THE CURRENCY, POWER

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

To this point, this blog has reviewed what the political world looks like through the natural rights perspective.  As far as a theoretical view, the political systems model was central for political scientists during the decades of the mid twentieth century.    Shortly, this blog proceeds with an overview of the methodology this approach promoted and how those methods reflected the general adoption of an approach known as behaviorism.[1] 

This bias has further influenced the portrayal of government in American civics courses.  That is, it reflects the market orientation of how Americans have come to see governance and politics.  As described so far, the political system has multiple parts which interact in order to provide governmental services.  These services are distributed through a competitive process. 

Those who gain the benefits derived from those services do so because they can exert more power than others.  Educators who instruct students about this process, therefore, are teaching their students about the exercises of power.  Unfortunately, this effect does not extend to highlight this currency; it is assumed without giving its proper due.

So, the language they use might not be so blunt, but that is what they are teaching.  One can ask, what is power in this social sense?  The definition used here is:  power is the ability of a person or a group, A, to get a person or a group, B, to do something B would not do otherwise.[2] 

For example, if one, in an agitated way, walks into a room, sees another person sitting comfortably on a lounge chair and yells, “Get up,” and that person stands, that is an incident of power if one assumption is true.  The assumption is that the other person was not about to stand up on his/her own accord to, say, get a cup of coffee.  That is, that B was content to continue his/her rest. 

This silly example is important because it illustrates how potentially difficult it is to measure power – only the lounging person knows what is going on in his/her mind and what he/she wants to do or is about to do.  At its base then, this business of analyzing politics has a bit indetermination to it, but that does not seem to humble those who conduct much of what is called behavioral studies – more on this below.

With a definition in hand, a further step in conceptualizing power is to look at a categorizing scheme that identifies types of power.  John R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven identify five types based on the motivation that someone would have to do something he or she would not want to do otherwise – that is, the mental states that would lead one to yield to the wishes of someone else. 

This is bit ironic since behavioral studies claims to stand clear of such mental content – after all, they claim what is studied is what people do, not what they think and feel.  But when one wants to wield power, costs are involved and if certain strategies are geared to take advantage of what people are apt to acquiesce to, then one has to speculate as to motivations on the part of the governed or ruled.

So, there are mental perceptions or expectations of coercion, reward, legitimacy, expertise, or reference (known, in turn, as coercive power, reward power, legitimacy power, expert power, and referent power).[3]  This conceptualization is not only applicable to behavioral studies, but equally apply to either federal theory based-studies or the studies based on other constructs – power is that central to politics and political behavior.  It is the currency of politics.

For purposes here, this account reduces power to three types: avoidance of punishment, seeking reward, and a sense of duty.  One should consider, when utilizing the systems model, there are winners and losers and this, in turn, creates issues.  No matter how small in dimension a political engagement happens to be, those who are engaged in it are participating in a process of competition.  They conduct these competitive activities in the context of a system, a conglomeration of parts and actors that to some large degree, is organized and is intra-active.

There are actors who are in positions to make distributive decisions and there are actors who are vying for sought after gains in the form of policies, waivers, or payouts.  In the vying for gains (desired outputs), the engaged actors can very well hold and promote competing political values and aims in the form of the preferred policies they are seeking. 

Often, these actors, whether in positions of authority or not (some might enjoy highly influential positions without holding formal government office), hold a position of a relative level of power to influence or to make decisions that revolve around the differences between competing values and preferences.  This exercise in power usually reflects negotiating among the various interests the “players” in a competition might have.  The decision can be not to decide, to decide in favor of one or a combination of interests, or to compromise on a policy. 

The exercise of power determines which way it goes.  In the natural rights view, each participant is only concerned with extending that participant’s interest to the greatest extent possible at the least cost possible.  For better or worse, this is how the system formulates “consensus” and arrives at a policy decision. 

Players are apt to exercise power in all three forms.  It metes out rewards and punishments and it also solicits a sense of duty and obligation.  Therefore, central to this whole process are the authoritative decisions that determine whose values will be honored – catered to – and whose will not. 

In addition, a study of this process (be it by decision-makers, competitors, or academics) entertains questions about how legitimacy is maintained even among the “losers” of a political competition.  After all, there is always tomorrow, and the system needs to maintain its players playing by the rules – rules that need to be of benefit to all. 

