THE FED GOVERNMENT REACTS

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

The last four postings took a side road from the narrative this blog is sharing.  That overall narrative is a telling of the nation’s experience from a dialectic lens.  The narrative reached the debate that the Progressives started between the followers of a more federalist view – that of Louis Brandeis – and that of the New Nationalism posed by Theodore Roosevelt.

The federalist view argued for a revitalization of local communities and jurisdictions to meet the challenges posed by the newly developed corporations.  The Roosevelt side argued that it was too late for such localism, that these corporations were too strong and provided too many efficiencies to reenergize those local entities to again become viable, political forces. 

This debate initially motivated this blogger to address the democratic quality of the US – which is being questioned today – and, in turn, a further departure was entertained in which the demands of a minority of supremacists were described and explained to a degree.  Of course, this last issue also has current relevancy.

But to continue the initial narrative, which side won the debate between the federalists and the nationalists?  What resulted was neither a Progressive movement that restored, to previous levels, a local, communal agenda nor a new nationalism as defined by Roosevelt and his advisor, political philosopher, Herbert Croly.  What emerged, according to Michael Sandel,[1] was an agenda that defined the problem of America as one of bigness but from the perspective of the consumer.

American consumers demanded professional government, which was honest and efficient, and as product consumers, they demanded products that were safe and met those products’ advertised benefits.  They, the consumers, demanded recreational areas, clean environments, and preserved natural beauty.  And as laborers, they demanded safety in the workplace (this last demand was less aggressively pursued).  In short, problems were couched in terms of consumer demands.

Within this agenda, the government could develop policy without a moral commitment.  After all, the demands were by consumers which called for a utilitarian approach.  If those who demanded the changes had the votes, the government could provide relief in a detached, professional mode.  This last point indicates the transactional character of the natural rights view.

 

The republican tradition had attributed to economics a broader moral and political purpose, and the early advocates of antitrust, true to this tradition, had assessed economic arrangements for their tendency to form citizens capable of self-government.  Arnold [an advocate of the consumerist view] dismissed this “old religion” as a sentimental notion out of place in an age of mass production.  He was the first major antitrust advocate to reject altogether the civic argument for antitrust and to insist exclusively on the consumerist one:  “there is only one sensible test which we can apply to the privilege of [a large] corporation, and that is this:  Does it increase the efficiency of production or distribution and pass the savings on to consumers?”[2]

 

So, from a psychological point of view, the Progressive era did significantly encourage Americans to look to the central government as a more active entity to protect their “consumer” interests in relation to the economy and the government.

          And the consumerist mode of thinking defined that pronounced role in a neutral form much like a retail business provides its goods and services to consumers.  This neutral approach to the problems associated with corporate political and economic power and the resulting loss of civic concern set the stage for the next big blow to localism and community in American nation.  That was the New Deal.

          Like the Progressive Movement, the New Deal had within itself a debate over the role of local communities for civic matters.  Spurred by the crisis of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt was confronted with the decision about whether industrial associations, communities of interests within each industry as called for under the National Recovery Act, or whether governmental, central planners should set national economic policy. 

Robert Higgs[3] provides a useful summary of expenditures that both the federal government and local/state governments paid during the 1930s, the years that the New Deal was administered.  He directly addresses this issue of whether the New Deal actively set out to diminish or eradicate the role of local jurisdictions.  That image, according to Higgs, is inaccurate. 

For example, states during these years engaged in “mini–New Deals” to meet the emergencies that the Great Depression presented all over the nation.  Here is what Higgs writes,

The foregoing figures might tempt us to conclude that the federal government simply overwhelmed the other levels of government during the New Deal era, but the image of the feds riding into Dodge City like James gang and taking over the town (and Kansas, too) is not true to the facts.  Recall first that the state and local politicians were literally begging for federal bailouts in the early 1930s; the money was scarcely forced down their throats.

Second, in some states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York, state politicians embraced the same ideology and political objectives as the dominant faction in Congress, and they proceeded to enact so-called Little Deals that implemented state-level reforms, especially union-friendly labor laws and anti-business tax laws, similar to those the New Dealers enacted nationally.  Twenty-four states adopted general sales taxes in the 1930s, 20 of them during the period 1933-35.

Third, many of the programs the federal government was establishing for relief and other purposes were not only financed with matching grants (in varying proportions), but also administered “cooperatively,” that is, in large part by state or local employees, especially at the lower levels.  Owing to this style of administration, state, and local politicians gained considerable control over the newly created patronage jobs, and in some cases they could also shape the local rules or select the particular projects to be undertaken.  In short, the lower-level politicos were definitely cut in on the deals.[4]

 

So, while the New Deal changed the compounded, federalist majoritarian rule of the US – making it significantly more centralized – its effort and somewhat success maintained the federal character of the American system, albeit defined differently.

And with that extended quote by Higgs, this posting will stop, and this blog will next pick up the implications that the New Deal posed for the federalist elements of the American polity as the nation approached World War II.

[Reminder:  The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, he/she can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings by this blogger by merely clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[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] Ibid., 241.

[3] Robert Higgs, “The New Deal and the State and Local Governments:  Today’s Larger and More Centralized Government with the Great Depression,” FEE/Foundation for Economic Educators (March 1, 2008), accessed February 3, 2022, http://fee.org/articles/the-new-deal-and-the-state-and-local-governments/ .

[4] Ibid.

THE RIGHTS’ LEDGER

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

Okay, to carry on from the last posting – if the reader has not read it, he/she will be well served (in terms of this posting) to do so – the current issue under consideration is how the American polity today seems to be proceeding in two directions.  On the one hand, it ignores the wishes of the majority as it seems to cater to a minority.  And at the same time, it also does not respect the decentralized, federalist beliefs and values the nation once held as a dominant bias.  This, on the face of it, is contradictory.[1]

          While addressing this contradiction, the last posting shared the ideas of Hendrick Hartog,[2] who points out that within the history of rights in the US, there has been a succession of minorities – those who found themselves as victims of inequality (women, blacks, labor, etc.) – who have opted to argue that balancing the scales would not only be congruent with constitutional principles or values but also would serve the common good. 

Generally, with a lot of backtracking along the way, the strategy overall has been successful, though much still needs to be done.  But in Hartog’s analysis, he points out that respecting the rights of these minorities has been at the expense of others being diminished.  Or as Hartog states it,

 

As a people, Americans may be “constitutionally” incapable of characterizing rights claims as a zero-sum game.  Lawyers know that a new, increased, or transformed public good must always be alleged as the necessary consequence of any recognition of previously unrecognized rights; there must be some net benefit to public welfare.  Americans have never simply righted wrongs; they have always been making things better.[3]

 

But while an overall betterment results, there are those who experience a lesser status in terms of how they previously determined their level of rights.

And those so affected in losing their rights, it turns out to be, in part, the same group, white male supremacists who, in addition to their weakened position, have felt the costs entailed with how the economy has changed in the last fifty or so years.  In their eyes, enough is enough and many have decided to react – some turning to violence.

          But there is a catch or complication in their reaction.  One of the attributes this group has shared is its love of individualism.  Yet now, to react politically, the members of this group find their individualism ill serves them in that to be politically effective – at least to have a chance to be effective – they must coalesce with other, likeminded cohorts.  They must organize and in doing so, have to give up a good deal of their individual autonomy.

          But comparing this latest group to those who preceded it – women’s groups, civil rights groups, labor groups, etc. – they, the individualist group, functions under a meaningful handicap.  That is, by using this formula in which the previous groups could reasonably cite how acquiescing to their demands would bolster the common good (in part, as defined by constitutional values) the individualists cannot reasonably make such a claim. 

To be clear, this zero-sum character, in which acquiring rights under natural rights calculations, is acquired at someone else’s expense, has taken various guises.  To illustrate, labor rights take away rights from business owners, women’s rights diminish rights of men, black rights are captured from white rights, etc. 

A right here is not necessarily some in-born license to do something (e.g., the right to speak freely), but a socially defined advantage a society allows certain people.  At times that could be a payment for a service they render or it can be the opportunity to purchase an advantage.  But if an aggrieving party – a party denied the advantage – claims that the common good would be advanced by it being allowed the advantage, this further legitimizes their claims.[4]

So, proposing a common benefit helps get those rights secured for the compromised citizens.  But eventually, that “someone” else’s advantage from whom the advantage is taken, is or has been continuously aimed at, to a great degree, the same limited number of actors, the ones who do not enjoy a good deal of other assets. 

