With the last posting, this blog began a
viability statement regarding the construct, liberated federalism. That construct has been described and
explained in a number of postings starting with “From Natural Rights to
Liberated Federalism” (June 2, 2023).
Readers are invited to use the archive feature of the blog (via Google: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/) and review the postings dedicated to that
presentation.
Using Eugene Meehan’s criteria to evaluate
social science constructs, this blog, in the last posting, utilized Meehan’s
first criterion, comprehension; this posting will apply his second, control. By using or implementing control, a reviewer
asks: does a construct control the
explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in
relationships between and among those parts?
That is, does it have power? Since this is a proposed adoption of this
model, the power level of the model will only become apparent through its
use. The model, as the foundational
construct, has to be used in the building of curricular content. Through that function, teachers and
curriculum material designers of American government and civics will determine
the effectiveness of this model by measuring the success that resultant
materials have in teaching those subject areas.
From a theoretical point of view, the judgment
of this synthesis is that it viably presents the factors, roles, and necessary
structures that are essential to creating a communal democracy with federalist
values. Further, it claims that these
elements can be synthesized into a product that teachers can transmit in
practice to the extent that the natural rights perspective and the political
systems construct have been able to do and is currently dominant in American
schools.
The model is based on the ideas and
relationships of such writers as Michael Sandel,[1]
Daniel Elazar,[2] and
Donald Lutz.[3] The model also reflects the synthesis of
communal, moral theorizing offered by Philip Selznick.[4] Selznick describes his effort in the
following way:
Although this work reflects my experience as a
sociologist, I take an ecumenical view of that discipline … “[S]ocial theory,”
as used in the subtitle here, includes political, legal, and moral theory.
Like
Emile Durkheim, I believe sociology is preeminently a “moral science” … Of
course, many specific studies – many lines of inquiry – are mainly descriptive
and explanatory … The closer we come, however, to what is central in the
discipline, the more important is evaluation …
Hence,
the distinctive feature of a moral or humanist science is its commitment to
normative theory, that is, to theories that evaluate as well as explain. In political science, constitutional theory
is normative or evaluative, in that it speaks to the difference between
superior and inferior constitutional systems, which may be strong or weak as
ways of achieving the rule of law.
Normative theory is value-centered.
It identifies values, including latent or emergent values, and studies
the conditions affecting their fulfillment or frustration … [W]e consider what
is genuinely valuable – and affects the fate of values – in the social worlds
we study, including our own, whether or not it conforms to our preferences.[5]
In short, the elements of the proposed model,
including the interrelationships it indicates, are based on the writings of
distinguished experts and their own and reviewed research in the social
sciences.
In
addition, the model is not limited to descriptive and explanatory theory, but
to normative theory as well. The needs
of students – young citizens – being introduced to the structures, processes,
and functions of government are more demanding than a neutral descriptive
account can provide. The application of
moral standards to authority, the same source from which they receive the
rules, regulations, and laws these youths are expected to obey, is inevitable.
Whether
the standards are based on short term consideration or longer-term ones are dependent
on socializing agents. Communitarian
agents are what encourage longer term perspectives and permit political
perspectives that are less conflictual and, according to Selznick, based on consensus. But one should keep in mind that conflict
will always be an element of political life and the liberated federalist model
does not short-change that reality.
And
to see beyond that reality, to see beyond a political context in which the
individual is scheming to attain the marginal advantage, the person must be
socialized to standards which promote “a healthy social environment [where]
this separateness [of the individual] is mitigated and obscured.”[6]
And
this posting leaves readers with the parting Selznick quote,
Nothing, I say, can be desired by men more
excellent for their self-preservation than that all with all should so agree
that they compose the minds of all into one mind, and the bodies of all one body,
and all endeavour at the same time as much as possible to preserve their being,
and all seek at the same time what is useful to them all as a body. From which it follows that men who are
governed by reason … desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire
for the rest of mankind, and therefore they are just, faithful, and honourable.[7]
In an ideal frame of mind, nothing could be
more powerful and possible than these claims by Selznick.
Next,
this blog will address precision.
[1] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1996).
[2] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States (New York,
NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1966 AND
“Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33
(Spring), 231-254.
[3] Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American
Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1988).
[4] Philip Selznick, The
Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and
the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1992).
[5] Ibid., xii-xiii.
[6] Ibid., 208.
[7] Ibid., 209.
