W phillips shively power and choice

Power & Choice

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Fourteenth Edition

Power & Choice An Introduction to Political Science

W. Phillips Shively University of Minnesota

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POWER & CHOICE: AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE, FOURTEENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous editions © 2008, 2007, and 2005. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shively, W. Phillips, 1942– Power & choice : an introduction to political science / W. Phillips Shively, University of Minnesota.— Fourteenth edition. pages cm ISBN 978-0-07-802477-1 (alk. paper) 1. Political science—Textbooks. I. Title. JA66.S47 2014 320—dc23 2013009848

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www.mhhe.com

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To Ruth Phillips Shively

and Arthur W. Shively

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Contents

Examples and Boxed Features xiii Preface xiv

Part I The Idea of Politi cs 1 CHAPTER 1 Politics: Setting the Stage 1

Politics 2 Politics as the Making of Common Decisions 3 Politics as the Exercise of Power 4 Power and Choice 9 Politics of the State 17 Political Science 18 The Pleasures of Politics 21

CHAPTER 2 Modern Ideologies and Political Philosophy 23

American Ideologies 25 Liberalism 28 The Conservative Reaction 31 The Socialist Alternative 35 Communism and Socialism 37 Fascism 38 Ideologies in the Twenty-First Century 39 Religion, Politics, and Political Philosophy 41 Political Philosophy in Other Historical Eras 44

Part II The State and Public Policy 49 CHAPTER 3 The Modern State 49

The Development of the Modern State 51 The Origin of States: Power or Choice? 53

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The State as a Device to Provide Public Goods 55 “State,” “Nation,” and the “Nation-State” 57 State-Building 63 Government and the State 64 Challenges to the State 67 Example: State-Building in Nigeria 69 Example: State-Building in the European Union 71

CHAPTER 4 Policies of the State 76

The Role of Government in the Third World 79 Constraints and Conditions for Policy 81 Defense Policy 84 Education 86 Research and Development 87 Health and Social Welfare 89 The Place of Power in Policy Analysis 91 Example: The Demographic Challenge 92 Example: Economic Development Compared with “Human Development” 93

CHAPTER 5 Economic Policy of the State 96

Economic Performance I: Growth 97 Economic Performance II: Controlling Inflation

and Unemployment 104 Unemployment 106 Distribution and Economic Inequality 109 Independent Central Banks 112 Corruption 115 Other Measures Available to Government 119 Globalization: Are States Losing their Ability to Make Economic Policy? 119 Political Economy 121 Example: Economic Policy in Germany 123 Example: Economic Policy in Indonesia 126

CHAPTER 6 What Lies Behind Policy: Questions of Justice and Effectiveness 131

The Problem of Justice 132 Other Aspects of Justice: Procedural Justice 134 Effectiveness 138

Contents vii

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viii Contents

A Basic Question of Effectiveness: Authority versus the Market 140 Power and Choice 145 The Need to Act, Even under Uncertainty 146 Example: Political Choice 146

Part III The Citi zen and th e Regime 151 CHAPTER 7 Democracies and Authoritarian Systems 151

Democracy 151 The Coming and Going of Democracy 153 Possible Explanations 155 What Did We Learn from the Third Wave? 157 Why Are Prosperous Countries Likely to Be Democracies? 160 Democracy and Freedom 162 Democracy and Capitalism 163 Authoritarian Systems 164 Military Government 166 Why Aren’t There More Military Governments? 168 One-Party States 170 Monarchies and Theocracies 171 Democracy versus Authoritarianism:

Material Considerations 172 “Power and Choice” Again 174 Example: Egypt in the Arab Spring 174 Example: Authoritarian Drift in Venezuela? 176 Example: Theocracy in Iran 178

CHAPTER 8 Political Culture and Political Socialization 182

Analyzing Political Cultures 184 Religion and Political Culture 187 Political Socialization 188 Media as Agents of Political Socialization 191 Political Culture and the “Democratic Citizen” 193 How Well Do Citizens Meet These Requirements? 194 Social Capital 198 Example: Building Authority and Legitimacy in West Germany after World War II 199 Example: Declining Democratic Legitimacy in the United States 202

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Contents ix

Part IV The Apparatu s of Governance 205 CHAPTER 9 Constitutions and the Design of Government 205

