JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XI

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

Of late, this blog, in a dialectic style, has reviewed that version of political science thinking that most congealed with the natural rights perspective.  This blog makes the claim that in the US, the natural rights view became the dominant view of governance and politics in the years following World War II. 

This shift encouraged in the 1950s and 1960s changes in political science that first adopted a behavioral approach – with its focus on political individual behavior – and then shifted to take into account topics reflecting contemporary political issues.  In the last ten postings, this blog described and explained the main theoretical bases upon which behavioral and post behavioral studies were – and still are – based. 

That would be political systems – ala David Easton – with a meaningful supplicant, the structural-functional model – ala Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.  From those models, other mid-range models had been developed – e.g., cybernetics, conflict theory, elitist theory, comparative politics, political culture, etc.  As one might suppose, these upheavals were profound in how the discipline conceptually accounted for politics and in the methods its practitioners utilized.

David A. Lake gives his readers a sense of this tumult as it applies to the study of international relations.

 

This [the upheaval within the discipline] is not an unreasonable characterization, given the attention devoted to the clash of paradigms in this era. As implied above, this debate or set of debates is better understood in my view as a continuation of the first debate. Others see the third debate (sometimes the fourth or fifth debate) as pitting the ‘positivists,’ as the successors to the behaviorists are sometimes called, against ‘reflectivists,’ giving it a more ontological [ethics based] cast. It is this what I will call ‘final’ debate that I want to focus on here. The term positivist was always something of a misnomer, as few were naive methodological falsificationists in the sense outlined by [Karl] Popper. An alternative label, ‘rationalists,’ fit equally poorly. Rather, positivists were a grab bag of approaches grouped by a general commitment to social science as a method and the assumption that individuals and other political actors are intentionalist and calculating in their actions.  By the 1980s, these so-called positivists constituted the ‘mainstream’ of the discipline of International Relations. Reflectivists, in turn, were hardly a single school either. Broadly united by a belief in the potential openness of various ‘taken for granted’ aspects of world politics, several strands of theorizing competed, including at least constructivism, post-modernism critical theory, and feminism. Several of these approaches share the normative positions of idealism; others are more social versions of realism.[2]

 

And he goes on for those who are interested, but the point is what his title suggests:  there is now an eclecticism prevailing within the discipline of political science with a good dose of tolerance among the disagreeing participants or practitioners.

            But for civics teachers – as reflected in their assigned textbooks – they are to abide by the political systems view (with a structural-functional format).  So, therefore, this blog has taken pains to present that view – from the perspective of an advocate.  And in that dialectic language, this posting begins that portion of its review of how this model addresses Eugene Meehan’s concerns or questions[3] regarding theory as that model relates to the commonplaces of curricular development.[4]

Viability of the Systems Construct

          In general. Meehan’s questions should, therefore, with the interests of individual students in mind, be geared to preparing those students for the political competition that confronts them during their adult years.  In that, the first Meehan question addresses the scope of the construct:  Does this construct explain as many phenomena as possible which are classified under its concepts and generalizations? 

The political systems construct can be better described as an approach.  It gives one a generic understanding of the needs of any political system, pointing out how allowances need to be made for different types of systems.  One does not find specific information within the construct about aspects of the American political system.

But it does provide a series of issues and questions that can be applied to any political system.  Once applied and answered or addressed, the process yields critical information about how the political system is organized, how it proceeds with its concerns, and with what needs it must fulfill in order to continue its services.  It is that specific information that students need to know and understand so that they may be viable citizens.  If comprehensibly applied in this manner, the construct has great scope.

Included in its scope are concerns and issues ranging from the cultural foundation of the political system to the decision-making processes in which political authorities engage.  The construct can be applied to any level of government or any internal agency of the government.  The power of the construct, therefore, is enhanced because it identifies the central motivational concern, relative to the system, of those in power, i.e., it focuses on those factors that if not attended to, can affect the health of the system.

Underlying the whole systems approach is this concern for systems’ survival.  It is not only important as an underlying factor to the whole of systems, but to any parts within them, including the individuals involved.  This motivational aspect or drive creates a central dynamic in the world of politics which has to do with establishing and maintaining a balance of forces – an equilibrium.[5] 

As such, it introduces students to a realistic political world in which they need political resources to win – i.e., to have their demands satisfied.  The next posting will continue this sense of power by adding a thought or two, but this current posting will end with a general comment on how non-judgmental this model is.  Notice the lack of any “oughts” or “shoulds” in this general description of the models.  It is that notion with which the next posting will begin.

[Reminder:  Readers are reminded that they can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, they can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit 

OR

click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then looking up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] David A. Lake, “Theory Is Dead, Long Live Theory:  The End of the Great Debates and the Rise of Eclecticism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations, 19, 3, 567-587 (2013), accessed September 4, 2022, https://quote.ucsd.edu/lake/files/2014/02/Lake-EJIR.pdf, 570-572.

[3] Here are Meehan’s concerns:  Does a construct explain as many phenomena related to the area of concern as possible; control the explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relationships among those parts; specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use; explain its components and their relationships the same way time after time; contain a one-to-one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain; align with other responsible explanations of the same phenomena; predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question; and imply ways to control phenomena in question?  See Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).

As readers of this blog might know, this blogger adds two pedagogic questions:  is a construct of such abstraction level that students will be able to comprehend it and is its content motivating to students?

[4] The commonplaces are subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[5] Morton Kaplan, “Systems Theory,” in Contemporary Political Analysis, edited by James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1967), 150-163.