Re: world court thread / cj#913> Mark Douglas Whitaker: THREE STRATEGIE

Just some practical questions about these musings:

1. How can any of this be accomplished without changing the legal status
of corporations? And how would this occur?

2. How can any of this be accomplished without diminishing the rate of the
accumulation of wealth of corporate stockholders via fiscal policy
changes, which they control?

3. How can any of this be accomplished without providing a legal framework
for limiting the scope of corporate resources amassed via consolidation?
And without disrupting price levels and production?

4. How can any of this be accomplished without breaking the alliance
betweem the military-security bureaucracies and corporate elites?

5. How can any of this be accomplished without creating a body of law that
will hold the role players in the legal, military, and security
bureaucracies criminally responsible for the same acts ordinary citizens
are prosecuted for?

6. How will the usual counter-revolutionary stratgies and tactics of
disinformation, disruption, and personal destruction employed by those
whose power will be threatened be successfully opposed?

7. How can any of this be accomplished without creating social, economic
and political chaos, which a larger proportion of the population, whose
survival depends on the largesse of corporations,  would perceive as
inimical to their interests?
 
These are my initial seven questions. The contents of the piece below seem
to me to be so academically abstract that it lacks semantic practicality
and common sense. Good stuff for a graduate seminar, quickly forgotten
when the seminar ends. 

Perhaps the theoretical starting point ought to be: Life is nasty,
brutish, and short, and no one abandons their interests unless they are
forced to, and that process is painfully horrific, which no action plan
can ignore. Under what conditions will David Rockefeller, Bill Gates, or
the Sultan of Brunei give up their wealth and power? And what will they
pay to disrupt efforts to take their wealth and power away? These are the
real questions that need to be asked.

//CJR
 


On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Mark Douglas Whitaker wrote:

> 
> Dear cj & rn,
> 
> Below is Mark Whitaker's essay, THREE STRATEGIES FOR
> DEGLOBALIZATION.
> 
> We've had a thread on cj regarding the "NEW CULTURE", started by Brian
> Hill, who also contributes regularly to rn.  That thead is about what _may
> be a resurgance of a communitarian (ie, noncompetitive, non-acquisitive,
> cooperation-oriented) movement in the US - reminiscent of the sixties
> hippie/communitarian movement.  I say "may", because there is some debate
> about whether the resurgance is real, or whether Brian (and some others)
> only _wish it was happening.  Personally, I'm still undecided on this
> point.  I have immense respect for Brian, but I haven't seen enough
> evidence to make up my own mind first-hand.
> 
> Mark's essay addresses not what _is happening, but rather what he believes
> _needs to happen if a viable, stable, grass-roots kind of democracy is to
> arise and prosper.
> 
> Mark has thought about these issues a lot, and he is a very perceptive
> analyst.  I recommend the essay to you, and would welcome follow-up
> discussion on either or both lists.  As I see it, this topic is of central
> importance, and Mark is one of the few who has the insight and audacity to
> approach it in a systematic way.
> 
> best regards,
> rkm
> 
> BTW> I will be putting the formatted version on the CDR website, together
> with a link to Mark's site.
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 20:10:25 -0600
> To: renaissance-network@cyberjournal.org, cj@cyberjournal.org
> From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <mrkdwhit@wallet.com>
> Subject: WWW: site and essay announcement: strategizing sustainability
>   and democracy in the long run
> 
> Hello,
> 
>         I have web-posted an essay entitled "LOCAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL: THREE
> UNIFIED STRATEGIES FOR SEPARATED POLITICAL PRESSURE:  MINIMIZING T.N.C.
> HEGEMONY ON THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE, POLITICAL THEORY AND
> PRACTICE," at http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/3strat.htm. It's an edited
> version of my 1998 Lelio Basso Prize Competition entry. The late Lelio Basso
> was an Italian socialist who felt that democratic procedures and
> socioeconomic development had to go hand in hand. The Prize was established
> in his honor after he died.
> 
>         The crux of the essay is theorizing ways to moderate the hegemony of
> United States politically and economically, keeping in mind the dual tenets
> of creating a 'sustainable democracy' organizationally speaking at the same
> time we consider 'sustainable economics.' The politics of the United States
> and the politics of the World Bank (marionetted in large part by United
> States investments) are crucial areas to consider. I offer structural
> additions to integrate local grass roots activity as well as ideas for
> opening international capital markets based on existing economies of scale.
> 
>         The essay is part of a larger site I am establishing at:
> 
>         	http:www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/cdi1.htm.
> 
>         Comments welcome. Activity desired.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mark Whitaker
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 
> ============================================================================
> From: http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/3strat.htm
> 
> 
>         LOCAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL: THREE STRATEGIES FOR DEGLOBALIZATION
> 
>                          Mark Douglas Whitaker
>                     University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 
> 
>          THREE UNIFIED STRATEGIES FOR SEPARATED POLITICAL PRESSURE:
> 
>             MINIMIZING T.N.C. HEGEMONY ON THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE,
> 
>             POLITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
> 
>         --------------------------------------------------------------
>         Sections:
> 
>             1.Introduction
> 
>             2.Present History
> 
>             3.LOCAL: CDI: Civic Democratic Institutions: Preparing and
>             Maintaining Local Input in Nation-State Level Politics and
>             Cultural Frames
> 
>             4.NATIONAL: Hanse Nationalism: Balancing Local and National
>             Identities and Politics
> 
>             5.GLOBAL: "Affirmative Cooperatives:" Using Mutualized
>             Economies of Scale for Developing a Separate Third World
>             Financial Sector
> 
>             6.Conclusion: DeGlobalization: Notes for a Philosophy of
>             Development, and Nation-State Democratic Security
>         --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> Introduction
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> This is an essay on strategic response to globalization of capital into
> transnational corporate forms (TNC's), based on what local, national, and
> international organizations can do to align strategically their different
> dimensions of politics to a separate yet simultaneous systemic press which
> is long-term and short-term. This involves two major areas:
> 
>     (1) to moderate nation-state level politics;
> 
>     (2) to provide a means to let Third World nation-states have the
>     ability to help themselves as a group by developing a capital market
>     for themselves, breaking the developmental monopoly of
>     international lending organizations like the World Bank.
