Copyright © 1990 by Paul F. deLespinasse. Details of generous permission to make copies This chapter may not print or copy unless you have clicked here first.
The concepts of decision and action introduced in Part I relate to all decisions. They can equally well be used to analyze the decisions of a Robinson Crusoe, living and acting on an obscure island in total isolation from other people, and to analyze decisions made by individuals living in a social environment, that is, in the presence of other individuals. Only in this second case, however, do we find politics.
The presence or absence of other people is certainly an important part of the circumstances C within which all decisions must be made. If there are other people present, as is usually the case, one of the side effects Y which the decision-maker may need to consider is how these other people will react to various possible actions that are being considered.
One way to try to predict how another person will react to a given action on our part is to imagine how we would act if we were in that other person's shoes, given his or her values and circumstances. Note that the complexity of such a calculation may soon become unmanageable, since the other person in turn could be taking into account how we will react to his or her reaction!
Associations as we will be defining them here arise when the satisfaction of one person is changed by the action of another person. Since not all actions produce changes in other people's satisfaction, actions do not always produce associations, but associations are one possible result of actions. We will be particularly interested in organizations, which we will see are one particular type of association, since governments--the central focal point of political science--are organizations.
Let us approach the concepts of human association cautiously and systematically:
Satisfaction can be defined as the ratio between an individual's perceived attainments and desires:
Perceived Attainments
Satisfaction = ------------------------
Desires
Ap
S = ---------
D
An individual's satisfaction can change as the result of several things:
Storms, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, etc., can affect a person's attainments. By changing the person's attainments, they thereby increase or decrease satisfaction.
A person who is cold can put on a sweater or dial up the furnace, thereby increasing his own attainments which in turn (everything else being equal) increases his own satisfaction. Or the individual, holding his attainments constant, can change his satisfaction by changing what is desired. Increased desires, as the formula shows, decrease satisfaction, whereas decreases on desires increase satisfaction.
Finally, one person's attainments--and thereby satisfaction--can be changed by the actions of other people. It is this fact which renders possible human associations and organizations, including governments.
Since the actions of others can affect our satisfaction, one thing that we desire may be to get these other people to act in certain ways. Social power is our ability to get another person to act as we desire.
Three kinds of social power can be distinguished. Metaphorically, we can call them the power of the pen, the power of the sword, and the power of the purse.
The power of the pen grows out of our ability to say and to refrain from saying things. Of course "pen" is only a convenient metaphor. Under modern conditions it includes the power of the typewriter, the microphone, and the camera.
We can employ pen-power overtly to persuade others to do what we want. We may try to convince them that they will like the consequences of the action we have prescribed or to convince them to change their values so that consequences already expected will be attractive.
The power of the pen can also be used covertly, although the exact boundary between overt persuasion and covert manipulation is unclear. Manipulation clearly includes cases in which the power of the pen is used negatively. For example, if we delay sending a message to someone until it will be too late for him to react in a way we disfavor, that is manipulation rather than persuasion.
The power of the pen is vitally important in politics. It is not always true that the pen is mightier than the sword, but this old saying still has some validity. The power of the sword may prevail in the short run, but decisions about using it are based on ideas which have been propagated by the pen.
The power of the sword is based on our ability to act so as to reduce the attainments of another person so that they are less than they would have been if we had taken no action at all. Diagramming the other individual's satisfaction with the aid of a "number line," point 0 marks that individual's satisfaction in the absence of any action at all on our part:
0
lower -----------|------------- higher
satisfaction satisfaction
Our action reducing his satisfaction down to point L, which we will call a sanction, is social power in the following sense: He may be willing to take an action desired by us, an action which will increase our satisfaction, if we will refrain from the action which would lower his satisfaction down to point L.
L 0
lower -------|-----|--------------- higher
satisfaction <------ satisfaction
As we will see, sanctions, the power of the sword, are the distinctively political form of social power.
The power of the purse, conversely, comes from our ability to refrain from doing something that another person would like us to do. Such actions, which we will call inducements, increase the attainments of another person so that their satisfaction is greater than it would have been in the absence of any action at all on our part:
0 M
lower -----------|-------|------- higher
satisfaction --------> satisfaction
On the diagram, such an action increases the other person's satisfaction from point 0 to point M.
Social power is exerted by inducements because the other person may be willing to do what we want in order to get us to do what he wants. Inducements, the power of the purse, are the distinctively economic form of social power.
