(The essay below is published recently in A Revista Conexao Politica, published by the Universidade Federal do Piauí in Brazil. The essay was translated into Portuguese and is published in both English and Portoguese courtesy of my friend, Prof. Batista. As the essay looks into politics and voter behaviour, I find it apt to put it here at Boholanalysis.)
Introduction
Some countries in the
world may have buried machine politics and the predominant role of bosses in
defining local governance as matters of nostalgia (Stone, 1996). But
undoubtedly, this is not necessarily the case in developing countries which
seem to be poor reflections of the colourful past of advanced democracies. Machine politics and bosses still thrive in these
environments where there is widespread insecurity and poverty and where on the
hands of politician, rather than the state, rests the relative power and means to
appease these conditions (Hedman and Sidel, 2000).
What happens to
machine politics and bosses in a period of increasing scarcity, where financial
crisis affects the availability of resources to serve competing users, uses,
and interests? While this essay may be construed as an exercise in retrospection,
it serves the purpose of understanding the persistence of machines in local
governance in present-day fledgling democracies characterized by increasing
financial insecurity, by looking into one aspect of machine dynamics – the
rules of supply and demand in local politics. Grounding the discussion on two
persuasive literatures – Erie’s Rainbow’s
End (1987) and Chubb’s Patronage,
Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy (1982) – this paper attempts to answer
the question as to what is the most appropriate political behaviour of machines
when confronted by resource insufficiency and massive voter demand.
In answering the
question, the paper briefly outlines Erie’s theory of balance between claimants
and resources (Section 1) as well as Chubb’s theory on the power of scarcity
manipulation (Section 2). In the succeeding section (Section 3), the paper provides
an attempt at analyzing the merits and limitations, points of differences and
convergence between the two theories presented. As a matter of conclusion, the
paper presents answer to the primary question by arguing that despite the
similarities and differences in conceptualization, there is a prevalent
characteristic that underlines both explanations– that these are context
theories that explain the development of machines in a continuum or progression. Accordingly, the appropriate behaviour depends
on the phase to which the structure of local power and the corresponding
condition of the electorate belongs.
Section 1. Erie’s Balancing Act
Erie’s theory is
anchored on the statement that “The secret of the machine longevity, then, was
bringing electoral demand into balance with resource supply” (Erie, 1988: 10). He
argued that the nature of local politics and the dominance of machines in
election results require that the demand of electorate, not necessarily the
whole but a substantial portion of it, must be met and taken cared of at all
times. Failure to do so will tip the
balance of the equation leading to the machine’s downfall.
Drawing his
generalizations in the analyses of big machines in Irish-American cities
between 1840 – 1985, he proposes that what local machines were successful of
was to increase the resource base on one hand, to be able to meet the
increasing demand for patronage, and deflate voter demand on the other, to
compensate for resource insufficiencies.
This requires from
machines a handful of things. First, it
requires that the machine is aware of the nature and propensity of demand, not
only in terms of current but also of future terms, in order to gauge the magnitude
of supply required. Second, it requires
that the machine knows well the limitations of its supply base as well as the
prospects of expansion. Third, it must
be able to determine the appropriate mix of resource enhancement and voter
deflation strategies that will not compromise current political gains with long-term
machine sustainability.
The case presented by
Erie suggests certain types of resource enhancement strategies as tax
increases, increases in public debt, annexation and incorporation, reliance on
private sector patronage, and alliances with county, state and federal bosses
to capture additional public sector patronage (his theory of intergovernmental
alliance). But in this case, resource
creation is conventional wisdom, since any sane person who would enter politics
will know that resources are necessary and that with the growing demographic
trend, one has to prepare more.
What is novel about
Erie’s theory is the concept of voter demand deflation. It moved away from the
traditional notion of indiscriminate inclusion and extensive mobilization in
order to “enlarge the electoral universe and pre-empt (their) opponents by
reducing the pool of voters available for counter mobilization” (ibid., p. 217).
He justifies this by positing costs reasons (doing so would drain the machine
of its resources) and the dangers of patronage and power reallocation (shifting
allocation from the Irish to the non-Irish).
Several forms were used in this respect but the primary of which were
repression and corruption.
How does Erie
understand this exclusionary procedure? First, he argued that the procedures of
incorporation were highly exclusive – as soon as the machine reached its point
of stability, it stopped mobilizing the electorate and warded off new joiners,
thereby concentrating on its traditional power base. Second, the machine made a
glaring distinction between the new and the old and put an economic premium
into the distinction by over-rewarding previously incorporated groups and
under-rewarding newly incorporated ones.
This conceptualization
however, while novel, is not surprising. The theory, which leans more on the
supply side of the equation as evidenced by the statement “to bring the
electoral demand, into balance with resource supply”, alludes to the concept of
the infiniteness of electoral demand and the boundaries of resource supply.
Hence, because the supply is scarce, it is but a logical proposition to curb
the abundant demand in order for the machine to cope up and survive.
