The American Voter: US Political Culture Explored

I worked really hard on this post and wondered if I would finish it by the US presidential elections of 2012. Luckily for me it is done well before. So here it is: some reflections on the American voter, backed with numbers and fancy sources. This post is not so much on ordeal, rather it functions as a set of ideas that frame the upcoming elections. Feel free to feel inspired and please share any thoughts! :p

Political culture is hard to define, yet it offers an attractive explanation for national differences concerning political behavior such as voting. 'The French are such', 'Americans do not think that way', etc. I am confident you have heard some like those before. There are indeed a lot of differences, but they are in my opinion not given. First of all political culture is dynamic: it can change over time (see the graph below). This is evident from the declining trust in political institutions with Americans. Second, the creation of and changes in political culture are the result of historical development. The trust is influenced by education levels, economic climate and central figures with their vigor or scandal.

Now how unique is the American political culture? Ronald Inglehart, famous amongst political scientists, was a driving force behind thinking about post-materialism: a value pattern focussing on self-realization relative to self-preservation. By adding traditionalism/secularism as a second dimension, Inglehart identified different cultures. He found an Anglo-Saxon value pattern which scores very high on self-realization and moderate on the second dimension. This is expressed in various features of American political culture: the perceived exceptionalism, the belief in popular judgement and the typical conception of freedom. All these elements are rooted in the history of the American state and society: fleeing religious or political persecution, resistance against the English crown, the autonomy of the states, etc.

(It needs to be said that the dominant political culture in the United States is perhaps more of an imposed value pattern rooted in the Anglo-Saxon and Protestant inheritance. Values differ along various lines, of which ethnicity might well be one. In how far the political culture is shared by say Afro-Americans or Latinos is hard to say. Even more difficult is it to draw conclusions as to how 'American' American political culture is.)

'American' political culture: a combination of influences or
the dominance of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant values?

The above should enable us to situate the American political culture and place it in its historical context. On to the voter now, as the upcoming election is the essence of this article. United States politics is largely spared from the increasing fragmentation that has Europe in its grip. Even in the UK they need to form coalitions now, despite the majoritarian mode of voting. This does however not mean that voting behavior didn't change in the States. Like everywhere in the West, identification of the voters with a single party has been diminishing. The electorate is increasingly motivated by what is called 'retrospective voting': casting your ballot based on specific issues, the image of parties/leaders and the economic climate.

Studies from the sixties up till now show that only up to a fifth of the American population is motivated by ideological reasons when casting the vote; about 40% defines politics in terms of group interests (classes, ethnicity, etc.) and 25% rewards or punishes the establishment based on the general tendency of the economy and society as a whole. The others are, sadly, apathetic: they don't give a ----. Furthermore, an overwhelming eight out of ten voters show no temporal stability in their ideological preferences. However in times of crisis and change the electorate becomes more ideological in its thought than its leaders, pushing for extremes. If these results don't seem to tell you anything, read this paragraph over once again whilst thinking about Obama's success in 2008. Now repeat that exercise with the possible Republican nominees for this year in mind.

Sources:

Converse, P.E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D.E. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent (pp. 206-261). New York: Free Press.

Hague, R. & Harrop, M. (2010). Elections and voters. In Comparative government and politics: An introduction (pp. 179-202). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Hague, R. & Harrop, M. (2010). Political culture. In Comparative government and politics: An introduction (pp. 121-137). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic and social change in 43 countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Inglehart, R. (1999). Postmodernization erodes respect for authority, but increases support for democracy. In P. Norris (Ed.), Critical citizens: Global support for democratic governance (pp. 359-392). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Putnam, R. (2002). Democracies in flux: The evolution of social capital in contemporary society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sears, D.O. & Funk, C.L. (1990). The role of self-interest in social and political attitudes, Advances in experimental social psychology, 24, pp. 1-91.

The WTO: A Brave New World?

