Politics: Setting the Stage - Power and Choice

1 Politics: Setting the Stage...

1 Politics: Setting the Stage MAJOR THEMES TO LOOK FOR IN THIS CHAPTER Politics is the making of common decisions, through the use of power. This def- inition implies two complementary emphases in interpreting politics: looking at politics as the search for a common choice and looking at politics as the use of power to achieve your ends. Power is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. The state and its government are structures by which power can be organized and used very efficiently. Nonstate actors can deploy power that influences the state and government. The object of inquiry for political science is the study of power, but other forms of inquiry make look at similar phenomena. E veryone knows something about politics, and many people know a great deal about it. It is an interesting, amusing, and moving spectacle that sometimes even supplants professional sports in the public eye. Political scientists, however, study politics and analyze it. This involves doing pretty much the same sorts of things that other people do who follow politics: we read the newspapers, listen to press confer- ences, and take part in political campaigns. However, we also do some things differ- ently. We usually try to see both sides of any question and to keep our emotions in low key because emotions can cloud judgment. We borrow deliberately from other discip- lines—such as economics, history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy—to help us understand what is going on politically. Above all, as you will see later in this chapter, Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. we try to be precise about the meanings of the words we use. Many words having to do with politics—such as “liberal,” “represent,” and even “politics”—are quite complex, but most people use them unthinkingly. Political scientists are careful to analyze the varied meanings of such words and to use them precisely, partly because it is important to know exactly what we mean by the words we use and partly because careful exami- nation of a richly complex word may teach us a great deal about the things it describes. What do political scientists study? Over the years, we have seen work in which political scientists: Measured just how much it costs a country to lose a war; Devised a new system of voting in primaries that might have led to a different set of candidates for most presidential elections; Analyzed and explained the various styles that members of the U.S. Congress adopt in dealing with their constituents; 2 Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 3 Studied the spread of stem cell research laws across the states; Showed that the roots of successful government may go back to social institutions several centuries ago; Described the role that race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion have on politics and political attitudes; Investigated the connection between nonstates institutions such as the family or corporations have with politics. Showed why most nations ignore warnings about surprise military action by hos- tile nations; and Studied why democracies almost never wage war on other democracies. These are the sorts of things in which political scientists engage. This book introduces you to the broad principles of what we have learned about politics, especially about the politics of democracies. I hope the study will sharpen and enrich the more general understanding of politics that you already have. This first chapter, in particular, involves the precise definition of several words with which you are already somewhat familiar. We must examine these definitions because you should start your study with some basic terms in place. You may also find it intri- guing to see complexity in words, such as politics, that have probably not struck you before as particularly complicated. POLITICS What is politics? What is it that makes an act political? Consider the following ques- tions, all of which involve politics. What do these have in common? How was Hitler able to take power through a series of supposedly democratic elections? Why do democracies tend not to engage in war against other democracies? Why should workers sort letters the way their boss directs if they know a more efficient way? Why were southern blacks denied the vote and placed in segregated schools throughout the 1950s while their housing was not as segregated as that in the North? Should gays be barred from the military? Should native populations in the Amazon basin of Brazil be displaced in favor of economic development? Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. Why does the United States have only two major political parties when most dem- ocracies have more? Should state and local governments have the right to force landholders to sell them land that they need for public purposes? Was Harry Truman right to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why do people so often feel guilty about not doing what their parents want them to do? What impact did George Floyd’s murder or the spread of the coronavirus pan- demic have on the 2020 presidential election? Should transgender individuals be allowed to use public bathrooms that corres- pond to the gender they identify with, or only use those that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificate? These questions deal with politics. The questions about bosses, parents, and bathrooms may not have looked to you as if they belonged in this group, but their connection with politics should become clearer by the end of this chapter. Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  4 Part I: The Idea of Politics What is it that these questions have in common? There are two main things, and scholars have often used both as the defining characteristics of politics. First, all the questions involve making a common decision for a group of people, that is, a uniform decision applying in the same way to all members of the group. Second, all involve the use of power by one person or a group of people to affect the behavior of another person or group of people. Let us look at both of these in more detail. POLITICS AS THE MAKING OF COMMON DECISIONS Any group of people must often make decisions that will apply to all of them in common, as a group. A family must decide where to live, what sorts of rules to set for children, and how to balance a budget. A class in a college or university (including the instructor as part of the “class”) must decide on the required reading material, how to grade stu- dents, and the brightness of lights in the classrooms. A country must decide where to locate parks, what allies to seek out in war, how to raise revenue by taxing its citizens, how to care for the helpless, and many other things. Each of these requires setting com- mon policy for the group, a single decision that affects all members of the group. Not all human actions, of course, involve making a common policy for a group. When one brother teases another, he is not making a family policy, nor is a family member who decides to write the great American novel. A student who decides to read extra material on one section of the course (or, perhaps, to skip a bit of the reading) is not making a policy of the class. A person’s decision to build a new house is not part of any common national policy, although the country may have policies— on interest rates, the regulation of building, land use, and zoning—that affect this person’s decision. Facebook’s decisions on a search algorithm are not part of a com- mon national policy, although a decision by it to bar a former president from having an account may have an impact on national policy. In some cases, it is possible for private individuals or organizations to affect national policy, even if only indirectly. Those actions that contribute to the making of a common policy for a group of people constitute politics, and questions about those policies and the making of those policies are political questions. The political/nonpolitical distinction is not always easy to draw. The Facebook example in the preceding text is tricky because Facebook is so large that its decisions verge on being common policy for the whole United States, even though the company has no formal role in the nation’s government. In other words, one might argue that because the U.S. government tolerates the concentration of social media among a few giant corporations and because (as a result of this) the decisions of Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. any one of them bulk large in American life, those decisions have a quasipublic char- acter and are “sort of” political. Another tricky aspect of the political/nonpolitical distinction is that it is a matter of perspective. Ford Motor Company’s design decisions are not political decisions for the United States, but they are political decisions for Ford’s stockholders, managers, and workers because they set a common policy for the company. But a decision by Ford to replace gas-powered engines in its vehicles with all-electric powered ones can both impact government policy and be an extension of it. A family’s decision to build a house is not a political decision for the country, but it is a political decision for the family as a group inasmuch as it involves a common policy for the family. “Company politics” is involved in Ford’s decision, and “family politics” is involved in the family’s decision. Neither, however, is a national political decision. Society consists of groups within groups within groups. Facebook and its employees are a group within the United States, and a family may be a group within the larger group of those dependent on Facebook. Politics exist within any of these groups whenever they make a decision that will apply to all the Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 5 members of the group. Depending upon which group you are thinking of, you may treat a given decision—the decision of the Clauski family to build a house—as either political or nonpolitical. The Clauski decision is political for the family as a group but not political for the country. However, the decision of many families or companies collectively might affect national politics, or at least local politics. Separating out when decisions do or do not affect politics is part of what one can call the “boundary problem.” That is, how do we draw a clean or clear line or boundary between things that are and are not political? POLITICS AS THE EXERCISE OF POWER A second characteristic of politics, one that runs through the questions at the start of this chapter, is that politics always involves the exercise of power by one person or persons over another person or persons. Power is the ability of one person to cause another to do what the first wishes, by whatever means. Politics always involves this: one person causing others to do what that person wants. Looking back at the questions, we note that Hitler rose to high office by convincing many Germans to vote for him, the U.S. Congress disagrees with the president so often about energy policy because the president does not have much power either to force or to convince Congress to go along with his wishes in that area, and so on. In such ways, each of these questions involves the power of one person or persons over others. The two defining characteristics of politics, then, are that (1) politics always involves the making of common decisions for groups of people and (2) those decisions are made by some members of the group exercising power over other members of the group. Power can consist of a wide variety of tools that help one person affect the actions of another. Power may be stark, as when a police officer stops a demonstrator from marching up the street, or it may be subtle, as when a group of poor people, by their very misery, elicit positive governmental action on their behalf. Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images. The protestor confronting police in Hong Kong depicts power and choice in reality. The protestor exercises choice to demonstrate and confront the power of the state in the form of police. Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  6 Part I: The Idea of Politics We may exercise power as coercion when we force a person to do something he or she did not want to do, as persuasion when we convince someone that something is what she or he really wishes to do, or as the construction of incentives when we make the alternative so unattractive that only one reasonable option remains. The ability to exer- cise any of these forms of power may be based on all sorts of things—money, affection, physical strength, legal status (e.g., the power of a police officer to direct traffic), the pos- session of important information, a winning smile, strong allies, determination, desper- ation (which helped North Vietnam to defeat the United States in the 1970s), and many more. Any of these can help some people convince other people to act as they wish. Many think power has to involve physical force or coercion. This is not always true. Steven Lukes once argued that there were “three faces to power”: decision mak- ing, non–decision making, and ideological. Decision-making power is the capacity to compel or make choices. An example of this is when a government body decides to raise or lower taxes. Non–decision making is preventing others from making decisions. An example of this is an interest group lobbying Congress not to pass a law or even hold a hearing on a topic. Ideological power is convincing others to go along with a decision by getting them to think that the choice they are making is correct for them, even though it is contrary to their interests. An example of this is when Karl Marx, a famous nineteenth-century radical thinker, argued that the ruling class was able to trick or convince the workers to support capitalism instead of socialism or communism. It is not necessary to learn the specific bases of power we have listed here. They are meant to provide a sense of the variety and complexity of power, not as an exhaustive list of its important sources. The point is that all politics involves the use of power, and such power may take varied forms. An Example of the Difficulty of Analyzing Power Both because power is important to politics and because it is difficult to measure pre- cisely how and when power is exercised, there are recurrent disputes within political science about how much power various groups have. A famous dispute of the 1950s and 1960s centered on American cities, about which scholars asked, “Is there a small group of people [the ‘downtown people,’ the political bosses, or what have you] who run things in American cities?” This might seem like a simple question, but it was diffi- cult for political scientists to answer, and we still do not have a clear answer to it. In a broader form, the dispute has continued to this day. The dispute started when in a study of Atlanta, Georgia, Floyd Hunter attempted to answer the question by asking journalists, officials, business leaders, and others who Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. the most important people in the city were.1 When his varied sources named roughly the same set of leaders, he concluded that Atlanta was run by a small group of insiders. In response, however, Robert Dahl observed that Hunter’s respondents might all be mistaken, but mistaken in the same way; they might think that the downtown corpo- rate elite ran Atlanta because that idea was part of the conventional wisdom about the city, but they might be wrong. That the downtown people had a reputation for power did not prove to Dahl’s satisfaction that they really had power; rather, he said, we must see power being used. As a response to the earlier Atlanta study, he performed a new study of his own based on New Haven, Connecticut.2 He chose a set of major issues that faced the community, which included education and urban renewal, and recorded who participated in making decisions on each type of issue. He was restricting himself to observable power, so he had to ignore the possibility of indirect influence. Other than that, his procedure was straightforward. He found that quite different groups of people were active on the different issues. Parents and “society people” were especially involved in education, for example, while downtown people were especially involved Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 7 in urban renewal. He concluded that New Haven was not run by a single group of insiders but that all sorts of groups were involved, moving in and out of participation depending on what issue was up for decision. Still a third position was then staked out in the dispute. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz criticized Dahl’s study of New Haven, noting that it is not enough just to see who has been active in various kinds of decisions but that we must also investigate why particular issues get raised in the first place.3 Perhaps the most important decision is the one that governs which issues will be brought before the public. For instance, during the period Dahl studied, New Haven did not consider any policies for taking over utili- ties and running them publicly, for breaking up the residential racial segregation of the city, or for cutting taxes. An ability to influence or control the public agenda in this way gives one great power over public policies. Who has this ability? Political leaders? The media? Teachers and professors? Bloggers? At this level, decisions may or may not be controlled by a small “power elite”; we simply cannot tell from a study designed as Dahl designed his. This is also the point that Lukes makes. Looking only at overt uses of power or formal decision-making institutions might mean we miss other forms of power that reveal how choices are made. This question of which issues enter public debate is crucial to politics. Larry Bartels notes, for example, that the American people value economic equality and think of equality as one of the characteristic virtues of American society. Yet, economic inequality is greater in the United States than in almost any other prosperous, advanced economy in the world, and has increased sharply since 1980.4 How is it, then, that economic inequality has not become a major issue in the press or in popular opinion? Bartels shows that the failure to bring this issue to the fore has affected American pol- itics profoundly. Going even beyond the complexity that such control of agendas adds to the con- cept of power, Peter Digeser, drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, also suggested a “third face of power.” Taking Bachrach and Baratz beyond the notion of an elite controlling the agenda of discussion about different groups’ needs and wants, Digeser pointed out that the process they describe might consist of an elite controlling ideas and public opinion such that it does not even occur to some groups to want the things they should want: “Lukes contended that power could be exerted even if B consciously wants to do what A desires. Lukes claimed that if B acts contrary to her objective, real interest then power is being exercised.”5 In other words, an elite might exercise power not just by preventing discussion of proposals it does not want to see on the table but by influencing what people want so that inconvenient proposals never occur to them Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. in the first place. The test for Digeser (based on Lukes) was not whether people have proposals that never reach the table but whether the things people want are contrary to their real interests. Such a disjunction between people’s wants and their real interests, for Digeser, is the footprint of elite power. That is to say, the elite maintains its power by controlling communications and ideas, such that people do not want (do not realize they need) things that threaten the elite. Of course, this becomes remarkably difficult to analyze because it requires us to identify what people really need as distinct from what they merely think they need. Academics, who have very distinctive values of our own, are not always in a good position to judge other people’s “true” needs. Notice how complex the question of power in American cities became in these exchanges. Hunter gave us a very straightforward assessment of Atlanta. Dahl compli- cated the issue by pointing out that in New Haven different types of people had dominant power with respect to different kinds of issues. Bachrach and Baratz reminded us that we must also consider who controls which issues will even come up for discussion. And Digeser added the consideration that this control might operate at an unconscious level, in Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  8 Part I: The Idea of Politics elite control of how people form their very desires. In the end, it is difficult to say anything general and conclusive about the concentration of power in our cities because it is difficult to study what might have been—what issues might have entered public discussion but did not. This series of studies illustrates clearly the inherent complexity of power.6 Although these studies certainly show that there are few blanket truths about power, one should not therefore conclude that power is impossible to study. Rather, an understanding of the complexity of power and the difficulty of measuring it can lead us to detailed examinations of very specific instances of power. In response to the Bachrach and Baratz article, for instance, several interesting studies appeared on the setting of agendas in American politics. These were a direct result of the argument that the most important power is that which decides what issues will be up for debate. Despite the complexity and elusiveness of power, we can say that all politics is based on some form of power and that its sources may be highly varied. For most questions about politics, it is not necessary to specify in detail exactly what sort of power is involved. It is always helpful to bear in mind that you are dealing with power of one sort or another; but that realization may often serve rather as a background or setting for your analysis. We can address most of the questions posed at the opening of this chapter without conducting precise analyses of the power relationships that form contexts for the questions. Power, and Interpreting Politics as Choice Although power is difficult to pin down in observations, conceptually it is rather simple: one person manages, by some means or another, to get another person to do (or not do) what the first one wants. We have seen in the preceding text that identifying the “some means or another” can be difficult, but the concept is fairly simple. When we seek to interpret politics as a “choice,” however, we find that the concept is a bit hard to get our minds around. Just what do we mean by choice? When we view a political outcome as a matter of choice, we explain the outcome by the fact that it was needed, either by society as a whole or at least by some politically significant figures. That is, the result came about because, to a significant set of people (possibly all the people), it should have happened, and