.  She also writes about Lowville, New York.  Both are highly similar in terms of their size and in their economic conditions. 

Relying on analysis by a Syracuse University professor, Shannon Monat, Macy points out some telling statistics.  The first one is of Lowville; a town situated near the Adirondacks and is Monat’s hometown.  It has a healthy economic mix which includes a viable dairy farm sector, produces wood products, and “houses” a wind turbine farm that through its operation generates $3.5 million dollars a year for the local school district. 

Monat sees the former conditions of Woodstock in the same vein.  In order to give the reader perspective of what size towns these are, Woodstock has a population, according to the 2010 census, of nearly 5100.  Like Lowville, it is a rural community with varied other business enterprises. 

Overall, Woodstock had fewer people who smoked, fewer people without insurance, and, more relevant to the topic here, lower mortality rates due to drugs, especially opioids, than those areas that relied on coal and single industry-based manufacturing such as furniture-making in the years up until the present century.

Macy goes on to describe how drug dealers are trying to make inroads into Woodstock – it, the town, is not beyond effective efforts to expand this illicit market.[2]

One can observe a more direct stat that further makes the comparison being made here.  When one compares opioid-prescription rates, Woodstock area had roughly half Virginia’s rate and a one-third the rate reported from coal mining counties in that state.  To compare two affected counties, Lee County, Virginia – a coal mining county – and Shenandoah County – in which Woodstock is the county seat – Lee doctors issued, in 2013, 10.23 prescriptions per Medicare Part D enrollee and Shenandoah doctors issued 2.96 to the same enrollee population.

While the number of communities in this review is too small, those who study this epidemic, like Monat, consider the resulting above numbers as representative of the distinction between economically stable communities and those that have significant economic challenges that seem to be endless with no foreseeable solutions in the near future.

[Note:  This blog has posted various entries that intend to assist civics teachers who wish to incorporate the opioid crisis as an ongoing societal problem that abuses federalist values.  Other postings have promoted the instructional practice of having students engage in a political or otherwise voluntary activity meant to help end or ameliorate the local manifestation of such situations, situations that similarly defy federalist values. 

While the message here is that the opioid crisis can be such a situation, illicit drug selling, dealing, purchasing, and/or consuming is illegal.  Teachers who allow students to engage in any community based activities relating to this trade, need to guarantee that students do not come into physical contact with any of its aspects – whether by handling or being in the proximity of any illicit drugs or with those who engage in its trade. 

This can become touchy if a student’s relative(s) engages, in any way with such trade.  Perhaps, those students should limit their interaction with people who are – from a community effort attempt or a law-enforcing attempt – working to address either the selling of illicit drugs or the consequences of their sales.]

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[1] Beth Macy, Dopesick:  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (New York, NY:  Riverhead Books, 2018).

[2] Actually, more recent developments unfortunately have introduced another factor – talented entrepreneurship.  Woodstock was targeted by an individual who wanted to expand his market.  That individual has opened a healthy trade in that town.  Here is how Macy describes this turn of events:

[Quoting Metcalf, a law officer,] “He created a market that didn’t exist before, then he manipulated it to increase his profits.  And that’s the problem with heroin, and why I don’t think its going away:  The money is insane, and the customers are always there.”

This indicates yet another factor, the rate of profit this product generates.  Ibid., 170.

THE OLD ONE-TWO

This blog has commented both on the effects that foreign trade has had on job availability and of the debilitating effects opioid drugs have had on too many citizens.  In both cases one can detect that the resulting conditions of these dysfunctional developments have eroded the ability of many Americans to fulfill their responsibilities as citizens and, more from their perspectives, their ability to enjoy the benefits of that citizenship.  Each topic was treated as separate issues suitable for students to study in civics classrooms. 

Further, those postings focused on these topics’ respective relationships to federalist values.  That is, they described how these issues affect citizens meeting their roles as partners in the grand federalist union the Constitution establishes.  But upon further consideration, these two topics are highly related to each other. 

One of them has caused the fertile conditions that has promoted the other.  Specifically, the loss of jobs to cheaper, foreign labor not only resulted in a loss of jobs in the US, but also, through high unemployment, “greased” the way for a deadly, addictive drug to capture a population prone to first experiment and then become hooked and eventually for many to overdose and die. 