Often mentioned in my posts is the World Trade Organization, WTO for short. Mostly it is in a complaint about the negative side-effects of its policies and actions. The WTO was established in 1995 as the successor to the GATT-negotiations. Its goal was to realize global free trade. I noticed however that more and more the organization is used as a battleground for the resolution of national interest conflicts. The big trading blocs - United States, European Union and China - are pursuing their economic self-interest, disguising it as concerns of free trade, ecology or fair trade.

One of the first big clashes was between Europe and the Cairns Group. The latter attacked the agricultural policy of the Union. Of course this was a genuine case of protectionism versus free trade. But when Europe masked its subsidies as support for environmental development, things got really nasty. The WTO was expected to decide on the legitimacy of environmental and other 'progressive' arguments, something it had no mandate for. Indeed the WTO assesses mostly in favor of free trade. Two clear-cut cases are the Banana War and the dispute about Europe's unilateral guarantee of free trade to its poorest trading partners. In both cases Europe had nothing to gain financially itself, but the WTO ruled that such practices are 'against the spirit of freeing up world trade'. I wonder what will become of the Union's aircraft carbon tax...

With its one-sided focus on free trade the WTO can
only serve capital. There is no attention for legitimate
concerns regarding the environment or free trade...

The WTO was created in a moment that everyone believed capitalism had triumphed. A brave new world dawned, a world in which free trade was good trade, best trade. In this spirit the rules of good practice were enshrined in legislation that could only be changed by unanimous vote of the WTO members. This gave rise to what political scientist Stephen Gill calls the new constitutionalism of disciplinary neoliberalism: governments across the world have to abide the rules regardless of their orientation, resisting or retreating equals economic suicide. Truly globalization at its best here, or should I perhaps say at its worst?

Nations sometimes win, sometimes they lose. The real winner in this game is capital: it enjoys the freedom to exploit without the hinderance of border, it is free to set up governments against each other. Who gives the biggest tax cut? Who provides the juiciest subsidies? Who doesn't care that the world dies tomorrow if we can feast today? The one-sided stress of free trade is the real tragedy of the WTO. When we have global exchange we need global regulation. Not the kind of night-watchman authority the WTO provides. Perhaps the resolution lies in the blockage the organization is currently in: being stuck halfway between painful fines and equally painful import taxes can only cause irritation with the WTO's members.

What lies beneath: Implicit attitudes and emancipation

In the previous post I addressed the issue of traditional gender roles. Inspired by a publication of the Belgian Institute for the Equality of Woman and Man, I argued that gender roles are constraining to the personal freedom. Here I want to illustrate this point more thoroughly: Gender roles are a mostly social phenomenon, while it is often portrayed as a natural order. This makes that any deviant behavior is considered abnormal, even when superficially tolerated. There always exists implicit psychological pressure to adjust to the norm, regardless of whether explicit social pressure accompanies it. The psychological bias is deeply ingrained within our minds, as I will show. I can however not do this without first mentioning the illicit nature of this pressure and thus of the constraints. We are not sufficiently aware of how indoctrinated we truly are. And, as stated in the previous post, it is in this subtlety that lies the real danger.

On to the proof now, as big declarations about brainwashing make me sound more like a lunatic than I am comfortable with. A key notion in need of understanding is that the human brain is the ultimate instrument of deceit: we succeed to fool ourselves with the most powerful illusions time and time again. People can say that they oppose traditional gender roles, even believe that they do, while subconsciously they have a positive attitude toward them. As long is this conflict does not surface the person in question doesn't notice. A quick example: people can speak noble of tolerance toward homosexuality until their son 'needs to say something'. Same so with multiculturalism and the daughter introducing her new boyfriend Ali.

