What Goals Should We Seek in Politics? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify four major questions in political philosophy. Define key terms in political philosophy. List major conceptions of social justice. Distinguish between political philosophies in principle and their application in practice. Humans seek a wide variety of goals through political action. Many of these goals are based on self-interest, including the pursuit of power . But is pursuing self-interest the highest and best goal for political action? Or is it possible to identify goals that go beyond “give me more of what I want”? Efforts to define these goals take us into the realm of normative political theory—political philosophy, which was introduced in Chapter 1: What Is Politics and What Is Political Science? . As it is not possible to demonstrate empirically what people should seek, normative political theory relies on logic and persuasion. Normative political theorists are less interested in describing who people are and what they do, and more concerned with who people could be and what they should do. The distinction between how the world is and how it should be is not always clear. For the big questions posed below, some have argued that answers exist, and that it is the human task to find them. Others contend that humans create the answers to our biggest questions. A nonpolitical analogy is the question “Does mathematics exist independently of human minds so that humans discover it, or do humans actually create it themselves?” This question cannot be answered by evidence—there is no proof regarding the origin of mathematical proofs—so advocates of each position appeal to our moral intuitions and our ability to reason. What Are Human Rights? Which rights should be called human rights is a core question in political theory. Human rights can be thought of in three main ways. One is that human rights exist; although unobservable, they are real, just as gravity is real. It may not be possible to know their source, but various philosophers have contended that they exist through God, nature, or human reason. From this perspective, people do not create human rights, nor must they earn them. Human rights are inalienable : they cannot be denied, taken away, or transferred to anyone else. This word is sometimes spelled unalienable; either way, the meaning is the same. The United Nations (UN) takes this position, describing human rights as “rights we have simply because we exist as human beings—they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental—the right to life—to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.” “What Are Human Rights?” United Nations, Officer of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), accessed April 2, 2021, https://ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx. Alternately, human rights can be seen as a human invention—a social construction or a creation. In this view, unlike gravity, which exerts its force whether or not humans recognize it, political action is necessary to create and protect human rights. The basis for this view comes from observing the world around us. If you look around you will see poverty, homelessness, discrimination, and violence. Billions of individuals can attest to the fact that they do not themselves have access to the human rights that are often called inalienable. From this perspective, human rights are created through political action: they are what people define them to be. There is yet a third possibility: that human rights (like gravity) are inherent, but too often ignored. Human rights are not created, but discovered. One of the tasks of political theory is to discern what these rights are, and one of the obligations of political actors is to bring these rights into practice. That countries have often failed to protect these rights reveals the flaws of political action, not the absence of the rights themselves. Human rights are so important to politics that this book examines them in multiple places. Chapter 4 focuses on civil liberties —freedoms of conscience, worship, and speech, as well as the rights to privacy, among others. Civil liberties involve the freedoms that humans have (or, alternately, should have) to live their lives according to their own directions and purposes, without governmental interference. Chapter 7: Civil Rights examines civil rights , another form of human rights that are most often considered rights that are affirmed to specific groups that have previously been denied their rights, such as for example when African Americans in the United States were guaranteed the right to vote through the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution and when the 19th Amendment extended voting rights to women. Freedom of expression is a human right. (credit: “2018 Freedom of Expression Awards” by Index on Censorship/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Consideration of human rights is central to international law , organizations, and treaties, so the book again turns to these rights in Chapter 15: International Law and International Organizations . The United Nations has been a leading voice advocating for human rights, especially through its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), although many other national and international organizations have also made the definition and promotion of human rights central to their activities. