How the power elite can – and does - manipulate us - Part 4 of the series on the political class

I’ve often in the past 20 years had to put myself in the shoes of Ministers and senior civil servants to help them develop “road maps” to their destinations of reform….An important technique I’ve used in these endeavours has been to get my counterparts to list why they think people behave the way they do – whether as officials, as citizens, politicians or businesspeople  – and what that tells us about the best way to try to get them to change. 

After all, the projects I’ve led only exist because someone has decided the present state of affairs is no longer acceptable…..so what aspects of whose behaviour are we talking about? And what is it that is most likely to make target groups change their behaviour?

-                Simple instructions?

-                Threats? Incentives?

-                Explanations and understanding?

-                Moral exhortation?

I have then developed, over the past couple of decades, this table which focuses on the assumptions we make about motives - and then explores the various mechanisms which are available to those trying to change beliefs and behaviour

The “behavioural turn” - Tools in the change process

Motivating Factor	Example of tool	Particular mechanism
1. Understanding	Training Campaigns Functional review	Rational persuasion Factual analysis
2. Commitment	Leadership Communications Training	Legitimisation; inspiration Pride
3. Maximising Personal Benefit	Pay increase and bonus Promotion (including political office) Good publicity Winning an award	Monetary calculation ambition Reputation; Psychological Status
4. Minimising Personal Cost	Named as poor performer Demotion Report cards	Psychological (Shame) Monetary Pride
5. Obligation	Law Action plan Family ties	Courts Managerial authority Social pressure
6. Peer influence	Bribery Quality circles	Pressure Support
7. Social influence	Opinion surveys	Feedback from public about service quality

The explosion of interest in behaviour

In the last decade, the question of changing (other) people’s behaviour has become a central one for government, business and NGOs. Professors Thaler and Cass may have “nudged” interest with their 2008 Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness but it was in fact the UK Cabinet Office which arguably set the ball rolling four years earlier with its Personal Responsibility and changing behaviour – the state of knowledge and its implications for public policy (2004) - an example which was followed with Changing Behaviour – a public policy perspective (Australian Government 2007).

The Nudge book certainly inspired the Cameron government some 7 years later to set up a Nudge Unit in the Cabinet but the British government had in 2008 been exploring this issue in its  The Use of sanctions and rewards in the public sector (NAO 2008) the very same year - accompanied by a literature review drafted by Deloitte

Even the House of Lords was not to be outdone – with the voluminous evidence of its Behaviour Change in 2011. And the voluntary sector put down an early marker with its Common Case – the case for working with our cultural values (2010) – which showed more familiarity with the marketing approach than did the economistic and rationalistic assumptions which were embedded in the erly British attempts.

So the World Bank was rather lagging behind when in 2015 its Annual Development Report got round to dealing with the issue - in its Mind, Society and Behaviour

In parallel to this burgeoning interest, the emergence of “behavioural economics” has represented a shamefaced admission by the “discipline” that their models had been based on utterly stupid assumptions of rationality…

However, policy geeks such as yours truly have perhaps been a bit slow to make the connection between the “behavioural turn” and “Big Data” - let alone the scandal of Cambridge Analytics

Useful Further Reading

articles

The Rational Paradox of Nudge in a world of bounded rationality; Martin Lodge and Kai Wegrich (2016)

Big Other – surveillance capitalism and the prospects for an information civilisation; S Zuboff (2015)

“Nudge, nudge, think, think”; article by John, Smith and Stoker (2009)

Wicked Problems and clumsy solutions – the role of leadership; Keith Grint (2008)

 “Fitting policy tools to context and motivation” (RG Young 2008)

The behavioural turn in law and economics - series of articles 

https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2769

https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2630

https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2640

https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2646

https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2756

Reports and Books

Influencing Behaviours and Practices to tackle poverty and injustice (Oxfam 2018)
Governance and the Law (World Development Report; World Bank 2017)

https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/sanctions-rewards-and-learning.pdf (IDEA 2016)

Mind, Society and Behaviour (World Development Report; World Bank 2015)

A Practitioner’s Guide to Nudging; Rotman 2013

Behaviour Change (House of Lords (2011)

Finding Frames – new ways to engage the UK public in global poverty (2011)

Nudge, nudge, think, think; book by Peter John, Smith and Gerry Stoker (2011

Common Case – the case for working with our cultural values (2010
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness; Thaler and Cass (2008).

