This blog, which is in the midst of presenting
a political model for the purposes of guiding civics curricular efforts, is set
to offer the model’s second component.
The first is the community and the second is participating entities. The model is entitled liberated
federalism. This posting describes and
explains this second component.
Entities
can be persons, groups, associations (both within and without government),
local governments, state governments, regional organizations of states, the
national government, or arrangements, including the United States and other
nations. One can ascribe to these
entities ideal attributes.
First,
entities have constitutional integrity, i.e., they have moral worth which
endows them with dignity and integrity as autonomous actors in the political
arena. They can make decisions, act upon
those decisions, and be held accountable for the consequences of those
activities. They, therefore, have
rights. Entities, in terms of this
model, are participants in some enterprise in which an arrangement with other
entities has been formulated.
Arrangements
are formulated for some purpose or purposes.
The entity is in relation with other entities within the arrangement
under the auspices of some agreement.
The agreement can take the form of a verbal statement, a contract, or a
compact or covenant. Each entity has
certain attributes within the context of the arrangement.
These
attributes are:
·
Status refers to the degree to
which the entity can be considered an elite.
Leaders of the arrangement have high status; followers have lower
status, non-active participants, usually, have even lower status.
·
Conscience refers to the individual’s
or collective’s ideal domain which contains the notions of desirable states in
terms right and wrong behavior. Of most
relevance are the desirable feelings of right and wrong associated with the
reasons for the arrangement.
·
Skills include listening, communicating,
physical dexterity and athleticism, researching, and political (such as
lobbying) skills, and other personality traits relevant to the role of the
entity. Personality can include humor,
friendliness, tolerance, accepting disposition, assertiveness, and decisiveness.
·
Roles include leadership roles,
followship roles, and other strategic positions. This can lead to inquiry as to the
appropriate types of roles that a particular arrangement should have and what
kinds of entities should fill them.
Primary in determining which roles and the kinds of entities that should
fill them would reflect the purpose of the arrangement.
Deserving special note is the attribute of
character – a more encompassing attribute – that is, it deals with conscience. It is considered not from its content but
from its depth. One asks in terms of
character: is the conscience of the
entity one that is the product of a reflected process? How well and thorough was that reflection? And does the entity have the courage of conviction
to act according to those reflected ideals?
These are the concerns of character.
Again,
associated with conscience but to a more specific level, is what the interests
of the entity are. This practical attribute is the list of relevant values,
both of material and non-material types, held by the entity. This attribute is also concerned with whether
the interests are short or long term. A
moral perspective is more concerned with long term interests.[1]
Within
an arrangement there can be any number of entities. Theory can be developed, and study can be
conducted to determine the optimal number of entities, given the purposes of an
arrangement (beyond the scope of this account).
But whatever the number, there needs for a relationship to exist among
the entities. Federalist unions require
that the entities, despite their varying statuses, enjoy equality among them.
Donald
Lutz points out that a basic characteristic of American federalism was a belief
in the equality among parties that joined compact-al or covenantal associations
and based on each member’s abilities to give consent. This notion can be
expanded so that, as part of an extended republic, all states were given equal
standing when joining a federal union of the United States. Not all states enjoyed the same status, but
all were equal under the auspices of the association.[2]
In like manner, the entities depicted in
the model enjoy the same equality.
The
relationship among the entities also has communal links tying them
together. The links can include the
elements of the agreement, emotional ties, shared resources, shared interests,
and mutual respect. All or any of these
links would make the entities closer and more committed to accomplishing the
purposes of the arrangement.
Again,
this relation has to do with what Selznick calls reciprocal advantage.[3] This concern includes an understanding that a
communal sense among the members of an arrangement increases the chances of
success; it is sensitive to the whimsical nature of fortune and fate, and it
avoids the disruption that a lack of dignity and integrity can cause any
collective (communal) effort.
The
last aspect of the model associated with the entities is the relationship between
them and the arrangement. The entity has
the obligation and duty to extend to the arrangement loyalty, trust, skills,
and knowledge. Of course, the nature of
the arrangement will dictate the exact nature of these obligations and duties. But loyalty, trust, skills, and knowledge
have the very practical consequence of making success and long-term
satisfaction of interests appreciably more likely.
Any
arrangement in which its member entities do not meet these obligations and
duties to a minimal degree would find it very difficult to meet the purposes of
its existence.[4] This point is important in that it, in terms
of day-to-day life, focuses on a basic difference between liberated federalism
and the natural rights view. The former,
liberated federalism highlights these obligations and duties and the latter,
natural rights, mostly dismisses them as merely the product of individual choices
among the populace.
Picking
up on this attribute, in return, the arrangement has certain responsibilities
to the individual entities; first, to guarantee the equal standing that an
individual entity is entitled to. This responsibility
should be addressed by the arrangement’s policies, by-laws, and other governing
attributes, and by the treatment of the entities in the arrangement pursuing
its goals.
Second,
in cases when an entity is lacking relevant resources and skills, the
arrangement, in relation to its resources and purposes, should make special
allowances and possibly distribute some helpful subsidies in order to “level
the playing field” among the entities.
Public schooling can be seen in this light. Selznick writes of derivative rights that one
can and should associate with equal treatment.[5]
And
that ends this account’s coverage of the first two components of the liberated
federalism model, the community and participating entities. That leaves the last component, the studied
association. The next posting will begin
addressing that component as it serves as the center of this model’s concern. For the purposes of civics education, the
studied association is the US government, a state government, or governmental
arrangement at the local level (e.g., city government).
[1] Philip Selznick, The
Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and
the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1992).
[2] Donald S. Lutz, “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,
1639,” in Roots of the Republic:
American Founding Documents Interpreted, edited by Stephen L.
Schechter (Madison, WI: Madison House,
1990.
[3] Selznick, The Moral
Commonwealth.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
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