ILLUSIVE SEPARATION?

Most of us are familiar with the political discourse that deals with the issue of whether government does enough for us or whether it does too much. Liberals (or what we call liberals in terms of this discussion) call for governmental programs that address a wide assortment of concerns such as poverty, health care, education, the environment, race issues, immigration, and the like. Conservatives, at almost every turn, call for a scaling back, if not eliminating or not funding government programs in these areas. There are some areas in which conservatives call for more extensive governmental action, as in abortion, but the general view is that conservatives are against government involvement in our private affairs. Much of this debate is based on an assumption: there is a private sector distinguishable from a public sector and each acts according to its own dictates and constitutes its own locus of power. That, in one realm of our society, lie those organizations – mostly businesses – that are apart from government and exist to provide goods and services for compensation. That while this realm is probably regulated by government to some degree, they exist as separate entities from government and their level of independence should be guarded and protected from the clutches of government to the extent possible. They should be able, for the most part, to act as they see fit and, by so doing, exercise their, mostly property, rights. On the other side, is a government populated by professional politicians and career government workers who operate in their own spheres with minimal involvement from outside actors. I would postulate that our civics and government instruction in schools across the nation teaches that these two sectors exist and that there exists a customary and legal separation between the two realms – the separation is part and parcel of our democracy or constitutional order.

There is a group of political scientists who question this assumption. According to Amitai Etzioni, the list of scholars who are doing (or did) the questioning include Grant McConnell, E. E. Schattschneider, C. Wright Mills, Theodore Lowi, and Mancur Olson. While these scholars might vary in their views of the extent of overlap between the two sectors and how the two act in coordination or in unison, each brings into question the view that the sectors are separate and mostly act independently of each other. They would argue, to some extent, that the sectors or realms act too much in tandem to be so independent as the assumption would have one believe.

Whether or not the sectors are independent or not or, if not, to what degree they are separate is a question that not only is important in understanding our system of governance, but dictates the types of questions that instruction should ask about our governance. A few postings ago, I reported on the use of Social Security numbers by private entities for a wide range of purposes. Etzioni reported on how the numbers are used to identify customers or clients or to categorize information about a whole slew of personal items such as medical, financial, or legal information. He used this case to illustrate how a line between the private and the public realms became blurred by the practice of utilizing Social Security numbers for private purposes or public purposes outside the Social Security program. In future postings, I will give other examples Etzioni provides. In this posting, the aim is to merely point out this scholarly area of interest that places in doubt a wide array of assumptions civics and government instruction holds – basic assumptions – of how our system is arranged and works. For if the private and public realms are not so independent from each other, many other assumptions come into question such as the essence of representation in Congress or the particularity of the policies of a specific Presidential administration. Our whole popular view of the democratic quality of our system can potentially come into question. Are these two realms answering to a third realm: corporate America, popular culture, or the political class? The point is that one cannot assume, as is the case of the Social Security numbers, that either the governmental/public sector or the business/private sector acts of its own volition – at least not entirely – and that such a possibility is not necessarily anti-democratic although it very well might be. What we can surely say is that such a reality is consequential.

The claim Etzioni is proposing is

… the deep divide between the public and the private realm (which plays a cardinal role in public discourse and is drawn upon in several segments of social science) is not nearly as deep as is often assumed, and that the two realms are intertwined and tend to change in tandem. Moreover, we often face the same forces on both sides of the divide; that is, they have a private face and a public face, but are actually often one and the same actor. Finally, the blurring of the realms has increased since the advent of cyberspace, although … it was in place long before the 1980s.¹

All of this, if true, belies the claims of the Tea Party and conservative politicians such as Paul Ryan. They push for policies or oppose policies – usually inhibiting the government from addressing pressing national problems such as unemployment – that assume the divide, that very likely, is not there.

1Etzioni, A. (2013). The bankruptcy of liberalism and conservatism. Political Science Quarterly, 128 (1), pp. 39-65. Quotation on p. 61.