Variations in Formality 206 The Virtue of Vagueness 207 Other Principles of Constitutional Design 208 Constitution-Writing 211 The Geographic Concentration of Power 213 “Federal” and “Unitary” States 214 The Distinction Between “Unitary” and “Centralized” States 216 How Much Centralization Is Good? 217 Constitutions and Guarantees of Rights 218 “Constitutionalism” and the Rule of Law 219 Example: Constitutional Government in Great Britain 220 Example: Constitution-Writing in South Africa 223

CHAPTER 10 Elections 226

Elections as a Means of Building Support 226 Elections as a Means of Selecting Leaders and Policies 230 Electoral Systems 230 Referendums 236 Electoral Participation 237 Effects of Choice and Information on Turnout 241 The Paradox of Voting 243 The Bases of Individuals’ Electoral Choices 244 Example: Proportional Representation Elections in Israel 247 Example: Elections in Nigeria 249

CHAPTER 11 Parties: A Linking and Leading Mechanism in Politics 251

The Political Party 251 Origins of the Modern Party 252 Political Parties and the Mobilization of the Masses 253 Political Parties and the Recruitment and Socialization of Leaders 255 Political Parties as a Source of Political Identity 256 Political Parties as a Channel of Control 259 Party Organization 260 Party Finance 262

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x Contents

Political Party Systems 263 Power and Choice 268 Example: The Communist Party of China 268 Example: Canada’s Political Parties 270

CHAPTER 12 Structured Conflict: Interest Groups and Politics 274

Interest Groups and Representation 276 Types of Interest Groups 283 Tactics of Interest Groups 285 The Choice of Tac tics 291 Patterns of Organized Interest-Group Activity 292 Pluralism 293 Neocorporatism 294 Pluralism and Neocorporatism: Power and Choice 296 Example: Interest Groups in France 297 Example: Attenuated Interest Groups in Bangladesh 298

CHAPTER 13 Social Movements and Contentious Politics 301

Why Now? 303 Social Movements as a Public Goods Problem 305 Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Informal Organization 306 Example: The Battle of Seattle 310 Example: The “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine 311

CHAPTER 14 National Decision-Making Institutions: Parliamentary Government 315

Head of State 317 Head of Government 318 Cabinet Control 319 What Does a Parliament Do? 320 Parliamentary Committees 323 Upper Houses 325 Advantages and Disadvantages of Parliamentary Government 325 Let’s Make Sure I Haven’t Made This Sound Too Simple 327 “Consensus” Parliamentarism 328 Parliaments in Authoritarian Systems 329 Example: Parliamentary Government in India 331 Example: Parliamentary Government in Germany 334

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Contents xi

CHAPTER 15 National Decision-Making Institutions: Presidential Government 338

Political Parties and Presidential Government 339 Presidential Leadership 341 Presidential and Parliamentary Systems Compared 342 Responsibility for Policy 343 Presidential Systems and Comprehensive Policy 344 Recruitment of Executive Leaders 344 Review and Control of the Executive 346 Flexibility of the Political Process 347 The Split Executive of Parliamentary Systems 347 Why Aren’t All Democracies Parliamentary Systems? 349 Democracy and the Question of Accountability 351 A Note on Institutions and Power 355 Example: Presidential Hybrid in France 356 Example: Presidential Government in Mexico 358

CHAPTER 16 Bureaucracy and the Public Sector 361

Public Administration as a Political Problem 362 Characteristics of Good Public Administration 364 “Bureaucracy”: A Reform of the Nineteenth Century 365 Bureaucracy versus Flexibility 366 The Problem of Protected Incompetence 367 Adjustments to Bureaucracy 368 Social Representativeness of Public Administration 369 Example: The French Bureaucracy 371 Example: Bureaucratic Cultures in Europe and Africa 373

CHAPTER 17 Law and the Courts 376

Anglo-Saxon Case Law 376 Continental European Code Law 378 The Blending of Case Law and Code Law 380 Religious Law: The Sharia 381 Courts 383 Judicial Review 385 Example: The Law in China 388 Example: The European Court of Justice 391

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Part V Internati onal Politi cs 393 CHAPTER 18 Global Politics: Politics among States (and Others) 393