> 
> The three areas detailed below have been thought out for their long term
> systemic effects on the local, nation-state, and international levels; they
> have many second-order effects which could make this essay easily a book
> length work. Therefore, I will only introduce these strategies with a sense
> of what they are 'designed' to accomplish. I stress 'designed' because of
> the thought into the second-order effects (meaning how it affects and
> facilitates grass roots, long-term participation in political and econmic
> decision making, and creates sustainable structures for such political
> processes. I call it creating a 'sustainable politics.' A sustainable
> politics is a politics that avoids clientelistic relationships in its
> operation.
> 
> Examples of clientelistic relatinships are lack of bank choices forcing
> someone to work with existing structures or a lack of choices of political
> representatives that works to the advantage of removing local political and
> economic input and making local interests dependent on proxy-only
> relationships to power.
> 
> This essay is a political analysis from a theoretical portrayal, drawing
> from much comparative research on organizational development and political
> process. It takes the following David Korten quotes quite seriously:
> 
> Without a theory, the assumptions underlying the organization's choice of
> intervention are never made explicit. Therefore they cannot be tested
> against experience, essentially eliminating the possibility of experience
> based learning
> 
> . . . [I]n the absence of a theory, the aspiring [actor] almost inevitably
> becomes instead merely an assistance agency engaged in relieving the more
> visible symptoms. . .through relief and welfare measures. . . .[his italics]
> 
> Without a theory, the organization can only proceed to scatter its
> resources in response to immediately visible needs [or perceived needs]. .
> . Our present concern is with the threefold global crisis of poverty,
> environmental destruction, and social disintegration. . . .The more we
> focus our attention directly on the symptoms, rather than on transforming
> the institutions and values that cause them, the more certain we can be
> that the crisis will deepen for lack of appropriate action. Under the
> circumstance, the need for a theory of the causes of the breakdown is of
> more than academic relevance. [Korten, 1990]
> 
> By the above term "transforming the institutions' is taken to mean less
> changing peoples minds as to changing the context of already existing
> actions to be interrelated systemically into decision making processes.
> This requires institutional changes and additions to a society, instead of
> a reliance on clientelistic relationships.
> 
> Keeping this in mind, this essay is both a work of 'development' oriented
> philosophy as much as it is political strategy. In my mind, these can be
> combined in a unified developmental philosophy, which takes political
> pressure into account since certain politics can have long term
> developmental effects; thus, certain politics can be seen as having a
> developmental character.
> 
> Visa versa, developmental effects have political effects as well. In
> essence, I am arguing that one can consider political effects and the
> facilitation of them (in a system of balances) a developmental philosophy.
> 
> The essay will deal with only three aspects of what I consider useful in
> 'working globalization over,' slowly and systematically, to aid a
> globalized economy in integrating more moderating and local influences. As
> I mentioned, it is based upon a theoretical analysis, of which I will go
> into before commenting upon the three areas where I see beneficial social
> change. The changes are less ideological and more sociostructural
> strategies, taken from an appreciation of how institutions create their own
> political ecology, and how political ecologies of actors are affected and
> maintained by organizational forms. It is an exploration into how both
> influence each other in a long term political process. These strategies can
> be widely adopted for many different areas of the world, because they are
> facilitation strategies of what is already 'out there' in the world. These
> facilitation strategies merely integrate the existing feedback into
> interrelated forms which create what I would call a 'sustainable politics'
> of interrelated balance. Out of the six problematic areas (listed below)
> that my own studies and researches are exploring presently, I am
> considering only the first three of greatest importance, because upon them
> I would argue, hinge the subsequent long term strategies. The first three
> strategies are the ones that the essay considers. Although I have added
> more, at this time of writing, the full six are:
> 
>     (1) Civic Democratic Institutions (CDI's): creating wider and
>     more complex local cultural autonomy as a political
>     mobilization force.
> 
>     (2) "Hanse Nationalism:" providing a means whereby urban interests
>     are systemic power actors on the nation-state level.
> 
>     (3) "Affirmative" world financial cooperatives: an MAI response
>     utilizing systemic elites and the huge economies of scale
>     of the impoverished countries to generate an organization
>     which will allow Third World countries to develop along their own
>     lines instead of the World Bank's lines of development.
> 
>     (4) Rural Financial Structures, embedded in mutualized economies
>     of scale, to provide for point (1) and for environmental
>     security through political capacity for moderating
>     feedback to urban politics and developmental processes.
> 
>     (5) Affirmative Democracy Structures, 'fiscal democracy' structures
>     which are geared to community level priortization of
>     urban governmental budgets--highly popularized
>     in Brazil after their 1985 Constitutional change.