While this whole process refers to the organizational workings of groups and government, the systems approach focuses on the behavior of individuals within that structure who act from motivations of self-interest.  Obviously, irrespective of the systems model emphasis on the individual – basic unit of analysis – any study of politics must account for collectives such as groups, associations, organizations of varying formalities, and governing processes. 

But the political systems model, as it has already been emphasized, accommodates political analysis of these collectives under the demands of individual participants behaving in such a way as to advance each actor’s own individual interests.[4] 

One should remember that how a person defines his/her self-interest can vary from person to person.  A person can want monetary benefits or reputational accolades or artistic recognition or athletic prowess, etc.  But however, one defines it, the systems approach – much in line with Machiavelli thinking[5] – sees this as the determining motivator in how he or she behaves politically.

A vivid example at this point helps.  That would be New York City's legendary Robert Moses, who was the central official determining the winners of New York’s political scene from the 1930s into the 1960s.  An extended quote from an interview with Moses' biographer, Robert Caro, gives one a taste of what is being described:

[For a highway, bridge, tunnel, park, etc.] Moses gave the contracts, the legal fees, the insurance premiums, the underwriting fees, and the jobs to the individuals, corporations, and unions who had the most political influence.  So they all had a vested interest in seeing that his project was built.  Therefore, if the people of a neighborhood, or their assemblyman or congressman, or a mayor or governor, tried to stop one of his projects, they would find themselves confronted by immense pressure from the very system they were a part of.  A huge public work – a bridge or a tunnel or a great highway – is a source of raw power, if it is used right, and no one ever used power with such ingenuity, and such ruthlessness, as Robert Moses.[6]

Power is not limited to government.  Power is potentially exercised in any social institution – businesses, churches, schools, medical facilities, legal firms, etc. – or any individual.  Given this fact, one can begin to understand that politics is ubiquitous.  The former popular TV show, The Good Wife,[7] dedicates a lot of its story lines to the political power plays within a legal firm upon which the series is based.  But examples can also be seen in everyday life.

During a recent Christmas season, the postal service ran an ad which depicted a husband and wife trying to decide who was going to tackle which holiday chore.  The wife says she will go to the mall if the husband takes care of mailing the gifts.  The husband immediately says that he will go to the mall because dealing with postage and the post office is a nightmare. 

He grabs the keys and runs to the car for his trip to the mall.  Just then the postman walks up and explains to the wife that sending packages is easy.  She responds with a wink, “I know.”  The postman says, “Oh, you're good.”  Power comes in many different guises and being the recipient or the victim might often go unnoticed.

What the last various postings try to communicate is not how civics is taught.  Future postings will address that.  What they to do try is to communicate a view of politics that has served as an overall understanding of politics that civics educators, including textbook authors, have brought to the task of planning and implementing their curricular ideas.  How these images have been interpreted needs to be reviewed and will serve as topics of future postings.

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[1] This writer has also seen this term referred to as behavioralism.  Apparently, the term behaviorism refers to the analysis of behavior in psychology, while behavioralism is a term used in political science designating the study of political behavior.  Both terms are used here interchangeably.

[2] Andre Munro, “Robert A. Dahl:  American Political Scientist and Educator,” Encyclopaedia  Britannica, February 1, 2020, accessed February 12, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-A-Dahl .

[3] Coercive power occurs when a person does something to avoid a punishment; reward power occurs when a person does something to gain a reward; legitimacy power occurs when a person does something out of a sense of duty; expert power occurs when a person does something because he/she is told to by a person who he or she believes to have some expertise, such as a doctor or lawyer; and referent power occurs when someone does something to be associated with someone, group and/or something.

[4] To be clear, a lot of the analysis might very well study group dynamics.  The point is that even with this level of analysis, the basic assumption is that each participating actor will strive to advance his/her self-interest.

[5] See posting, “Foundations of the Natural Rights View,” March 10, 2020, accessed March 19, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/03/foundations-of-natural-rights-view.html .

[6] Ric Burns and James Sanders, New York: An Illustrated History (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 462.

[7] Robert King and Michell King (creators and producers), The Good Wife, CBS (a television series), 2009.