they made some decision or took part in some action to realize it. On the face of it, this sounds mystical. We know that causation must always work forward in time, but here we say that the need for something brought about the actions that would produce it! The choice interpretation, however, is really a shorthand for many factors that led various people to act, all of which had to do with the fact that they felt the need to Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. bring something about. Thus, you will see in chapter 3 that one explanation (the “choice” explanation) for why powerful governments developed in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in Europe was that modern large-scale commerce and industry arose in Europe at about that time, and powerful governments holding sway over broad territories were neces- sary if the commerce and industry were to operate efficiently. This does not mean that in some mystical way the need called forth the strong governments. Rather, kings could extend and deepen their power because large, significant groups in the society (mer- chants, factory owners) felt that they would benefit from a strong king and supported him in extending his power. In other words, the need for strong governments brought them about—but not in some mystical way. Rather, many individual exercises of power brought about the “choice” outcome. As another example, you will see in chapter 14 that parliamentary government works most smoothly when prime ministers can control tightly how individual Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 9 members vote. As a result—in a “choice” interpretation—most parliamentary systems have developed tightly disciplined parties. This does not mean that the need, in some mystical way, produced the disciplined parties. Rather, over a number of years and by trial and error, prime ministers found that their lives were easier if their political parties were tightly disciplined, and they devised all sorts of rewards and punishments to keep their party members in line. In principle, each of these examples could have been reduced to a large number of relatively small, individual power transactions. However, that would almost certainly have meant missing the forest for the trees. The central process running through all the individual power transactions was that patterns of behavior were reshaped to meet the needs either of society as a whole or of significant and powerful parts of society. A “choice” interpretation captures that truth in a way that analyzing thousands of small power transactions could not.7 We see that “choice” involves “power” because it is through power events that we reach the “choice” outcome. The “choice” perspective has some advantages, however. First, as we have seen in the preceding text, it is sometimes more efficient than power in helping us to see the big picture. Second, it emphasizes that politics meets needs. From a purely power perspective, we can easily lose the role of needs in shaping politics. POWER AND CHOICE Politics, then, consists of making common decisions for a group through the use of power. Although the concept involves some complexity, it will usually be clear to everyone concerned whether a given action is or is not political in this sense. From the two parts of our definition, there stem two basic ways of looking at how such common policies are made, and people often emphasize one or the other of these in evaluating any particular political action. In so doing, they may fail to consider how their view- point colors their conclusions. The two alternative viewpoints are as follows: 1. We may interpret political action as a way to work out rationally the best com- mon solution to a common problem—or at least a way to work out a reason- able common solution. That is, politics consists of public choice. (Even though this perspective emphasizes the cooperative aspect of decisions, power will still be involved in the making of choices, as noted previously; if nothing else, the power to persuade will be involved, and, of course, some of the “public” will undoubtedly have had more power than others and will have tipped things in Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. favor of their needs.) 2. We may interpret political action as a process through which some people are dominated by other people. That is, politics consists simply of the use of power. Here we often think of power simply as power through coercion. Yet in some cases, political action can involve a majority making decisions for an entire group, even if there is a minority that does not agree or participate. This would be an example of majority rule in elections in a representative democracy. In other words, two people who observe the same political action from these opposing viewpoints might have different ideas of what is happening. For instance, a person operating from the choice viewpoint might look at the large number of people who fail to vote in American presidential elections and conclude that if such a large number of people have chosen not to bother voting, they must be tolerably satisfied with things as they are. Someone else, operating from the “power” viewpoint, might look at that same large number of nonvoters and conclude that American elections are Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  10 Part I: The Idea of Politics Lee Lorenz/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank. flawed, that they are meant to give the appearance of popular choice without providing the voter with significantly different options (i.e., many voters do not bother to vote because their choices have been restricted). Often, both viewpoints are partly accurate. Politics generally involves considering at least the broad needs of the group for whom policy is made: pure tyranny