REVIEWING A CIVICS MANDATE

I have from time to time in this blog made certain distinctions between traditional federalism and liberated federalism. The former is the political mental construct that served, more than any other construct, the founders in their formulation of our nation and its political/legal system. It is a construct that was heavily influenced by the congregational tradition of early religious thought that served much of the theory by which early settlements were organized. This was especially true in the New England colonies. This thought, by the way, went a long way in steering a political culture across the northern stretch of states in the United States.¹ This is a more moral approach to politics and is distinguished from the central layer of states with an individualistic perspective and southeast states that had/has a traditional political culture orientation. The moralistic strain, to a very meaningful degree, took on a mostly Aristotelian bias in that moral citizenship is marked by participation, policy judgments based on their promotion or antagonism of the common good and, with a departure from Aristotelian thought, a strong sense for equality among societal members. In addition, traditional federalism has been marked by a strong support of small polities (which is weary of larger political units like the federal government) and parochial values. But transcending all of these perspectives was the view that the polity, in order to be federalist, is the product of a people coming together and forming the governmental structure through agreement among its members. The agreement is solemn oath and takes the form of a covenant – God witnessing the agreement – or a compact – God not called upon to witness the agreement. As the nation became diversified and its political arrangements became more expansive – with an accompanying diversified view of God or a deity – a compact became the mode of agreement as is the case with the US Constitution.

For regular readers of this blog, the above description is old hat, but for newer readers it is a good review of this blog's basic ideas. This blog is dedicated to promoting a form of federalism, liberated federalism, as a construct useful in guiding content choices in a civics curriculum for our secondary schools. This form of federalism is easy on its promotion of local and small political entities, but maintains the call for equality, participation, and the set of values that denotes moral politics. It is offered as an idealistic perspective, but hopefully mindful of the real social and political nature of people.

One might ask: why call it a construct instead of a theory or an ideology? It is not a theory when it comes to guiding curricular choices because the purpose is not to give a purported definitive explanation of politics or even American politics. It is not offered as a predictive statement or as a guide for political science research. A form of it might be devised for those purposes, but here it is offered as a direction to which students' attention should be geared – what issues students should consider as they learn about their government and their nation's politics. The operative word is “consider” and as such, what is being proposed is not an ideology. It hints at what should be considered; it does not tell students what to believe. In this sense, the construct serves the same function as that of the prevailing dominant construct – that construct being the natural rights construct or as it is known in philosophical writings, liberalism (not to be confused by what is generally called liberalism in our popular discourse).

Let me confess; I am not a political philosopher – as if that weren't obvious. I am an educator concerned with how best to encourage the development of good citizens. I believe that task to be very important, especially in a democracy. I believe many of our current civics efforts are too closely hitched to the ideals and ideas associated with market values and to a construct that promotes the individual determination of values. While I am totally against a curriculum that calls on students to adopt a set of values, I do believe that we have enough history under our belts to determine a list of values that, if people would abide by them, would bolster a healthy society – a list I have provided in the past. It makes sense that a curriculum should, at least, make students aware of these values. How? By having students present issues and situations that relate to those values and have them tackle them as challenges and figure out the essence of each, the consequences of varying courses of action, the actions they favor, and the justifications for their choices. In this manner, the construct can provide the guidance, not indoctrination, of which I write.

1Elazar, D. J. (1966). American federalism: A view from the states. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

HOW FEDERALIST?

Here's an idea for seniors in high school. In a government class, they can see how federalist their community is. By federalist, I mean how much a community fits an ideal model. That model states that ideal political system is formed when a people bind together under the auspices of a covenant or compact in which all of them are equal under that agreement – equal under the law – with equal opportunity to accomplish their self-defined goals in life. This ideal does not call for equal results where all share equally in income or wealth or reputation or any other social or economic advantage. But it does, by implication, hint that the disparity of income or wealth cannot be so large that those at the bottom or middle lack any reasonable chances to improve their lots or even earn a place among those at the top.

Now this blog doesn't, as a rule, address instructional issues, but this posting will, because the implication of its topic has a strong relevance on content. So here is an instructional strategy that does point students in a specific content direction. One project for these seniors would be to investigate who belongs to the top echelon of the social and economic hierarchy within their community. This project would be especially revealing if the students live in a large urban area, but the exercise can be useful if the community is smaller and more homogenous in terms of social groupings or economic activity.

An instructional strategy for such a project can follow the research design Floyd Hunter used in his famous study, Community Power Structure.¹ I will reveal that strategy over several postings, but let me summarize briefly that a large part of the study had Hunter interview a list of forty top individuals of a city he calls Regional City. Apparently, by using the made up name he was able to keep the anonymity of those interviewed and, thereby, get more revealing information from the interviewees.