The Use of sanctions and rewards in the public sector (NAO 2008)

It was accompanied by a literature review drafted by Deloitte

Changing Behaviour – a public policy perspective (Australian Government 2007)

Personal Responsibility and changing behaviour – the state of knowledge and its implications for public policy (UK Cabinet Office 2004)

We need to talk about……..Power

Oborne’s book was interesting because, rightly or wrongly, it seemed to identify a turning point – that the way the British system of government operated had changed significantly (and for the worse) in the 1980s……He was not the only person arguing this – a year before, Simon Jenkins’ Thatcher and Sons; (2006) had conducted the same analysis but without using such dramatic terms as “new political class” and “manipulative populism”..

And even political scientists had been remarking that the much-famed “Westminster model” (of dominant political power) seemed to have been replaced with a much more consensual one of networked “governance”. Rod Rhodes – whom I briefly met in the 1970s - had been the foremost proponent of this view with his concept of “hollowed out government”

My table included a 2006 textbook British Politics – a critical introduction by Stuart McAnulla which nicely captures the sort of debate going on in those days in these academic circles……with McAnulla taking issue with both the traditional and reformist schools of thought and suggesting that we needed to extend our understanding of power beyond the political..…

It is, of course, nothing less than astounding that it took a global financial crisis to force academia to consider that government agendas are shaped by more than political manoeuvrings – and McAnulla’s is still a fairly lonely voice in his profession….The commercial links of New Labour were memorably exposed by George Monbiot in his 2001 expose The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain But, astonishingly, only 2 of the 500 pages of The UK’s Changing Democracy – the 2018 Democratic Audit have anything to say about corruption

Wolin’s Democracy Inc questioning the scale of commercial funding of American political personalities was distinctive only for it being produced by an academic (one of the most respected) and came out ten years ago. Neither it – nor the various studies of the significance of lobbying activity and resources at the European level – seem to make any impact on our discussions about democracy….Here is a rare 2014 academic contribution to the question of how consistent capitalism now is with democracy

We seem indeed averse to talking about “power” and its various facets…although most of us tend to have our own little conspiracy theory….I grant you that books on the subject tend to be rather specialised and daunting…..although Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power is a very good read…..if focusing rather too much on individual rather than systemic or structural factors.

When we look for books about power, we invariably find that they are written by sociologists, a group hardly famed for its clarity - one honourable exception being the recent Vampire Capitalism (2017).

Probably the best book about the subject is Steven Lukes’ slim Power – a radical view (2005) which starts with the simple story of how the post-war argument about the structure of power basically got underway with an American (Dahl) being upset with how 2 colleagues (C Wright Mills and Floyd Hunter) were portraying a power elite that seemed impervious to accountability – at both national and local levels…

Inevitably, however, even this book is guilty of the dreaded compartmentalisatio of which academia is so guilty and fails to mention the classic work of Amitai Etzioni who in the 1960s classified organisational power in terms of “coercion, economic assets or normative values”.. Sticks, carrots and moral persuasion we would call it.....

And if you’re wondering what “moral persuasion” is when it’s at home, Joseph Nye’s “soft power” will tell you more than Antonio Gramsci’s “hegemonic power”!!

Making sense of the structure of power

I had enjoyed my reread of “The Triumph of the Political Class” (2007) to such an extent that I started to google the other titles I remembered dealing with the same issue…to discover that what I imagined to be a dozen books on the contemporary structure of power (in the English language) turned out to be more than 20….And I can claim to have read only 8 of them – just over a third…..So some fast skimming is in order.  
A recent academic article I unearthed What do we mean when we talk about Political class? (Allen and Cairney 2017) turned out to be  a very pedantic analysis. But, as a background read to help make sense of the three thousand or so pages in this collection, I would highly recommend this (20 page) article on The Past, Present and Future of the British political science discipline

It’s on occasions like this that I would like to have some European counterparts to share analyses with……what, for example, are the key French and German books in the literature?? And how, if at all, do their studies differ from these?

Twenty years ago, the British system was universally admired. Now - and not only due to Brexit - it's seen a “basket case”. And sadly, with devolution now almost 20 years old, the Scottish Assembly and governance system does not seem to have lived up to its early promise.
The French have been highly critical of their centralised and elitist systems for some decades – and don’t seem any happier these days…

Only the German system had more balance – although it too is now suffering.