is rare and is difficult to maintain. At the same time, making a common policy generally means that one part of a group is dominating another part to at least some extent. In the pre- vious presidential voting example, both characterizations probably have some truth to them. It is good to bear these two perspectives in mind because we may then be able to avoid misjudging a particular political situation as all one or the other. For example, Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. a college or university class is a group for which common policies must be made and in which a single person (the instructor) is formally charged with responsibility. Thus, the group’s politics will largely consist of domination of the students by the instructor, based on the authority of her role as professor. However, the class is not solely or simply a system of domination because there are a number of informal mechanisms by which students participate in decision making. In short, the politics of a classroom also includes aspects of a rational working out of solutions to common problems. Such questions as the timing of tests, whether or not to close doors or leave the lights on, or the nature of special projects and examinations are often decided by the instructor in consultation with the students. In less direct ways, students—by their expressions of interest in taking or dropping the class—often influence the content or pace of a class. (Never underestimate the effect of paper shuffling two minutes before the end of a class.) Thus, although the politics of a classroom consist primarily of domination, there is also some element of a common search for solutions to common problems. We might overlook this if we were not alert to the two sides of politics. Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 11 An example of this problem is raised by Terry M. Moe, who argues that a popular theory (rational choice theory, which we will discuss in chapter 5) emphasizes “choice” too much at the expense of “power.” One of the concerns of this body of theory is the question of why institutions like Congress, the presidency, bureaucracies, and the like are set up as they are. Rational choice theory emphasizes voluntary choice in setting up such institutions; it sees them as evolving to solve problems of coordinating varied people’s actions to obtain coherent policies. This is clearly a “choice” perspective, in that it explains the way institutions are set up by pointing to their need for coherent policy making. But as Moe points out, while this benign view may be part of the story, institutions are also shaped by powerful political figures to get things they want. The absence of such a “power” perspective is a serious flaw in the theory.8 Additionally, Albert O. Hirschman argues that individuals have three options when confronting they dislike—exit, voice, or loyalty. They can withdraw or disen- gage, protest or let their views be known in some way, or remain silent. The choices that individuals have are shaped by institutions, as well as the choices they make. James C. Scott sees power among those often described as weak. In the face of direct threats from governments, they can take passive resistance measures such as work slowdowns as ways to express their choices. The point here is that power and choice are connected and not always easily separated or distinguished. It is especially important to bear in mind these two points of view when we consider political actions about which we have strong feelings and about which we may expect to be prejudiced. Until the opening up of elections in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, for instance, Americans tended to dismiss elections in communist countries as simple fraud because voters could only vote for a single candidate, with no electoral competi- tion for their votes. However, there was also evident in those elections a surprising ele- ment of broad participation in a search for common action. For instance, even during the period of noncompetitive elections, with only a single candidate on the ballot, 28 percent of Soviet citizens reported that they had at one time or another attempted to persuade others to vote as they did; 19 percent had contacted a state or national government official about some problem.9 “The weeks preceding the election see the formation of countless study circles, discussion groups, campaign meetings, door-to- door canvassing, rallies, demonstrations, and speeches.”10 There appears to have been something more to the Soviet Union’s uncontested elections than we were able to see at the time. Another example of emotions leading us to think of politics not as an interplay among power and choice but just as one or the other is furnished by Iraq at the time Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. of the Second Gulf War in 2003. The U.S. government focused so strongly on Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator, ruling by the power of coercion, that they assumed victo- rious American troops would be greeted by jubilant crowds of grateful Iraqis. In their intense dislike of Saddam Hussein, they forgot that although he did indeed maintain his regime by unspeakable violence, the basis of his rule was more complex than that. He was not only a brutal dictator but, at the same time, also a focus of national unity and nationalism; some parts of the country had been favored by his regime (although others had suffered); and he was seen as having maintained order in a potentially violent ter- ritory. The resulting mixed reaction to American troops—relief at the end of Saddam Hussein’s oppression, but anger at the breakdown in security and the presence of a foreign army of occupation—caught the U.S. government by surprise and left it unpre- pared for the rise of a crippling