After a while, that continuous targeting has had an effect.  And one should not be surprised that that group – the targeted group – is apt to react.  That seems to be the case with this latest version of a minority asserting its “rights.” 

But the problem with this latest rendition is that they, the white males, cannot cite comparable constitutional values.  And it happens that many of them have been suffering economic challenges due to changes in the economy.  So, unlike previous, aggrieved parties, they cannot – at least not in a reasonable fashion – cite either constitutionally defined injustices or the advancement of the common good by way of addressing their complaints. 

Instead, and here is the scary part, they have cited counter-constitutional claims and a reasonable interpretation of those claims is of them being fascistic.  Yes, their language to date is still hinted at or expressed as inuendo, but that is changing and it is becoming more direct and open. 

One can therefore legitimately see this as being anti-democratic regardless of whether – as this series of posting has asked – the US is losing a simple majoritarian form of democracy or a compounded form of majoritarian rule which in this nation has been under the guise of federalism.

At the heart of the problem with the former uprising claims, those that are based on constitutional precepts reflected the fact that the American form of federalism was informally based on a highly parochial foundation.  Federalism relies on the historical development of a people either directly or through representation forming a polity.  Formally, the term, “people,” unless otherwise limited, includes all agreeing parties. 

Yet historically, in the eyes of many if not most Americans, the included parties were limited to Western European immigrants or their descendants.  Actually, this condition was initially more limited in that it included only Protestant, Anglo-Saxon people.  For example, in reading the national history as late as the 1850s, one can find a vibrant, highly popular movement, the Know Nothing movement, being actively antagonistic toward Roman Catholics as immigration from Ireland and other Catholic, European nations grew.[5]

It is from that tradition that one can trace the connection to current day individualists whom one finds claiming they have had enough – enough of them losing their privileges or rights as Hartog describes them.  These individualists who now find it necessary to form this collective, anti-democratic cabal, have long ago lost their federalist bent, due in part to the nation not sufficiently shedding its bias for white, Anglo supremacy – its parochial character. 

For the rest of the nation, is it too late to adopt a more liberated form of federalism that sheds the parochialism?  Many Americans have adopted a more liberated sense of what it means to be an American, but there is that minority who feels it has been put upon one too many times. 

Perhaps, as the evidence seems to indicate, it is too late for these “parochialists” to be “liberated.”  This blogger does not see a healthier future for the nation without reenergizing its federalism, but within a liberated format.  And in that, civics education has a definite role.

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[1] America has a compounded democracy based on a dispersion of majoritarian rule along territorial basis as in the power at the central government and that of the states.  And, of course, that would be its federalist arrangement.  A simple majority rule arrangement is characterized by a centralized republic in which the national government retains most powers.  When a minority can block the wishes of the majority, that would seem to advance a federalist agenda, but in this case, that is not what is happening when the substance of those blockages reflects efforts to degrade the voices of a number of minorities such as racial, ethnic, gender, and employment designations.  See Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[2] Hendrick Hartog, “A History of Rights Consciousness,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume II:  From 1870 to the Present, edited by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 2-14.

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] For example, for a global review of this claim, see Joseph Losavio, “What Racism Costs Us All,” Finance and Development/International Monetary Fund (Fall, 2020), accessed January 31, 2022, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/09/the-economic-cost-of-racism-losavio.htm .

[5] Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1999).

UNCONSTITUTIONAL SUPREMACY

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

This blog in its last posting might have been a bit unclear on one point and it needs some clarification.  It suggested that a current problem relating to the nation’s federal system is that it, the nation, has veered from its supportive values and beliefs that have sustained that system. 

A recurring claim this blog has argued is that federalism no longer serves as this nation’s dominant construct; that instead, the natural rights view has ascended to that position.  How that happened is complex and this and the next posting will attempt to explain one aspect of that development by sharing the thoughts of a natural rights advocate. 