 Despite the explosion in the number of European political scientists these days (the European Consortium for Political Research alone claims 20,000 members), there doesn’t seem all that much in depth comparative analysis – at least not that’s easily accessible. Perry Anderson is about the only character with the linguistic ability to supply us Brits with extensive analyses of post-war and contemporary debates in France, Germany and Italy. His stunning study The New Old World (2009) can be read in its entirety here (all 560 pages).

Obviously my selection is arbitrary but I think it does catch most of the key writing…..The table starts with the most recent material - and the cutoff point is at the start of the new millennium since this was the point at which the New Labour style began to make itself felt....

Studies of the system of Power – mostly UK

Title	Summary
The UK’s Changing Democracy – the 2018 Democratic Audit; Dunleavy, Park and Taylor	“Democratic Audit” publishes an annual analysis – described here. This is its latest 500 page study – carried out by academics but who write well!
The Political Class – why it matters who our politicians are; Peter Allen (2018)	Focuses on the way the homogeneity of the political class damages the quality of decisions – written by a political scientist
Reckless Opportunists – elites at the end of the establishment; Aeron Davis (2018)	Rather one-sided critique
Prosperity and Justice – a plan for the new economy (IPPR 2018) Final report on economic justice	Most books focus on political power. Although this is a book about prescriptions – produced by a commission of the great and the good - it starts with an implicit critique which goes wider than mere politics
New Power – how it’s changing the 21st Century; Helmans and Timms (2018)	A typical, breathless, American “take” on how the internet is apparently challenging “old power”. Lacks any historical sense…..
State of Power 2018 (TNI)	An annual look at global capitalism by a left-wing Netherlands-based Foundation
State of Power 2017 (TNI)	Ditto
The Establishment  - and how they get away with it; Owen Jones (2014)	No pretence at objectivity in this hard-hitting analysis by a left-wing journalist of what’s wrong with Britain. So not limited to constitutional issues..Well written and strong on recommendations….
Ruling the Void – the hollowing of Western Democracy; Peter Mair (2013)	Rated as the most significant analysis of the issues of the past 25 years…by a political scientist
The New Few – power and inequality in Britain Now; Frederic Mount (2012)	A surprising critique from a Margaret Thatcher adviser!
Who Runs Britain? Robert Peston (2008)	Less an analysis dealing with the question than a critique of the political economic strategy of New Labour
Democracy Inc – managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism; SM Wolin (2008)	Written by one of America’s greatest political scientists
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/	A great website by an academic whose book on the subject is in to its 7th edition
Triumph of the political class; Peter Oborne (2007)	A provocative analysis a journalist of how the traditional British Establishment has morphed into a much more powerful and homogeneous political class
Power to the People – an independent inquiry into Britain’s democracy (Rowntree Trust 2006)	Unfortunately, this investigation limited itself to political and constitutional aspects
British Politics – a critical introduction; Stuart McAnulla (2006) see also the google version	This is a textbook – but a rare critical one which nicely sets out what’s wrong with both the traditional textbooks but also the newer ones which emphasise networks and negotiation
Thatcher and Sons; Simon Jenkins (2006)	Very much in the style of the Oborne book, this “rightist” Guardian journalist gives a strong critique of the destruction of the last vestiges of pluralism
Who Runs this place? The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century; Anthony Sampson  (2004)	The last of a series produced over 40 years by this famous journalist
The Power Inquiry (2004)	Like the 2006 study, limits the analysis to the political aspects. Produced by a commission
Democratic Audit of the United Kingdom; (Democratic Audit 2003)	Incorporating the negative effects of New labour
The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain; George Monbiot (2001)	The most explosive critique – from one of the best leftist journalists
Political Power and democratic control – the democratic audit of the United Kingdom; S Weir and D Beetham (Rowntree 1999)	One of the early audits

Controlling the Masses

Second-hand bookshops do not get enough credit – first for their shelter from the juggernaut marketing of fashionable titles and then with the delight of a text found which has languished unappreciated after a decade or so…..