> 
>     (6) educational structural change.
> 
> Each build upon the others in an overall macro strategy which is designed
> to meliorate globalized economic centralization and nation-state political
> domination by TNC biased politics and the subsequent decline of feedback
> from their respective populaces.
> 
> There are two 'flanks' to this strategy, those interior to the nation-state
> and those exterior to the nation-state. The interior strategies (number 1
> and 2) consist of institutionalizing and focusing local culture and
> politics in an overall nation-state framework which requires nation-state
> organizational structural facilitation as well. The exterior strategy
> (number 3) is generally a bulwark to the TNC capital domination of the
> 'neocolonial' world (the ex-European colonial possessions which have
> experience a shift in economic domination to TNC and World Bank derived
> development strategies).
> 
> As a work of theorizing a 'sustainable politics,' though these ideas are
> designed for strategic application to the world at large, the historical
> examples and discussion will figure on the United States. This is for three
> reasons. As a citizen of the United States, I am more familiar with the
> cultural, historical and political milieu of this nation-state. Secondly,
> with the central place the United States has in the globalized economy
> (detailed below), any examination of the state of the world which fails to
> take into account the role of the United States as military and economic
> sovereign of the existing system will be very shallow. For these
> rationales, my rhetoric will focusing on using the United States as the
> running example, though I want it made clear that these ideas were
> formulated with a more generalized and abstract level of analysis which
> would be applicable to all nation-states potentially. Therefore, this is a
> work of theory as much as it is of practice, through it's point is to
> develop theory to the extent that it can aid in the formulation of
> practice, instead of merely theory for theory's sake. Thirdly, granting the
> United States centrality of TNC expansive globalization, political change
> in the United States would have the most widely felt repercussions.
> 
> 
> PRESENT HISTORY
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> This is a short introduction to where I see we are presently. With the
> increasingly unopposed neoliberal putsch of transnational corporations and
> their respective nation-state governments which abet them, the world's
> economy is in increasingly being conducted across international lines, even
> for what once would have been a simple 'local' transaction. Transnational
> corporations (TNC's) increased in number from 7,000 two decades ago to
> 37,000 presently (1995 figures). TNC's have two trillion dollars in
> property values, and fully one-third of total private sector productive
> assets are owned by TNC's worldwide. Remarkably, 30% of world trade is
> merely parent-subsidiary transfers between branches of the same TNC, which
> solidifies and embeds these paths as linkages of investment flows. This
> characteristic of TNC world trade makes TNC oriented trade, overall, more
> than the global total trade in goods and services.
> 
> Continuing the theme of the United States centrality in this globalizing
> economy, the United States is simultaneously the world's largest foreign
> investor as well as the largest site for foreign direct investment.
> International direct investment (IDI) increased in the 1970's-80's by 10
> times, three times faster than the increase in global merchandise exports,
> and four times faster than industrial nation-state economies taken as a
> single average. [Fry, 1995] It is far from surprising that this economic
> dislocation and fluxing in the world could be related to a systemic level
> of violence expanding as economics and politics are shorn into two,
> something which the United States even is far from immune.
> 
> I feel it is required to anchor local politics to local institutional
> structures to provide a meliorative balance to the neoliberal political
> regime. The populations of (what was once known as) the First World have
> seen themselves being more and more unrepresented, as, in the United
> States, both the Democratic and the Republican Parties further are removed
> to the political 'high-end' market players and corporate sponsorship. There
> is a small window of opportunity while the globalized system is yet to be
> 'formalized' into structures which will by are definition be out of local
> or even nation-state political control. I am thinking of the 'quietly
> tabled administrative' agendas like the MAI, which moves to place TNC's on
> a sovereign legal tier above nation-state political feedback and
> nation-state law--a regime where democratic procedure is effectively
> censored as 'obstruction.' The nation-state, our political feedback
> capacity, is being dismantled.
> 
>  So, on the abstract level, what is required is a double flank
> 'pincer' movement which both pressures globalized capital (in the form
> of TNC state bias) from the nation-state level and pressures on globalized
> capital financial organizations on the international level.
> 
> Yet what structures could provide such systemic pressure? And remain in
> place in the face of what would likely be a huge media propaganda blitz
> which frames localized interests as misguided or undemocratically inclined?
> This highlights the important realm that the media play, especially in the
> United States, in forming political opinion through a process of selective
> reporting. This is less to insinuate that thoughts are formed by media, yet
> the media provide a structural channel through which only a portion of
> nation-state news ever gets broadcast or printed, and out of that, the
> 'culture' of the nation-state only has a small inkling of ideas in which to
> popularly mobilize around. Culture serves a 'functional' political aspect
> for a society by assuring mobilization material for political movements,
> and culture is crippled when frames of discourse which are shared are only
> coming from systemic actors. The aspect of selective acting and reporting
> has been well described by Crenson in his formulation of non-politics: the
> ability of systemic or governmental actors merely to deign to respond
> because it would highlight the conflict of systemic interest.[Crenson,
> 1971] Therefore, the message is merely dropped. This explains the
> descending silence upon issues of whether this is a boon or a curse to
> democratic procedure, as well as slick packages like 'fast-track' proposals
> which are designed to enact formal TNC economics before local actors have
> the funds, the ability, or the popularity to stop such actions.