Within this frame of
analysis, Erie did not discount the importance of the manner of distribution
when resources are pooled and when target demand has already been defined. He argued that the Irish-American machines
worked on the concept of “different strokes for different folks”, segregating
the electorate to classes and their particular interests. For example, the machines appropriated costly
patronage and welfare services to poor inner city wards while offering
efficient low cost homeowner services to outlying middle class homeowners.
Part of the whole
process, is the skilful management of externalities that has effects on both
the supply of patronage and the demand for it.
The resilience of machines first is exemplified by its never ending
search for patronage sources, as the bundle decreases due to externalities, and
as opportunities for creation becomes evident.
Secondly, this resilience is also evident by the intentional
exclusionary procedures that machines undertake in order not to enlarge the
mass of people to whom it shall make itself accountable in the midst of an
inevitable increasing trend.
Section 2. Chubb’s Rules of Exploiting Scarcity
Chubb’s theory of machine
success, in response to the question of demand and supply, is comprehensively
captured by the statement that “the power of the party rests on the
manipulation of scarcity, on maintaining large numbers of people in competition
for scarce resources” (Chubb, 1982: 215).
Chubb’s proposition is
situated in a particular context, where there is amass poverty and insecurity
and the only way to salvation is a government that should have responded
sensitively to the needs of the people.
In the context of Palermo in Italy, the government did, but in an
entirely different way, a clientelistic way that did not only dispense actual
material favours but also, ironically, hope.
Chubb’s proposition does
not indicate the neglect of the supply side of the equation. As a matter of fact, she laboriously
expounded on it. However, the process of
the party’s wealth creation in the context of the research locale was highly
dependent on regional spending, government funds, and nothing else. While Erie mentioned increased taxation for
purposes of revenue maximization, such can not be made an option in Palermo
where the majority of people were poor and where even the business community, a
primary source of tax revenue could not even be relied upon since it was highly
subsidized, and where the white collar employees, a source of
tax-deducted-at-source, represented a huge powerful negotiating block that
would be very sensitive to these types of deductions in gross pay.
The forms of patronage
in Palermo did not differ significantly from Erie’s account. The primary support mechanism is related to
the provision of jobs, by manipulating the public payroll and by the
dispensation of hopes of job acceptance through recommendations. In the case of the business community, there
was a very high degree of public intervention in the form of direct public
spending (incentives, subsidies, contracts and special industrial salvage
programs), credit assistance (both from private and public banks), and the
exercise of discretion in the implementation of the regulatory powers of
government (e.g., licensing). As such,
“the different strokes for different folks” argument earlier mentioned, also
holds true in Chubb’s proposition where the machine sliced the electorate into
chunks of homogenous needs.
The critical element,
however, of Chubb’s analysis which also made it significantly different from
Erie’s account is the trade of future goods in the political exchange - the
element of hope that she repetitively referred to in her book. In which case,
there is a trade of actual versus future goods. However, this paper argues that
both the supply and the demand side are trading on hope in specific and
particular instances. For example, the moment the patron signs a
recommendation, it is a promise in itself, and thus a future element. Conversely, the moment the client receives
it, he undertakes the promise to vote, thus, another future commodity. However,
it will be different if what is traded is a recommendation for a vote on
election day and the recommendation is given only upon the sight of an
affirmatively-filled ballot.
This analysis,
however, is not peculiar. In moments of supply scarcity, it is customary for
sellers and buyers to trade future goods (like in the case when two persons pay
to reserve an out-of-stock item in an antique shop). What is peculiar is the
proposition that one does not have to do so much about supply (like the antique
shop owner searching for the reserved item), but to maintain the scarcity (make
the item always unavailable) to ensure that the supply is most sought assuming
demand is increasing (more people request for the item) or is held constant
(the same persons come back to follow up on the request).
How then does Chubb operationalize
this theory in the context of local politics?
Chubb proposes that
there is a great incentive to maintain the poverty and insecurity that
characterized an area while the machine retains political control in
alleviating it. So long as there is poverty, and so long as the machine holds
the key to all resource opportunities available, the machine will always
succeed. This proposition is very
volatile and vulnerable and requires a handful of things.
First, it requires
that development is kept beyond the gates.
It means warding off all opportunities that will give people a certain
degree of economic power, because surely it will have large implications on
political ones. The reason why Chubb argued
that it is economic development, and not economic crisis that presents the
greater threat to a machine, is the recognition that it offers alternative
sources of economic goods that may not anymore be controlled by the machine and
may therefore compete with its power to accommodate the demand.
Second, it requires
the continued hegemony of the government (and therefore the machine, assuming
situations of majority control) in the provision of alternatives to the poor.
The cooption of business sector, the control of non-profit institutions, the
subjugation of labour unions and even the misapplication of development funds
are necessary in order to recreate every day the same poverty that fuels the scarcity
that assures the machine’s immortality.
Finally, while
ensuring that poverty and insecurity persist, the machine should be able to
raise the banner of hope and the promise of the future that one only attains by
a sustained loyalty to the machine.
