HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/anarchy/essays/schoolsucks/group.txt

Text File | 1996-04-27 | 15KB | 263 lines

Group Polarization and Competition
in Political Behavior

        On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, in what has been perceived as the years
biggest non-event, the federal
government shut down all "non-essential" services due to what was, for
all intents and purposes, a game of national
"chicken" between the House Speaker and the President.  And, at an
estimated cost of 200 million dollars a day, this
dubious battle of dueling egos did not come cheap (Bradsher, 1995,
p.16).  Why do politicians find it almost congenitally
impossible to cooperate?  What is it about politics and power that seem
to always put them at odds with good
government?  Indeed, is an effective, well run government even possible
given the current adversarial relationship
between our two main political parties?  It would seem that the exercise
of power for its own sake, and a competitive
situation in which one side must always oppose the other on any issue,
is incompatible with the cooperation and
compromise necessary for the government to function.  As the United
States becomes more extreme in its beliefs in
general, group polarization and competition, which requires a mutual
exclusivity of goal attainment, will lead to more
"showdown" situations in which the goal of good government gives way to
political posturing and power-mongering.
        In this paper I will analyze recent political behavior in terms of two
factors:  Group behavior with an emphasis
on polarization, and competition.  However, one should keep in mind that
these two factors are interrelated. Group
polarization tends to exacerbate inter-group competition by driving any
two groups who initially disagree farther apart in
their respective views.  In turn, a competitive situation in which one
side must lose in order for the other to win (and
political situations are nearly always competitive), will codify the
differences between groups - leading  to further
extremism by those seeking power within the group - and thus, to further
group polarization.
        In the above example, the two main combatants, Bill Clinton and Newt
Gingrich, were virtually forced to take
uncompromising, disparate views because of the very nature of authority
within their respective political groups.  Group
polarization refers to the tendency of groups to gravitate  to the
extreme of whatever opinion the group shares (Baron &
Graziano, 1991, p.498-99).  Therefore, if the extreme is seen as a
desirable characteristic, individuals who exhibit
extreme beliefs will gain authority through referent power.  In other
words, they will have characteristics that other group
members admire and seek to emulate (p. 434).  Unfortunately, this circle
of polarization and authority can lead to a
bizarre form of "one-upsmanship"  in which each group member seeks to
gain power and approval by being more
extreme than the others.  The end result is extremism in the pursuit of
authority without any regard to the practicality or
"reasonableness" of the beliefs in question.  Since the direction of
polarization is currently in opposite directions in our
two party system, it is almost impossible to find a common ground
between them. In addition, the competitive nature of
the two party system many times eliminates even the possibility of
compromise since failure usually leads to a
devastating loss of power.
        If both victory and extremism are necessary to retain power within the
group,  and if, as Alfie Kohn (1986) stated
in his book No Contest:  The Case Against Competition, competition is
"mutually exclusive goal attainment" (one side
must lose in order for the other to win), then compromise and
cooperation are impossible (p. 136).  This is especially so
if the opponents are dedicated to retaining power "at all costs."  That
power is an end in itself is made clear by the recent
shutdown of the government.  It served no logical purpose.  Beyond
costing a lot of money, it had no discernible effect
except as a power struggle between two political heavyweights.
According to David Kipnis (1976, cited in Baron &
Graziano, 1991), one of the negative effects of power is, in fact, the
tendency to regard it as its own end, and to ignore
the possibility of  disastrous results from the reckless use of power
(p. 433).  Therefore, it would seem that (at least in
this case) government policy is created and implemented, not with regard
to its effectiveness as government policy, but
only with regard to its value as a tool for accumulating and maintaining
power.
        Another of Kipnis's negative effects of power is the tendency to use it
for selfish purposes (p.433).  In politics
this can be seen as the predilection towards making statements for short
term political gain that are either nonsensical or
contradictory to past positions held by the candidates themselves.