insurgency. Similarly, after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban from power (who harbored the terrorist group that attacked the United States), many thought it would be easy to set up a new government that would Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  12 Part I: The Idea of Politics be stable and more free. Twenty years later, President Joe Biden called for the final U.S. troops to be withdrawn from that country. It was not clear that in a generation the United States had accomplished its goals to democratize the country or change loyalties or attitudes in Afghanistan. Bearing in mind that there is almost always more to any political choice than just the exercise of power, or just the provision of a collective choice, helps us to remain alert to more varied possibilities even when we know we are strongly prejudiced about a subject. To summarize this section of the chapter: politics consists of making a common decision for a group of people through the use of power. We may view any act of poli- tics from two perspectives, either as a search for an answer to common problems or as an act by which some members of a group impose their will on other members of the group. It is important to remember that generally both viewpoints have at least some validity. It is especially important to remember this when we might be prejudiced about the subject at hand because keeping both viewpoints in mind can help us to avoid think- ing about the subject in narrow, prejudiced ways. Power and choice, the two major themes by which we organize our views of politics, have provided the title of this book. They will recur from time to time in this book as we examine various aspects of politics. The Concentration of Power in Leaders The use of power is surprisingly universal, even in determining common decisions for very large groups of people. People around the world do not vary much in physical strength and intelligence. They are more or less equal in their basic talents. Yet, millions of them will fear and obey another person whose intrinsic capacities are little superior to theirs. It is understandable that this should be so within families because of the weakness and inexperience of children. The adult members of a family are stronger than the chil- dren, and it is perhaps natural that they should be able to control them. However, it is astounding that large numbers of adults will grant this sort of control over their own actions to a military officer, a member of Congress, a dictator, or a religious leader. How is it that political power is so universal and often so concentrated in small num- bers of people?11 Simply posing the question in this way demonstrates once again that the bases of power must be varied and complex. Physical compulsion alone would not be sufficient to ensure the obedience that people all over the world give to their political leaders. Authority and Government Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. The thing that makes it possible to concentrate power in this way is authority. A person (or a group of people) has authority if there is general agreement among those involved that she has the right to control certain decisions and that her deci- sions should be complied with in those areas. The concept of authority is related to another called legitimacy. Just because a person or an institution has power does not make its use legitimate. If there is general agreement that someone may use power, then they have the authority to do so and it will be viewed as legitimate. Various indi- viduals or groups in a society have limited sorts of authority that extend over specific ranges of behavior. A parent has authority to tell children of a certain age when they should go to bed or with whom they should play, but as children grow older the range of activities over which a parent has authority dwindles until it disappears. A teacher in a classroom has the authority to tell students how they should prepare for classes, but the teacher does not have the authority to tell them whom they may date or what political candidate to support. A General Motors supervisor has the Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  Chapter 1: Politics: Setting the Stage 13 authority to tell an assembly-line worker which bolts to tighten, but he cannot tell the worker how to spend coffee breaks; and when the worker resigns, the supervisor has no authority at all. In contrast to such groups, a government is a group of people with ultimate authority within a territory. It is unique in society in that all its power involves authority and that, at least potentially, there is no limit to the range of activities over which it may exer- cise authority. Most governments impose some limits on their authority; for instance, the U.S. government, in its Constitution, rules out the exercise of authority over what religion people are to follow or what people are to say to each other. However, these limitations are self-imposed and not necessarily “natural” to governments. Many gov- ernments around the world, at one time or another, have claimed authority to tell people what religion they should follow, what they should or should not say to one another, what sort of sexual activity was permitted, what they might eat or drink, or the sports and recreation in which they could take part, or recently whether to wear face masks or get a vaccine to combat a pandemic. It is safe to say that there is no area of human activity over which some government or another has not at some time exercised authority. All governments claim authority to tell people what to do, the question is the range of issues or human activities that they have the authority to do this. Authority is so pervasive and important because it is an efficient way to exercise power. It provides a “standard