JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, VII

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

Eugene Meehan provides a list of concerns that guides a researcher in choosing a theoretical construct[2] by suggesting questions he/she can ask of a perspective construct.  This blog has identified this list and has used the elements of it to critically review parochial federalism not to guide research, but to guide the development of a civics curriculum.  That is, such a construct suggests the direction – what questions and themes it should pursue – that a curriculum should utilize in classroom instruction.

          To remind the reader, the list is comprehension, power, precision, reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.  This blogger has added two more elements that more directly relate to the concerns of educators: abstraction level, and motivation.  Following the order of this listing as presented here, the blog has shared this presentation’s application of the first five elements (from comprehension to isomorphism) in its presentation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might judge this construct to be.

          That is, each element suggests a conclusion concerning the construct and this blog has reported how it sees parochial federalism measuring up to the ideals that this listing identifies.  The sixth conclusion is that parochial federalism is conducive to other explanatory theories/models of American government because it absorbs them all.

          Quite a claim to make, but here is how this assertion is offered.  All other theories or models are intermediary explanations that attempt to analyze some aspect of federalist theory as it pertains to the US.  Such constructs or theories or approaches are mid-range.  For example, systems theory (which will be further addressed as this blog presents the argument for natural rights) looks at complex interdependent attributes of some social/political arrangement and studies their interaction and control mechanisms.[3]  

While this is quite inclusive of governance and politics, it still does not address all the concerns a political science discipline sets out to address.  There is nothing in systems theory that refutes parochial federalism; they are parallel views – their distinction is in terms of normative concerns.  And here, one needs to consider why political study is conducted. 

According to Daniel Elazar, the purposes of political study are to:

 

·      pursue the quality of justice as an integral part of government’s role in establishing and maintaining order,

·      discover generalizable factors that correlate with various political acts within the polity under study, and

·      discover, communicate, and promote those policies that create and sustain a functional civic environment – through a civil society and a civil community.[4]

 

As utilized, systems theory ignores the first and third and focuses on discovering generalizable insights (the second aim). 

Why?  The utilization of systems theory was meant to reflect its advocates’ commitment to turn political science into being more “scientific” and avoiding normative concerns, which the first and third aims above are.  But to the extent the two constructs coincide in their attempts to reveal the reality of politics, systems theory helps one see why parochial federalism works in day-to-day politics from the perspective of this other systems model.

Another example is to compare parochial federalism to chaos theory.  By trying to explain the underlying order from what appears to be disorder,[5] chaos theory is a mid-range theory.  Specifically, chaos delves into the diverse forces of ethnic politics and centers on the challenges they pose the polity.  As such, it sheds light on the federalist processes which bring pluralist elements into a cohesive whole. 

Both chaos theory and systems theory are parallel in some focused factors to parochial federalist construct.  Parochial federalism is the all-encompassing theory for explaining and prescribing the operation and structure of an extended republic, i.e., one that attempts to bring together heterogeneous populations within organized cultural structures.  In America, that would be the Anglo-based foundation of its polity.

Moving on, the seventh and eighth conclusions from the above evidence (over the last several postings) are closely linked.  That is, the parochial federalist construct has both predictive and controlling power.  Given the explicit values prescribed by the construct, implementation of its principles and organizing tenets led and continues to lead to a healthy and viable republic.  As a matter of fact, any signs to the contrary can be attributed to the fact that America, since World War II, has no longer held this construct as dominant within its political culture.

While definitional issues had to be developed through the course of this nation’s history, as those mentioned earlier in this blog dealing with inclusions of groups such as African Americans, the basic logic and values were being worked out and truer federalist arrangements were manifesting themselves in a civil society.

The movement away from federalist/republican principles, as predicted by many founding fathers and a whole tradition of political philosophers – starting with Aristotle – has led to the level of incivility and lower levels of civic capital the nation is experiencing today.  The construct makes it clear that the way to recapture what one can describe as a fuller civil society is to reapply the same parochial federalist principles that launched this nation back in the late 1700s.  As such, the construct has demonstrated its predictability and control, the last two Meehan concerns.

And that leaves the two added concerns this blogger attaches to Meehan’s list:  abstraction level and motivation.  This blogger’s published book, Toward a Federated Nation, delves extensively into these elements.  Good marketing would merely state here:  go get a copy and not only be informed as to how federalism is of an appropriate abstract level and instrumental in being motivational, but also instructs the reader as to how it does these two desirable aims.

Albeit using another version of federalism (liberated federalism), the book not only addresses these two elements, but also gives examples of lesson ideas.  These ideas not only demonstrate how understandable (workable abstraction levels) the use of federalism can be, but also how motivating it can be.  That is the case since the construct encourages instruction to focus on local political-social subjects and, therefore, more apt to be relevant to the concerns of students and their parents. 

