When a curriculum
developer determines the content of a school offering, he/she needs to rely on
the relevant area of study that produces reliable knowledge in that field. For civics education, the primary area of
study is political science. In the age
of natural rights dominance (which this blog has described), American educators
have chosen a unified theoretical foundation, the political systems model.[1]
This model has its origins in the work of David Easton.[2] In the 1950s and 1960s, his theoretical work
dominated the direction political research took. In turn, because of this dominance, the
nation’s growing allegiance to the natural rights view and other historical occurrences,
educators saw political systems model as highly adaptable to their needs.
Therefore, they more thoroughly saw governance and politics as a
complex set of activities and structures aimed at providing public services. The approach is designated as systemic in
that the resulting entity of activities and structures is visualized as having
intra-active components. As will be
further explained below, the entity is self-regulating, including its pursuit
of its own survival.
The general process that the model identifies is as follows: the government or the political system takes
in demands and supports from the population – inputs – and, reacting to those
stimuli, issues outputs. These issuances
are usually in the form of policies. If
the policy is of any importance, they are authoritative; that is, they are
backed by law.
Obviously, before a government or the system acts, it must decide
to act. In terms of Easton’s model, this
is done in what some have called a black box since the model provides little
insight into what the decision-making process is. The model instead shifts attention to those
policies or “output,” such as laws and regulations.[3]
In terms of the model’s view of citizens, they are assumed to be generally
self-sufficient and can for the most part solve their own needs and desires. Typically, people are reluctant to seek
government services beyond those generally provided, such as police and fire
protection.
But there are times when they encounter conditions that deprive
them of satisfying important enough needs or desires. At those times, individually or, more
commonly, collectively, they make their dissatisfaction known to government
officials to seek those things or services that they perceive will meet their
demands. This view of governance and
citizenship has been described by Michael J. Sandel as a consumer perspective.[4]
Consequently, government takes on a third-party role which in
effect creates a psychological separation between government and its citizens. This view is further enforced by certain
assumptions:
·
One, government's main purpose is to be protective of individual
rights. In turn, those rights afford the
individual the ability to pursue those ambitions they themselves determine.
·
Two, government acts as a neutral arbiter and is limited to
overseeing a competitive process among the populous as they seek the governmental
decisions that are favorable to their interests.
·
And three, individuals are motivated to engage in the competition
to advance their self-interest.
There are important implications derived from these assumptions. First,
the process will result in winners and losers since resources are limited and
certain outcomes, by their very nature, exclude other outcomes. As a result, certain citizens will be disappointed
to some degree. This inevitability
concerned Easton as he identified stress management as a main political concern. If the process creates enough stress, this
can lead to serious systemic problems.
And the second implication is that this view of governance and
politics places a high dependency on an individualistic view. This has further implications on how moral
concerns are to be considered. In the
last posting, the influence of Machiavelli’s writings was reviewed. It was pointed out that that influence gave
politics, both in its practice and study, an amoral bent. The only moral concern seems to be the
concern for liberty.
Many consider this approach to government as a mechanical
view. The analogy goes as follows: inputs in terms of a machine consist of fuel
and in terms of a political system there are demands and supports; conversion
of a machine is an engine and in a political system the government; and outputs
in a machine is the activity it performs, for example moving a car and its
passengers, and in a political system the laws and regulation the government
issues.
Scholars who utilize a systems model to guide their research often
dismiss this analogy. They point out that
a human, such as a political system, has a feedback capacity. That is a self-reflected response to the way people
react to outputs. Machines cannot do
that, although, with advancements in computers, they have been programmed in
many ways to provide feedback.
It is this writer’s contention that the distinguishing
characteristics between machines and human systems is the ability of human systems
to feel, either on an individual basis or on a collective basis. This distinction suggests an important aspect
of systems theories that one can find wanting.
[1] This writer’s use of the terms theory and model need
to be defined. A theory is a proposed
explanation of some reality, such as gravity or evolution, that has had strong
empirical evidence to support it. The
theory of evolution is an example. A
model is an explanation or description that has some evidence to support it,
but is much less able to predict and/or control the reality it addresses. In the social sciences, generally, scholars
are dependent on models since their research has not afforded scholars or
policy makers with much predictive or controlling power.
[2] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David Easton, A
System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1965).
[3] This mirrors a behavioral approach to psychology,
especially as that study was viewed back in the days when systems models were
initially offered. In that approach, in
terms of attempting to be scientific, the claim was made that one cannot see
what goes on in a subject’s mind, but one can see and measure a subject’s
behavior. Similarly, political
scientists saw the study of politics as seeing and measuring what governments
did in the form of outputs.
[4] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of
a Public Philosophy, (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1996.
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