Thus, stories of inspiration, of ascending up the ladder, of
entrepreneurial success that owes largely to the possibilities that the machine
can offer, should float in the minds of people so that while scarcity is in the
air, the much-desired abundance does not seem to be so far. Conversely, stories of failure because of
disloyalty should also be spoken of in the streets so that the reliance on the
politics of hope will become more convincingly real.
Section 3. Points in Conversation
It can be said that
both Chubb’s and Erie’s account focused more on the economic favours that the
machine can logically, or illogically allocate to clients - patronage,
services, contracts, franchises, tax freezes, jobs, garbage collection,
homeowner services and how these can be sourced. Both exclude in the discussion
the allocation of power as a form of patronage that may also be ably
distributed to generate significant results if dispensed and managed at their
appropriate levels.
In this context, it
can be said that both theories propose that more than anything else, a
machine’s birth and survival rely heavily on the economic resources it can
dispense to be able to get the monopoly of the political power that it seeks to
establish. This, among others, reflects
the electoral exercise as a cycle of economic-gain-for-political-power
exchange. The voters get favoured economically, while the boss got favoured
politically. However, this is entirely
not so. With every dispensation of
economic favour, a political power is added to the demand side, thereby
increasing its potency to bargain and to demand for more. Also, with every vote that a client gives, it
is with the client’s awareness of the patron’s economic gain in it and the
latter’s increased power to gather the resource.
Thus, the demand and
supply side can not be simply understood as an expression of economic needs and
favours. Had this been so, voters may not have the power to demand other types
of goods and the machines may not have to give in. In Italy for example, the bargaining power
of the white collar middle class causing fear to the leaders, and even
resulting in the passage of a bill that it previously rejected, is an
indication that indeed, what were dispensed as jobs are not mere jobs in
themselves but also a fraction of the power that the ruler holds. In US cities,
the fact that machines shift the response to the client’s demand speaks of the
power that the latter is able to wield.
It is important to
note here, that in the context of this demand and supply analysis, Chubb’s
proposition comes from the same ground as Erie’s – that the supply is finite
while demand is entirely the opposite. While Erie suggested on expanding demand
and restricting supply, the components of the equation, Chubb’s prescription is
not on these but on the context at which the equation is held to operate.
The demand and supply
law of economics only applies to the assumed situations of scarcity (which
undoubtedly characterizes the world) that when needs are unlimited and there
are boundaries in supply, one has to manipulate either the demand or the supply
in order to achieve optimal results. Thus, the scarcity, in this case, is a
given, in the context of the equation, without which the equation is
meaningless. It may be tempting to conclude that Chubb’s prescription is on the
demand side, by holding it as constant (as suggested in Erie’s argument), but this
paper would argue that it is not so. The scarcity is the reason of the
equation, and Chubb’s argument focused on this. In her theory, one does not
have to manipulate the equation, but rather to make its underlying assumption
hold true at all times.
Erie on the other hand
treats scarcity as a given that one can not do anything about, hence his
preoccupation with manipulating the two elements of the equation. This is maybe
conditioned by the assumption that abundance is never possible, but if it is,
it will always be relative and time-bound. However, the differences in
generalization are more on the point of reference, the context of the argument
rather than the belief of an economic assumption of finite resource, which,
after all, is general knowledge.
Palermo’s scarcity was
so overwhelming, that its influence on conceptualization is persuasive. On the
other hand, the US cities may have not been in the same condition in its recent
history, that’s the reason why the theory can not support the construct. But what if Erie’s study is situated in the
same scarcity situation as Palermo, at a point in the US history that mirrors
exactly the same condition? It is very likely that a different generalization
may have been arrived at, and may even liken Chubb’s conclusion. Conversely,
Chubb’s interpretation is grounded on the seemingly unlimited control of the
state since, as earlier pointed out, the manipulation of scarcity requires the
precondition of power monopoly. What if given the scarcity that there was, the
machine does not have a near-to-absolute control? More likely, Erie’s proposition is more
tenable. Indeed, without the machine or
the government’s power monopoly, the manipulation of scarcity is not at all
possible, even when the population is characterized by intense poverty and
insecurity. If the power veil is susceptible to the piercing, the maintenance
of scarcity will lead to higher expectations and graver discontent that can
even incite revolt.
Conclusion
This is not to argue that
the appropriate behaviour of the machine in situations of scarcity and high
voter demand is dependent on place, or culture, or time, or ethnicity mix, or
nature of people, but rather on the phase by which local politics, defined as
the system of control, evolve (the supply side) and the manner by which
development, defined as improvement of well-being, has taken place (the demand
side). If local control rests on the hands of the machine at a state of
monopoly, and the electorate is characterized by extreme poverty and voiceless
existence, then managing scarcity will perpetuate the machine naturally. On the
other hand, if the control of local politics is on a stiff competition, while society
is fragmented as to socio-economic condition where some can afford better
living while others can’t, then the machine that has the most resource and is able
to capture a significant support base, will likely fare better and exist longer
than others.
On this last note,
Chubb may be right when she argued that the state of economic development and
the structure of political power serve a mutually reinforcing bond. It is just
that she framed the argument in the negative that it precludes all other types
of conditions to benefit from the explanation.
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