The book highlights the opioid crisis, tort law, and loss of jobs to low-wage nations such as China and Vietnam.  Each of these refers to current conditions that challenge the federated status of the nation by undermining equality within the American population.  For example, the opioid crisis has been the source of rendering to many Americans tragic personal fates in which their dignity and ability to engage in the American political experiment have become inoperative.

The next posting will boast of the methodology upon which parochial federalism relies.  By way of foreshadowing, this construct does not rely on reductionist methods, usually prevalent in political science today.  Instead, in a more conducive manner to how ordinary people talk politics, it relies on historical analysis.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded 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 parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Theoretical constructs provide guidance to researchers in that by representing descriptions or explanations, they suggest research questions and hypothesized resolutions to those questions.  By doing so, they identify specific research inquiries.

[3] 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).

[4] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[5] Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandaemonium:  Ethnicity in International Politics (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993).

JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, VI

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

This blog, at present, is attempting to demonstrate how isomorphic parochial federalism is – i.e., how much of a one-to-one match it is to what it describes and explains.  That would be governance and politics and this blog is relying on the federalist thinking that the founding fathers utilized in getting this nation started.  Basically, the recent postings have focused on a set of the founding documents such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and the Declaration of Independence.

          This posting begins by reviewing the Articles of Confederation and the important role it played in the eventual constitution upon which the nation has relied since the late 1780s.  Of course, the Articles was the first attempt at a national constitution, and it was organized in the familiar compact style. 

It established a national governmental arrangement in which the created national government did not get direct authority from or over the citizenry, only from and over the states, despite the fact that it lacked the coercive power to enforce the states to obey the policies it enacted.  This lack of power pertained to the most fundamental governmental activities such as collecting taxes or enlisting soldiers during a time of war.[2]

As is commonly known, these deficiencies are the motivators for writing a new constitution in 1787.  What is seldom pointed out, though, are the innovations and provisions contained in the Articles that were incorporated in the US Constitution.

 

That the Articles were wholly replaced by the Constitution of 1787 is not exactly the case.  It would be more accurate to say that the 1787 document, although providing for a fundamentally different kind of government, was generally constructed around an amended Articles of Confederation.  Depending upon how one counts words and provisions, from one-half to two-thirds of what appears in the Articles was retained in the Federalist Constitution of 1787.[3]

 

Donald Lutz points out that these provisions which were later adopted include:

 

·      “full faith and credit,” “privileges and immunities,” and the return of interstate fugitives provisions of Article IV

·      provision for admitting new states

·      republican guarantee

·      specific grant of power (though the powers are obviously different)

·      list of prohibitions on national powers is similar in both documents

·      list of prohibitions on state governments is similar in both documents, and

·      provision that “… the free inhabitants of each of these states … shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states” (a fundamentally federalist provision in that it creates dual citizenship in state and national levels and helps define the structure of citizenship in the subsequent national constitution of 1787).

 

The Articles, Lutz writes, was the vessel which precluded the shape that the eventual national government arrangement would take under the new constitution.  Before they moved on to the US Constitution, it is important to note that the foundational generation did not easily relinquish their localism – intrinsic in state sovereignty and protected by the Articles. 

The practical necessities of gaining independence from Britain and other ongoing national forces – such as ever-increasing interstate trade – made the step toward federalizing at a national level essential.  That does not necessarily mean it was welcomed by all parties, but the tide was cast.[4]

Among the average Americans, the emphasis was still in local communities meeting their own concerns despite the call for more nationalistic approaches (for example, in the pamphlet by Thomas Paine, Common Sense[5]).  What one is apt to do is to assume that Americans up and down the Atlantic seaboard were familiar with their fellow colonists.  That was not the case.

This blog will end its treatment of isomorphism with this last document.  The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights amply demonstrate the culmination of how parochial federalism views governance and politics and, due to their ongoing application in the nation’s political affairs, they define the American view of governance and politics as the basis of its parochialism.  Hopefully, the reader can appreciate that that view reflects a national, parochial federalist perspective.

From this sampling of the concerns, the governmental issues that this blog has recently addressed, and how this blog has relied on the writings of Lutz, the judgement is that this review has amply demonstrated the isomorphism of this perspective.  Hopefully, the reader agrees and is willing to accept parochial federalism as the basis for the study of all aspects of the national governmental arrangement by using a historical, developmental approach.  That approach – under the designation of “methodology” – will be shortly addressed in an upcoming posting.

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded 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 parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Donald S. Lutz, “The Articles of Confederation, 1781” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 227-248.

[3] Ibid., 229.

[4] For an interesting account of this less than enthusiastic unionization among Americans, see T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution:  How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York, NY:  The Oxford University Press, 2004).

[5] See Richard B. Bernstein, “John Adams’s Thoughts on Government,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1990), 118-128.