From California to Florida, the parents behind Relatives Against Purdue Pharma already knew that OxyContin stood out more in rural America’s distressed hollows and towns, where reps could easily target the lowest-hanging fruit – the injured jobless and people on disability, with Medicaid cards.  But OxyContin was everywhere, of course, and it had been almost since the beginning, even if the crimes associated with it hadn’t dominated the urban news.[1]

This history has many turns and some of those turns are global in nature, but local in effect.

This posting will briefly describe one of those turns.  It does not take many words to describe it, but this should not mislead the reader to believe it had limited effect.  No, the consequences have not only been extensive in its numbers, but qualitatively profound in its social, economic, and medical consequences.

As previous postings pointed out, after World War II, US foreign policy aimed at reestablishing the viability of the world’s manufacturing capabilities.  That war did an effective job at destroying the manufacturing centers of most industrial nations.  The one exception, due to the protection of two oceans, the US’ capacity was not only not destroyed, but enhanced as this nation became “the arsenal of democracy.”

It was decided, given the experiences after World War I, that post World War II policies should favor liberal trade policies.  The post conditions of that earlier conflict taught policy makers in the 1940s that relying on restrictive trade policies led to the rise of totalitarian regimes and, in turn, another global war. 

Liberal policies promised to rehabilitate those bombed-out manufacturing centers in Britain, France, Germany, and other nations.  By so doing, a US led effort could and did make the world’s economy viable and offset those highly nationalistic forces that were, in part, responsible for World War II.  In addition, it promised a more efficient world economy benefiting all.

One of the polices the Western world initiated was the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO).  This organization was meaningfully expanded by extending membership to China in 2001.  The move was accomplished through the work done during the Bill Clinton administration.  That administration was also responsible for the institution of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Both policies exemplified the liberal trade bias set in motion back in 1944 with the Bretton Woods Conference.[2]

The Clinton administration touted these moves as opening American markets to cheaper products, – produced abroad – markets for American produced, consumer products, and the introduction of immediate incentives to expand appropriate educational programs to train American workers for advanced jobs that would prove to be more engaging and satisfying for American workers.

This last element – the one involving training – has proven essential to this plan, not in its implementation, but in its absence. 

But with ill-designed training for displaced Americans based on a lumbering federal program created in the 1960s, the second part of that equation very rarely came to pass.  Only a third of workers who qualified for Trade Adjustment Assistance even went back to school, and the majority of those who did found themselves with new certifications and associate’s degrees yet earning much less than they had in the factories, if they were working at all.[3]

Even with this training, many today hold low paying jobs at Walmarts, rely on food stamps, and have to tend small gardens to able to feed themselves.  These results were particularly seen in rural counties. 

Globalization, in effect, killed opportunity in many rural areas.  It added to the effects of automation and the decline in the demand for coal – a lot of the Appalachian areas relied on coal for the bulk of their economies.  For example, in one county, Henry County, experienced soaring crime, insecurity in terms of access to food (food stamp claims up more than 300%), an upshot of disability claims, unemployment shooting up to 20%, and disability claims also rising to 60.4%.[4]

And many of those people suffering from these drastic changes began consuming opioids in the ensuing years.  To prove a cause and effect relationship, one needs to look at the individual cases in which addiction took hold.  But the general social environments of many Appalachian communities were highly affected, as their financial situations became dire. 

And yes, one can reasonably believe that such a downturn set the stage for a people to be disposed to drug abuse.  Not all newer drug takers were affected by these economic maladies; many came/come from middle class families.  Of course, there were other factors; chief among them was the role pharmaceutical and medical players played.  In total, the nation has had a significant tragedy befall it.

This blog will continue to share information concerning these two areas of concern in future posting as it reports related factoids and insights over either the opioid crisis or the loss of jobs due to foreign trade.  As this posting indicates, at times, these two issues serve up a one-two punch.

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[1] Beth Macy, Dopesick:  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (New York, NY:  Riverhead Books, 2018), 131.

[2] See “Setting the Stage,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, a blog, August 1, 2017, accessed July 29, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/08/setting-stage.html .

[3] Beth Macy, Dopesick:  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, 123.

[4] Ibid.  Macy goes on to explain how these claims were further used to extend medical treatment to get access to more opioid drugs.