While this may not be the use of actual power, it is an
attempt to gain political office (and therefore power) without regard
for the real worth or implications of a policy for
"good" government.
        A prime example of this behavior can be seen in the widely divergent
political stances taken by Governor Pete
Wilson of California.  At this point I should qualify my own political
position.  While I do tend to lean towards the
Democratic side of the political spectrum (this is undoubtedly what
brought Pete Wilson to my attention in the first
place), I examine Governor Wilson because he is such a prime example of
both polarization and pandering in the
competitive pursuit of power.  Accordingly, I will try to hold my
political biases in check.
        In any case, selfish, power seeking behavior is reflected in Wilson's
recently abandoned campaign for President.
Although he consistently ruled out running for President during his
second gubernatorial campaign, immediately after he
was re-elected he announced that he was forming a committee to explore
the possibility. And, in fact, he did make an
abortive run for the Republican nomination.  In both cases (presidential
and gubernatorial elections), he justified his
seemingly contradictory positions in terms of his "duty to the
people"(No Author 1995).  This begs the question; was it
the duty that was contradictory, or was it Wilson's political
aspirations.  In either case it seems clear that his decision
was hardly based on principles of good government.  Even if Wilson
thought he had a greater duty to the nation as a
whole (and I'm being charitable here), he might have considered that
before he ran for governor a second time.  It would
appear much more likely that the greater power inherent in the
presidency was the determining force behind Wilson's
decision.  Ironically, Wilson's lust for potential power may cause him
to lose the power he actually has.  Since his
decision to run for President was resoundingly unpopular with
Californians, and since he may be perceived as unable to
compete in national politics due to his withdrawal from the presidential
race, his political power may be fatally
impaired.  This behavior shows not only a disregard for "good"
government, but also a strange inability to defer
gratification.  There is no reason that Pete Wilson couldn't have run
for President after his second term as Governor had
expired.  His selfish pursuit of power for its own sake was so absolute
that it inhibited him from seeing the very political
realities that gave him power in the first place.
        In his attempt to gain power, Wilson managed to change his stance on
virtually every issue he had ever
encountered.  From immigration to affirmative action - from tax cuts to
abortion rights, he has swung 180 degrees
(Thurm, 1995).  The point here is not his inconsistency, but rather the
fact that it is improbable that considerations of
effective government would allow these kinds of swings.  And, while
people may dismiss this behavior as merely the
political "game playing" that all candidates engage in, it is the
pervasiveness of this behavior - to the exclusion of any
governmental considerations - that make it distressing as well as
intriguing.
        Polarization is also apparent in this example.  Since Pete Wilson
showed no inherent loyalty toward a particular
ideology, it is entirely likely that had the Republican party been
drifting towards a centrist position rather than an extreme
right-wing position, Wilson would have accordingly been more moderate in
his political pronouncements.  The
polarization towards an extreme is what caused him to make such radical
changes in his beliefs.  It is, of course, difficult
to tell to what extent political intransigence is a conscious strategy,
or an unconscious motivation toward power, but the
end result is the same - political leadership that is not conducive (or
even relevant) to good government.
        The role of competition in our political system is an inherently
contradictory one.  We accept the fact that
politicians must compete ruthlessly to gain office using whatever
tactics are necessary to win.  We then, somehow,
expect them to completely change their behavior once they are elected.
At that point we expect cooperation,
compromise, and a statesmanlike attitude.  Alfie Kohn (1986) points out
that this expectation is entirely unrealistic (p.
135).  He also states that, "Depriving adversaries of personalities, of
faces , of their subjectivity, is a strategy we
automatically adopt in order to win" (p.139).  In other words, the very
nature of competition requires that we treat people
as hostile objects rather than as human beings.  It is, therefore,
unlikely, once an election is over and the process of
government is supposed to begin, that politicians will be able to
"forgive and forget" in order to carry on with the
business at hand.
          Once again, in the recent government shutdown we can see this same