> 
> So three major areas where I see that there should be a meliorative
> pressure: (1) a manner to address media bias, since the media effects and
> rarefies political control, (2) means to provide localized political
> pressure which is sustainable on the level of globalized capital dominated
> nation-state politics, (3) and a means to provide international pressure on
> world financial organizations like the World Bank, which could be said to
> be a virtual monopoly organization which sets the terms of development with
> the greater part of the Third World being forced to go to such institutions
> since there is little competition on that level of economic domination. All
> of these could be summarized in one phrase: what is required is a mutually
> interrelated means of action on many levels to provide a proactive response
> to globalization of economics and assure the increased potential for
> national self-destination. This translates into "how can we maintain/create
> a democratic procedural system?" Procedures of political process are
> important to identify because 'globalization' fails to happen by itself:
> one of the secrets of 'market economics' is the role of the state in
> underwriting much of the expense of this globalization, out of taxpayer
> moneys. In the United States for example, tax moneys go to maintaining and
> funding unprofitable private logging operations in national parks, pay for
> international advertising budgets for United States TNC's, and assuring
> that the TNC's are taxed relatively low compared to individuals, despite
> corporate structures being legally considered individuals they fail to pay
> the tax rates of individual citizens. In essence, the externalized costs of
> globalization are being underwritten by the individual taxpayer. TNC's
> 'efficiency' rests highly on its ability for others to shoulder its
> economic costs, which is a better definition of 'inefficiency.'
> 
> The political control of the state is crucial in fostering this novel
> globalized economic epoch. In such states, we have seen increasing
> ecological degradation and political malaise mixed with increasing levels
> of endemic violence. Yet is it to pressure on the state that we can look
> for 'solutions,' yet with a twist on the strategic 'point' of mobilizing in
> the first place. In the history of the United States, I would argue, the
> increasing centralization of government is less a sole product of state-led
> drives, and a mutual process which involves continuing pressure from the
> grass roots for considering 'regulatory saviors' as a solution (whether
> that idea is their own or sold to them is outside the scope of this essay).
> My point is that in a strategic sense a nation-state's (or any state's)
> citizenry looks to the national level government for solutions for local
> problems, and this contributes ironically to their own decentralizing, slow
> removal from systemic power. So in light of this, I would add that there
> should be some mechanism for assuring that such frames of 'government
> regulatory salvation' are appropriately challenged when posed that more
> 'regulation' will solve something. I say appropriately challenged. This
> will be addressed momentarily. This is less a call for complete rejection
> of state regulation and more a sense that these ideas are appropriately
> weighed for the pro's and con's.
> 
> Most of my sense of what may be challenging to some in what I am
> describing, is that I am simultaneously having to describe my epistemology
> as I go along. Most of those who write and speak, I would venture, are
> relying on existing tropes, memes, frames, and teleological suppositions
> within their audience and playing off of that. It's already to an extent
> 'out of the can.' Instead, I am having to package the epistemology,
> distribute it around the audience, and then speak. The following is an
> experiment in rhetoric as well as historical sociology, because I am having
> to deal with existing interpretations. Therefore, I will be defining terms
> as I go along.
> 
> This leads into a short historical lesson which deals with patterns I see
> in world history--what I would call a systemic drift in power relations in
> a society. I will be only dealing with one aspect of this in this essay, an
> aspect which relates to the essay's drive to strategies for grass roots
> interests. In this essay's sense, the basic definition would be the
> increasing centralization of political structure and economic structure,
> which is dually abetted from grass roots pressure (ironically) as much as
> systemic actors desires for more economic wealth, political power or status
> prestige. Culturally and crucially, it relies on government level groups
> being able to effectually 'co-op' rebellious discourse with a successful
> government level solution to dampen upset with the state or some private
> actor with more state intercession exchanged for public quiescence. As it
> is a political process, there are any number of 'outcome' scenarios,
> variations on a theme, though a particularly 'bad scenario' (depending, as
> always (and unfortunately), on one's point of view) would be if the
> centralization is carried to a great extent the society itself may come
> apart through the sheering of all sense of status markings of legitimacy
> for the state level government, where the government is seen as
> unremediable, and people withdraw and become actively embedded in more
> local issues and interests, effectively attempting to blot out of their
> thoughts the issues of government. The United States seems to be well on
> its way to this outcome.
> 
> Unfortunately, politically speaking, this drive for centralization from
> both the state and the grass roots rarely leads to anything save a
> clientalistic relationship between the impoverished and the elites of
> government which soon decays socially, leaving ironically an
> organizationally stronger government structure (which was facilitated by
> the impoverished) in the hands of those who use it for their own ends--in a
> sort of internal colonialization. As the cycles continue, strategies of
> organizational mobilization possibilities decline systemically for the
> grass roots as they ratchet up past successes or suffer repression. The
> problem for this from a democratic procedural standpoint, is that the grass
> roots is systemically contributing to their removal from systemic power.
> 
> The same pressures for a world government from the base as well as
> externalized elites lining up to take advantage of the situation is
> beginning to occur, and I worry about the long term ramifications when the
> informal clientelism of the elites and their pressure groups decays leaving
> a stronger, more centralized, more removed and remote governmental level
> organization. On this scale, government would be effectively out of local
> and even nation-state political input. Because after the elites ride to
> power on a potential ticket of a 'world government for everyone' the same
> ebbing away will occur, and people find they have helped construct
> something which local politics are unable to touch systemically by
> definition. If you split up typologically what this 'world government'
> would look like, the centerpiece institutions, like the World Bank and the
> international financial sector, are the economic side. The United Nations
> can be considered the 'representative' side. Of course each of them are
> very particular in their systemic interests, and the degree of
> representativeness or of "appropriateness" of them are just discourses
> which say that they "promise" to be these things, out to deflect opposition
> and centralize power. State legitimacy is always constructed and maintained
> in a political process through cultural discourses, where legitimacy is
> bought with, sadly, what amounts to grass roots supported co-option and
> externalization of them in a politcal process that relies on clientelistic
> relationships with power.