The first step was to identify those fields in which the top individuals would be found. He writes:

In Regional City the men of power were located by finding persons in prominent positions in four groups that may be assumed to have power connections. These groups were identified with business, government, civic associations, and “society” activities.²

The important element here is that the determiner for Hunter is power. That is, he is trying to determine who the people are who can get others to do what they want them to do irrespective of those other people's wishes. Given this structure, students could first inquire as to what the leading organizations are in each of these four categories. This can be determined by a variety of ways – reputation, importance, longevity, etc, – but how large their respective budgets are is probably most useful. One can probably find out what the respective budgets of these entities are – they are, for the most part, public knowledge – and the information has a more objective quality than such factors as reputation.

Once the organizations are determined, their leaders – chief executive officers, chief financial officers, chairpersons of the board, high profile board members – can be identified. A list can be formulated and by comparing budgets and what people in the know – like journalists – say about these people, a class of students can determine who the final forty should be. Once identified, the subsequent steps can begin. What those steps are will be the subject of future postings.

The object is to ascertain what these leaders believe their role is in their community, what they see is or should be the structure of opportunity in that community, and what they believe is the legitimacy of their power. Do they see themselves and their organizations as structures limited to advance their shareholders' interests or do they see a role that goes beyond that responsibility? What percentage of economic activity do they control within the community? Do they provide opportunities beyond meeting their immediate needs from the labor pool of the community? For civic associations, how do they perceive their role in advancing opportunities? What rates of success have they been able to achieve in advancing opportunities? These are some of the questions students can ask of these leaders once they are identified and interviews with them are secured. Just finding out how open to being questioned by these students can be revealing. A summary article in the high school paper can be written and published. Subsequent years can extend the list to other leaders that were not in the original list of forty and the effect over some years can be an expanded study of the power structure within the community. This would be a useful view of the kind of place in which these students live. They can get a sense of how federalist it is.

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study of decision makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

2Ibid., p. 11.

A CONCERN FOR GOVERNANCE

The Federalist Papers is a collection of essays written for the purpose of “selling” the new proposed constitution of 1787. They were initially written anonymously but we do know who wrote them: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. In the one entitled, Number 51, Madison writes of the challenge of setting up a new government: “[T]he great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” We Americans, according to Samuel P. Huntington,¹ seem to under-appreciate the first of these challenges and over- emphasize the second. We tend to forget that we inherited from mostly the British a sense for established governance, yet we also inherited from them the need to react to over-governance. And so it has become part of our folklore to romanticize our rebellious spirit, our sense of independence from any foreign force and from our own government. Unfortunately, this bias gets easily translated as an anti-government language we bandy about. It also lends to the rhetoric of opposition aimed at those governmental programs with which we disagree. Not only do we not want the programs, but fighting them gets elevated to an inordinate and unwarranted crusade against big government.

A prime example today is how we see universal health care. Is providing health care a legitimate government responsibility? Here is an argument for it: disease is no more a danger to our citizenry than a foreign enemy. We set up governments for mutual protection. The difference is that no private entity can afford individual protection against a foreign national force. It takes a national government to do that. But in the case of health, some citizens can afford private medical care and some can't. Our ability to pay should not stand in the way of any of us getting a reasonable level of care relative to the national economy's ability to pay for such care. Well, I don't expect this argument to change anyone's view, but I provide it to demonstrate a point of view that does not threaten our liberty, at least not any more so than a government providing for national defense.

As a matter of fact, it points to a need for governance. We should be about forming a more perfect union, a goal our constitution identifies. How can one argue a more perfect union is achieved when tens of millions of citizens cannot receive viable health care? Such a position is not reasonable. And an approach to governance that sets out to provide health care for all citizens cannot be seen as a failure of our government “to control itself.”

1Huntington, S. P. (1968). Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS AND THEIR USES

In a recent article, The Bankruptcy of Liberalism and Conservatism,¹ the eminent sociologist, Amitai Etzioni, reports on the extended use of Social Security numbers (SSNs) in identifying citizens and legal residents. The growth of this use has taken place despite the concerns by many over privacy and security issues. Those issues have been expressed ever since Social Security began back in the thirties as part of the New Deal legislation under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt. Etzioni cites this case study to make a larger point about the assumptions made in public discourses between liberals and conservatives – a point I will most likely visit in the future. But my concern here is more in line with one that I have made in the past. That is, one of the assumptions made in defense of unrestricted gun sales seems to miss the point and the reality associated with governmental power as it is constituted today.