By opting for a natural rights dominance, the nation has chosen a more individualistic view – as opposed to a local, communal perspective.  It is this more communal view that one associates with federalist values and beliefs.  Yet in the last posting, the blog argues that the nation might be presently suffering from not being centralized enough, what federalists might welcome, to the point it is ignoring the wishes of its majority. 

So, what is it; is the nation radically divided at the individual level, a la a natural rights view, or does it lack sufficient centralization to be able to respect its majoritarian wishes?  Or stated more academically, is the nation abandoning its compounded democratic qualities or is it undermining its majoritarian qualities that one associates with a simple democratic approach?  Or can it be both?

The reader can decide, but here is one interpretation based on the thoughts of Hendrik Hartog.[1]  His concern is over the consciousness Americans share regarding their rights and he makes the case that a natural rights view, historically, has been compromised by various concerns. 

One of those concerns regards the common good; that is, how do people enamored with their individualism deal with the challenges of maintaining the common interest?  After all, irrespective of their individualism, they are not immune to the consequences of adverse developments or conditions that negatively affect their communities, their states, or their nation. 

          Hartog writes,

 

A history of constitutional rights consciousness needs to begin by confronting the immense symbolic power of an emancipatory vision of natural rights. … [During that history] people read into constitutional texts and drew from diverse and contradictory sources, including English common law, liberalism, Enlightenment philosophy, post-Reformation theology, and the medieval peasant’s vision of self-ownership and freedom. … [Yet that] vision of autonomy incorporated an ideal of community.  Autonomous, rights-bearing individuals would live in groups and collectives and participate in public life.  Their “happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson knew, required community.  They would know themselves, as individuals and as citizens, through capacity to construct intentional and voluntary forms of solidarity.[2]

 

To this blogger, this description could not be more federal in its message without using the term federalism or employing federal language.  Hartog begins with a natural rights bias and ends up with a federal conclusion. 

In his way, he explains how an individualistically thinking people could harbor a political culture supporting a federation (a communal arrangement) yet holding unto the view of one being autonomous within that communal life.  But this more communal stance finds itself being repeatedly challenged by the autonomous self-image to which Americans ascribed.  So, bottom line, Hartog’s argument agrees with this blog – the nation was more federal in its past – and provides a reason for a less communal society today.

At a societal level, one detects a dialectic struggle regarding this tension as it reflects its growth to the point that the communal side eventually succumbed to the individualist side.  Through the years of the nation’s history, that struggle would make itself known through the outward debate between those claiming individual autonomy versus those defending the public good. 

Hartog describes this national, internal debate opting for the language of personal rights (a form of property rights) allegedly being constrained by those who activate the image or concept of the sovereignty of the people – as opposed to the individual – as in “We, the People,” a collective ideal.  Historically, it was the former – the personal rights view or position – being in dominance and recurringly being challenged by various versions of a collective interest that to some degree is recognized by the US Constitution.  

This blogger agrees with this conclusion but takes issue with the underlying reasoning Hartog offers (a topic for another posting).  But the historical path he offers in how this struggle unfolded seems sufficiently accurate as a partial explanation.  That is, the tension had been experienced or made conscionable as various groups strove to establish their rights as is the case with women’s rights, African Americans’ civil rights, immigrant rights, and even the rights of youth. 

Hartog uses the image of these various compromised – in terms of rights – groups lodging their complaints against the privileged group – collectively being the white, male, dominant group.  The term “against” is key since under this natural rights’ reasoning, the attainment of rights by some meant the diminution of rights for others. 

Given the politics this environment produced, such a rights’ claim by some compromised group, e.g., women, needs to be sufficiently justified before any consideration is given to it by those in power.  Therefore, as part of the rationale of such moves, the contending party would cite some common good notion to further legitimize their claims.  That is, they repeatedly held that their deprivation of rights offended some constitutional value or belief and, in moral and practical terms, caused the nation some costs and should be rectified.

This account by Hartog reveals an important aspect of this process that sheds light on the concern with which this posting began; does this recurring process help one make sense of how federalism can be offset by decentralizing the nation’s politics and, in turn, de-democratizing its political processes? 

Here, Hartog offers an insightful generalization that not only helps one see how this contradiction can be explained, but also a reason why federalism lost its dominance after a long battle with natural rights thinking.  But before sharing his accounting of this process, one needs to appreciate a core conception of rights. 