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. What Is Social Justice? As with human rights, it is worth asking whether such a thing as social justice actually exists, or whether, in the words of the philosopher Friedrich Hayek , social justice is a “mirage.” F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Rather than engaging in the debate as to whether social justice is a human invention or an eternal verity, this chapter instead explores the most important, often competing, definitions of social justice that have been proposed. There are as many different definitions of social justice as there are differing conceptions of justice itself. The common element across the various perspectives is that social justice is achieved when the distribution of opportunities, resources, and rights is equitable, or in simpler terms, fair. A brief, general outline of some of the most prominent conceptions of social justice in the Western tradition is helpful before turning to critiques and alternative views. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is the belief that there is one measure of worth in society: “utility” (hence the name utilitarianism ), or what one might call happiness or well-being. Julia Driver, “The History of Utilitarianism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2014), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/utilitarianism-history/. In the utilitarian view, the goal of society is to maximize human happiness and human welfare. This is sometimes summarized as calling for “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” but that description is not quite complete. Utilitarians also want to avoid unhappiness if possible. What matters is net happiness, that is, the sum of all happiness minus the sum of all unhappiness, so increasing happiness and reducing unhappiness are both valuable social goals. A just society maximizes human happiness. This implies that a good government is one that chooses policies that maximize “utility.” A central challenge to utilitarianism is how to measure human happiness. John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B. Aknin, and Shun Wang, World Happiness Report 2021 (New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2021), https://worldhappiness.report/. Like power , happiness cannot be measured directly. Imagine that a country—say, Kenya—is deciding whether to create a new national park with a diverse ecosystem and magnificent vistas, preserving these in perpetuity. Hubert Cheung, “Tourism in Kenya’s National Parks: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.” SURG Journal 6, no. 1 (2012): 31–40, doi:10.21083/surg.v6i1.2019. Creating this park will also prevent economic development on those lands and, unfortunately, displace those who live there. Will creating the park increase net human happiness? Depending on how the calculations are done, the answer could be either yes or no, so it is not always possible to know which answer is correct. Utilitarianism has had a profound impact on public policies around the world. Governments use cost-benefit analysis, which is based on utilitarian principles, to analyze their policies and policy proposals. “Cost-Benefit Analysis,” Center for Effective Government, https://www.foreffectivegov.org/node/3470; “Cost-Benefit Analysis,” Office of Economic Policy, USAID, last updated July 12, 2021, https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/economic-growth-and-trade/promoting-sound-economic-policies-growth/working-more. As the name implies, cost-benefit analysis tries to identify all the various costs (e.g., financial, environmental, and social) and benefits of a policy. If total benefits exceed total costs, the policy is seen as enhancing utility and so should be adopted. Libertarianism Libertarianism rejects the idea that maximizing net happiness produces a just society. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). Libertarians claim that individual rights should not be violated, even if doing so increases net social utility. Social justice , in the eyes of libertarians, results when individual liberties (hence the name libertarianism ) are most fully protected from the state and from others. Bas van der Vossen, “Libertarianism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/libertarianism/. Here is a simple example. If a Robin Hood steals the belongings of one rich person and gives them to the poor, society as a whole may be happier because those who received the goods are now much happier (“higher utility”), and only the one rich person is now unhappy. William Kottmeyer, The Robin Hood Stories . (St. Louis, MO: Webster Publishing Company, 1952). In its simplest form, utilitarianism might approve of Robin Hoods, to the extent that their actions increase net happiness. Libertarians reject this, arguing that the rights of the rich person were violated, and that this is impermissible even if it makes society in general happier. Is social justice served when Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor? (credit: “Robin Hood” by It’s No Game/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Our instant reaction might be that, of course, thievery is wrong. A libertarian would respond that almost any action by governments or individuals that deprives us of our liberty or property is thievery. Taxes? The government is stealing my money. Environmental regulations? The government is robbing me of my rights to use my property as I wish. Speed limits and gun regulations? The government is depriving me of my liberty to drive as I wish or use guns as I please so long as my driving or gun use does not directly threaten others. As you might guess, there is substantial disagreement as to what constitutes a threat. One person might believe that carrying a handgun makes them safer without harming others, while some might believe