Etizioni provides a summary account of how not only the public sector – government – but the private sector – businesses and private organizations – have come to, in ever increasing levels, count on the use of SSNs. As a former university prof, I was often disconcerted by the use of SSNs in identifying students. It seems that my own dealings with banks, insurance companies, doctors' offices, and the like all call for me offering up my SSN. All my dealings with the federal government revolve around me being identified by this number. This is not only the Social Security office, but Medicare or services such as getting a passport. Etzioni makes the point that since information has been digitized, the use of SSNs has skyrocketed. In all of this, despite the absence of a federal identification card – which most countries demand of their citizens – the federal government's ability to keep track of us has become extremely efficient. And with the extended use by the private sector, a process that makes collating information about us relatively simple and far reaching, the amount of information about us which is easily retrievable is downright scary.

I have made the point before: if we extend an unlimited right to “bear arms” in order to protect us from an oppressive government, that “ship has sailed.” The extended use of SSNs by government and private entities – information easily obtainable through subpoena – has made any insurrection by an oppressed people that more improbable in even getting off the ground, much less in meeting success. That's not to mention what I have mentioned before: the government's regulation of motor vehicles, communication facilities, other transportation facilities, and the weaponry at its disposal makes armed rebellion a romantic, but unrealistic possibility. So if the concern is to keep the government in check – a responsible concern – I think we as citizens should be more concerned with other means than counting on launching an armed insurrection. Such efforts such as active participation in our governmental processes, active economic involvement, active community involvement, being educated about the issues before us that would be facilitated by an active press and school instruction that is informed and proficient would all be more reasonable ways of putting pressure on governmental officials to do right. And we should be insistent that citizens be involved in overseeing what government does at all levels from the local to the national and international. Part of that effort is a viable civics education program.

1Etzioni, A. (2013). The bankruptcy of liberalism and conservatism. Political Science Quarterly, 128 (1), pp. 39-65.

A PROVERBIAL AMERICAN TENSION

I have from time to time in this blog used the expression: the freedom to do what one should do, not necessarily what one wants to do. I have further associated this expression with the vision of liberty promoted by federalist thought – at least as an ideal for which federalists strive. I have also made the claim that the founding generation of our political system – those patriots we recognize as starting our republic – were swayed, more so than by any other construct, by federalist thought. Therefore, one can readily assume that I see the founders believing in a severe socialization of youth in which they are taught that the good of the community trumps the good of the individual. By so doing, we can solve the Rousseauean problem: “… we no longer have citizens.”¹ Or stated another way, the founders argued: we should all conduct our lives in such a way that we place the interests of the community above our own. That is what it means to “do what we should do ...”.

The nation, during its Puritanical beginnings and for many years thereafter, placed this kind of burden on individuals. The earliest settlers might not have taken this notion as far as Rousseau did, but religiously stern discipline characterized many of the expectations of those New England settlers. In this blog, I have traced the history of how the harsh initial conditions of the frontier demanded this kind of discipline to assure the very survival of the early settlements. But naturally, as those conditions softened, the rationale for such a view became ever more difficult to maintain. Slowly, the more hospitable environment – caused in no small measure by the discipline exerted by the earlier Americans – led to political and social perspectives that liberalized our laws, customs, mores, and ethos. In addition, writers other than Rousseau, such as John Stuart Mill and John Locke, presented arguments that individuals are entitled to rights and that the community cannot and should not impose burdens on individuals that transgress those rights. These rights are provided by nature.

Since prior postings have spelled out this development, my purpose here is to merely remind you of this overall evolution and to point out that by the time of the founders of our present republic, there was still a very strong sense of societal duty and obligation, but that this sense had been somewhat compromised – how compromised is up to interpretation and debate. Read what a current scholar believes about the state of mind most founders were in by the late eighteenth century:

[The Federalist – collection of essays promoting the newly written constitution of 1787] presumed … that man is selfish and his politics factious. Moreover, stability of the regime is assured only through “mechanical devices” aimed at pitting “ambition against ambition” within government and faction against faction in society. …

It can no longer be taken for granted, however, that the American constitutional founders – even the authors of The Federalist – can be described as Lockean liberals. … I will argue that the revisionists were right in asserting that the constitutional founders were more civic-minded, more concerned about the dispositions of citizens to undertake public duties, than the “possessive individualist” … I reject what I see as a tendency in the revisionist literature [though] to assume that where civic virtue is discussed – and practiced – liberalism must be absent.²