That is, the advancement of one party’s rights is accomplished by the diminution of someone else’s rights – there is a fixed level of rights (given the contextual realities of a given time).  So, for example, advancement of women’s rights is at the expense of men’s rights.  Practically, that means as women exert a right to vote, that diminishes the right of men to control the politics of the polity.  But when it comes to individualists (those “freedom loving,” formerly dominant white males), as currently is the case, taking on the role of a compromised victim, some contradictions become apparent.

Hartog observes,

 

When presented as claims [by compromised groups] to negate rights [of the dominant class], rights readily become a focus for group organization and identity.  As possessive individualists, rights holders may lack collective identities, but to uproot common opponents they must join together.[3]

 

Hence, currently, the minority – that white, Anglo based supremacist male group – is fueled with fear of losing or having lost its privileged position, i.e., it sees the current political landscape as having taken away its “God-given” standing. 

While being individualistic, these self-defined “oppressed” people have to first recognize that they, at an individual level, can no longer protect or advance their rights or interests.  To regain their old position of privilege, they must swallow their bias for autonomy and recognize their need for solidarity with other similarly “deprived victims.” 

Hence, the collectivity of these natural rights – individualists – “oppressed” people cannot maintain the individualism they so cherish in defending their privilege or be able to recapture it.  They must form and belong to collectives to have any chance of regaining their lost or losing privilege and, as such, have to compromise or even abandon their autonomy.

This has further consequences for this newly self-defined group of victims and the next posting will describe what they are.  It makes the connection about how this development affects the current political landscape and produces the seemingly incongruent conditions this posting cited at its beginning.

Again, Hartog offers, back in 1987, a cogent argument about how this new minority has developed this sense of victimhood and how, in turn, it is running interference in the system being able to allot the majority its favored policies.  As such, this current conflict over rights – and how they are perceived – further undermines the federal values and beliefs upon which this federal system depends.

P.S.:  The next posting promises to be a good deal shorter!

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[1] Hendrick Hartog, “A History of Rights Consciousness,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume II:  From 1870 to the Present, edited by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 2-14.  Hartog originally had this this article published in 1987.

[2] Ibid., 3-4.

[3] Ibid., 7.

SOCIAL QUALITY OR TERRITORY

 

[This blog is in the midst of a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

Spurred by the introduction of the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt, the nation considered whether it wanted to leave its more local, communal approach of governance – its federalism – or take on a more national and centralized approach.  The latter is known as a Jacobinism-style model of governance.  This blog, in the last posting, reviewed and compared two levels of centralization, Jacobinism and consociationalism. 

That is, Jacobinism is a highly centralized model, and consociationalism, a less centralized and, consequently, a less democratic model.  This posting will move in the non-centralized direction and compare consociationalism and federalism, an even less centralized and democratic model.  Daniel Elazar provides the needed explanation of these models as he reports on the work of Arend Lijphart.[1] 

First, in this other comparison, one points out that both consociationalism and federalism are types of non-majoritarian forms of governance.  Lijphart calls the more centralized form, the Jacobin-style, the Westminster system.  He calls both consociationalism and federalism by the descriptive term, “compound majoritarianism.”  This is in line with the designation James Madison promotes in Federalist Paper, No. 51.

Elazar writes,

 

… Madison presents the compound republic as the best republican remedy for republican diseases, in contrast with the simple republic … [In what he proposes] majority rule is not rejected, but majorities are compounded either from distinct territories (territorial democracy [read federalist arrangements]) or concurrent groups (consociationalism), [which are] not counted through simple addition.[2]

 

That is, one can compound this notion of majority in various ways.  So, a key distinction is that consociationalism divides the populous in aterritorial ways whereas federalism relies on territorial divisions. 

Examples of consociationalism-style are, as mentioned in the previous posting, the Netherlands (with its “three pillars”), but also Austria (with its grand coalition) and Israel (with its camps and parties).  The reader is invited to look up these references to glean their distinguishing structural makeups, but here, this blogger continues this posting’s definitional explanation.

