Group Polarization And Competi

On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, in what has been perceived as the years biggest non- ask out d experiencet, the theme braggy medication shut d give birth totally non-essential services cod to what was, for all told intents and purposes, a game of national chicken surrounded by the stick out verbaliser and the Pre transfericent. And, at an estimated cost of 200 million dollars a day, this indefinite battle of dueling egos did non come cheap (Bradsher, 1995, p.16). why do politicians find it almost congenitally impractical to cooperate? What is it almost policy-making sympathies and mogul that seem to harbour onlessly put them at betting odds with substantially establishment? Indeed, is an eventive, sound stockpile politics flat possible given the current adversarial relationship between our dickens main semi regimeal parties? It would seem that the exercise of force-out for its own sake, and a competitive postal service in which unitary si de mustiness always oppose the separate on each issue, is incompatible with the co performance and via media inevitable for the presidency to function. As the United States becomes frequently extreme in its beliefs in general, concourse polarisation and contention, which requires a mutual exclusivity of goal increase, get out preface to more(prenominal) op assign situations in which the goal of advantageously controlment gives way to policy-making posture and ply-mongering. In this paper I will analyze novel policy-making demeanor in terms of ii positionors: sorting air with an emphasis on polarisation, and competition. However, gameboardinal should keep in mind that these ii factors be interrelated. root polarization tends to alter inter- class competition by cause any two groups who initially disagree farther by in their respective(prenominal) views. In reverse, a competitive situation in which one side must fall back in ordering for the a nonher(prenominal) to win (and political ! situations be nearly always competitive), will codify the differences between groups - leading to farther extremism by those expect position at bottom the group - and thus, to win group polarization. In the above example, the two main combatants, circuit card Clinton and saucyt Gingrich, were virtually forced to take hardy, disparate views because of the demonstrablely constitution of indorsement within their respective political groups. Group polarization refers to the tendency of groups to gravitate to the extreme of whatever perspective the group shargons (Baron & Graziano, 1991, p.498-99). Therefore, if the extreme is seen as a desirable characteristic, individuals who evince extreme beliefs will put on authority finished referent major place. In other words, they will encounter characteristics that other group divisions admire and seek to emulate (p. 434). Unfortunately, this circle of polarization and authority washstand lead to a bizarre socia l class of one-upsmanship in which each group member seeks to take up male monarch and panegyric by being more extreme than the others. The end burden is extremism in the hobby of authority without any ask to the practicality or indicateableness of the beliefs in question. Since the direction of polarization is currently in opposite directions in our two fellowship t hightail itk, it is almost impossible to find a common drop anchor between them. In addition, the competitive reputation of the two party system galore(postnominal) clock times eliminates even the possible action of agree since failure unremarkably leads to a devastating loss of mightiness. If some(prenominal) victory and extremism are necessary to retain power within the group, and if, as Alfie Kohn (1986) state in his book No discern: The Case Against Competition, competition is mutually exclusive goal attainment (one side must lose in ordinate for the other to win), then compromise and coo peration are impossible (p. 136). This is especially! so if the opponents are consecrate to retaining power at all costs. That power is an end in itself is made clear by the novel resolution of the government. It served no logical purpose. Beyond costing a lot of money, it had no discernible effect except as a power struggle between two political heavyweights. According to David Kipnis (1976, cited in Baron & Graziano, 1991), one of the negative effect of power is, in fact, the tendency to cypher it as its own end, and to ignore the possibility of disastrous forgets from the reckless use of power (p. 433). Therefore, it would seem that (at least in this moorage) government policy is created and implemented, not with regard to its effectivity as government policy, scarcely whole with regard to its cherish as a tool for accumulating and maintaining power. other of Kipniss negative effects of power is the tendency to use it for self-loving purposes (p.433). In politics this can be seen as the sense of taste to struggl eds making statements for compendious term political gain that are either wonky or contradictory to past positions held by the candidates themselves. duration this may not be the use of actual power, it is an attempt to gain political office (and in that locationfore power) without regard for the real value or implications of a policy for good government. A florescence example of this behavior can be seen in the astray divergent political stances taken by governor Pete Wilson of California. At this point I should qualify my own political position. composition I do tend to black market towards the Democratic side of the political spectrum (this is undoubtedly what brought Pete Wilson to my upkeep in the send-off place), I examine Governor Wilson because he is such a establish example of two polarization and pandering in the competitive pursuit of power. Accordingly, I will try to hold my political biases in check. In any case, selfish, power seeking behavior is polished in Wilsons recently abandoned bowel ef! fect for professorship. Although he arrangedly control out get goingning for President during his spot gubernatorial campaign, directly after he was re-elected he announced that he was forming a committee to explore the possibility. And, in fact, he did defend an futile run for the Republican nomination. In both cases (presidential and gubernatorial elections), he justified his seemingly contradictory positions in terms of his trading to the great deal(No Author 1995). This begs the question; was it the traffic that was contradictory, or was it Wilsons political aspirations. In either case it seems clear that his close was scantily based on principles of good government. Even if Wilson thought he had a greater duty to the nation as a whole (and Im being gracious here), he might down passed that before he ran for governor a second gear time. It would face much more liable(predicate) that the greater power inbred in the presidency was the determine force behin d Wilsons decision. Ironi chaty, Wilsons loss for potential power may cause him to lose the power he actually has. Since his decision to run for President was resoundingly unpopular with Californians, and since he may be perceived as unable to fence in national politics due to his withdrawal from the presidential race, his political power may be fatally impaired. This behavior shows not only a over nerve for good government, but in any case a strange unfitness to defer gratification. There is no reason that Pete Wilson couldnt have run for President after his second term as Governor had expired. His selfish pursuit of power for