> 
> Much of my research goes into discussing and creating a typology for
> systemic shifts of power relations in societies. With the tabling of ideas
> like the MAI, the connections between the base pressured discourse/co-oped
> discourse government side and the economic side are being merged, just like
> they were in the smaller sense on the nation-state level. Two examples of
> this systemic drift created from the overall full input of a rarefacting
> political ecology are the United States in the early 1900-1930's era, as
> well as Britain in the latter 1800's when the 'nouveaux riches' of the
> capitalist industrialists joined in power with the British aristocracy. I
> would go further and add that the political and economic consolidation of
> feudalism, whether one traces that to the last centuries of Rome or to the
> 1100-1300 C. E. period, occurred with the selfsame systemic drift of the
> entire political ecology. Economic dislocation and environmental
> degradation can abet this yet it is far from the only means whereby this
> political ecology wide phenomenon will occur.
> 
> Notice I am continuously saying that this is a political process, meaning
> it is feasibly 'up for grabs.' Yet I would argue that this quality of
> 'openness' of outcomes is unrelated to the 'openness' of the political
> process to different methods of approach at the time, since I am arguing
> that the systemic drift occurs out of the increasing rarefaction of the set
> of strategies of political possibility for the impoverished, as they
> further and further contribute to the agglomeration of political and
> economic power. This is ironically the very path which leads them to
> further look to such governmental organizations for addressing their equity
> and social justice concerns, when they are contributing to social
> stratification of those concerns in a systemic sense. The systemic drift is
> the rarefaction of whole sets of strategies and capacities of a society,
> effectively centralizing the interests of state expansion drives with the
> clientelism of the impoverished. I would argue that the political potential
> of the impoverished making a successful push for political representation
> wanes while simultaneously this waning of their influence makes they call
> upon the centralization of government services more and more. This I tend
> to describe less as a cause/effect relationship and more as a
> self-reiterating process of feedback potentials. In other words, the waning
> political potentiality of local grass roots strength contributes to their
> increasingly dependent relationship on government. Looking at this from a
> strategic sense, the problematic point becomes this: elite co-option of
> cultural frames of grass roots action contributes to this by dampening any
> call for structural changes in the systemic political systems which
> continuously abetted and helped to foster this in the first place. So, a
> means to effectively secure local cultural action of framing and of
> discourse of what the 'issues' are from a local instead of a disassociated
> elite view is important, from which they can decide for themselves (within
> the nation-state) what they wish--with minimal (or at least recognizable)
> externalized input attempts to influence the direction and terms of the
> debate. I would posit that the nascent capitalistic systemic elites'
> discourse when it pressed for state power was exactly the same. In both the
> United States and France, the greater part of the rural population
> ironically wanted a completely different outcome than what they got, and
> the government got elites with different policy interests than which they
> had rebelled for in the first place. [LeFebvre, 1989; Gross, 1990] The
> French population wanted the king to aid them against the economic
> dislocation and 'commercialization' occurring in the rural areas which was
> increasingly impoverishing (and starving) them. The rurals of both future
> nation-states (most of the population) wanted a more circumscribed life and
> they rebelled in the name of what they hoped would be a regime which would
> defend these ideas, if they rebelled for anything at all.
> 
> It is important to recall that these ideas for systemic change are less
> 'just harmless and unconnected suggestions' which float in and out randomly
> in a culture, and more that they are proposed by certain groups and
> represent certain interests attempts to influence the debate's framing of
> goals, intentions, oppositions, and friendships. Political ideas are firmly
> grounded in a sense in the history of past ideas and relationships, in the
> culture at large [Billig, 1995], as much as they are dependent upon how the
> multifarious interpretations and counter moves of other groups react to
> them in the present moment. [Oliver, 1984]. Many ideas are tabled by
> systemic actors and organizations looking for political influences.
> 
> To understand the systemic drift is to then proffer means to meliorate and
> decentralize the process of the rarefying of political pressure, by
> detailing strategies which would 'hold open' a plurality of mechanisms for
> achieving political pressure, instead of increasingly having to rely on the
> clientelism of the gatekeepers of the increasingly rarefied and solitary
> path to get the state's attention. In other words, 'first dimensional
> power' relationships [Lukes, 1974] are something which any 'sustainable
> politics' should move to minimize, on the level of 'methods' of achieving
> power. When there is a wider array of methods to achieve political and
> cultural power, first-dimensional 'gatekeeper' power dependencies are
> reduced and externalized groups and interests have more potential for
> pressuring the state, and in these situations systemic drift is forestalled
> and held in abeyance. With such a plurality of political methods I would
> argue, the political ecology could avoid the increasing 'feudalization'
> which I see in this systemic drift--the elision of the political and the
> economical systems being tied to a centralized government and the
> increasing centralization and thinness of mobilizing cultural frames and
> systemic actors. I will address this concern first in the interior realm of
> the nation-state, addressing a strategic solution for voicing localized
> cultural frames, followed by a discussion of nation-state level changes of
> processes which can keep this feedback going.