The following table summarizes the three types of social power:
metaphor Pen Sword Purse
Other typewriter gun dollar
terms microphone stick carrot
Nature of thing
done or not done communication destructive productive
action action
Name of action pure persuasion sanctions inducements
Example seduction rape prostitution
It should be noted that it is not meaningful to say that social power causes the actions taken by another person. Rather social power causes possibilities and impossibilities for other people, it manipulates the circumstances within which they are deciding how to act. A drawbridge operator who lowers the bridge into position makes it possible for us to cross that bridge. But lowering the bridge does not cause us to cross it, and indeed we may choose not to do so. If we do drive across the bridge, this actualizes the possibility, but the action, as distinguished from its possibility, is not caused by the bridge operator.
Our definition of associations is as follows: An association exists when one person's satisfaction is being changed by the actions of another person. The two persons are then said to be associated.
This definition is not as simple as it sounds. To understand exactly what it means, we need to specify what is meant by several of the words used in defining it.
We have already stipulated that satisfaction, one of the key terms, will be defined as the ratio of a person's perceived attainments to his desires, and that it can be expressed as a point on a number line:
Ap
S = ------
D
0
lower -----------|-----------higher
satisfaction satisfaction
The second key term in the definition of an association is "changed." There are two possible kinds of change in the other person's satisfaction: an increase, or a decrease. For purposes of our definition, these changes are measured relative to the level of satisfaction at which there would be no association at all between the people in question, point 0 on the diagram.
Note that the 0 does not mean that the person whose satisfaction is being diagrammed has no satisfaction. Satisfaction is always a positive number, and since the diagram assumes (correctly) that the individual's satisfaction could be lower, its current value must be greater than 0. Rather, the 0 means that there is no association between the individual in question and some other specified person. (To diagram the relationship of our individual to yet another person would require an additional diagram: Jones may simultaneously be associated with Smith and not associated with Baker.)
It must also be emphasized that each diagram of satisfaction represents only a very few elements, abstracted out of a very complex situation because they and they alone are relevant to the existence and nature of an association between particular persons. As noted above, there are many people with whom a given person, Jones, might be associated. Imagine that he is associated with Smith because Smith has imposed a sanction on him, with Kennedy because Kennedy has conferred an inducement on him, and is not associated at all with Baker. All three of the following diagrams are therefore simultaneously true:
1. Jones' relationship to Smith:
L 0
lower sat.-------|--------|-----------higher sat.
<---------
sanction
2. Jones' relationship to Kennedy:
0 M
lower sat.--------|-------|--------higher sat.
-------->
inducement
3. Jones' relationship to Baker:
0
lower sat.--------|-----------higher sat.
0 = Jones' satisfaction if Baker
didn't act at all.
0 = (also) Jones' actual satisfaction,
since Baker hasn't acted, or if he
acted it had no effect on Jones'
satisfaction.
Obviously, these diagrams express only relative levels of satisfaction rather than absolute satisfaction. Absolute satisfaction after all will be a composite representing the net effects of actions by the many different persons with whom one is associated, by the person himself, and of events in the natural environment.
The third key term in our definition of an association is "actions." In its normal usage, this word can very well refer to inactions and to communications as well as to actions in a narrower sense: deliberate bodily motions whose primary significance is not their symbolic meaning. But for purposes of our definition of an association, "actions" will refer only to things done, not to words or to inactions.
The fact that there are two kinds of action which can create an association with another person suggests one basis for classifying associations into different types. The additional fact that there are always at least two parties to an association (the actor and the person whose satisfaction is changed by the actor) provides an additional basis for defining types of association. The first person's action either takes place with the consent of the person to be affected, or it is unilateral, without the affected person's consent.
Combining these two consideration we find three possible types of association (and one impossible type!):
sanctions inducements
_________________________________________
| | |
unilateral | 1.Involuntary | 2. Trusteeship |
| associations | associations |
| | |
|___________________|____________________|
| | |
mutual | (Impossible!) | 3. Voluntary |
consent | | associations |
|___________________|____________________|
An involuntary association is created by the unilateral imposition or the threat of sanctions. They may be extremely gross or high subtle. A grossly involuntary association exists, for example, when the victim hands over his wallet in response to the robber's threats. This association involves a sanction that will be imposed unless the victim cooperates, and if the victim could have nothing at all to do with the robber he would gladly do so. But there is no such choice, for their relationship has been unilaterally established by the robber.
Air pollution exemplifies a more subtle involuntary association. Here, the sanction is imposed but not threatened, and the polluting companies, for example, have no desire to manipulate the actions of others. They merely want to achieve cheaply what otherwise would be more costly. They dump waste products from their enterprise into the atmosphere. The pollution is a sanction because it reduces attainments of the people who breath the air--their long-term health and longevity and the general attractiveness of environment. If the magnitude of the sanction is great enough to be perceived, then an association is created between the company and the people breathing the air and that association is involuntary.