The Absence of Central Authority 394 Fiduciary Political Roles and International Morality 395 Impediments to International Communication 397 Power and International Politics 397 The Process of International Politics 399 The Evolution of the International System since World War II 405 The World since the Cold War 407 Power and Choice in International Politics 413 Example: An International Failure: Rwanda 414 Example: The United Nations 417 A Personal Note 419

APPENDIX Principles of Political Analysis 421

Falsifiability 421 What Makes a Statement Interesting? 422 Causation and Explanation 423 Historical Explanation 425 A Few Common Pitfalls in Analysis 426

Glossary G-1 Index I-1

xii Contents

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Examples State-Building in Nigeria 69 State-Building in the European Union 71 Th e Demographic Challenge 92 Economic Development Compared with

“Human Development” 93 Economic Policy in Germany 123 Economic Policy in Indonesia 126 Political Choice 146 Egypt in the Arab Spring 174 Authoritarian Drift in Venezuela? 176 Th eocracy in Iran 178 Building Authority and Legitimacy in

West Germany aft er World War II 199 Declining Democratic Legitimacy in the

United States 202 Constitutional Government in Great

Britain 220 Constitution-Writing in South Africa 223 Proportional Representation Elections in

Israel 247 Elections in Nigeria 249 Th e Communist Party of China 268 Canada’s Political Parties 270 Interest Groups in France 297 Attenuated Interest Groups in

Bangladesh 298 Th e Battle of Seattle 310 Th e “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine 311 Parliamentary Government in India 331 Parliamentary Government in Germany 334 Presidential Hybrid in France 356

Presidential Government in Mexico 358 Th e French Bureaucracy 371 Bureaucratic Cultures in Europe

and Africa 373 Th e Law in China 388 Th e European Court of Justice 391 An International Failure: Rwanda 414 Th e United Nations 417

Boxed Features John Stuart Mill and Liberalism 30 Edmund Burke and Conservatism 32 Karl Marx and Socialism 36 Analytic Political Philosophy 46 Th e Marxist Th eory of the State 55 Why Are Th e World’s States Expanding? 81 Planning for Environmental Sustainability in

Costa Rica 85 Baumol’s Disease 97–98 Corruption, on a Scale of 0 to 10 117 Are Regime Changes Contagious? 166 Diffi culties of Elections in a New

Democracy 229 What Is the Best Level of Participation? 241 Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy” 264 Th e Logic of Collective Action 282 “Delegate” and “Trustee” Models of

Representation 322 Presidential Leadership 350 Immigration Agencies as an Example 370 Emile Durkheim’s Th eory of Law 379 Banning Land Mines 411

Examples and Boxed Features

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This book provides a general, comparative introduction to the major concepts and themes of political science. For a number of years, I had taught a course that attempted to accomplish this aim, and that experience showed me how badly we need a text that is conceptually alive and that engages students with concrete examples of analysis without losing them in a clutter of definitional minutiae. That is what I aimed for when I first wrote this book, and I’ve been very pleased at the response it has elicited.

The title of the book, Power & Choice, indicates a subsidiary theme that recurs at intervals. We may view politics as (1) the use of power or (2) the production of a public choice. Often one or the other is heavily emphasized in approaching the subject. Marxism emphasizes politics as the use of power, while pluralism and much formal modeling work emphasize the emergence of public choices. For our present purpose, I have defined politics as the use of power to make common decisions for a group of people, a definition that obviously demands that one hold both perspec- tives simultaneously. At various stages of my presentation, I note instances in which an emphasis on just one of the two halves of the definition may yield a distorted interpretation.

Behind this subsidiary theme lies a broader theme that remains largely implicit—it is best if we conduct political analysis eclectically, rather than straitjacketing ourselves into a single approach. My own research is squarely in the behavioral realm, for instance, but I found as I was working on this book that necessities of exposition and understand- ing pulled me toward a greater emphasis on policy and institutions than I had originally intended. Similarly, the state as an organizer of politics thrust itself more to the fore than I had anticipated. Distinctions that provide useful boundaries for research proved unhelpful in my efforts to build an understanding of politics among students. I think this is a healthy sign.