> 
> 
> (1) CDI: Civic Democratic Institutions:
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Preparing and Maintaining Local Input in Nation-State Level Politics and
> Cultural Frames Cultural discourses are inherently political, which is
> shown in much of the political sociology of culture literature [Mellucci,
> 1995; Billig, 1995; Nash, 1989; Levine and Mainwaring, 1989; Navarro,
> 1989]. It can either make or break a successful mobilization to have a
> widely shared sense a fortiori of activities and interpretations of the
> world. Especially in nation-states, political parties tend to be the
> reifying structures with the widest participation, and thus these
> nation-state political parties both aid in defining nation-state culture,
> as well as prescribing it to suit systemic interests in the aforementioned
> systemic drift which leaves local areas shortchanged culturally speaking.
> Crenson's understanding of non-politics is readily witnessed in the
> selectivity of these national-political parties in discussing local issues.
> The CDI aids in local area formulation of their own political cultural
> frames and discourses, based on their community interests which are created
> out of their local political processes.
> 
> The Civic Democratic Institution form (CDI) is a structure for defensibly
> maintaining and registering local sentiment in a form of a 'living poll,'
> if you will, recognizing any individuals who are admired or culturally
> trusted in a degree in social relations. The Appendix One of this essay is
> a copy of a web-published document (at www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/cdi3.htm)
> describing the functions, features, and structures of the CDI.
> 
> One of the rationales of for creating the CDI was to embed organizationally
> different groups together in some degree (in my first thoughts) in an urban
> context, because I was initially worried about increasing social
> bifurcations in not only this country but worldwide. And following from
> this sociopolitical isolation comes what I saw as a contributing factor for
> the nation-state failing its ability to address democratic and equity
> issues successfully because it was so divided. Bonacich's arguments for the
> systemic effects of divided labor markets comes close to my observations,
> [Bonacich, 1972] about the importance of social cultural forms of 'split
> labor markets' facilitating or debilitating particular political cultures.
> I wanted to stir up the pot a bit--yet only in a way that the people
> themselves could keep the stirring continuing, as well as in a way that
> would lead to moderation in politics instead of reactionary politics.
> 
> Throughout the description of the CDI in this essay, I will be
> using urban sites as the primary examples of where this would be useful.
> Because of the degree of sociospatial separation as well as 'ethnically'
> split labor markets, people thus lack of ability to organize a localized
> coalitional politics in a wider sense in an urban context. People exist
> in different networks sociospatially in an urban context. [Fischer, 1975]
> Thus the CDI would be most useful in urban areas, though it is in rural
> areas, because of their multiplexity of network connection, where it may
> have a lower 'critical mass' to be seen as useful. [Marwell and Oliver,
> 1984]
> 
> I should explain two terms at this point: multiplex and simplex
> relationships. Multiplex relationships are most likely to be found in rural
> areas, where particular individuals may share many different overlapping
> roles with other people in the vicinity. For example, a father-son-daughter
> business, in which they attend the same religious organization as most of
> the people who employ their services, who may be indeed the very people who
> loaned them the money to start the business. This is one complex example of
> a 'multiplex' social environment--where individual relationships may be
> more likely to carry many different roles, than, say, in an urban context.
> Simplex relationships occur readily in an urban context. In urban sites,
> the population density allows for great organizational growth and the
> potential of individuals social relationships to become very splayed in
> urban space and very compartmentalized. More choice results in
> relationships which are simplex--and people are more likely to have only
> one level of relationship, like for instance a cab driver and his or her
> fare, or an economic exchange at a fast food restaurant. Multiplex and
> simplex relationships make it easier to comprehend what the CDI designs to
> do: make urban simplex relationships more multiplex in character, which
> provides for less 'critical mass' required to achieve unified cultural and
> political pressures. The CDI acts as an 'introduction service' for
> urbanites, separated by the innately splaying sociospatial networks of
> urban areas and organizational life, and out of which a more complex
> cultural milieu is recognized. With the increasingly complexity of the
> urban culture comes less likelihood to be swayed by external solutions to
> their problems. With a more multiplex coalitional structure which the CDI
> aims to facilitate, community organizations become local systemic actors.
> >From this localized context, they can network with other cities for wider
> nation-state level politics. This is discussed in the next section.
> 
> The CDI conception is so webbed into social feedback effects it's rather
> germane to discuss it in terms of what it does, than what it 'is.' The CDI
> 'grounds' coalition building into existing cultural networks. It uses
> existing thoughts and feelings towards other citizens, pools them together
> and delivers a tally to the people of whom they find representative or
> admire, as a group. This brings local politics into integration with local
> cultural forms, and makes state elites work to maintain their power by
> reducing first-dimensional power relationships culturally speaking. Instead
> of local actors working to get the state's or a political party's
> attention, the latter groups have to acquiesce more when there is a
> stronger and more vocal local cultural milieu which is less dependent and
> more resistant to external ideas about what is 'good policy.' The CDI
> balances out the highly unequal systemic power which occurs between a
> low-input, simplex urban politics and powerful nation-state political
> parties. The CDI creates a mobilizing forum on the local level which is
> designed to embed local groups in a long term process of coalition building
> as a social institutional process. This process is tailor made to the local
> cite because the actors which are recognized are selected for several
> traits on the organizational level of the CDI. The CDI makes sure they are
> 
>     (1) popular amongst various groups instead of merely their own
>     'political machine,'
> 
>     (2) with a cultural sense of creating an intermediary and facilitating
>     role in cultural sense, instead of creating an ideological reactionary
>     influence,
> 
>     (3) and in addition, the CDI makes sure they are personally motivated
>     to fulfill this role without any incentives besides the status recognition
>     which becomes a symbolic rallying frame for them being framed in a social
>     and political capacity by the CDI recognition.