Two titles caught my eye this week in a new downtown outlet opposite Bucuresti University – the first Who Runs this place? The Anatomy of Britain in the 21^st Century (2004) was the final contribution of a famous journalist, Anthony Sampson, who was of south African origin and had started in 1962 what became a series of efforts to capture the anatomy of the UK power structure. ….Extracts can be read here. Sampson himself became so ensconced in his role as voyeur that he almost became one of the institutions of which he wrote – as can be seen in this tribute. New Labour was half-way through its 13 years as he was drafting the book and the impact of its media manipulation was already in evidence. But a quick skim suggested that it might suffer from being a tad incestuous – with the references consisting of either newspaper articles or political biographies. Not a solitary academic reference

The Triumph of the Political Class by journalist Peter Oborne (2007)  was the other (smaller) bargain which I swept up – first read and blogged about in 2014. It has a much more powerful tale to tell - of the destruction by Thatcher in the 1980s of the traditional power of trade unions, universities, local government, the judiciary and the civil service. And of the huge rise under Blair et al since 1997 of the power of the political class and media – and the further emasculation of parliament, the Cabinet and the civil service. Interestingly, he coins the phrase “manipulative populism” – and identifies the significance of Peter Mair’s writing to the fate of the Western political party

The nature and location of power fascinated me from an early age – I had studied Elite theorists in the early 1960s on my political sociology course at University. Although Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) had led the way, it was Robert Michels’ (1876-1936) Political Parties (1911) which made the lasting impression on me - with his close study of trade unionists and social democrat politicians and derivation of “the iron law of oligarchy”.

For more than a century, one of the central issues of our time has been that of how “the masses” might be “controlled” in an age of democracy….These authors, thoroughly “Real” in their “Politik”, hardly suggested that the political and commercial elites had much to worry about – but this did not prevent writers such as Walter Lippmann (Public Opinion 1922) and Ortego y Gasset (Revolt of the Masses 1930) from conjuring up frightening narratives about the dangers of the great unwashed masses. Lippmann’s full book can be read here…

The scintillating prose of Joseph Schumpeter’s (1883-1950) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943) was also a favourite of mine – with his theory of the “circulation of the elites” reassuring the elites that all would be well….

But the populism evident since the start of the new millennium has sparked new anxieties on this count amongst the liberal elites – and indeed raised the question anew as to whether capitalism is consistent with democracy…

One guy whose words are worth reading on that question is SM Wolin – whose book on the history of political thought - Politics and Vision - held me spellbound in the 1960s. In his 90s he produced this great critique of the US system – Democracy Inc – managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism (2008) – reviewed here. And this is an interesting recent article, Why Elites always Rule which reminds the new generation of the significance of Pareto’s work…..

Since starting this post, I’ve noticed quite a few new books on this topic and will do an annotated reading list shortly of the dozen or so more interesting of these….

Complacency of the European Class

After the last post – on identity and political correctness – was it coincidence or serendipity that brought The Strange Death of Europe – immigration, identity, Islam by Douglas Murray (2017) to my attention first in the window of Bucharest’s Humanitas shop) and, mere days later, at the impressive Nautilius stand at the annual Gaudeamus Book Fair - where it was duly bought?

I had been less open 6-7 years ago when I had encountered a similar book - Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe; Immigration, Islam and the West (2010) which (very strangely in my view) Murray fails to mention anywhere in his 2017 book. I had left the Caldwell book lying on the shelf – my antennae telling me that the author was a right-wing “stirrer”.…But 2014/15 had seen the massive waves of immigrants pour into Europe – and Angela Merkel’s astonishing open invitation to immigrants…..if quickly withdrawn and translated into immigration quotas - which were quickly rejected by member States representing both sides of the old East-West border.. And migration – as I pointed out at the time – had played a crucial role in the Brexit vote although I have not subsequently written about it.

A few minutes later – with equal serendipity – I had come across and bought at the Book Fair (for 2 euros) a remaindered book by one Andrew Anthony entitled The Fall-out – how a guilty liberal lost his innocence (2007) which documents one man’s disillusionment with the conventional wisdom of the time. The link gives a sympathetic review to the confessions of someone caught up in his early life in a highly simplistic (what I call a Manichean) labelling of the world  

 Both books are very good reads - and have tempted me to offer foreign readers my take on the confused debate which Europe is now having about immigration….   

At first blush Murray’s bool looks like the latest in a long series of books with “Islam and immigration” figuring in the subtitle. But it is informed by ………a quality of writing that manages to be spritely and elegiac at the same time. Murray’s is also a truly liberal intellect ......and doesn’t betray the slightest hint of atavism or mean-spirited-ness. Yes, Murray is quite good at piling up the numbers that outline the collapse of European populations and the explosion of migration in the past decades and especially over the past two years.
He’s also quite good at batting down the facile arguments for allowing migration on this scale. Why must Germany turn to Eritrea for a work force when youth unemployment around the European Mediterranean is between 25 and 30 percent? 