          For the sake of that explanation, one should note that what is highlighted by such compounded systems is how they characterize the majority.  As opposed to just counting noses, they outline a system, where to be successful in getting policy enacted, one needs to build coalitions.  In turn, the type of coalition depends on the structural character of the system in which one is operating.

That is, how one goes about forming a coalition will depend on the type of compounded arrangement in which he/she is functioning.  What those strategies should be is a topic for another venue, but the point here is that these compounded settings call for wider consensus of support to enable them to successfully achieve policy either in the derived laws or the actual implementation of those laws.

          The timing of this posting could not be more apropos as the nation is witnessing the difficulty that Democrats in Congress are facing.  That is, in the two initiatives President Biden has proposed (voting legislation and the “Build Back Better” legislation), he and supportive Democrats have been unable to pass them into law.  This is the case even though polling indicates that those bills, substantively, have overwhelming support among the American public.  And in this, to the extent that majoritarian proposals go wanting, it reveals a potential problem for Americans.

          In line with this development, a lot of what is in the news lately has been about how democracy in America is under attack.  The attack on the Capitol in Washington is just a visible reflection that things are a bit shaky.  Many are questioning whether the basic assumptions most Americans make concerning the health of their governmental system and its democratic quality still hold.

          Observed through this “compounded” lens, what might be a basic underlying malfunction – one Elazar alludes to – is whether the federalist nature of the system relies too much on its structural composition and not enough on the federal values and beliefs that provide the rationale for their existence. 

Many governmental arrangements around the world and in history have set up those structures, but are basically centered, simple majoritarian systems and do not promulgate or utilize federal values.  But perhaps that is not the problem in the US today.  To be federal is not just a matter of being sufficiently decentralized, but of not being centralized enough. 

That is why defenders of federalism do not use the term, decentralized, but instead use the term, non-centralized, to describe their dispersion of power.  And in that, has the American system drifted toward becoming too un-centralized or too indifferent to majority wishes?  The need is for the right balance between a respect for minority interests and the desires of the majority.

          Unlike consociationalism, which is based more on a social system and relies on its culturally based institutions – religion, ethnicity, and other social groupings – federalism relies on a set of principles.  Elazar lists Lijphart’s federalist principles:

 

1.    A written constitution which specifies the division of power and guarantees in both the central and regional governments that their allotted powers cannot be taken away;

2.    A bicameral legislature in which one chamber represents the people at large and the other the component units of the federation;

3.    Over representation of the smaller component units in the federal chamber of the bicameral legislature [is provided];

4.    The right of the component units to be involved in the process of amending the federal constitution but to change their own constitutions unilaterally; [and]

5.    Decentralized government, that is, the regional government’s share of powers in a federation are relatively large compared to that of regional governments in unitary states [as in the case of France].[3]

 

What this blog has hinted at is in terms of principle #3; with the filibuster and other provisions, perhaps the balance is too much in favor of non-central, overall minority rights.  And the minority being favored in the US today is that element made up of conservative factions or what some might call their reactionary desire to reestablish a white population-centered polity.  In that polity, racial and other ethnic minorities are “kept in their place.” 

While this is debatable, one can see that the debate needs to be held or one can expect that current anti-democratic developments will continue to grow and threaten what has been America’s style of democratic rule.  After all, ask the typical American what type of system America has and he/she is apt to say it’s a democracy.

          In any event, this posting will end with one more Elazar quote,

 

Nevertheless, both [with consociationalism-style and federalist arrangements] the political wisdom that popular government is not only not enhanced by simple majoritarianism but is often defeated by it because civil society in a democracy is both complex and pluralistic and both its complexities and its pluralism must be properly accommodated.[4]

 

While the narrative this blog is sharing has progressed to the first years of the twentieth century (with a review of the Progressive movement), one can see those debates – in this case over how federal the US system should be – have not been settled or resolved.  The debates – sometimes in the open and loudly expressed, a la the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and other times subtle and below the surface – continue; the dialectic beat beats on.

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

[2] Ibid., 19.

[3] Ibid., 22-23.  Whereas with consociationalism, they have two primary characteristics, grand coalitions and segmental autonomy, and two lesser characteristics, proportionality and veto power among minorities.  

[4] Ibid., 26.