In other words, it is hard to peg the founders on a continuum from republicanism – with a commitment to civic duty – and liberalism – with a commitment to individual interests. My take is that the difficulty lies in the nature of the transition the nation was only beginning to experience at that time and is still progressing today.³

One thing we should not forget when considering the founders is that they saw themselves creating a layered polity. A problem they were trying to solve was how do you get citizens to take on the burdens of obligations and duties without the resulting regime being oppressive. How do you, at the same time, maintain within each of us the ambition to help build that great nation with a vibrant economy that not only provides a better material life, but provides the resources to make the nation strong in relation to other nations? How do you create the conditions that would lead to a foreign policy sufficiently vibrant to protect our national interests? The national layer of the polity was to set the political infrastructure by which such a posture could be created. It would set about a governmental framework to allow this more ambitious agenda by allowing people, at least as far as the national government was concerned, to advance their individual goals and aims. It would create those conditions that would allow a national market with a free trading zone to be established and unleash the natural ambitions of Americans to not only prosper on the Atlantic seaboard, but to conquer a continent chock full of resources. With these aims eventually accomplished, they believed that prominence, power, and wealth would naturally follow. Allegiance to this more grandiose government would be based on its protection of individual rights by first limiting its powers to those delegated in the national compact and later by adding a set of rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, as far as promoting what Richard C. Sinopoli calls “a sentiment of allegiance,” the local government, under the auspices of the state governments, would take the lead in this more communal ambition.

Why? Because the national government was, in the eyes of the founders, probably too big and represented too many diverse interests to be able to engender the attachment and allegiance upon which civic virtue depends. Smaller entities, like the states, with more limited populations, interests, and diversity can engender those bonds of attachment the founders believed essential. Of course, what exactly was viewed as deserving allegiance would be, from state to state, very different and, of course, in one area this diversity almost led to the union dissolving. As it was, it led to a bloody civil war.

Where are we today given this tension between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community? A lot of politics today is an expression of this tension. If anything, the alternative views between the two are being expressed with more intensity than what had been the case some thirty years ago. The presidency of Ronald Reagan gave a shot in the arm to those views promoting the individualist side of the debate. Recently, those who champion the duty and obligation side have had some successes. For example, the passing of the Affordable Health Care Act has been interpreted by many as the society taking on the responsibility of providing health insurance to many who can't afford it. This provision, in turn, is viewed as a program that will lead to a healthier nation and, as such, promotes the common good. The final outcome of Obamacare will go a long way in defining where we are: are we tilting toward the “me” or are we tilting toward the “us”? Are we finding morality under a doctrine of individual determination or under a doctrine of societal welfare calculation?

1Quoted in Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 3.

2Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 4-5.

3In terms of the prominent views of those in the political class between the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, I am partial to the description provided to us by Gordon S. Wood. See Wood, G. S. (1998). The creation of the American republic 1776-1787. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. This seminal work was originally published in 1969.

LOOKING AT POWER RELATIONS

Back in the early fifties, a political scientist, Floyd Hunter,¹ came out with an influential study on power and power relations in a local community. The volume presenting the study is entitled Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Such a study has to, early on, define the concept, power. In this blog, I have used the definition for power as that social factor in which one party can get another party to do something he/she would not do otherwise. Here's Hunter's definition: “[p]ower is a word that will be used to describe the acts of men [and women] going about the business of moving other men [and/or women] to act in relation to themselves or in relation to organic or inorganic things.”² I judge Hunter's definition to be in agreement with how I use the term. So, his study is a view of a local community he names Regional City and how the power relations of that community are structured.

While his study is about the structure of power relations, he readily admits in his introduction that there are other factors, beyond structure, that can influence the nature of those relations. Including structure, he identifies four factor categories. These categories are elements of social life in a community that can and usually do influence how power relations operate and function within that community. In his study, he is focusing on only one of the factors directly. The other three are designated as “residual elements” and he admits that while influential, they would fall outside the scope of his study. The other three are historical reference, psychological motivation, and values, morals, and ethical considerations. By identifying these factor categories, Hunter provides civics educators a helpful set of topics that, if used, can provide a conceptual framework by which to attack this whole area of concern: community power relations.

