Competition In Government Essay, Research Paper

On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, in what has been perceived as the years biggest

non-event, the federal government shut down all "non-essential"

services due to what was, for all intents and purposes, a game of national

"chicken" between the House Speaker and the President. And, at an

estimated cost of 200 million dollars a day, this dubious battle of dueling egos

did not come cheap (Bradsher, 1995, p.16). Why do politicians find it almost

congenitally impossible to cooperate? What is it about politics and power that

seem to always put them at odds with good government? Indeed, is an effective,

well run government even possible given the current adversarial relationship

between our two main political parties? It would seem that the exercise of power

for its own sake, and a competitive situation in which one side must always

oppose the other on any issue, is incompatible with the cooperation and

compromise necessary for the government to function. As the United States

becomes more extreme in its beliefs in general, group polarization and

competition, which requires a mutual exclusivity of goal attainment, will lead

to more "showdown" situations in which the goal of good government

gives way to political posturing and power-mongering. In this paper I will

analyze recent political behavior in terms of two factors: Group behavior with

an emphasis on polarization, and competition. However, one should keep in mind

that these two factors are interrelated. Group polarization tends to exacerbate

inter-group competition by driving any two groups who initially disagree farther

apart in their respective views. In turn, a competitive situation in which one

side must lose in order for the other to win (and political situations are

nearly always competitive), will codify the differences between groups – leading

to further extremism by those seeking power within the group – and thus, to

further group polarization. In the above example, the two main combatants, Bill

Clinton and Newt Gingrich, were virtually forced to take uncompromising,

disparate views because of the very nature of authority within their respective

political groups. Group polarization refers to the tendency of groups to

gravitate to the extreme of whatever opinion the group shares (Baron &

Graziano, 1991, p.498-499). Therefore, if the extreme is seen as a desirable

characteristic, individuals who exhibit extreme beliefs will gain authority

through referent power. In other words, they will have characteristics that

other group members admire and seek to emulate (p. 434). Unfortunately, this

circle of polarization and authority can lead to a bizarre form of "one

upsmanship" in which each group member seeks to gain power and approval by

being more extreme than the others. The end result is extremism in the pursuit

of authority without any regard to the practicality or

"reasonableness" of the beliefs in question. Since the direction of

polarization is currently in opposite directions in our two party system, it is

almost impossible to find a common ground between them. In addition, the

competitive nature of the two party system many times eliminates even the

possibility of compromise since failure usually leads to a devastating loss of

power. If both victory and extremism are necessary to retain power within the

group, and if, as Alfie Kohn (1986) stated in his book No Contest: The Case

Against Competition, competition is "mutually exclusive goal

attainment" (one side must lose in order for the other to win), then

compromise and cooperation are impossible (p. 136). This is especially so if the

opponents are dedicated to retaining power "at all costs." That power

is an end in itself is made clear by the recent shutdown 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

effects of power is, in fact, the tendency to regard it as its own end, and to

ignore the possibility of disastrous results from the reckless use of power (p.

433). Therefore, it would seem that (at least in this case) government policy is

created and implemented, not with regard to its effectiveness as government

policy, but only with regard to its value as a tool for accumulating and

maintaining power. Another of Kipnis’s negative effects of power is the tendency

to use it for selfish purposes (p.433). In politics this can be seen as the

predilection towards making statements for short term political gain that are

either nonsensical or contradictory to past positions held by the candidates

themselves. While this may not be the use of actual power, it is an attempt to

gain political office (and therefore power) without regard for the real worth or

implications of a policy for "good" government. A prime example of

this behavior can be seen in the widely divergent political stances taken by

Governor Pete Wilson of California. At this point I should qualify my own

political position. While I do tend to lean towards the Democratic side of the

political spectrum (this is undoubtedly what brought Pete Wilson to my attention

in the first place), I examine Governor Wilson because he is such a prime

example of both 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 reflected in Wilson’s recently abandoned