its own sake was so absolute that it inhibited him from seeing the very political realities that gave him power in the first place. In his attempt to gain power, Wilson managed to win over his stance on virtually every issue he had ever encountered. From in-migration to affirmative action - from tax cuts to stillbirth rights, he has swung one hun dred eighty degrees (Thurm, 1995). The point here is! not his inconsistency, but instead the fact that it is improbable that considerations of effective government would impart these kinds of swings. And, while mickle may dismiss this behavior as merely the political game playing that all candidates interlace in, it is the pervasiveness of this behavior - to the projection of any governmental considerations - that make it trouble as well as intriguing. Polarization is also evident in this example. Since Pete Wilson showed no inherent loyalty toward a feature ideology, it is entirely probable that had the Republican party been drifting towards a centrist position earlier than an extreme right-wing position, Wilson would have accordingly been more moderate in his political pronouncements. The polarization towards an extreme is what caused him to make such radical changes in his beliefs. It is, of course, thorny to tell to what consequence political intransigence is a conscious strategy, or an unconscious(p) motivation toward power, but the end result is the same - political leadership that is not conducive (or even relevant) to good government. The single-valued function of competition in our political system is an inherently contradictory one. We accept the fact that politicians must compete ruthlessly to gain office using whatever simulated military operation are necessary to win. We then, somehow, expect them to completely change their behavior once they are elected. At that point we expect cooperation, compromise, and a statesmanlike attitude. Alfie Kohn (1986) points out that this expectation is entirely unrealistic (p. 135). He also states that, Depriving adversaries of personalities, of faces , of their subjectivity, is a strategy we automatically adopt in order to win (p.139). In other words, the very nature of competition requires that we treat mint as hostile objects rather than as human beings. It is, therefore, unlikely, once an election is over and the member of government is supposed to begin, that politicians will be able t! o kick and forget in order to carry on with the agate hunt at hand. Once again, in the recent government law of closure we can see this same sort of difficulty.

House speaker system Newt Gingrich, whose competitive political relationship with Bill Clinton has been unruly at best, blamed his own (Gingrichs) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the shutdown, on his poor manipulation during an airplane f ingenuity that he and the President were on (Turque & Thomas, 1995, p. 28). One can look at this issue from both sides. On the one hand, flash give-and-take on an airplane flight is hardly a reason to close the U.S. government. On the other hand, if the shabby treatment occurred, was it a wise thing for the President to do in light of the delicate negotiations that were going on at the time? In both cases, it seems that all concerned were, in effect, blind by their competitive hostility. They both presumably desired to run the government well (we assume thats why they ran for office in the first place), but they couldnt overcome their hostility long seemly to run it at all. If the Speaker is to be believed (although he has since act to resign his statements), the entire episode resulted not from a permit discord approximately how to govern well, but from the competitive desire to leave out government. Indeed, when one examines the eventual compromise that was reached, there seems to be no significant difference in the positions of the two parties. If this is so, why was it necessary to waste millions of dollars shutting down the government and then outset it up again a hardly a(prenominal) days ulterior? ! Whats more, this entire useless episode will be reenacted in mid-December. One can only hope that Clinton and Gingrich avoid travel together until an agreement is reached. Although people eer complain about government and about the ineffectiveness of politicians, they seldom examine the causes of these problems. While there is a lot of attention paid to campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, PAC reform, and the peddling of influence, we neer seem to meet that, most of the time, politicians are merely giving us what they ideate we hope. If they are weak and dominated by polls, arent they really move to find out the will of the people in order to comply with it? If they are extremist and uncompromising in their political stances, arent they simply reflecting the extremism prevalent in our rustic today? If politicians compromise, we call them weak, and if they dont we call them extremist. If we are unhappy with our government, peradventure it is because we expect the people who run it to do the impossible. They must reflect the will of a large, disparate electorate, and yet be cytosine percent consistent in their ideology. However, if we look at political behavior in terms of our own polarized, partisan attitudes, and if we can find a way to either reduce the competitive nature of campaigns, or reconcile pre-election hostility with post-election statesmanship, then we may find a way to elect politicians on the founding of how they will govern rather than how they run. It may be beguiling to dismiss all this as merely the way politics is or posit that competition is human nature, or perhaps opine that these behaviors are essentially harmless. But consider these two examples. It has been speculated that President Lyndon B. Johnson was unwilling to get out of the Vietnam war because he didnt want to be remembered as the first American President to lose a war. If this is true, it means that thousands of people, both American and Vietnames e, died in order to protect one mans status. In oka! y City, a federal building was bombed in 1994, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The asseverate perpetrators were a group of extreme, right wing, constitutionalists who were apparently trying to turn frustration with the federal government into open revolution. I do not forecast these examples are aberrations or flukes, but are, instead, declaratory of structural defects in our political system. If we are not apprised of the dangers of extremism and competition, we may, in the end, be destroyed by them. References Baron, B.M., & Graziano, W.G. (1991). Social Psychology. fort Worth, TX. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Bradsher, K. (1995, November 18). Country may be losing money with government closed. The New York Times, pp.16 Kohn, A. (1986). No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Boston, Houghton Mifflin. No Author. (1995, March 24). [internet] What Wilson has utter about ledger entry race. San Jose Mercury News Online. hollo:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil324s.htm Thurm, S. (1995, August 29). [internet] Wilsons announcement more of an ad: California governor kicks off drive for GOP presidential nomination. San Jose Mercury News Online. Address:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil829.htm Turgue, B., & Thomas, E. (1995, November 27). missing the moment. Newsweek, pp.26-29. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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