that the very presence of guns makes them insecure. As a result, libertarians claim that social justice is created through a political system that maximizes individual liberty and protects individual rights, with a government dedicated to securing those goals with minimal rules at minimal cost. A libertarian country would require military and police forces because these are necessary to protect rights and preserve order, and citizens must be taxed to pay for these protections. According to the most ardent libertarians, virtually all other government functions (such as education, health care, and welfare programs) are illegitimate if they require taxes to pay for them because taxes are seen as theft. Rather than the government providing these goods and services, individuals should have the freedom to purchase them through the open market. Reason (https://reason.com/) is a good source of contemporary articles advocating for libertarianism. Marxism “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Critique of the Gotha Programme (London: Electric Book Co., [1891] 2001). This is the essence of the social justice views of Marxism , an ideology associated with the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Although these theories are wide ranging and complex, the core element of Marxism that relates to social justice concerns how material resources should be produced and distributed. According to Marxists, a society is just when both economic and labor contributions and needed resources are distributed properly, without discrimination. In his writings, Marx explicitly rejected capitalism . Capitalism is an economic system in which the “ means of production ” (raw materials, facilities, machinery, tools, and so forth) are privately owned, and individuals are assumed to be motivated primarily by acquisitiveness. The production of goods and services is based on supply and demand, with the vast majority of the population selling their labor to the capitalists in return for wages. Marx considered capitalism to be fundamentally coercive and unjust, with the working class exploited. Under capitalism, government and politics serve only the interests of the capitalists, as “the State is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class [that is, labor] by another [the capitalists].” Karl Marx, Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, [1871] 1937), 19. According to Marx, political systems do not create economic systems. Instead, the “economic structure of society [is] the real foundation on which rise moral, legal and political superstructures,” Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, IL: C. H. Kerr, [1859] 1911), 11. and “the modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine.” Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin, On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, [1925] 1984), 243. The creation of a just society, according to Marx, thus calls for a radical reordering of society, a revolution. Class distinctions, and hence the conflict between workers and capitalists, must be eliminated. In a just society, government would no longer be needed, as the only real purpose of government is to protect the interests of the capitalists. In such a society, communism , in which all people share equally in the creation and allocation of goods, and within which all people are truly free because they are no longer subject to class repression, would prevail. Today there are only five countries—China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam—that label themselves as communist. “Communist Countries,” World Atlas, accessed August 6, 2021, https://www.worldatlas.com/which-countries-are-still-communist.html. In none of these countries do all residents share goods equally, as political elites (discussed in Chapter 6: The Fundamentals of Group Political Activity ) ultimately control the allocation of resources. Yet the principles that motivate advocates of Marxism have had a profound impact on countries around the world, especially through well-established political parties (variously named some permutation of socialist, social democratic, or labor) in many countries as well as prominent advocates such as Senator Bernie Sanders in the United States. For the US version of democratic socialism, see Gary J. Dorrien, American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021). Rawls’s Theory of Justice One of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century was John Rawls , who offered a comprehensive theory of justice. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [1971] 1999). To understand Rawls’s ideas, imagine that you (or any other rational person) could design the allocation of rights and resources for all the citizens of the world, and that you would then be placed in this world. However, while designing this world you would not know who you would actually be in the world you created; in designing it, you would be operating from behind a “veil of ignorance.” What kind of world would the rational person create? Not one with great poverty or other large inequalities, because it is possible that the designer could be poor or the victim of those inequalities. As a result, any rational person would design a world using two basic principles. First, not knowing who you would be in this world, you would give everyone the same basic liberties and rights (you wouldn’t want to design a world in which you would be deprived of your rights, would you?). Second, as a rational person you would distribute resources (income, wealth, responsibility, power, respect, etc.) so that inequalities would be allowed only