Maybe it's because it's still football season, and will be until next Sunday evening, but I find my mind drifting in the direction of team ideas of freedom. It will not surprise anyone to notice that at any given level of individual engagement (low, medium, or high), the more freedom the team has, the less freedom any individual has.
I hope it will not become necessary to distinguish "freedom to act" from "freedom to decide," which I would call, "discretion" or "expertise" of "judgment" or something.
If I am the defensive coordinator, I call a defense and expect that everyone will go to the place on the field where he supposed to be and take on the responsibility he is supposed to have, whether he likes the assignment or not. If the players are free (to do what they want to do) then I am not free to call the defensive alignment.
But a football team is an institution, rather than a process. It is, in that way, like the U. S. Congress and unlike the information acquisition process or the value application process or the voting process. In the Congress, every representative feels the need to serve (at best) to placate (in the middle) or to distract (at worst) the voters in the district. I call that a centrifugal stress because it moves the rep away from the center of the institution--away, to follow the football example, from the defense that was called. Every representative needs to align himself or herself with the caucus position or pay the consequences, if any. I call that a centripetal stress, a "center-seeking stress." It emphasizes the exact performance of the defensive alignment I call.
I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that each major branch of government--I divide them into four pieces, executive, judicial, administrative, and legislative--has a characteristic pattern of centrifugal and centripetal forces. It occurred to me this week that the process part--the politics rather than government part--also has a balance of the two. I will want to think quickly here of three of those.
Coming to Public Judgment is not about the range of opinions on issues or the rapidity of change of those opinions or any short run enthusiasm for them. It is about the stability of an opinion, even when the whole set of likely consequences is examined. It is easy to use a foreign war as an example. The reasons for undertaking a military conflict rarely take into account the cost in "blood and treasure," as they say and when the war has begun, those are the costs most likely to be present in the minds of voters. If, following the centrifugal stresses model, predominant opinion returns to the center and is stable and can weather increased costs, we say the public has, as Daniel Yankelovich calls it, "come to public judgment."
Coverage of Conditions is a centrifugal emphasis of the effects of the media. Lance Bennett says we are quite likely to treat a story as a narrative episode, dramatizing the human effects. Such a story says very little about the institutions, which are important over the long term; it is not likely to be analytical or historical, both of which help to sustain policy interest over the long run. News which emphasizes the elements of a policy and the predictable outcomes will help citizens decide whether to support it or to begin to push for something better. Stories that are only "up close and personal" will not help us make those decisions.
Responsible Party Model (RPM) is a very disciplined model of party competition. Currently, candidates freelance their candidacies, decide what they are for or against, and if they are elected, "vote their consciences." This amount of "player freedom" gets in the road of any "team freedom" at all. To return to the football metaphor, RPM would be a radical change in politics, but it is the taken for granted condition of a defensive coordinator. In the RPM, the party recruits and funds the candidates, insists on fidelity to the party platform, maintains strong inter-branch cooperation among members of the party, and has strong legislative caucuses. Because of all that personal freedom forgone, this party can come back to the electorate, taking responsibility for the outcomes of their policies, and ask the electorate the kind of question they are best equipped to answer, which is, "Here is what we did. How do you like it?"
Two things struck me as I brought these together today. The first was the applicability of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in the policy process. Here it is in public opinion; and again in media coverage; and here again in party competition. The second in that in opting for centripetal forces in all these areas, is there a substantial loss in the range of policies that can be considered? Yes, probably so. Is it worth it? Give me a little time on that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment