FACTORS OF REALISM

[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.]

Secondary civics textbooks capture an essential aspect of their subject matter, i.e., they describe a role that governance and politics play in citizens’ lives.  In their pages, a vision of government emerges as something out there responding to the wishes of the electorate through a political process of competition.  What is noteworthy, it does this by merely describing it in general terms without categorizing what is being described.  Mostly, the text will point out entity X gets Y but without revealing, in sufficiently descriptive language, how that happens.

That is, these books have a deficiency.  While a review of the typical civics textbook consists of chapters or “units” dedicated to the various input entities that engage in feedback on a regular basis, the language it uses does not feature a feedback loop.  These entities can be individuals, interest groups, or political parties.  The textbook depicts these entities not as integral parts of the political system, but as customers in relation to a department store. 

That is, feedback is an information loop communicating people’s reactions to government policy.  One might attribute to that loop, as political systems language does, a self-correcting mechanism for the system.  In short, as those in authority hear and see how people are reacting to past policies and actions, those in government can adjust or correct perceived mistakes; those being mistakes as perceived by those who have requisite power. 

While the image of citizens portrayed in textbooks might be of entities seeking satisfaction, it avoids the language of what that implies.  In line with this instruction, most people out there are not informed or do not care about the great majority of policy decisions.  Their concerns are limited to their personal demands.  This detaches citizens from the operations of government. 

Again, using the above analogy, the textbook image is of customers of a department store, and as such, they are not integral parts of that “store” and, therefore, do not worry to any extent about the general workings of that operation.  Likewise, these customers are not depicted as essential parts of the government and, therefore, they do not worry over the general workings of that institution.

Instead, these entities provide the demands that government is set up to satisfy; without those demands, government has no purpose.  As such, this view expresses a limited role for each entity.  Each is to express only those demands relating to that entity’s affected interests.  

But the assumptions underlying the US Constitution call for an alternate view of this relationship between government and citizen.  Those assumptions place each citizen as a partner with every other entity (citizens and interest groups) and partners concern themselves with the health of the enterprise be it a department store or a government. 

It might be unrealistic to expect each entity to know about what the concerns of every other entity are.  Furthermore, one cannot keep up with the way that each entity expresses those concerns.  But each partner can be expected to conceptualize what the federated expectations from each are.  That includes the standards each entity should meet in making its demands.  And that awareness to any level of formality should begin with appropriate instruction in a civics course of study.

But as this blog has made clear, federation theory does not guide current civics efforts in schools.  The natural rights view does.[1]  And it can be said that that view does hold reality as a necessary quality in whatever political concern is at hand.  So, with that in mind, one can hold certain requisites as needed in any review of the political landscape – even in terms of a natural rights view. 

It is, therefore, obvious and more realistic that a depiction of governance should describe feedback as those activities that inform the system of sought-after corrective policy changes.  Those are changes more in line with the desires of influential members of the citizenry – or stated more descriptively, to those who have more power.  But that is a realistic depiction of what goes on and, unfortunately, it is not currently captured by what those textbooks describe or explain despite the fact they are guided by the natural rights view.

Those with power are those in the environment who can administer either meaningful rewards (for example, campaign funds) or meaningful punishments (for example, the withholding of campaign funds).  To have power, one needs either ownership or control of one or more motivating resources that are effective in the political arena. 

It can be access to reward, punishment, legitimacy, expertise, or referent resources.[2]  But the language and the description of typical textbook accounts avoid such revealing information.  As a matter of fact, the model, as presented in those textbooks, says little about whose inputs have meaningful influence.[3] 

On the surface, one is easily led to believe that all participants are equal, not in a theoretical sense, but in reality.[4]  The closest those accounts come to describing how influence works is the way they describe the effect that numbers of votes have on a politician.  While having the ability to deliver votes counts, it is but one source of either reward or punishment.  Limiting the description of this important aspect of politics in this fashion is, of course, to be inaccurate and misleading.

For a more telling account of how the government responds to different constituents, one can see E. E. Schattschneider’s book, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America.[5]  In that account, Schattschneider reviews how different constituents of varying levels of power go about planning to win political competitions.  While this source has out of date descriptions of particular entities, its basic description and explanation of how the mechanisms of government operate still holds up fairly accurately. 

Another influential book that addresses the relative strength of constituents is Theodore J. Lowi’s book, The End of Liberalism:  The Second Republic of the United States.[6]  Lowi makes a convincing argument about how well-funded entities and interest groups have taken over the competition for government allocated benefits.  One can observe a constant stream of commentators on TV today making the same point – a particularly virulent issue today as the federal government has set about to dole out funds during the current Covid 19 emergency.

To interject a quick point and possibly mix the metaphor, a casual review of the civics textbooks used in our schools will give the reader more of a mechanistic view than an organic explanation – the one that includes a feedback loop.  What begins as a highly objectified approach, thanks to the political systems model’s effect, it becomes even more so and therefore less about what really affects average citizens.  They are accounts of politics and government devoid of passion and, one may judge, interest.

Before this posting leaves this topic, one last point should be made, or better stated, remade.  Most teachers depend on textbooks to basically make their curricular choices.[7]  The ironic part of this is how few pages of a textbook the average student actually reads.  Perhaps, the most expensive purchase that the public treasury makes is what school districts spend for those pages.  These books only serve to tell teachers what to teach.[8]  This blog will further develop this theme in future postings.

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[1] In this regard, the difference between a natural rights and federation theory is that natural rights view merely reports the reality involved while federation theory would have students consider how that reality affects the equality of those involved.  The former avoids normative questioning and latter engages in them.

[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] A good political question is:  why is this lack of candor the case?  This, one can suppose, is a political question.  Applying the message of this posting, one can further wonder, who’s political power is at play insuring this editorial decision.

[4] To interject a federalist message:  Government, according to the messaging of these books, is thereby a service rendered to entities with governmental demands, not to entities that are extensions of the system or the community that has a governing body – which reflects a federalist ideation of the governing process.

[5] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[6] Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979).

[7] Stephen J. Thornton, S. J. (1991).  Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies.  In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 237-248).  New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company.  While this citation is dated, there is no reason to believe the point made is not as true today as it was in 1991.

[8] A promising development is offered by the professional organization of social studies teachers, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).  It has issued a set of standards that through their implementation would question this depicted role of textbooks.  For further description of this possibility see Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementation of National Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020) – available through Amazon.  Chapter 1 of that book critically reviews the NCSS’ effort.