COMPETING HISTORIES

One of the background bits of information undergirding a lot of what this blog has to say is the ongoing “debate” between establishment educators and academic educators.  A simple rundown of what divides them can take the following form:  the establishment favors a natural rights point of view and academia favors critical theory. 

The natural rights view summarily supports individuals holding basic rights and that they can behave to exercise those rights as long as such behavior does not interfere with others enjoying their basic rights.  Critical theory believes society is ruled and controlled by monied interests and the resulting political/economic system is set up and sustained to advance those interests. 

Each side strives to move education toward recognizing the governmental/political, national perspective they respectively harbor, to pursue policies it sees as ideal, and delegitimize the related beliefs of the other side.  This leads to a different set of policy preferences:

·        For establishment educators, policy should support and be directed toward preparing students for the competitive environment that categorizes the economy. 

·        For critical theorists, policy should encourage the citizenry toward overthrowing the exploitive society – this can be done peacefully – so it can advance to a general state of equality in which all will equally share in the economy’s benefits.

As a short expression of these opposing ideas, one can simply state what each side’s trump value is:  natural rights holds liberty – or what the literature calls natural liberty or equal condition – and critical theory holds equality – or what the literature calls equal results.  As a point of context, the current political landscape seems to indicate that the electorate is swinging toward one camp or the other by abandoning what is usually called the “political center.”  Another way to describe this:  both sides are getting closer to the extremes – nationalism and socialism.

As for this posting, the aim is to see how each side treats educational history in the US.  If either can have its view of the past as the general view, this would lead, among the electorate, to agreements over many assumptions one makes in promoting one set of policies as opposed to the other set.  This writer believes that that would be an important achievement by either side as it would “grease” the way toward being successful in many policy debates.

But before explaining that, here is a contextual point that needs to be mentioned.  One should not view education as a consumer service.  Instead, one should see it as a discipline; in order to succeed, it demands that a reasonable amount of effort be exerted by students.  This account mentions this because of its varied implications.  When reformers consider changes in education, they need to remember that this basic relationship – between students and subject matter – should dictate important parameters as to what should be considered.

Often, those who discuss reform, be they establishment advocates or critical theorists, do not take this fact into consideration.  How an educational system is run, therefore, goes a long way in determining whether the resulting service is reasonable in its demands in the expected efforts called upon by students, parents, or other involved adults, such as teachers and school administrators.  With those ground rules, what do these opposing sides view as being the educational history of the nation?  Here is a short answer.

Naturally, both sides have differing historical accounts they favor.  So, how can one see these dual views separately and in comparison, to each other?  A central concern of critical theorists can be used to begin this review.  That is:  why, to begin with, does an exploitive nation, such as the US, have a public-school system?  Here are the two opposing answers to this basic question.

The establishment believes that on the face of it, public schooling allows the masses to become educated and, through that experience, can improve their competitive posture.  In turn, this, with hard work, can lead to ever higher levels of rewards that lucrative careers can accrue.  In short, education can lead to equal opportunity assuming the educational system works sufficiently well. 

This assumption is one of many that critical theorists question.  Critical theorists do not accept that the above overall aim is true.  They argue that an alternate motivation was at play when the rich agreed to sign up and support a public-school system, an essential element in instituting such a system.  

On the critical theory side, one can summarize its view by stating that public schooling came about due to how rich people saw a vast population.  That population, mostly poor, would have little to no motivation to favor, uphold, or otherwise support the existing, exploitive polity and its economic system.  Given their lack of any meaningful stake in what was, the masses were left to their own devises to not only be antagonistic toward that system, but also, through lawlessness and outright rebellion, undermine it.

Chief among the upper class’s concerns, were behaviors that aimed at destruction.  Yes, religion could be counted on to stave off some of these beliefs or feelings, but on a day to day basis, a more instituted effort could be made to promote a message of how good the system was and, better still, that message could be imparted early in life. 

Not only could such a schooling institution do these things, but it could also socialize people to except such exploitive practices as forcing the working class to submit to the factory system, in which manufacturers forced workers to earn a subsistence wage.  By the way, schools used the factory model to physically structure their operations.[1] 

The promotors of public schooling could and finally did sell this essential message to the rich.  It has been further supported, critical theorists would say, with the underfunding that public schooling has struggled through the years since its inception.  Of course, because of funding formulas across the country, one can readily see the results of such funding when one compares the physical resources schools in lucrative areas have compared to say inner city schools where struggling people live.