> 
> The CDI aims at popularizing local political coalitional development as a
> cultural process, within cultural networks. The CDI has nothing to do with
> changing government structure, or changing voting law, etc. These winnowing
> aspects of the CDI are effected by its dual-tier voting structure, and the
> turnover period of one CDI is short enough (one year) to allow for issues
> to develop as soon as they become widely pertinent, instead of growing
> unobserved and unaddressed by government and exploding into violent
> conflict. The CDI voting mechanism is described in Appendix One, and I turn
> the reader to examine it further there. Other CDI-like forms (or forums, in
> this case) in operation around the world are the Cuban political
> 'affirmative' political structure of localized political input, and the
> fiscal budgetary 'affirmative democracy' of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande du
> Sul, Brazil. [Navarro, 1997]. Including the CDI in this group, they have
> several uniting features:
> 
>     (1) a mix of direct and representative features, to create a middle
>     ground;
> 
>     (2) they attempt to get around political party formation which
>     divides a populace on a local level by an integrationist
>     and coalitional input form of operation,
> 
>     (3) by a means to institutionalize coalition building as a political
>     means of integrating community level cultural organizations
>     with local government level structures 'culturally,'
>     thus minimizing sociospatial separation amongst different networks.
> 
> Though I mentioned in point (2) that they attempt to get around ideological
> conceptions, I mean in the sense, that they are structured to be
> deliberative political arenas instead of combative public factions (which I
> would argue exist only when they are left out of the deliberative process
> in some sense, in the past).
> 
> If the political theorist Goodnow and his ideas had been successful instead
> of had been co-opted in the Progressive Era of the United States (circa
> 1900), urban politics might have been quite different. His ideas of an
> urban administrative structure which moved to integrate local political
> input into urban governmental structure in a deliberative and consular
> sense would have been cut of the same cloth as the abovementioned three.
> [Frisch, 1982] The CDI 'holds open' the possibility for effective
> democratic structures, which ideological and identity politics normatively
> closes and separates, leading to a further debilitation of the political
> democratic process, as systemically those unconnected with the government
> structure face only their small groups of identity or ideological adherents
> as their audiences against the state.
> 
> I was particularly interested in the 'whipping' cultural effects of
> unrepresentative political victories due to the lack of other candidates or
> discrimination, etc. There are two major choices in situations like these:
> wait, and in the next election elect someone else; or, if there is nothing
> resembling a group willing to challenge, just sitting back and being
> frustrated. The first option, I would argue is less based on issues
> therefore and more capable of being based on a cycle of revenge. This can
> easily be manipulated to get people into power who merely have to say "I'm
> the exact opposite of so-and-so, and will do the exactly opposite of
> so-and-so,' and with little other strategic choice for the individual
> voter, they generally vote in droves for this challenging candidate. And
> what occurs generally once this 'challenger' candidate gets into power? It
> becomes obvious that they have merely used the public's lack of choice of
> other venues of reaction for their own ends. Generally they do nothing
> different, and the cycle of the 'false challenger' begins again--becuase of
> a lack of political method choice. One is forced to vote 'for' someone when
> one actually would rather more directly like to vote 'against' a particular
> person. The CDI integrates this, described below, in a 'voter veto.'
> 
> The second option: the disgruntled frustration, of saying to hell with it
> all, has been the option of most of the United States population for many
> years. This is related to a lack of recognized leaders. This is not related
> I would argue to a sense that there are no leaders. There are. Yet many
> potential leaders realize that the game as it is is a losing one.
> 
> There ar two intents of the CDI: one is symbolical, and the other is
> deliberative. The symbolical is described first. The CDI moves to make
> these leaders visible in the background without having them to do anything.
> It just recognizes them, and moves to recognize them with a facilitations
> role, which is 'seen' as actively taking on a social frame of recognition,
> taking on a status symbol which becomes a potential rallying point. The CDI
> 'election' has shown symbolically to the people at large that these people
> already have an informal 'party' following. This is the symbolic intent of
> the CDI.
> 
> The deliberative intent of the CDI is recognizing these individuals in
> addition as a cultural 'forum' group. Their recognition is both individual
> and civic. The CDI is nothing like a governmental structure, it is a
> cultural body of admired citizens--the whole spectrum.
> 
> Dealing with the symbolic context once more, it is the spectrum only of
> those who are 'widely' admired. In other words, the CDI attempts to
> disfranchise machine politics structural hold on cultural creation. That's
> a mouthful, so I will restate. I am saying that political parties tend to
> develop identities for nation-states, for cities, for people as individuals
> because they are the social status system as much as the nation-state
> political participants. And in time, a simulacrum develops where the
> 'culture' becomes the feedback which the political actors have selectively
> listened to, since everyone else who is ignored either goes hoarse, or just
> shuts up. Either way, a system develops between what official culture is
> and what politics is. Both reinforce each other. The CDI aims to include
> local systemic power in this official cultural capacity of discourse. The
> CDI moves to create a way to sustain a coalitional based recognition system
> which is wider that what the political status quo would allow for their
> conceptions of what the 'culture' is. In other words, the CDI wants to
> widen the cultural recognition, which would move the political structures
> to adapt over time. The CDI wants to 'hold open' the cultural coalitional
> 'channel' of discourse as an option.
