In a conversation with a colleague about civic participation, he, like many others including me at times, lamented the public’s lack of engagement in the political process and how that hurts the integrity and effectiveness of our system of government. I think we all feel that way at times, thinking to ourselves if only more people voted, if only they read more blogs or newspapers, if only we could take the money and the political bosses out of the process, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, we would be better off if all of those ideals could, in fact, be achieved. However, this perspective too often leaves us to make some serious mistakes, however well-intentioned, as members of a democratic republic since we overlook how direct self-interest plays a role in everything we do in a society, and how understanding this is the key to effective reform.
First, let me just explain why this perspective of “if only…” can lead us astray. Usually the pursuit of increased participation or access, which we think is in our best interest overall as a democratic republic, predicates some level of government intervention, and that is, by all counts, a very sharp two-edged sword. The Scandal of Reform by Francis Barry details how the mobilization of New York’s political reformers and progressives throughout the 19th and 20th centuries actually created a rather dysfunctional and, arguably, equally corruptible political system in the pursuit of resolving the previous system’s woes. To summarize one of the major themes of the book, in an effort to clean up a mostly unregulated political and electoral system, reformers and progressives argued for government to assume oversight and regulatory authority over much of the political process to make the system fairer, cleaner, and more efficient. That, unfortunately, didn’t happen quite as planned as they instead created government-sanctioned legitimacy for political bosses, gave them unfettered access to patronage, and created a system that is still quite stacked against the very independent and insurgent candidacies that the reformers aimed to help.
Therefore, using government to ensure greater participation or access may, if not evaluated carefully, result in creating another set of problems without really improving on the current ones, especially if it inadvertently doesn’t really change the balance of self-interests in the system. For instance, let’s look at compulsory voting, like Australia has. Theoretically, if everyone must vote, and someone receives a majority of votes, that person is objectively the most preferred candidate. Then he or she will more likely serve in the majority’s best interests than if only a plurality elected him or her. Firstly, that borders on a genetic fallacy for a host of reasons, but, more importantly, what if voters, who are disgusted by having to vote, choose to cast a blank ballot? Or what if a voter votes almost at random simply because they don’t care who wins? Let’s look at a few more questions about this “reform”:
- If a voter casts a donkey-vote or blank ballot (which can neither promote nor harm their interests since it takes no action), does that actually improve or harm the system by distorting the vote of genuinely interested voters? Will it statistically make a difference? Is the winning candidate any more likely in voters’ minds to be viewed more favorably as a result? Will that person’s agenda deviate significantly from the agenda of a person who was elected outside of a compulsory system?
- After all, if uninformed people who wouldn’t vote on their own vote anyway because it is the law, could that result in a “false-positive” majority for a candidate whom genuinely interested voters did not prefer?
- Doesn’t it also reflect the notion that every citizen must be concerned with the operation of government, regardless of government’s proximity to their own needs or interests? Is that a bad thing?
- Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, does it make a material difference in what actually happens once the election is over? Are lobbyists, special interest groups, government bureaucrats, corruption, abuse, waste, and so forth any less influential in the policies of government against what is in the best interests of the people?
I’m asking a lot of hypothetical questions because it leads to my main point: self-interest is what drives participation in anything. Politics and government is a special interest, and those who are deeply involved are members of a kind of special interest group, which most likely consists of other special interest groups. Am I crazy about art history? Nope. Those who are have a genuine interest in the topic and have some reason for it. Whatever the reason is, it is rational for them because it suits them. It doesn’t have to make sense to you. It just has to make sense to them.
Ultimately, the self-interest factor in what government is doing, can do and ought to do is what determines the level of participation of various groups of citizens.
Take for instance the great disparity in Republican and Democratic enrollment in New York City. One might think that there is a great–almost universal–preference for Democratic Party policies compared to Republican. If that’s how voters actually made their decisions, you would be correct. But it’s not. After all, how else could Republican candidates for Mayor of New York do so well? So here are some of the reasons that there are so many Democrats in New York City, in order of strong to weak self-interest (and probably correlates to frequency and intensity of political participation):
- My issues and needs align most strongly with Democrats than any other party.
- I can better advance my political goals/career or get special favors by being a part of the Democratic Party since there are mostly Democratic elected officials.
- Leaders in my union, college, church/synagogue/mosque, community-based organization or workplace encourage me to do so because only Democrats support the same things I care about, either policy-wise or financially.
- I desire to vote in local Democratic primaries, which often result in producing the general election victor by default, so I can have a greater say in the process, regardless of whether I support the party, its candidates or its principles in the general election.
- All my neighbors, friends or co-workers are Democrats, so I want to fit in.