That, in a few sentences, summarizes why critical theorists argue the rich – in this nation and in just about all nations that have public education systems – supported initiating and funding such expensive operations among the states of the US.  Of course, lately the rich are thinking of ways to lighten that financial burden.  Critical theorists are apt to see such “reforms” in this light, and one can easily see why the critical theorists might question the motivation behind moves toward some alternate school models such as charter schools.[2] 

On the other side, natural rights advocates favor a different history.  They might see some of the above counterproductive practices – e.g., the factory system model for structurally arranging schools – but usually chalk those up to how people generally saw education at a given time.  They instead look and emphasize those actors and movements that strove to make education available to the public. 

And they proudly point out those cases where people of modest means have been successful in an array of professional careers.  For example, the head of Amazon went to high school in the Miami-Dade school system. 

In addition, they like to tout the efforts of such historical characters as Horace Mann who in the 1800s “believed passionately in the value of public schools and common education for the children of Massachusetts and defended his proposal in flowery … terms.”[3]  But, one should note an issue that bogged down a harmonious beginning to the public-school system. 

Among the populous, initial efforts found a lot of disagreement over any normative elements being included in the resulting public-school curriculum.  What one needs to keep in mind, initial efforts at public schooling emanated from a time when there was broad concern over any educational effort especially those involving moral content. 

Most insisted any resulting curriculum should include moral content based on sectarian foundations.  But, the founders of the public system faced a public strongly divided – for one thing, Roman Catholics who objected to the Protestant bias started their own generally affordable system.[4] 

Despite this divergence, American schooling evolved into a homogenous product.  Here is Toni Massaro’s summary:

Despite this resistance, compulsory schooling came to dominate the educational landscape during the 1900s.  By 1918, every state had adopted a compulsory school act.  In the 1920s, Cremin reports, “over ninety percent of American children between the ages of seven and thirteen were reported as enrolled in school,” and the vast majority of them were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools.  Moreover, the content of this education became reasonably, though never completely, coherent.[5]

This writer argues that the resulting curriculum up until roughly the 1960s had a strong moral component.  Cremin lists various moral strains which categorized the content among the various state systems that include:  New Testament values, Poor Richard’s Almanac wisdom, and Federalist Papers’ political messaging.  This writer feels this ended in the sixties and that a more natural rights bias has become dominant and has instilled a less communal content-based curriculum that generally avoids dealing with moral questions.

Part of adopting federation theory to guide educational efforts, especially in civics, is a call for a communal curricular base that actively deals with moral questions, but on a secular basis.  This blog has argued that the federalist view can and should be seen as a compromise between both the natural rights view and critical theory.  Again, the nation seems to be edging toward the extremes of these views and that, in turn, can result in dire consequences.

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[1] Here’s the analogy:  The raw material was students, they were submitted to timed sessions, they were molded and passed on the assembly line of different workers/teachers and were submitted at the end of the assembly line as finished – educated – products.  In addition, production areas, the classroom, were to be arranged in neat rows to better keep oversight on how well the material was progressing.

[2] These semi-public, semi-private schools are often seen as just means of draining public resources away from regular public schools to provide cheaper semi-private schools to affluent families that usually do not have the oversight to which regular schools are subjected.

[3] Toni M. Massaro, Constitutional Literacy (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press 1993), 12.

[4] For an account of this division, see Robert Gutierrez, “Some Initial Rancor over Education,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, December 1, 2017, accessed July 25, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/12/some-initial-rancor-over-education.html .

[5]  Toni M. Massaro, Constitutional Literacy, 14.

MORE INFORMATION ON OPIOID CRISIS

In the past, this blog has shared lists of factoids and insights this writer links to the opioid crisis.  His interest in that concern has not waned.  His reading into the topic has led him to Beth Macy’s book, Dopesick.[1]  Using Macy’s work, this posting adds to the previous listings.  Below, it also informs the reader how to find the initial listings.