His opening chapters on “How we got hooked on Immigration” and “The Excuses we told ourselves” present the basic facts and arguments we have all used to make sense of the various phases of migration in the post-war period. In the UK case, net immigration was noticed for the first time only at the end of the 1990s - and I well remember the first research reporting on the economic effects – consistently stressing its positive side. As an ex-pat I had no reason to take sides but did wonder that little mention was made of dependents and remittances abroad…..

The Tyranny of Guilt?

And, as someone who left the UK in 1990, I have little understanding of the “guilt” of the European Imperial past which has apparently been inculcated into younger generations – which both Murray and Caldwell assure us is a powerful factor in the reluctance of the European political class to act in the face of the immigration wave….

Giving up the ghost?

One of Murray’s most interesting chapters is that entitled “Tiredness” – which argues that Europe suffers from “an exhaustion caused by a loss of meaning.... .” Substitute faiths, whether in the high cultural visions of Wagner or the political theories of Marx, have also failed and been discarded. Murray is especially taken with the deconstructed edifice of contemporary academia. He has a section about a conference in which the “full catastrophe of German thought” dawned on him and which powerfully conveys my own feelings about a lot of "post-modernist" writing: 

A group of academics and others had gathered to discuss the history of Europe’s relations with the Middle East and North Africa. It soon became clear that nothing would be learned because nothing could be said. A succession of philosophers and historians spent their time studiously attempting to say nothing as successfully as possible. The less that was successfully said, the greater the relief and acclaim. No attempt to address any idea, history or fact was able to pass without first being put through the pit-stop of the modern academy.

No generality could be attempted and no specific could be uttered. It was not only history and politics that were under suspicion. Philosophy, ideas and language itself had been cordoned off as though around the scene of a crime. 

The job of the academics was to police the cordons – all the while maintaining some distractions in order to at all costs prevent wanderers from stumbling back onto the terrain of ideas….

All relevant words were immediately flagged and disputed – “nation” and “history” had the place in uproar and “culture” brought events to a grinding halt…..

If there remains any overriding idea, it is that ideas are a problem. If there is any common remaining value judgement, it is that value judgements are wrong. If there is any remaining certainty, it is a distrust of certainty.

“The Strange Death of Europe” is one of these rare books about contemporary issues which needs to be read slowly…with a marker…and reread…. I had not realised that it was as long ago as 2010 that Merkel first made her statement that “multiculturalism is dead” and that this refrain was quickly taken up by other political leaders. And yet, how badly they seem to have used those 8 difficult years!

Further Reading

“Strange Death of Europe” (2017)

https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2017/06/02/the-strange-death-of-europe-immigration-identity-islam - the most important review –

https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/07/strange-death-europe-douglas-murray-review

http://hungarianreview.com/article/20180719_douglas_murray_on_the_strange_death_of_europe

https://www.npr.org/2017/06/27/534597202/the-strange-death-of-europe-warns-against-impacts-of-immigration?t=1542262916642

http://www.dartreview.com/a-review-of-the-strange-death-of-europe/

https://vimeo.com/260817325

“Reflections on the Revolution in Europe; Immigration, Islam and the West”; Christopher Caldwell (2010)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/17/christopher-caldwell-immigration-islam

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/13/christopher-caldwell-revolution-in-europe

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/christopher-caldwell-on-muslim-integration-it-s-much-better-if-things-are-discussed-openly-a-668750.html

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/04/10/tiredness-the-strange-death-of-europe/

http://theorytuesdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Strange-Death-of-Europe-Excerpts-Murray.pdf

http://theworthyhouse.com/2017/09/08/book-review-the-strange-death-of-europe-douglas-murray/

https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Revolution-Europe-Immigration-Islam/dp/0307276759

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/afd-german-media-politicians-angela-merkel

Identity Politics

How has it come to pass that the world is divided these days on the issue of identity and political correctness?? Is it the insidious result of the American “culture wars” – which can be traced back  to 1968; Of an American left targeting Universities to help develop “identity politics”? Or simply the results of the polarising effect of the social media…..?