operating procedure” for power, in which a decision does not require any direct use of force, making of arguments, or construction of incen- tives. Authority allows smooth day-to-day decisions on many questions with minimal spinning of wheels. It may be backed up ultimately by the threat of coercion (the police will haul you off and punish you physically if you do not do what those in authority tell you to do), or it may be backed up ultimately by persuasion (if you keep your well clean, as the government tells you to do, you will be sick less often). However, if people do what the government tells them to do, without having to be coerced or persuaded, everything goes more smoothly and—at least from the government’s point of view— more satisfactorily. In general, authority does not require the actual use of coercion or persuasion to any great extent. No one has to stand at street corners to force cars to stop at red lights, and no one has to stand there to persuade them to do so. One of the things that makes a government so important to politics is that it has authority and therefore can ensure that people will comply with its commands with a minimum of expensive and time-consuming coercion or persuasion. People do obey governmental authority and not always out of threats of force or coercion, but because they want to, as Lukes suggested. Actions against authority are Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. by definition “outlaw” behavior and therefore extraordinary, so we can think of many vivid examples of refusals to obey authority—burglary, speeding on the highways, or tax evasion. The startling thing, however, is that few people steal things even when it would be safe to do so, most people drive at or near speed limit even though only a sprinkling of police are available to monitor what they are doing, and most people pay the taxes they owe. It is authority that makes this system of commands and obedience work as smoothly as it does, and this makes the modern state appear to us to be the most natural form of political organization. Authority is not a simple thing that is either present or absent. Rather, it is a matter of degree. Remember, we stated that authority exists because it is “generally agreed on,” that is, most people believe it exists. There will probably never be a government for which every person agrees on the existence and range of the government’s authority. Sometimes when a government issues commands, a portion of the people do not accept its authority to do so. If enough people deny the authority of the government, there Shively, W. Phillips, and David Schultz. Power and Choice : An Introduction to Political Science, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=6915565. Created from anu on 2023-02-16 04:02:59.  14 Part I: The Idea of Politics is a problem. In the early part of the twentieth century, the government of the United States attempted to command people not to drink alcohol. So many people denied the authority of the government in this area that enforcement proved impossible and the law was eventually abandoned. More seriously, in the 1860s, the whole southern region of the United States denied that the national government had any authority over it at all. The states in that region set up their own new government instead, and it took a long and bloody Civil War to reestablish the authority of the U.S. government over them. In 1989 across Eastern Europe in countries such as East Germany, Hungary, and Poland the people decided that these communist government no longer had authority over them, and they hit the streets in demonstrations. Soon thereafter these governments fell and were replaced by new ones. Legitimacy and Authority The crux of government then, and of its ability to function effectively, is the govern- ment’s wide-ranging authority to organize the lives of its people. Paradoxically, this authority exists only because the people believe it to exist and that it is appropriate. If authority were to fail, it might still be possible for a government to organize its people by coercion and persuasion but at such great cost that this approach could probably not be sustained. A pure tyranny, existing without the benefit of at least some degree of authority, probably could not last long. It is crucial to a government that large numbers of its people should believe not only that it has authority, but that it properly should have that authority. As noted in the preceding text, we call the existence of this sort of feeling, to the extent that it does exist, the legitimacy of the government. Legitimacy, like authority, is a matter of degree. Not everyone in a state will necessarily always agree that its government is legitimate or that a given type of governmental act is legitimate. Much of the violence of politics in Afghanistan, for instance, is a result of a failure to agree on what sort of government is legitimate. Sources of Legitimacy How does a government achieve a reasonable degree of legitimacy? There are many ways by which the people’s allegiance may be bound to a government so that it is con- sidered legitimate. 1. Legitimacy by Results. First and foremost, a government may gain and retain legitimacy with its people by providing for them the things they most want: security against physical assault, security of their country’s borders against invasion, pride in Copyright © 2022. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved. their nation, and economic security. If the government can provide these things, its legitimacy will be greatly strengthened. If it cannot, its legitimacy is likely to be called into question. A good example of “legitimacy by results” is the rule of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s. In 1933, Hitler took power through dubious maneuvers and with at most