A second type of association, which we will call trusts, is created by unilaterally conferring inducements. The most familiar example is the association between parents and children in the nuclear family. Children, especially when very young, are in no position to give or to withhold consent to associate with their parents. The association is created unilaterally by the parents, but their actions-- creating, housing, feeding, clothing the child--are inducements from the child's point of view.
Voluntary associations, a third type, are created by the exchange or transfer of inducements or expected inducements by mutual consent. Traditional difficulties fitting the family into general social analysis may derive from its two-dimensionality. Although it is a trust association between the parents (jointly) and their children, it is a voluntary association between husband and wife. Voluntary associations can be far larger than a family. Four of the predominant institutions in modern America--corporations, labor unions, political parties, and churches--are basically voluntary associations.
The fourth combination of types--sanctions by mutual consent--can exist only when sanctions are falsely expected to be inducements by the party who consents to them. (Since sanctions reduce another person's net satisfaction below what it would be if the actor did nothing at all. Naturally, no one who sees it for what it is would consent to such an action.) Instead of recognizing a fourth type of association--"mistakes"--we will regard these as a special type of voluntary associations. Hence, the definition of voluntary associations is in terms of inducements or expected inducements.
Any set of objects can be classified in more than one way. For example the people in a room can be classified into groups in terms of the following characteristics: those who wear glasses and those who do no; male and female; political orientation: Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Socialist, and so forth; income per year; height. Clearly, classifying associations as involuntary, trusts, or voluntary does not begin to exhaust the possibilities; nor need we assume that only one approach to classifying associations is important or useful. We will now examine a second way in which associations can be sorted into categories.
A private association is one which is not a government and is made up of parties none of which is itself a government. We refer here to "parties" rather than to persons because once a simple association of two or more individuals exists this association itself may enter into still other associations. "Parties" is simply a convenient way of recognizing that the constituent elements making up an association can be either individuals or associations.
Governments, clearly, are not private as defined here, and this is obviously as it must be given the usual connotation of the word "private." Nor are associations between another one government and another private. The association between husband and wife is private, since (1) neither of them is a government, and (2) their marriage does not constitute a government.
Public associations are defined by any one or more of the following characteristics:
The U.S. government is public by virtue of characteristic number 1: Some of its laws are general rules of action in the sense that they apply to anyone who takes the prohibited action. And the available punishments--deprivations of "life, liberty, or property"--are clearly sanctions as we have defined them above. The United Nations, on the other hand, qualifies as public under characteristic number 3, even though it is not itself a government. Its Charter is a multilateral treaty or contract between a number of governments.
A compound association is any to which at least one party is a government and at least one party is not a government (and is also not the public as defined above). Thus the U.S. government may hire an individual to work for the Department of Justice or it may buy jet fighters from a private corporation. The resulting association is not private, since one of the parties to it is a government, and it is not public, because the other parties are not governments. It is, instead, compound.
More than one way of classifying associations can be used at the same time, extending our analysis into a second dimension. Outside the context of politics, two-dimensional classifications are in fact quite common. For example, locations on the earth's surface are described in terms of two numbers, one representing classification by latitude and one indicating classification by longitude. The roomful of people mentioned above can also be grouped on the basis of more than one consideration. For example, its individuals can be classified both in terms of gender and in terms of whether they are wearing glasses. Four categories of people are thus created. It is always possible, of course, that no members of a possible subgroup may be found in a particular population we are classifying. For example, only bespectacled males may be present, so that in mathematical terms the category "males not wearing glasses" would be the "empty set."
Dmitri Mendelyeev's periodic table of the chemical elements is probably the most famous example of a two-dimensional classification in the history of science. It established the frame of reference within which chemical research has produced a dramatic increase in understanding and practical accomplishments during the last century. It even suggested the existence of new elements that were, in fact, later discovered or synthesized. It can and has been argued that the science of chemistry did not even exist before the periodic table.