          First item:  One depressing factoid is that America’s life expectancy, between highest fifth in terms of wealth and the lowest fifth, widened between the years 1980 and 2010 by 13%.  The Appalachian poor account for a significant portion of that widening due to the incidence drug taking (much of it being opioids).  “[O]verdose mortality rates [are] 65 percent higher than in the rest of the nation.”[2]

          Second item:  Part of the marketed advantages, according to its producer, of OxyContin was its longer period of pain relief.  Purdue Pharma claimed its relief lasted three times longer than the claimed relief time – four hours – of most other pain pills.  In addition to that reported advantage, the company claimed that since the drug had a slow-release time, it would frustrate those who used the drug to elicit a euphoric rush and, therefore, discourages its use for that purpose.  This latter advantage has proved to be untrue.

          Third item:  The use of poppy derived opium can be traced back to Neolithic humans.  Apparently, the two aims have been all along to induce a high and/or to get cured of some malady.  Jumping to a much more recent time, but considered some time ago, were the years before and during the Civil War.  It is during that time the use of morphine became common.

Fourth item:  An early proponent of morphine, an opioid, was Dr. Alexander Wood, the inventor of the hypodermic needle.  Wood touted that one use for his needle could be injecting morphine which was to avoid the drug’s addictive quality that resulted from either swallowing or smoking it.  His promotion was made in the mid-1800s.  Of course, his claim proved to be untrue as its application to Civil War veterans demonstrated; many of them – 100,000 – became addicted.

Fifth item:  The Macy book should be read if for no other reason than to become informed of the work done by Dr. Art Van Zee and Catholic nun, Sister Beth Davis, in their work to combat the marketing efforts of pharmaceutical companies to promote the distribution and use of opioids.  They should be considered for one of those awards that are handed out in Washington to outstanding citizens by a president or the heads of Congress.  Van Zee has won over a dozen national awards.

Sixth item:  On a cultural level, Macy provides an insight into the Appalachian people.  “In an Appalachian culture that prides itself on self-reliance and a feisty dose of fatalism, peddling pills was now the modern-day moonshining.  Some passed the trade secrets down to their kids because, after all, how else could they afford to eat and pay their bills?”[3]  Macy, with this last reference about being able to afford food, is reflecting the devasting effects caused by the elimination of jobs in that region due to the cessation of coal mining or manufacturing jobs.

Seventh item:  The Appalachian coal region can be credited with bucking a trend.  Many postings in this blog have repeatedly claimed that the nation has abandoned, as a dominant view, the federated view of citizenry.  That is, as was the case before World War II, Americans were easily apt to involve themselves in communal efforts to address local problems.  But since that war, they have not been so disposed.

It also describes, as an exception, how after many years suffering from an opioid addiction problem, the city of Portsmouth, Ohio of late has begun to seriously address this addiction.  The lack of initiatives generally can be regarded as an enabling factor in the spread and severity of that epidemic.

But here is another case countering the general trend.  It turns out that miners in Appalachian localities had portions of their pay directed to build a clinic way back in 1973.  In addition, these communities of miners have initiated fund raising efforts – like bake sales and talent shows – that have actively solicited money from their neighbors to meet the needs of drug affected families.  Of note, these efforts were organized by three nuns who were, in turn, inspired in their youth by the War on Poverty programs initiated by the efforts of LBJ’s administration.

Eighth item:  An added factoid regarding the elements of an addiction is that an opioid addiction, like alcoholism, lasts a lifetime.  Relapses are common and active treatment, to be effective, needs to last ten years.  While 40-60% of treated addicts experience remission – when assisted with appropriate medication – relapsing among them is a problem.  In the meantime, 4% of opioid addicts die annually from overdoses.  Given that the death rate is 68,500, in 2018, over 1.7 million Americans are addicted today.

Ninth item:  And for this posting, the last factoid it offers is to report that, as with the addiction problems after the Civil War, recognition of opioid addiction on such drugs as Oxi-Contin was slow to develop.

For readers who are new to this blog or to those who have not kept up with the blog’s description of how factoids and insights are used for classroom purposes, the following is offered.  Factoids are “bundled” facts that can be utilized in conducting an inquiry over an issue or societal problem.  Insights are statements of some cause and effect relationship between or among factors.  In both cases, these statements are useful in constructing arguments.[4]

Also, this writer has accumulated a list of factoids and insights relating to the opioid crisis.  That can be found online and has the following URL:  https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11635&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AFhwqIF3ZhONVK8 .  He will, within the next few days, add the above factoids and insights identified to this online site.