Whatever the precise origin, Brexit and the election of Trump have helped divide the world into two groups - “cosmopolitans” and “left-behinds” – with the former favouring open borders and a libertarian agenda; and the latter a more traditional one which has only recently found expression…

Except that this ignores a significant middle group which doesn’t fit such a Manichean perspective….and I readily confess to being a fully paid-up member of these “mugwumps” who don’t take up predictable positions - and are as a result considered unreliable – with “their mugs on one side of the fence and their wumps on the other”!

Take “human rights” as an example….I still remember my reaction when a young Kyrgz woman quoted some recondite UN declaration at me - viz to launch into an explanation that such rights were the results of long and bitterly-fought struggles eg for trade union let alone gender rights – and would not be enforced by simple diktat…from thousands of kilometres away. But she seemed to expect the magic waving of a wand……gain without pain…

And when feminism became active in the UK in the 1980s, I was responsible for a new “social strategy” which was trying to assert the rights of the unemployed and low-paid - and I confess that I had then little sympathy for what I felt were the interests of well-paid women pushing for an end to the “glass-ceiling”.… The issue, I felt, was simply one of priorities in what is, after all, always a crowded agenda for political attention….

With its referendum on the constitutional definition of a family, Romania provides another recent example. This grass-roots initiative would have restricted the definition of a family unit to that between a man and a woman (thereby denying that definition to single mothers!). This did not prevent three and a half million voters from voting yes but this was (at 21%) below the required 30% threshold. Many who supported the amendment argued that social values were offended by same-sex marriage and that it was unrealistic to expect villagers suddenly to accept that such behaviour was normal….     

Francis Fukuyama’s latest book - Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment - reminds us of the dual aspect of identity - individual and social….the first being our own sense of who we are ( very much to the fore in this narcissistic age), the latter being the sense of group differentiation. It is an issue which has clearly been eating away at Fukuyama for some time – evidence this powerful 2007 article Identity, immigration and liberal democracy which is very good on the contrast between US assimilation v European multiculturalism…

From the excerpts, his new book seems a good overview of how fundamentally politics has changed from being a fight between labour and capital to being a contest over identity and belonging…. 

While the economic inequalities arising from the last fifty or so years of globalization are a major factor explaining contemporary politics, economic grievances become much more acute when they are attached to feelings of indignity and disrespect. Indeed, much of what we understand to be economic motivation actually reflects not a straightforward desire for wealth and resources, but the fact that money is perceived to be a marker of status and buys respect.

Modern economic theory is built around the assumption that human beings are rational individuals who all want to maximize their “utility”—that is, their material well-being—and that politics is simply an extension of that maximizing behaviour. However, if we are ever to properly interpret the behaviour of real human beings in the contemporary world, we have to expand our understanding of human motivation beyond this simple economic model that so dominates much of our discourse.
No one contests that human beings are capable of rational behaviour, or that they are self-interested individuals who seek greater wealth and resources.

 But human psychology is much more complex than the rather simpleminded economic model suggests. Before we can understand contemporary identity politics, we need to step back and develop a deeper and richer understanding of human motivation and behaviour. We need, in other words, a better theory of the human soul.

I’m aware that this post has wandered a bit……starting with an (obvious) assertion about polarisation….with a defence of those who seek a more nuanced or “balanced” view… Some confession about past prejudices duly followed….and also a recent Romanian example ..…I then came across the Fukuyama book which clearly warranted inclusion....

Until now the conclusion read that - 

Grassroots pressure rarely leads to significant change – not at least on its own.……But neither do the imposition of national or international norms – which produces a push-back if not angry resentment  Social change generally comes from a combination of both.

A July post had explained that the pincer theory of change had been my default theory since the 1980s (although it later gave way to one called “windows of opportunity”)

In those days, it was clearly possible for some elite “insiders” to work together with activists to change things. The collapse in trust now seems to make such alliances impossible?

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst.. are full of passionate intensity”.

WB Yeats

Reading List

Identity, immigration and liberal democracy; F Fukuyama (2007) very good on the contrast between US assimilation v European multiculturalism…

New Yorker Review of Fukuyama book – Identity  

a rather fatuous review – but useful for getting you to read more..

podcast with Fukuyama

The political theory of recognition – the case of the white working class (article)
The Once and future liberal - after identity politics; Mark Lilla (2017)

The Limits of Identity – ethnicity, conflict and politics; article by Richard Jenkins (2000)

identity politics and the left Hobsbawm 1980s