I present the material in the book topically rather than on a country-by-country basis. However, in order to add the sort of detailed contextual grounding that students gain from a country presentation, I have included within each substantive chapter a couple of extended examples from countries that particularly display the conceptual material of that chapter. For instance, Chapter 3 , which deals with the state, concludes with detailed sections on the establishment and maintenance of the Nigerian state and on the European Union. Similarly, Chapter 16 , “Bureaucracy and the Public Sector,”

Preface

xiv

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gives detailed treatment to France and a comparison of bureaucratic cultures in Europe and Africa.

• New to the Fourteenth Edition Over the decades since I first wrote this book, the world has proved to be a strange and wonderful place—even more than I realized at that time. The book has seen the joy and light of the young people who pulled down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dark- ness of the suicide attackers who destroyed the World Trade Center in 2001. As it has evolved across a number of editions during this time, very little that it started out with has remained unchanged. Its mood has also varied from time to time, but one thing that has been constant is my faith in people’s capacity to shape their futures through politics.

In this fourteenth edition there is, of course, a great deal of updating. When a book deals with all the states of the world, much changes over even a couple of years. I have updated the fallout from the 2008–2009 worldwide economic crisis, Russia, the Arab Spring, new elections in Mexico and other states, and many other topics.

More substantial changes include:

• a new section on media and political socialization • reorganization of the global politics chapter • a new example: Egypt and the Arab Spring • new treatment of the principal-agent problem • new treatment of soft power

I long wrestled with what might seem like a small matter, but is not: what to call states that are not democracies. “Non-democracy” is clunky. “Authoritarian system” risks confusion with “authoritarian democracy,” which is too important a concept to omit. In past editions I have used “autocracy” as a compromise, though it is not literally accurate. Starting with the thirteenth edition, I decided I really had to make a choice, and opted for “authoritarian sys- tem.” I hope this works for you.

• Supplements For the Instructor Instructor’s Online Learning Center. This password-protected, Web-based supplement offers access to important instructor support materials and downloadable supplements. Visit www.mhhe.com/shively14e for a comprehensive Instructor’s Manual, Test Bank, Computerized Test Bank, and PowerPoint lecture slides.

Preface xv

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xvi Preface

• Acknowledgments I have been very pleased by the response to this book. It is a wonderful experience to run into people who have used it and feel that it has helped them. I benefited greatly from comments by the reviewers of the fourteenth edition, who will notice many of their sug- gestions have been incorporated.

W. Phillips Shively

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About the Author

W. Phillips Shively is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and has taught at the University of Oregon and Yale University. He has also served as Visiting Professor at the University of Oslo in Norway. His research, which has appeared in numerous books and articles, deals with the comparative study of elections, and he has written The Craft of Political Research, an introduction to research techniques. He has also had practical political experience as a lobbyist in Minnesota. His true love is birding.

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1

PART I

The Idea of Politics

CHAPTER 1

Politics: Setting the Stage

Everyone knows something about politics, and many people know a great deal about it. It is an interesting, amusing, and moving spectacle that sometimes even sup- plants 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 peo- ple do who follow politics: we read the newspapers, listen to press conferences, and take part in political campaigns. However, we also do some things differently. We usually try to see both sides of any question and to keep our emotions in low key, because emo- tions can cloud judgment. We borrow deliberately from other disciplines—such as eco- nomics, history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy—to help us understand what is going on politically. Above all, as you will see later in this chapter, 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 examination of a richly complex word may teach us a lot 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 actually 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. • Studied the spread of stem-cell research laws across the states.

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2 Part I The Idea of Politics

• Showed that the roots of successful government may go back to social institutions several centuries ago.

• Showed why most nations ignore warnings about surprise military action by hostile nations.

• 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 like the United States. 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 be- cause you should start your study with some basic terms in place. You may also find it intriguing 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 does the U.S. Congress so often disagree with the president in framing energy policies?

• 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 at the same time their housing was not as segregated as that in the North?

• Should homosexuals be barred from the military? • Should fascists be banned from teaching in the schools? • Why does the United States have only two major political parties when most

democracies 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?

These questions deal with politics. The questions about bosses and parents 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.