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[1] Beth Macy, Dopesick:  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (New York, NY:  Riverhead Books, 2018).

[2] Ibid., 16 (Kindle edition).

[3] Ibid., 42 (Kindle edition).

[4] See Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (London:  Cambridge University Press, 1969) AND Robert Gutierrez, “The Structure of an Argument or Two,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, May 15, 2015, accessed July 22, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-structure-of-argument-or-two.html .

COMPLICATING PUBLIC INFLUENCE

Does the American government do what Americans want it to do?  In an earlier entry, “Is the Love Real?” (January 12, 2016), this blog reported findings from research conducted by Paul Burstein.[1]  That researcher looked at how much the American federal government followed what Americans wanted it to do in terms of 60 issues.  Here is what that posting reported:

Of the sixty policy proposals, public opinion polls were silent on 40% of them.  Of the 60% that had polling information, Congress seems to abide by public sentiment 50% of the time.  As for the “silent” 40%, there is no reaction to whether the proposals should be considered, much less as to whether the policy proposal should be adopted or discarded or adopted in a modified fashion.  As for soliciting the attention of interest groups, they responded to only three of the 60 proposals.  Again, the indifference is sufficiently palpable.

But should one be surprised?  Most of what government does is of little concern to most Americans.  Should an Interstate plan call for this or that routing option or should it implement a certain maintenance schedule?  Who cares unless one owns property in the affected area?  In short, this question of how reflective governmental policy is of citizen desires is not that easy to answer.

In Burstein’s account, he goes go on to cite opposing findings among social scientists.  James A. Stimson published his findings in 1995 that argue not only does public opinion influence policy decisions, but there is nothing else that matters.  Some other researchers agree, but still other ones disagree.  Agreeing, in an earlier, 1993, article, is Robert Erikson (who this writer found himself in his class back in the late 1960s on the campus of Florida State University – surely, he does not remember the encounter). 

Yet, citing a review article by Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, Burstein informs the reader that political sociologists don’t agree.  They don’t just disagree; they don’t even consider this factor in their research.  Actually, Burstein doesn’t clarify whether political sociologists ignore this factor due to their opinion that it does not fall within their theoretical concerns or that they find, through their research, it doesn’t matter.

Burstein summarizes both camps with the following:

… on balance, there is great support for the view that public opinion consistently influences policy, sometimes very strongly, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well, over time and on a wide range of issues … [According to Soroka and Wlezien] “in major policy domains … the people ultimately decide” what policy will be, especially on issues the public cares about.[2]

This finding is not limited to the United States, but to advanced countries in general and that includes, surprisingly, the Russian Federation as well. 

          Elsewhere in this blog, a recurring message has been that Americans in general have decreased their level of engagement with politics and governance.  This lack of involvement serves to encourage this writer to write this blog; he feels it indicates that his fellow citizens are not sufficiently exhibiting federalist values, of acting in accordance with the obligations of a partnership – it’s like missing the board meetings of a company.

          So, reading that governments do follow public wishes in general, maybe citizens not engaging in an ongoing fashion is not that important.  This then needs to be further looked at and this blog will do so in the future.  A question for now is:  what specifically should be asked of how this influence is determined and measured?  While there is general agreement with this more generalized sense that public opinion matters, a more telling question might be:  how do they influence public policy?

          Researchers have turned their related concerns to an array of circumstances in which that influence is exerted.  That is, they are looking at intervening factors affecting this relationship.  For example, do political power holders effectively manipulate the perceptions of the public?  When this blog picks up this topic again, it will look at the process of advocacy.  Burstein offers information in that concern.

          Whatever that research reports, hopefully the reader agrees that this notion of public influence enjoys a central place in why and how civics teachers should teach their subject matter.  This writer can report that the textbooks used in their central role in determining what is taught say little over this concern.

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[1] Paul Burstein, American Public Opinion, Advocacy, and Policy in Congress:  What the Public Wants and What It Gets (New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press, (2014).

[2] Ibid., loc. 224 (Kindle edition).

