(Originally posted: 12/23/2011)
It seems like, once again, our nation has survived a showdown in Washington. Legislators came together yesterday to agree on a tax-cut extension that everyone agreed from the beginning was a good idea. Even so, they bickered and argued with one another until virtually the last possible instant, each party blaming the other for the dysfunction. Even the president noted publicly that the dysfunctional factionalism in Congress has become a major problem for the country.
Well, anthropology is either of use in fixing society’s ills, or it is nothing but intellectual navel-gazing. I’ll use this post, and a few more in coming weeks, to explore how an anthropological perspective on government might help to shake out some of the wrinkles. Click through to the full article for my thoughts.
My dissertation research involved developing a system for describing sociopolitical organization at several scales simultaneously. With that kind of synchronic description, looking at diachronic changes became easier. The system involved two relevant dimensions of variation (a third deals with issues of no concern to this post), making for four possible “ideal” organizations. Of course, no single real world society ever typifies any ideal organization, but many real world cultures resemble one more than the others. The modern US, for example, resembles type 2, the vertically focused society. In general, we view ourselves as distinct individuals, compete with one another for power. On the other hand, we tell ourselves that our society is a type 1, horizontally focused society, where everyone considers themselves as part of a larger group, whose parts all cooperate and share power. Clearly, the reality and the ideal are not in sync here.
On the other hand, smaller subgroups within the US can have markedly different organizational structures. Congress is one such group. It is organized not as a type 2, but as a type 5 group. In such an organization, factions still struggle with one another to dominate power and exclude others, but the personal identities of individuals are tightly tied to their membership in the faction. In this case, we’re talking about party affiliation. Republicans and Democrats fight against one another to grab and hold power, and the individual legislator’s identity as a legislator is largley defined by his party. Republicans very seldom side with Democrats–and vice versa–except in circumstances when neither side alone can grab full control. In circumstances where one party can grab control of the process and exclude the other from full participation, that party (almost) invariably does so.
So what does this perspective bring to the issue? How can it help us see a solution to the perennial deadlock in Congress? We have a Congress organized as a type 5 society; we want Congress to be a type 1. Without going into too much detail over the social theory involved, the change that needs to be made is this: Congressional factions must shift from exclusionary competition to sharing power as a corporate body. This is the organizational difference between types 1 and 5.
The collective social identity of Congress–where individuals’ personal identities are tied to their membership in a larger group–is a good thing, it’s just that they’re tied to the wrong groups. If Person A sees himself first as a Republican and Person B first as a Democrat, it is easy to rationalize competition. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to rationalize exclusionary competition within the focal group of a collective social identity. Rather than tying a person’s identity as a legislator to the political party, we should create an environment where legislators see themselves as Americans first, Congressmen second, and party members only later. If Persons A and B share a common social identity as “Congressmen,” they are much less likely to fight. It would be almost like fighting with oneself.
How, then, can we get our legislators to stop seeing themselves as Republicans and Democrats, and start seeing themselves as allies in the task of governing the country? There are any number of ways this might be accomplished–sadly, none of them seem very likely. The most obvious approach, though, would be to break the power of the two-party system, so that its salience in the daily live of legislators becomes much lessened. We cannot simply outlaw political parties, as that would clearly violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. What we could do, through some significant shuffling of the federal government, is to redefine the roles that parties play in US politics. That’s what I’ll look at in the next few posts: changes that seem (at least from my non-expert perspective) consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, but which will reduce the prominence of political party affiliation.