sort of difficulty.  House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, whose competitive political relationship with Bill Clinton has
been rancorous at best, blamed his own
(Gingrich's) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the
shutdown, on his poor treatment during an airplane
flight that he and the President were on (Turque & Thomas, 1995, p.
28).  One can look at this issue from both sides.  On
the one hand, shabby treatment on an airplane flight is hardly a reason
to close the U.S. government.  On the other hand, if
the shabby treatment occurred, was it a wise thing for the President to
do in light of the delicate negotiations that were
going on at the time?  In both cases, it seems that all concerned were,
in effect, blinded by their competitive hostility.
They both presumably desired to run the government well (we assume
that's why they ran for office in the first place), but
they couldn't overcome their hostility long enough to run it at all.  If
the Speaker is to be believed (although he has since
tried to retract his statements), the entire episode resulted not from a
legitimate disagreement about how to govern well,
but from the competitive desire to dominate government.  Indeed, when
one examines the eventual compromise that was
reached, there seems to be no significant difference in the positions of
the two parties.  If this is so, why was it necessary
to waste millions of dollars shutting down the government and then
starting it up again a few days later?  What's more,
this entire useless episode will be reenacted in mid-December.  One can
only hope that Clinton and Gingrich avoid
traveling together until an agreement is reached.
        Although people incessantly complain about government and about the
ineffectiveness of politicians, they rarely
examine the causes of these problems.  While there is a lot of attention
paid to campaign finance reform, lobbying reform,
PAC reform, and the peddling of influence, we never seem to realize
that, most of the time, politicians are merely giving
us what they think we want.  If they are weak and dominated by polls,
aren't they really trying to find out "the will of the
people" in order to comply with it?  If they are extremist and
uncompromising in their political stances, aren't they simply
reflecting the extremism prevalent in our country today?  If politicians
compromise, we call them weak, and if they don't
we call them extremist.  If we are unhappy with our government, perhaps
it is because we expect the people who run it to
do the impossible.  They must reflect the will of a large, disparate
electorate, and yet be 100 percent consistent in their
ideology.  However, if we look at political behavior in terms of our own
polarized, partisan attitudes, and if we can find
a way to either reduce the competitive nature of campaigns, or reconcile
pre-election hostility with post-election
statesmanship, then we may find a way to elect politicians on the basis
of how they will govern rather than how they run.
        It may be tempting to dismiss all this as merely "the way politics is"
or say that "competition is human nature", or
perhaps think that these behaviors are essentially harmless.  But
consider these two examples.  It has been speculated that
President Lyndon B. Johnson was unwilling to get out of the Vietnam war
because he didn't want to be remembered as
the first American President to lose a war.  If this is true, it means
that thousands of people, both American and
Vietnamese, died in order to protect one man's status.  In Oklahoma
City, a federal building was bombed in 1994, killing
hundreds of men, women, and children.  The alleged perpetrators were a
group of extreme, right wing,
"constitutionalists" who were apparently trying to turn frustration with
the federal government into open revolution.
        I do not think these examples are aberrations or flukes, but are,
instead, indicative of structural defects in our
political system.  If we are not aware of the dangers of extremism and
competition, we may, in the end, be destroyed by
them.


References


Baron, B.M., & Graziano, W.G.  (1991).  Social Psychology. Fort Worth,
TX.  Holt,      Rinehart, and Winston.
Bradsher, K.  (1995, November 18).  Country may be losing money with
government      closed.  The New York
Times,  pp.16
Kohn, A.  (1986).  No Contest:  The Case Against Competition.  Boston,
Houghton        Mifflin.
No Author.  (1995, March 24).  [internet]  What Wilson has said about
entering race.  San     Jose Mercury News Online.
        Address:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil324s.htm
Thurm, S.  (1995, August 29).  [internet]  Wilson's 'announcement' more
of an ad:       California governor kicks off drive
for GOP presidential nomination.  San Jose      Mercury News Online.
        Address:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil829.htm
Turgue, B., & Thomas, E.  (1995, November 27).  Missing the moment.
Newsweek,       pp.26-29.