- My teachers in high school or my parents told me to register Democrat and I never cared to give it a second thought.
- Oh, I must have registered to vote by accident when I got my driver’s license.
In case you can’t already tell, this list can apply to the gamut of reasons anyone registers or votes for any group of candidates or party.
So let’s look at a very simplistic view of what gets voters in each party excited. Republicans and Democrats succeed in mobilizing voters when voters’ direct best self-interest is squarely in the hands of government. Generally speaking, Democrats promise programs funded by tax dollars, sweet contracts for public employee unions, or benefits for certain groups of voters that only government can provide. Republicans seem like the party of limited government, but generally Republicans’ most effective mobilization of voters in recent memory has been when the Republicans tied the moral and spiritual well-being of the country to social legislation. Lowering taxes could not get as many Republicans elected as promises to end abortion, prevent gay marriage, and so forth–something only government could do. While the Democrats largely mobilize voters with promises of government-supported benefits, among other things, that allegedly serve voters’ best interests, Republicans provided, among other things, allegedly government-sponsored moral cleanliness for society, which those socially conservative voters valued more as being in their best interest.
Remember, I said that what one deems in their self-interest doesn’t have to be sensible to you; it just has to make sense to them. Most importantly in politics, if you inject fear, sadness, indignation or anger into the equation, you will do quite well by playing the self-interest card.
By this logic, the voters who are most involved in elections, politics or their communities are those that strongly believe they have something very close and important to them that they must protect through government or from government. Those individuals who feel extremely strongly about lower taxes, a right to life, better wages for City union workers, or social programs for certain populations are more likely to vote and be involved than someone who might gripe only on occasion about this-or-that. I don’t imagine it possible that any of these groups alone constitute the absolute majority of voters, but I would not be surprised if any one of those groups constitute the absolute majority of reliable voters who consistently vote all the time, especially in Presidential races down to dogcatcher.
With that, I give you the voting bloc. Voting blocs (which might also be special interest groups, but not always) and the coalitions that campaigns and parties form with them are representations of why it is so hard to fix the system and yet are the most welcoming of change under the right circumstances.
For instance, if there is a shooting on your block, and that never happened before, you and your neighbors, even if you never spoke to each other before, might decide to do something like attend a precinct community council meeting, petition for more police funding from your elected officials, organize a neighborhood watch, have public safety cameras or better lighting installed, and so forth. You have a need for a function that pretty much only government can fulfill and it is most proximate to your best self-interest than most, if not all, of your other self-interests (like watching Hulu all day and night). Your block has just become a public safety-oriented voting bloc. You will want to know what your public officials are going to do to make your block safer, and you and your neighbors are more likely to vote now that the stances of candidates on this issue really affects you.
Conversely, a few blocks away from your block with the recent shooting, you are also the owner of a hookah bar who is looking to open up another place. You know the City government is looking to ban hookah bars and might be on the cusp of passing such legislation. You’ve never voted before, let’s say, simply because you never had a good enough reason to. Now that your entrepreneurial freedom and livelihood are being targeted, you start letting your customers know that government wants to ban one of their favorite recreational and social establishments. You start organizing other hookah bar owners to do the same, and maybe create a permanent organization to advocate or lobby for the continued non-regulation of hookah bar establishments. You and your colleagues now not only certainly vote, but also donate money to candidates who aren’t going to regulate or destroy your business. Hookah bar owners and customers have now become a voting bloc.
Now, your block consists of 1% of the voters of a district, and your fellow hookah bar owners and customers represent 5% of the same district. When you go out to vote, you are going to support the candidates that are pro-public safety and anti-regulation on hookah bars. Assuming you have prioritized your self-interests similarly with others in the same voting blocs as you, 6% of voters are probably casting their votes the same way as you. Heck, you yourself might have encouraged them on how they should vote! You and your fellow voters could decide an election simply because of these two preferences. After all, in a local election, if everything else is pretty status quo, those 6% of voters might generate 40% of the votes cast.
Pursuing one’s best interest through government or protecting it from government are the best motivators for political action. Most of us would love taxes to be lower, but I know (a) everyone else has to pay them, so I don’t feel totally singled out and (b) it is not really hurting my other self-interests that I value more highly. Since reform tends to be general self-interest-oriented, it is very hard to mobilize the general public and especially the non-interested voters to support something an absolute majority might agree with since the proximity of its benefits are too far removed from anything immediately affecting them. Plus, other voting blocs and special interest groups might vehemently oppose reforms if those reforms could make efforts towards protecting their self-interests through government or from government more difficult or less predictable.
In a future post, I will offer some ideas as to how one can tie direct best self-interest with reform that consists of interaction with government and outside of government.