JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, IV

 

Inquiry suitable for secondary students in the field of political behavior needs to be concerned with the ideal domain of decision making. That would be behaviors at all levels from individuals to national groups.  That is, it needs to account for those elements of one’s thinking concerned with what should be.  The inquiry should include looking at and analyzing what the ideals are, their appropriateness, and the vibrancy in which they are held by political players.

          That study can include asking what the ideals are, why are they held, what moral messages they assume or communicate, and how powerful or transcendent are those ideals.  As such, a model of politics can and should be proposed by the political science community that incorporates ideal concerns when delving into how this domain influences the actions of political actors.

          Is political science completely disengaged from such a concern?  Here is how the discipline is introduced to prospective and new students at Northwestern University:

 

Political science is the study of politics and power from domestic, international, and comparative perspectives. It entails understanding political ideas, ideologies, institutions, policies, processes, and behavior, as well as groups, classes, government, diplomacy, law, strategy, and war. A background in political science is valuable for citizenship and political action, as well as for future careers in government, law, business, media, or public service.[1]

         

While one can detect some peripheral interest in ideals, the topic seems not to be addressed directly – perhaps political philosophy would be more disposed to addressing it.

Obviously, if political action involves the manipulation of power arrangements for the purposes of securing goals and attaining value satisfaction, then everyone is a political actor from time to time.  Such an encompassing model, one that directly and extensively addresses this concern over the ideal domain, was not found by this researcher in political science literature. 

The parochial/traditional federalist model, while concerning itself with political ideals, especially those identified as republican ideals, has been limited in its analytic efforts to describe and explain some idealistic view of what could or should be.[2]  The political systems approach, associated with the natural rights view of governance and politics – and highlighted earlier in this blog – falls short of sufficiently addressing the concerns of the ideal domain. 

Philip Selznick comes close to providing such a model (and many of his insights will be incorporated below), but the description of what he calls communitarian liberalism lacks comprehensive and isomorphic qualities in relation to what is called for here.  Again, the emphasis seems to be on what is and why that reality exists, and little attention is directed to the question revolving around the concern about what should be.

          What is offered in upcoming postings is a model of political activity not necessarily suitable for professional analysis, but viable for the study of government in the nation’s secondary classrooms.  That is, what is being sought here is not to guide the efforts of political scientists, per se, but to guide the efforts of civics educators and the claim here is that their demands significantly part ways from those of political scientists. 

Be that as it may, what this account is offering is a model this blogger calls liberated federalism and the demand here is that it should address sufficiently, if not directly, the ideal domain as well as the real and physiological domains.  Does that mean that this proposed construct can totally ignore the demands of political science study?  Of course, not; it needs to be sufficiently attuned to what that discipline holds as essential in its pursuit of political knowledge, but the ultimate aim or aims of civics educators do differ from that other professional field.

Before providing a description of the elements of a liberated federalism model and the model itself (being the topics of various postings to come), a word should be given to determining the viability of such a model.  This blog will address what conditions this model must address to be a legitimate and a viable foundation for the study of government in the nation’s schools.  Addressing this concern takes on several dimensions.  Eugene J. Meehan[3] provides criteria by which social scientists can judge constructs.

While a curriculum developer and/or implementer of curriculum have different concerns from social scientists, some of Meehan’s ideas can be incorporated into evaluating constructs for the purposes of classroom use.  The following questions suggest themselves from Meehan’s work:

 

·       Does this construct explain as many phenomena as possible as are classified under its concepts and generalizations?  (Does it have scope?)

·       Does this construct control the explanation it is presenting by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relation between and among those parts?  (Does it have power?)

·       Does this construct specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use?  (Does it have precision?)

·       Does this construct have the same control over the class of situations it is explaining without changing the relations it has established?  That is, does it explain the same way time after time?  (Does it have reliability?)

·       Does the construct contain one-to-one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain?  (Does it have isomorphism?)

·       Does this construct predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question?  (Does it have predictability?)

·       Does this construct imply ways of controlling the phenomena in question?  (Does it have purpose?)

 

In other words, given the general goal of the liberated federalism model, how does its view of governance and politics match up with the realities of government and serve as a vehicle by which to present that reality, i.e., the structures, functions, and processes involved, including how it is contextualized among all relevant reality?

          But, as pointed out above, this construct is not aimed toward guiding political research by political scientists and other social scientists, but in guiding the efforts of civics teachers in secondary classrooms.  That means that in addition to the above concerns, there are exclusive pedagogic concerns as well.  That fact leads to two more questions.  They are:

 

·       Does this construct facilitate an educator to present its content at such abstraction levels amenable to students being able to comprehend the content?  (Does it have an appropriate abstraction level?)

·       Does this construct allow presentations of the material to students in such ways as to have motivating qualities in its presentation?  (Does it motivate students?)

 

A curriculum, to be viable, must sufficiently be powerful enough in relation to its subject matter[4] and be amenable enough to teenage students – students dealing with all the challenges of adolescence.  A tall order, indeed.

          What follows in the upcoming postings is a report on the way the liberated federalist construct addresses its subject matter.  Later, this blog will address pedagogic issues, but first it will “do” the subject matter.  It is argued in this synthesis that the liberated federalism approach, as will be presented, provides positive responses to the concerns posed by Meehan’s questions. 

What will follow in this blog illustrates that liberated federalism is a viable representation of governance and politics and a legitimate basis, from the demands of the subject matter, to generate the substance for an effective American government and civics curriculum.  The next posting will begin reviewing the elements of the liberated federalism model.

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[1] “What Is Political Science,” Department of Political Science/Northwestern University (n.d.), accessed June 19, 2023, https://polisci.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/index.html#:~:text=It%20entails%20understanding%20political%20ideas,law%2C%20strategy%2C%20and%20war.

[2] For example see Andrew Roberts, “The State of Socialism:  A Note on Terminology,” Slavic Review, 63, 2 (Summer 2004), accessed June 18, 2023, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/abs/state-of-socialism-a-note-on-terminology/4C742B00BE0D00ED3F0BE855097DE5F7.

[3] Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).

[4] “Difference between Subject Matter and Content,” Difference Between.net (n.d.), accessed June 17, 2023, http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-subject-matter-and-content/#:~:text=Subject%20matter%20communicates%20ideas%20and,gaining%20from%20the%20knowledge%20imparted.  AND Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1949).