That people are not aware of implicit attitudes is widely accepted in social psychology. An instrument has been designed to measure such attitudes, the implicit association test (IAT). The test was created by Harvard psychologists in 1998 and caused a real revolt in methodology. I suggest not to find out how it works untill you have taken one yourself. It is a solid instrument though and some stunning results have been discovered using it:

The above image illustrates the preference of whites over blacks (left) and the attitude toward traditional gender roles (right). Both measured once by self-observation trough a list of questions (explicit) and once using IAT (implicit). Apparently women are not as emancipated as they themselves claim to be. Sure they are free, they have made their own choices, etc. Subconsciously they are still compelled to follow the gender roles though. Socialization at its best here. I included the example of blacks and whites in the United States because it shows that even blacks have a more positive attitude toward whites than toward their in-group. Seemingly the black community is based on a contrast with whites, a socially produced (!) contrast that places blacks at the bottom end of the comparison. A contrasts blacks too agree upon, albeit without being aware of it.

IAT research strengthens my view that there is a merit in stressing the harm done by the less visible or even invisible dynamics. We must acknowledge that the continuous portrayal of socially produced inequality as natural blocks the way to true emancipation. We must expose the triggers of mental oppression and fight them openly. To end this post I wish to thank J.J. Ekins for his comments on the previous post. They were a genuine stimulus for me to build upon. To all other readers: feel free to engage, to formulate your own thoughts, etc. A little polemic makes my blog more than an exercise in writing.

Gender equality in Belgium: The IGVM report

A few days ago the Belgian Institute For the Equality of Woman and Man (IGVM) published its second report on gender statistics. The report is an instrument that lists numerous indicators of inequality between genders. The first gender statistics report was published in 2006. Since that time a lot of progress has been made in my little country. Especially at the indicators of education and academic careers the emancipation is really visible. A lot of problems still remain though. The hardest conclusion to digest - also the one the press covered most intensely - is that for every houseman there still are 32 housewives. Classic gender roles are indeed more firmly embedded in our open societies than you might imagine. The group of men who are participating in the household is growing, albeit at a slow rate. In the end the combination of a working job with tasks around the household still falls mainly on women. Housemen are a marginal group both within the population of men and the population of house cats. This is a trend that persists even in younger generations.

In Belgium we have a great system of time credit formulas: social security arrangements that allow working people to do less hours or even take a few months off to raise the children, care for an ill family member, etc. It is a sad reflection though that mainly women make use of these formulas. I understand that an instinct for caring might be more characteristic of woman, but not to such statistic extremes. There is no denying that a cultural pattern is at work here. And this is a real pity since the IGVM explicitly states in its report that "a more equal distribution of (caring) tasks within the household is a necessary condition for greater equality in other domains" (IGVM, 2012a).

To conclude I wish to point out that the inequality evident from the numbers has two main reasons. One is the ongoing enforcement of gender stereotypes onto children. Examples are all too evident: girls between 12 and 18 engage significantly more in household activities than boys of the same age, sports are still considered a boy's thing while we buy girls a doll for their birthday, etc. The IGVM report confirms the role of such practices which are to me no less than indoctrinating, limiting the free choice of children. I dare to say indoctrinating because how else would you call the natural representation of a constructed social order? The second problem links up to this in a direct fashion: most people see no problem. Most Belgian citizens do not recognize gender roles as a severe limitation to either freedom or emancipation. Gender roles may  not be as rigid as they once where, the danger lies exactly in their subtlety. What remains slumbering under the surface is hard to contest, but it can spread its poison nonetheless.

Sources:

IGVM (2012a). Press release 'Females and males in Belgium: Equal in 2012?' (Dutch). Consulted on February 22, 2012 (http://igvm-iefh.belgium.be/nl/binaries/Persbericht%2021feb2012_tcm336-163732.pdf).

IGVM (2012b). Females and males in Belgium. Gender statistics and indicators (Dutch). Consulted on February 22, 2012 (http://igvm-iefh.belgium.be/nl/binaries/GenderStat_N_Hfdst1-8_tcm336-161101.pdf).

Policy approaches on abusive substances

This post is going to be a real practical one: there isn't a single adult out there who isn't involved. I am going to talk about what policy society ought to pursue when facing abusive substances. The trigger to write this was a family discussion on the legalization of soft drugs. The post will however encompass a wider variety of abusive substances. Including tobacco and - the emotionally even more sensitive - alcohol. Feel free to comment on the reasoning below or share your own views with us!