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Chapter 1 Politics: Setting the Stage 3

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 com- mon, as a group. A family must decide where to live, what sorts of rules to set for chil- dren, 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 students, 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 common 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 mate- rial 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. Ford Motor Company’s decisions on new-car styling are not part of a common national policy.

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 Ford Motor Company example above is tricky because Ford 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 our automobile industry among a few giant corporations and because (as a result of this) the decisions of any one of them bulk large in American life, those decisions have a quasi-public char- acter and are “sort of” political.

Another tricky aspect of the political/nonpolitical distinction is that it is also a matter of perspective. Ford’s design decisions are not (except via Ford’s quasi-public nature) politi- cal 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. A family’s de- cision 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. “Com- pany politics” is involved in Ford’s decision, and “family politics” is involved in the family’s

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4 Part I The Idea of Politics

decision. Neither, however, is a national political decision. Society consists of groups within groups within groups. Ford Motor Company is a group within the United States, and a family may be a group within the larger group of those dependent on Ford. Politics exists within any of these groups whenever they make a decision that will apply to all the members of the group. Depending upon which group you are thinking of, you may treat a given deci- sion—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.

• 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 per- sons 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 presi- dent 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 in- volves 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 ac- tions 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.

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 that 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 exercise any of these forms of power may be based on all sorts of things—money, affection, physical strength, legal status (the power of a police officer to direct traffic, for instance), the possession of important information, a winning smile, strong allies, determination, desperation (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.

It is not necessary to learn the specific bases of power I 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.

Implicit and Manifest Power Power need not consist of any observable link at all between the people or groups in- volved. Scholars distinguish between manifest power and implicit power . Manifest

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Chapter 1 Politics: Setting the Stage 5

power is based on an observable action by A that leads B to do what A wants. A police officer’s signal that causes a driver to stop and wait is an example of manifest power. In the case of implicit power, B does what A desires not because of anything A says or does but because (1) B senses that A wants something done and (2) for any of a variety of reasons B wishes to do what A wants done. Many examples of implicit power are found in families, whose members are so attuned to one another that there is often no observ- able communication between members who yet manage to “read” and comply with one another’s wishes. A father may toss the car keys to his daughter on Saturday morning completely unprompted except by his knowledge of her habits and his desire to comply with her wishes. As she drives, the daughter may obey the 55 miles-per-hour speed limit because she knows that her parents feel strongly about it. In neither case is there any overt signal from one family member to the other.

A famous example of implicit power in a broader sphere of politics comes from the reign of King Henry II of England. The king had been involved in a series of dis- putes with Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry exclaimed one day, “Will no one rid me of this man?” Four of his knights overheard what the king said and proceeded to murder Becket. Historians still dispute whether the king really wished to have Becket killed.

Politics as power: a child-soldier abducted and forced to fight. His shirt reads, in either bravado or pathos, “I fear old age more than death.”

©AP Photo/Boris Heger

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6 Part I The Idea of Politics

What is most important and interesting about implicit power is that an observer would have a hard time deciding whether or not power has been exercised in any par- ticular instance. The source of implicit power may lie far away from its exercise. To understand why the daughter drives 55 miles per hour, for instance, we might have to look back to her early childhood. We can analyze power easily in the case of one coun- try telling another, “Cede the province Anemone to us or we’ll invade you.” We cannot so easily analyze it if the resources on which it is based are varied and complex, as in the power of a defeated Iraq to draw economic aid from the United States, or if it is in whole or in part implicit, as in the king’s muttered remark in the presence of his soldiers.

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 dif- ficult 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 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 actually 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; therefore, he had to ignore the possibility of implicit power. 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 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.

1 Floyd Hunter, Community Power Structure (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953). Note that the politics of Atlanta today is very different from that which Hunter described in 1953. The most obvious difference is that Atlanta has now had black mayors for many years. The power structure Hunter described was all white. 2 Robert Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).

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Chapter 1 Politics: Setting the Stage 7

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 utilities 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 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 eco- nomic inequality has not become a major issue in the press or in popular opinion? Bar- tels shows that the failure to bring this issue to the fore has affected American politics profoundly.

Beyond the complexity that such control of agendas adds to the concept of power, Peter Digeser, drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, has 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 points 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 prevent- ing 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 in the first place. The test for Digeser (based on Lukes) is 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 communica- tions 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.