POWERING AS A CONDUIT

This blog, as a recurring concern, attempts to share ideas regarding power.  Politics revolves around the use of power; this social mechanism is central to any understanding of politics.  And this blog, in its treatment of power, relies on Robert Dahl’s definition, power is a condition in which one party, person or collective, convinces some other party or parties to do something they would not do otherwise.[1]  In addition, to further this perspective of power, this blog has also relied on the work of John French and Bertram Raven’s “bases of power.”[2]

          As stated earlier (posting, “What Power,” November 28, 2017), French and Raven identify five bases:  coercion, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent power.  That posting pointed out the problems associated, first, with coercive power – its likelihood of engendering resentment and a desire to extract revenge – and second, with the other bases, of generating feelings of being manipulated. 

At times this can not only engender motivations to not comply openly or under some subversion, but if compliance is elicited, for it to be done with low levels of competency.  All these negative consequences usually result in the power holder policing the “compliance” in any subsequent acts.  Policing can further engender negative feelings and, to the degree it does, it generates costs – sometimes, significant costs.

Finally, the earlier posting offered “three faces” of power offered by Joseph S. Nye.  Using Nye’s words:

First Face:  [Party] A uses threats or rewards to change [Party] B’s behavior against B’s initial preferences and strategies.  B knows this and feels the effect of A’s power.

Second Face:  [Party] A controls the agenda of actions in a way that limits [Party] B’s choices of strategy.  B may or may not know this and be aware of A’s power.

Third Face:  [Party] A helps to create and shape [Party] B’s basic beliefs, perceptions, and preferences.  B is unlikely to be aware of this or to realize the effect of A’s power.[3]

As described, progressing from one face to the next, certain attributes take hold and chief among them is that the subject is less likely to know he/she is being subjected to a power interaction.  And before one castigates all of this as something evil or sinister, one should remember that parents exert power all the time and smart parents strive to use the above “Third Face” strategy.

          Nye goes on to write of the importance of social networks in the implementation of power.  Networks function in various ways.  Two functions of importance are their role in communication and in furthering the legitimacy of power holders.  People understand the importance of communication – after all, how does one know what he/she is expected to do if he/she is not told – but might find legitimacy a more subtle quality.

          Beyond legitimacy as a bases of power, legitimacy refers to how the power holder is viewed.  One can disagree with a specific power play, but that does not in itself debase the legitimacy of the power holder.  What bolsters that legitimacy are many factors, among them is the existence of institutional networks that provide the foundations upon which the society resides.  And in this, Nye situates the above “faces.” 

He writes:

Another reason not to collapse all three faces of power into the first is that doing so diminishes attention to networks, which are an important type of structural power in the twenty-first century.  Networks are becoming increasingly important in an information age, and positioning in social networks can be an important power resource.  For example, in a hub-and-spokes network, power can derive from being the hub of communications.  If you communicate with your friends through me, that gives me power.[4]

So, beyond legitimacy, the faces enhance all the bases of power by creating functional roles if extended and institutionalized, the power becomes indispensable or perceived as such.

          And upon further reflection – and based on ample case studies – when holes develop in these networks, when direct communication is hindered or ruptured, the ability to provide bridges in those gaps can result in newer or novel bases for power relations.  Used in this fashion, the possibility of forming federated relations becomes possible.

          That is, such formulations can allow for third face strategies to take hold.  They can target information flows that encourage or permit innovation, cooperation, and collaboration, to further institutionalize more communal power relations.  How?  By “plugging” network holes.  This is what Kenneth Boulding called “integrative power.” 

In turn, this helps establish power friendly, social landscapes that, in turn – according to relevant research – furthers the use of empathy and social intelligence.  And when that happens, would-be power holders are more effective in their attempts to solicit compliance than when they rely on force, deception, or terror. [5]

          Examples of theorists Nye cites in backing this view include Hannah Arendt – “power springs up among men when they act together” – and John Ikenberry – “American power after World War II rested on a network of institutions that constrained the United States but were open to others and thus increased America’s power to act with others.”[6]  While it is a stretch to categorize such efforts as being federated ones, it does encourage one to see it as taking steps in that direction.

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[1] Robert Dahl, Who Governs:  Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1961).

[2] John R. P. French, Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Power,” in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, ed. Edwin P. Hollander and Raymond G. Hunt (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1967), 504-512.

[3] Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,  The Future of Power (New York, NY:  PublicAffairs), 14.

[4] Ibid., 17.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 18