Before going to dictate the state what laws it should adopt I have to say a word or two on social control of abusive substance usage in general. What a person ingests, inhales or injects is often portrayed as a private matter. Users claim the right to abuse their own body. Yet reality shows that personal abuse is not at all a personal issue. Users create costs for others, directly trough exposure and indirectly by the impact on health care costs and economic productivity. A drunk is not a valuable asset to society, to state it bluntly. But the costs to society don't stop at this one generation. The current image and status of usage influences future usage too. I am sensitive for the idea that 'it is still my body' but there is no good in denying several millennia of social evolution. You do live with other people and that should count for something.

So what strategies are available to our respective governments? A first extreme is to come down hard on usage. But prohibition will only shift the demand to a black market. This causes society to miss possible revenue from taxes and having a harder time reaching out to users. Criminalizing by law also causes prices to mount (due to a less accessible supply) and triggers a rise in criminal activity. At the other end of the prohibition-tolerance spectrum we find complete legalization of whatever you feel like getting high on today. As stated above that would bring social costs. It also lowers the threshold to even more wicked substances. In my eyes such a policy gives the completely wrong signal by freeing the personal needs from all social boundaries.

Tackling the image of alcohol and other
abusive substances might be the way.

It should be clear by now that I am not in for freeing the egotist genie from its social constraints. But just as legalization, prohibition ignores social reality. That is why I want social control to be a force for the better without being all totalitarian/bitch-like. So what does an effective middle road approach look like? One element is taxation. The main idea behind a surplus tax for abusive substances is that it should discourage usage. It also raises money to recover some of the social costs. At once it becomes clear that taxation is an incomplete instrument if no directives for spending the tax money are laid out. The argument that cigarettes are a milk cow for the state is too often misused, but this is a legitimate concern. After all, the burden of such taxes tend to fall on the more vulnerable groups within a society. The idea of good practice directives should be extended to the suppliers of such products. Labeling needs to provide clear information, certain limits are imposed, etc. The European Union is in fact working on a proposal for the sale of tobacco products: the goal is to let them all come in dull-looking packages and put them somewhere out of sight.

I think it ideal to exercise strong pressure on the image of abusive substances. All by all easy to get, but hard to engage into the activity morally. A moral criminalization so to say. This guilt-approach makes people think about their behavior and, in time, change will occur. From this point of view Europe is on the right track concerning tobacco. Not so much for soft drugs though and not at all for alcohol. (Of note: I don't use any of the aforementioned substances, nor any that could at this time be reasonably considered abusive. Without a doubt this reflects in my views, though I am confident that it provides me a unique position to see things too.)

Capitalism and the global environment

As I explained at the beginning of my previous post I am spending all my free time on doing research for my paper. It came to me that if I wrote something on that, I would be able to maintain focus and keep you readers well-supplied for the next couple of days. What follows is a slimmed down summary of what I've been reading the past few months. It accounts of the exploitation of the South, its environment and the evil ways of capitalism. Enjoy!

In the West we still are under the impression that we ought to learn people in the South how to live in a sustainable way. This is evident from our leader's attitudes at international conferences and the various 'plant a three in the South'-like campaigns that are put forth as a solution to ecological crisis. As if environmental degradation in the South is the result of ignorance rather than poverty. As if we are setting a good example...

This is exactly the attitude that needs tackling: the whole idea that the North has the most progressive environmental policies is misleading. Sure, such statement holds when we are talking about quality standards of rivers and the like. But what about international trade? "Now what has trade got to do with it", you ask? Economic policy is not isolated from environmental concerns, just like the world economy is not isolated from the global ecosystem. The North consumes a majority of the natural resources that are extracted from this planet, yet most degradation that accompanies this extraction is experienced in the South. Rich countries use their purchasing power to shift the burden to the South. We cut down African rain forests in stead of American temperate woods. Now isn't it strange that third world countries suffer from deforestation while we don't see that many IKEA-closets in Kinshasa?