A "periodic table" of human associations can be constructed by combining the two one-dimensional classifications which we examined above:
Involuntary Trusts Voluntary
_________________________________________________
| | | |
| | | |
Private | 1.robber-vict.| 2.parents- | 3.husband-wife |
| | children | |
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
| | | |
Compound | | | |
| 4.Govt-as- | 5.Govt-as | 6.Govt-as- |
| bandit | trustee I| contractor I|
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
Public | | | |
| | | |
| 7.Govt-as- | 8.Govt-as | 9.Govt-as- |
| legislator | trustee II| contractor II|
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
The resulting diagram contains room for nine basic types of association, eight of which--for better or for worse--already exist:
The most important distinction to emerge from the categories created by the periodic table of human associations is between three different meanings all commonly pointed to by the word law:
Since these three meanings are so very different, using the same word to indiscriminately refer to all of them can only produce confusion. We will therefore stipulate that the word law will be used only to refer to the first meaning: a general rule of action enforceable by sanctions. For the other two meanings we will assign the following terms:
Involuntary Trusts Voluntary
_________________________________________________
| | | |
| | | |
Private | 1.robber-vict.| 2.parents- | 3.husband-wife |
| | children | |
| | | |
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
| | | |
Compound | | | |
| 4.Govt-as- | 5.Govt-as | 6.Govt-as- |
| bandit | trustee I| contractor I|
| | | |
| pseudolaws | | bylaws |
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
Public | | | |
| | | |
| 7.Govt-as- | 8.Govt-as | 9.Govt-as- |
| legislator | trustee II| contractor II|
| | | |
| laws | | bylaws |
|_______________|_____________|_________________|
The two key elements in distinguishing laws, pseudolaws, and bylaws are generality and sanctions. To be a general rule of action, it must apply to everybody without any exceptions whatever. It is because the public is defined precisely as everybody who is subject to a given government that laws are an expression of government-as-legislator and constitute public-involuntary associations.
Since generality is not an issue one way of the other with bylaws, the first question to be considered, when translating the word laws as it is used by the general public into our more precise terms, is whether there is a sanction involved at all in the rule. If there is not, then the rule is a bylaw, which is "enforced" by withdrawn or denied inducements rather than by sanctions. If there is a sanction, however, we must still ascertain whether the rule is a law or a pseudolaw, and this is where we must consider generality.
The following are examples of rules which are not general, and which therefore are pseudolaws rather than laws:
Generality requires that the rule apply to the equivalent of "anybody who," and all of the above examples discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, or wealth. People are treated not merely on the basis of how they act, but also on the basis of who they are.
Pseudolaws are enacted by government-as-bandit, a term suggested by St. Augustine's famous observation: "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?" Footnote 1. The only difference between a compound-involuntary association and a private-involuntary one is that government is a party to the former. In both, individuals are arbitrarily singled out and sanctions imposed or threatened against them. If anything, government-as-bandit is even more intolerable than private robbers, for it wields the resources of the entire community and one cannot seek government protection from it.
The word "bylaw" reflects the fact that when Congress determines the terms on which and with whom the U.S. government is willing to enter a voluntary association, it is doing no more and no less than is done by the boards of directors of any private corporation.
Bylaws apply both to compound-voluntary and to public-voluntary associations. Examples of bylaws applying to compound associations include portions of the Bacon-Davis Act, the Hatch Act, and the Philadelphia Plan. The Bacon-Davis Act prohibits the federal government from making contracts with private firms paying their employees less than "prevailing wages" as determined by the Secretary of Labor for each occupation and region of the country. The Hatch Act prohibits the federal government from retaining civil servants who engage in certain types of politicking, including addressing a political rally or holding office in a political party. (Any law prohibiting such actions and enforced by sanctions would clearly violate the First Amendment; the Supreme Court, however, has twice upheld the Hatch Act, which is enforced by withdrawn inducements.) Under the Philadelphia Plan the federal government contracts only with private construction firms that agree to hire at least a certain percentage of minority employees. The Plan is an effort to overcome racial discrimination by the power building trades unions and acquiesced in by employers.
Bylaws applying to public associations include the Hickenlooper Amendment and the federal enactment producing the 65 (originally 55) miles per hour national speed limit. The Hickenlooper Amendment cuts off foreign aid to any country that nationalizes property owned by U.S. citizens without paying them fair compensation. It tries, via the power of the U.S. government purse, to extend the protection against uncompensated seizures provided domestically by the Eminent Domain Clause of the Constitution. When President Nixon proposed a national speed limit during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact a law requiring people to drive more slowly. The state governments had the power to enact such laws but where not disposed to do so. Acting on Nixon's proposal, Congress merely enacted a bylaw cutting off all federal highway funds to any state whose legislature did not enact a law making the speed limit 55 or less. If any state had refused to comply, its action would not have been illegal. It would merely have been a violation of a federal bylaw. But the states, sometimes with great reluctance, knuckled under unanimously--few local politicians were willing to climb off the federal gravy train.
_______________________________________
1. City of God, Bk. IV.