campaign for President. Although he consistently ruled out running for President

during his second gubernatorial campaign, immediately after he was re-elected he

announced that he was forming a committee to explore the possibility. And, in

fact, he did make an abortive run for the Republican nomination. In both cases

(presidential and gubernatorial elections), he justified his seemingly

contradictory positions in terms of his "duty to the people"(No Author

1995). This begs the question; was it the duty that was contradictory, or was it

Wilson’s political aspirations. In either case it seems clear that his decision

was hardly based on principles of good government. Even if Wilson thought he had

a greater duty to the nation as a whole (and I’m being charitable here), he

might have considered that before he ran for governor a second time. It would

appear much more likely that the greater power inherent in the presidency was

the determining force behind Wilson’s decision. Ironically, Wilson’s lust 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 compete in national politics due to his

withdrawal from the presidential race, his political power may be fatally

impaired. This behavior shows not only a disregard for "good"

government, but also a strange inability to defer gratification. There is no

reason that Pete Wilson couldn’t 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 change his stance on virtually every issue he had ever encountered. From

immigration to affirmative action – from tax cuts to abortion rights, he has

swung 180 degrees (Thurm, 1995). The point here is not his inconsistency, but

rather the fact that it is improbable that considerations of effective

government would allow these kinds of swings. And, while people may dismiss this

behavior as merely the political "game playing" that all candidates

engage in, it is the pervasiveness of this behavior – to the exclusion of any

governmental considerations – that make it distressing as well as intriguing.

Polarization is also apparent in this example. Since Pete Wilson showed no

inherent loyalty toward a particular ideology, it is entirely likely that had

the Republican party been drifting towards a centrist position rather 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, difficult to

tell to what extent political intransigence is a conscious strategy, or an

unconscious motivation toward power, but the end result is the same – political

leadership that is not conducive (or even relevant) to good government. The role

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 tactics 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 people as hostile

objects rather than as human beings. It is, therefore, unlikely, once an

election is over and the process of government is supposed to begin, that

politicians will be able to "forgive and forget" in order to carry on

with the business at hand. Once again, in the recent government shutdown we can

see this same sort of difficulty. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose competitive

political relationship with Bill Clinton has been rancorous at best, blamed his

own (Gingrich’s) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the

shutdown, on his poor treatment during an airplane flight 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, shabby treatment 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, blinded by their competitive hostility. They

both presumably desired to run the government well (we assume that’s why they

ran for office in the first place), but they couldn’t overcome their hostility

long enough to run it at all. If the Speaker is to be believed (although he has

since tried to retract his statements), the entire episode resulted not from a

legitimate disagreement about how to govern well, but from the competitive

desire to dominate 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 starting it up again a few days

later? What’s more, this entire useless episode will be reenacted in

mid-December. One can only hope that Clinton and Gingrich avoid traveling

together until an agreement is reached. Although people incessantly complain

about government and about the ineffectiveness of politicians, they rarely

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 never seem to realize that, most of the time, politicians are

merely giving us what they think we want. If they are weak and dominated by

polls, aren’t they really trying to find out "the will of the people"

in order to comply with it? If they are extremist and uncompromising in their

political stances, aren’t they simply reflecting the extremism prevalent in our

country today? If politicians compromise, we call them weak, and if they don’t

we call them extremist. If we are unhappy with our government, perhaps 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 100 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

basis of how they will govern rather than how they run. It may be tempting to

dismiss all this as merely "the way politics is" or say that

"competition is human nature", or perhaps think 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 didn’t 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 Vietnamese, died in order to protect one man’s status. In

Oklahoma City, a federal building was bombed in 1994, killing hundreds of men,

women, and children. The alleged 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 think

these examples are aberrations or flukes, but are, instead, indicative of

structural defects in our political system. If we are not aware of the dangers

of extremism and competition, we may, in the end, be destroyed by them.

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 YorkTimes, pp.16 Kohn, A. (1986).

No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Boston,Houghton Mifflin. No Author.

(1995, March 24). [internet] What Wilson has said about entering race. San Jose

Mercury News Online. Address:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil324s.htm Thurm,

S. (1995, August 29). [internet] Wilson’s ‘announcement’ moreof an ad:

California governor kicks off drivefor 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.