> 
> Continuing this, what about the racists, the fascists, extremists, etc.?
> Wouldn't they get equal voice? Extremists would have to pass the litmus
> test of the second round of voting, where the longer term of nine months
> voting meshes with the published tallies. These tallies allow people to
> vote against the people they hate, instead of indirectly finding someone
> else to vote for (who is only there mobilizing and capitalizing upon the
> widely shared opposition to this other person). The CDI just says that
> voting can cut both ways--both for or against these recognitions. This
> creates a nice, wide group of centrists, who don't lean either way.
> Centrists? Yet doesn't that edit out of cultural recognition anyone
> interested in change? No. A quote from Max Weber may be opportune at this
> point, concerning external social selection pressures within organizations
> which lead to the 'organizational cream of the crop' being the least
> definitive elements possible as to satisfy more constituencies.
> 
> The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not alone
> or even predominately owning to the "human, all too human" factors, which
> naturally occur in the process of . . .selection [in an organizational
> context]. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of faculty
> members or educational ministries responsible for the fact that so many
> mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities. The
> predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human cooperation,
> especially of the cooperation of several bodies. . . .
> 
> A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be traced
> over many centuries and which are the most important controllable examples
> of a selection [in an organizational context]. The cardinal who is said to
> be the 'favorite' only rarely has a change to win out. The rule is rather
> that the Number Two cardinal or the Number Three wins out. The same holds
> for the President of the United States. [Weber, 1958]
> 
> Recall the the CDI individuals are not brought together out of
> organizational politics, and are more akin to a slow, private accumulation
> of votes over the first voting period of nine months. This crates a highly
> diverse body of recognized people unaffected by organizational winnowing to
> mediocre persons or persons who have been designed to 'fit' in the existing
> cultural system. The second tier of voting publicizes their relative
> standing to each other, and allows people to vote for people they had
> forgotten to vote for before, or in the particular case of the CDI, winnow
> out those they despise by voting against them. Since the voter can vote for
> as many (for or against) as he or she pleases, the pressure to come up with
> one (mediocre and predictable) candiate) is minimized. The idea of the CDI
> is to develop intermediaries, those whose appearance is relatively
> unclouded by massive popularity or infamy, since these people will most
> likely have just as many people who would like to see them disappear as
> they would like to have them recognized further. With a roster of
> intermediaries, recognized as individuals and as a tacit group, the
> organizational politics can develop from there in a political process
> within which these intermediaries can decide upon what are the major
> concerns of their civic area without having a great deal of systemic input
> or state-connected people involved, thus more likely to speak their minds
> instead of upholding an image of what they feel they have to represent. The
> same principles of intentionally minimizing the social repercussions and
> thus allowing for greater citizen honesty of conscience were effective in
> the representative debates on the Constitution of the United States in the
> 1780's.
> 
> In the CDI, legitimacy comes from their personal vote totals, and no one is
> running against anyone else. After the individual recognition, the
> organizational politics develop off a very different and more complex
> systemic base than public power structures in society. The CDI designed
> with the external effect of it as much as the organizational qualities. But
> what about the lump of centrists? Isn't that the definition of politically
> inert? Moderation? Doesn't that maintain the status quo?
> 
> I have had this argument before. Presently, we are not living in an epoch
> of centrist led status quo. We are living in an era of extremist led status
> quo--allowed due to co-opting of local cultural frames for uncultural
> interests. The present status quo is not actively maintained by centrists.
> It is maintained by the continuing successful appeals to extremists--from
> the age of Greek tyranny to the present 'wrapping oneself in the flag' of
> the Republicans. It would seem that centrism is intentionally and
> structurally avoided and deselected against in the present organization of
> the nation state, and unrepresentative political ecologies develop which
> maintain this process.
> 
> I have already found out that my definition of moderation is perhaps quite
> different than what it normatively represents in public speech--maintaining
> the status quo. Personally, I consider the status quo as a very radical
> polity indeed. It fails to deserve the term 'conservative' or 'moderate'.
> It is dangerous to allow it to continue 'unmoderated' by democratic input.
> If there is one discourse switch I would feel be of great use is
> considering the existing status quo as a radical and one sided polity,
> capable of being maintained because of a lack of political mediation and
> moderation. Thus, 'moderation' in my sense is a sense of increasing
> complexity and less issuing out of ideological platforms, and more coming
> out of cultural networks and humanizing socialization which brings groups
> through the representatives of the CDI together socially on a local
> context. As I mention in the Appendix, the CDI is an 'introduction service'
> for generating local consensus and coalitional based political pressures.
> 
> It's a strategic and solvable problem I argue on how to keep these
> democratic channels from 'sealing' into formal ideological frameworks,
> which can be co-opted by external elites (out of the urban context of
> groups without representation). The complexity, the shifting quality, and a
> system of generating multiplex relationships in an urban context thus
> making it difficult for clientalistic elites to swoop in and take advantage
> of economic desperation or of desire for 'solutions' by ideological mimicry
> of 'local values' platforms. The CDI creates and holds effectively 'open' a
> process of coalitional politics.
> 
> Power wins and will always win. We have to find a way to join in its
> deliberations on a long term basis. We have to find a way to disrupt power
> by participating in it, thus pulling its dimensionality of relations to a
>