This posting will give a short description of each element and comment on how they might be addressed in civics lessons. First let's look at historical reference. Here, the claim is that what has been discussed and written in the past about power will have an influence on how power is used and how people will form their expectations regarding power. The list of writers who have addressed the meaning and uses of power includes a who's who of political thinkers. They include Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Marx, and many others. Just to cite one of these, look at the influence Marx had, on a global basis, during the twentieth century. And this influence was not limited to national political debates, but filtered all the way down to the local affairs of those nations that fell under communist rule. Another angle to the historical factor has to do with how a particular area has developed or failed to develop from traditional societal conditions to modern and post modern conditions. This development has a lot to do with who has power. Historical development is the context in which power positions are created and the definitions of legitimacy are formulated. All of this is relevant to how power is defined, used, and abused.

In a civics class, the historical context should always be addressed. Even if the main aim of a lesson is not the history of a relation, students need to know how an event or set of events fits, at least on some minimum level, within its historical time. In so doing, an educator should seek out those historical stories that provide the human touch that can liven up what is being addressed. Often, in order to make what is being studied understandable to young students, real stories can provide meaning that an abstract presentation cannot. Let me use an example from my own education on power relations. I, like any American student, read about the “Know Nothing” movement in the US. This movement was an attempt to “purify” American culture and politics from any foreign influence, particularly from the onslaught of Irish immigrants and their Catholicism. Textbook descriptions of the movement never really caused in me much of a response. But when I saw the feature film, Gangs of New York, I understood many of the nuances involved in the power relations associated with the “Know Nothing” movement. That vividness not only provides useful information, but stirs the senses needed to be able to get the whole meaning of how power in a city like New York has been affected by the history of such a time. Even today, the roots, beliefs, traditions, and other aspects of the power relations that were established over a hundred years earlier still have meaning in that city.

The second power factor identified by Hunter is psychological motivation. Once the parties of a relation are made known, knowing what psychological factors affect them becomes a very useful thing to determine. Knowing what psychological motives such as ambition, greed, loyalty, fear, respect, and the like are in play is useful to ascertain whether one is actually engaged in a power relation with someone else or is studying a power relation. To accurately determine what psychologically motivates the subjects of a relation will go a long way in predicting power moves in the future or gaining understanding as to why a person or group acted in a particular way in any given power interaction. Of course, to know what motivates a person or group is hard to determine. We, at times, have a hard time figuring out why we act the way we do, much less why someone else acts as he or she does. But the effort is not only helpful in understanding a given situation, but it gives insight as to the nature of human behavior in general. The need for this type of knowledge is self-evident, but to actually determine motivations can be a very daunting task.

Of course, we don't expect civics students at the secondary level to be knowledgeable enough about psychology in order to determine what the motivations of people are, but asking about why people act as they do is a natural line of questioning. Students engage in such questioning all the time: why did my girl/boyfriend storm off; why did mom insist I wear this dorky outfit; why did Mr. X pile on such an assignment just before vacation? The aim here would be to get students to understand that motivations are varied and oftentimes not obvious or direct. As I stated above, even the person under our analysis might not know his or her own true motivation.

The third power factor Hunter mentions is values, morals, and ethical considerations. Somewhat related to motivations, the values factor has to do with what people consider to be moral or good or, by implication, what is evil or bad. When talking about politics, politicians, and even businesspeople, we often think that such considerations don't come into play. This is not true. How people see the ethical considerations of a situation, especially when the exertion of power is involved, can and do affect how they behave even if what's under consideration is the implementation of a power advantage. Most people attempt to be “good” when they deal with others. The challenges appear when the consequences become highly rewarding or highly costly. The consequences might affect them directly or might affect a loved one or an enemy or someone who can provide him or her an advantage or disadvantage. The real world can become complicated. It is quite an advantage for students to think of these things in the safe confines of a secondary classroom. It is beneficial if they have to think through dilemmas that reflect these complications before they might appear in real life.

The final power factor is structure. This is the most straightforward of the factors and one with which a student would do best to start. Here the aim is to identify the parties involved in a power relation, how the relation is organized in formal and informal ways, and how the relation is situated within larger organization(s). For students, while this type of information is essential and informative, it is, compared to the other above concerns, the most easily determined. Yes, some structures are hidden, usually intentionally for some advantage by those involved, but eventually such information becomes known by journalists and other interested observers. How a person or group is structured gives one hints as to those historical references, psychological motivations, and value considerations that are at work in determining or influencing how a power relation will function. So, as I indicated, this factor is probably the best place to start when one is beginning to study a power relation.

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

2Ibid., pp. 2-3.