We can maintain both our welfare and natural richness by externalizing the environmental costs associated with production processes. We are still exploiting the South when enjoying our Starbucks coffee or blogging from our HP laptop. Not that we should be surprised at such a conclusion. Exploitation is the very mechanism that makes money go round. From its very start, the capitalist mode of production was grounded in keeping certain costs external to the one who was producing for the market. The market value in other words should not reflect the full cost of production upon society. An example: Starbucks doesn't make you pay for the biodiversity that got lost while clearing tropical forest for a coffee plantation.

"But doesn't the market tend to evolve toward some kind of balance, a correct price?" If only economists would use a little more of their time researching why the optimum is so hard to achieve, you wouldn't need to ask that question. (Economists tend to chatter along about an optimum hardly ever achieved...). If prices where to reflect the real social and environmental costs inflicted, there wouldn't be any surplus gain. The notion that under perfect competition no surplus profits are made is central to economic theory. Yet a lot of free market champions don't seem to understand that you can't get anything for free.

This is why a fair and sustainable society can never be achieved under capitalism. In a system based on the exploitation of both labor and nature, wealth can only be generated for a few at the expense of the many. If we would force our firms to internalize the full cost, the system would start to sputter. Our mode of production is one of production for sale; market value prevails over use value. Change needs to occur at the most fundamental level. Capitalism, with its insatiable hunger for more, functions as a treadmill of destruction. It must be stopped before it collapses under the gravity of its own consequences.

"We, The People"

My activity is on a downward slope, so it seems. My paper has me really occupied so all I can present you for now is this exciting piece of text on language and populism. It looks dull though, no links or color images involved. I promise more eye candy in the next one. Cross my heart and hope to write more soon.

See if you recognize the following reasoning: "Intellectuals look down on the common man and are estranged from reality as it is experienced by the people. They use a language infused with technobabble that conceals reality and thus gives a distorted view." Sounds familiar? It is called a populist discourse which aggressively downplays the role of theory and language. A defensive reflex against theory can be found anywhere in the political spectrum: populism is a matter of left and right, of progressive and conservative. Yet it is naive and above all it is dangerous too. By bashing intellectuals and glorifying everyday speech, populists endanger actual emancipation.

"Society is an amalgam of groups constructed along fluid identities."

First of all, the populist critique against class, gender, race, etc. can be turned against the catch-all categories like 'common man' or 'the people'. These are ideological constructs themselves and there is no reason to assume a priori that they more accurately describe reality! Indeed the populist discourse is dangerous because whoever claims 'the common man' claims a majority. This constructed majority is based on a patchwork of stereotypes: the common man is a caucasian male with limited schooling who works hard, pays his taxes, loves his family, watches popular media and thinks that all politicians are crooks. This cliché can be expanded in any direction at will to gain the favor of other identities. Quite a few things are ignored by populists which become obvious when we introduce a wider geographical area or certain historical developments into our analysis: we have high schooling degrees, deprivation is largest with immigrants/non-whites, gender is not a given thing, etc. Society is an amalgam of groups constructed along fluid identities. This fluidity should not be mistaken for a common identity or even common interests. The boundaries of classes are vague and sometimes they overlap, but the cores of classes still remain.

Populists reject any such analysis. For them the world is a simple place in which the struggle is one between elites - either misguided or malevolent - and the people. Populism therefore is in general a struggle about discourse; a struggle that encompasses more than just 'the people' versus 'classes'. That the attacks of populists are not justified can be seen in their selectiveness: they oppose theory, abstractions, terminology, etc. only when it concerns social and political phenomena. Never they oppose terms as inflation, appeal, cardiological or fusion-reactor. Why not? Because the associated fields of theory do not pose a threat to them. Nothing more dangerous to a populist than describing social reality. After all, you might get people emancipated...

Overcomplicating things is never a good thing. Explaining social phenomena in a understandable way is a must for the advantaged. The real evil lies however in the opposite of oversimplification. When you keep them stupid, you can keep them down. So do as Bob Marley sang and emancipate yourselves of mental slavery. Dare to deconstruct your language, but always with a constructive attitude.