to the extent that they would benefit the least well off. For example, an inventor could earn a higher-than-average income if the invention served to improve the lives of those with less income. These ideas give us a tool to evaluate the policies and practices of countries. Would a just society allow racial or ethnic discrimination? No, because the person designing the society from behind the veil of ignorance would not know which racial or ethnic group they would be in once placed in the world: as a result, the rational designer would ensure that no such discrimination existed. Rawls’s theory of justice implies that anyone acting rationally behind the veil of ignorance would create a just world. Rawls makes a logical case for adopting his principles, and they are closely related to the “Golden Rule” (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), elements of which have been a common feature of the world’s religions since antiquity. African Americans and Social Justice Countless African Americans devoted their lives to advancing the cause of social justice , but the ideas and activism of four African Americans—Booker T. Washington , Ida Wells , W. E. B. Du Bois , and Martin Luther King Jr.—merit special attention regarding social justice. For Washington, DuBois, and King, see Robert Michael Franklin, Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African-American Thought (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990); for Wells, see Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells , 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020). Anyone thinking and writing about social justice will be influenced by their own specific experiences, and these four individuals came of age in a country that proclaimed a view of the good society (“with liberty and justice for all”) that was denied to them because of their race. These thinkers were also activists; they were less concerned with how to define social justice than with how to obtain it. In their focus on social justice, these individuals recognized that institutional reform was essential, as justice could not prevail unless the branches of government supported it. Martin Luther King Jr. (center left) and Malcolm X (right) both sought social justice, though they differed regarding what that required. (credit: “Martin Luther King and Malcolm X after King’s press conference at the US Capitol about the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964” by Marion S. Trikosko/US News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Public Domain) Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), who was born into enslavement but advanced to become perhaps the most politically influential African American of his period, called for Black empowerment through education and entrepreneurship. Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). In Washington’s eyes, “political activity alone cannot make a man free . . . he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.” Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Penguin Books, [1901] 1986). W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), an early leader in the struggle for racial equality in the United States, advocated for a social justice that would recognize universal human rights while also incorporating a special concern for those groups who had been oppressed and marginalized. Sean Elias, “W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Human Rights.” Societies without Borders 4, no. 3 (2009): 273–294. doi:10.1163/187188609X12492771031492; see also Robert Gooding-Williams, “W. E. B. Du Bois,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/dubois/. As one of the founders of the NAACP , Du Bois conducted path-breaking research on Black communities and wrote The Study of the Negro Problem , Souls of Black Folks , Black Reconstruction in America , and many other books. He insisted that full civil rights and political representation for African Americans were preconditions of justice. Ida Wells (1862–1931) was also born into enslavement. As a freed adult, she was a journalist and an advocate for rights for African Americans and women, as she helped establish the NAACP as well as other organizations supporting women’s rights. For a discussion of Wells and other female activists during the early-20th-century Progressive era, see Stacey Ellen Sheriff, “Rhetoric and Revision: Women’s Arguments for Social Justice in the Progressive Era” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2009). She was best known for documenting the lynching of African Americans and the use of lynching as a tool of racial oppression, and for inspiring the anti-lynching movement. Not until 2018 did the United States enact legislation labeling lynching as a hate crime. Louis P. Masur, “Why It Took a Century to Pass an Anti-Lynching Law,” Washington Post, December 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/28/why-it-took-century-pass-an-anti-lynching-law/. One of her many legacies is the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting , which encourages journalists to expose governmental injustices and to defend the vulnerable. “Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting,” Hussman School for Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina, http://hussman.unc.edu/ida-b-wells-society-investigative-reporting. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was a radical advocate for social justice . He said of the uprisings in the late 1960s: “The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.” Quote appears in Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “How Do We Change America?” Department of African American Studies, Princeton University, June 8, 2020, https://aas.princeton.edu/news/opinion-how-do-we-change-america. Social justice required societies to simultaneously address all their social ills, to actively work to end all forms of discrimination. Still, King was hopeful that “we will be able to . . . achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.” Kate Langan, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Visit to WMU: Transcription of MLK’s WMU Speech and Q&A Session,” accessed August 16, 2021, https://libguides.wmich.edu/mlkatwmu/speech. Gandhi’s Philosophy Influential political ethicist Mohandas Gandhi (whose first name came to be changed by his many supporters to "Mahatma," a term used in Indian culture to describe a person widely admired and respected) (1869–1948) led the nonviolent struggle in India against British rule. Although he never wrote explicitly about social justice, his writings—a “mixture of political science, spirituality, religion, and ethics”—frame his understanding of what a just society would look like. Shailender Kumar Tiwari, “Social Justice: Gandhi and Ambedkar,” The Indian Journal of Political Science 70, no. 2 (2009): 429–439, https://www.jstor.org/stable/42743907. Like Western political philosophers, Gandhi emphasized the dignity of the individual and a respect for human rights. Unlike most Western writers, however, Gandhi’s vision focused not just on rights but also on duties: “Civilization is that mode of conduct that points out to man the path of duty.” Similar to Marx , Gandhi called for resources to be allocated so that “each man shall have the wherewithal to supply his needs and no more.” Seeing the state as a source of violence against its people, he favored a minimalist government, with the long-term goal of harmonious local rule. But political freedom would mean little without social and economic freedom. For Gandhi, a just society would arise not through an armed revolution, but only through a nonviolent one. Non-Western and Feminist Critiques The astute reader will note that these conceptions of social justice have all been proposed by men from Europe and the United States (with the exception of Gandhi, who nonetheless received a Western education, but remember also that Malcolm X embraced Islamic principles). They seek to make universal claims applicable to all people in all places at all times. These ideas have had broad, deep, and lasting impacts on politics around the world. Principles of utilitarianism and libertarianism have become embedded in the constitutions and policies of virtually every country. Marxism has influenced revolutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Although not as influential worldwide (at least not yet), the Rawlsian conception of justice has had a broad impact on policy in the United States, including policies addressing racism and economic inequality. Western theories of social justice generally begin with the individual, so, for example, social justice is obtained when individual happiness or personal liberty is maximized. These Western and male conceptions of social justice hardly exhaust the possibilities—maximizing happiness or liberty are not the only goals of social justice—and non-Western voices have been marginalized or ignored. Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013). Westerners have been accused of exporting to Africa their notions of social justice that were “out of tune with the local context [and] based on an individualized view of justice.” True social justice, in contrast to Western philosophy, would recognize “the primacy of the community over the individual—[with an] emphasis on diversity and the rights of cultural communities (defined in terms of traditions and languages), as well as respect for human rights within each community.” John de Coninck, Julian Culp, and Vivience Taylor, African Perspectives on Social Justice (Uganda: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2013), 6, 8. As University of Cape Town professor Vivien Taylor puts it, “The values of competitiveness, individualism, survival of the fittest, and overconsumption . . . are at odds with the values of social justice. These values . . . are based on social solidarity, communitarianism, social and economic inclusion, and subsidiarity.” Viviene Taylor, “Social Justice: Reframing the ‘Social’ in Critical Discourses in Africa,” in African Perspectives on Social Justice , eds. John de Coninck, Julian Culp, and Viviene Taylor (Uganda: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2013), 14. Note: Subsidiarity is the idea that governmental power should be assigned to the smallest feasible level (e.g., the village) rather than to the national government. University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum expands this vision of social justice to argue that humans have a collective obligation to care for each other, to provide the essential needs required for humans to have lives of dignity, and to live cooperatively with others. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice. An Olaf Palme Lecture, Delivered in Oxford 19 June 2003,” Oxford Development Studies 32, no. 1 (2004): 3–8. Moreover, excluding or marginalizing people from the process of determining the principles of social justice is itself an injustice. Julian Culp, “The Problem of Undemocratic Side Effects to Democracy Promotion,” in African Perspectives on Social Justice eds. John de Coninck, Julian Culp, and Viviene Taylor (Uganda: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2013), 26–44. In alignment with African scholars, Islamic principles of justice, which emphasize altruism and helping others, also reject the Western preoccupation with individualism. According to Islamic scholars, Western theories of social justice are incomplete because they fail to identify the ultimate source of what is right and wrong. These scholars argue that Allah, who knows what is best for all humans, provides. “Human beings are created for the sole purpose of worshipping the One God through the engagement of good things and avoidance from engaging in wrong things.” Al-Hasan Al-Aidaros, Faridahwati Mohd-Shamsudin, and Kamil Md. Idris, “Ethics and Ethical Theories from an Islamic Perspective,” International Journal of Islamic Thought 4, no. 1 (December 2013): 1–13. doi:10.24035/ijit.04.2013.001. Social justice is obtained when humans abide by Allah’s words. Feminist scholars have criticized the ideas of Western thinkers Hobbes and Locke as relying on “arguments of social convenience and men’s superior strength to justify the continued subordination of women.” Valerie Bryson, Feminist Political Theory , 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 9. Feminist academics have used Marxist ideas to analyze the oppression of women under capitalism , although other scholars have argued that Marxism is based on a male viewpoint that ignores the reality women experience. Ibid, 64. Feminist political philosopher Susan Moller Okin has argued that, if Rawls were to be taken seriously, for example, the inequities women face in society and within the family would be considered unjust. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989). In short, male views of social justice do not necessarily represent female perspectives, and there is a diverse literature by feminist scholars. You can find current scholarly engagement in social justice by female political scientists at the “Women Also Know Stuff” website (https://womenalsoknowstuff.com/) with the keyword search “social justice.” What Is the Purpose of Government? There is no unanimity on the question of the proper purpose of government, as different individuals have proposed different answers at different times. In the mid-1600s, the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that if governments didn’t exist—that is, if individuals lived in a “state of nature”—then the lives of humans would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, [1651] 2006). For Hobbes, then, the principal purpose of government would be to remove the people from the state of nature and to promote their security. The European Parliament building is located in Strasbourg, France. The European Union is an attempt to bring multiple countries together to govern themselves. (credit: "Outside the building of the European Parliament in Strasbourg" by European the building of the European Parliament in Strasbourg” by European Parliament/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) But how would a government arise? Hobbes’s answer was that governments would be established through what is called a social contract . A business contract is an agreement between two or more parties regarding the specific rights and obligations of each party. You likely signed such a contract for your phone: you agreed to provide a set amount of money to receive a specific package of phone services. A social contract, in contrast, is not an actual contract but a metaphorical one. It contains two main elements. First, the individuals involved decide to collectively give up some of the freedoms they had in the state of nature, such as the freedom to commit violence against each other. Second, they delegate the authority and power to enforce this contract to a person (such as a king) or assembly of people (say, a parliament)—that is, to the state. English philosopher John Locke had a more benign view of human nature. He believed that in the state of nature, humans would have complete liberty to live their life as they saw fit, without interference from others. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government , ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, [1689] 1960). In Locke’s view, all God’s children are forbidden to deprive each other of “life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Disputes could nonetheless arise, leading to violence, which would become self-perpetuating unless there was an entity—the state, again created through a social contract—to prevent wars from breaking out and to end them when they do. Because conflicts could arise over life, health, liberty, and possessions, the social contract would need to protect them. In the 1700s, Scottish philosopher David Hume reasoned that the primary purpose of government was to provide public goods . A public good is a resource that a) benefits everyone, because it cannot be withheld from anyone and b) is not used up when individuals benefit from it. Streetlights, clean air, and national defense are examples of public goods. Everyone using streets benefits from streets that are well lit, and the light cannot be withheld from anyone traveling down that street. Because streetlights (and other public goods) can be expensive, no one has a personal incentive to put them up. Unless some collective entity (such as a government) provides public goods, they will not be produced in sufficient quantities. To provide public goods, governments impose taxes, issue threats, or provide incentives. For Hume, the social contract expanded its purpose to include the governmental provision of public goods, with governments having the power to impose and collect taxes on the public to pay for these goods. Purpose in Principle If Hobbes , Locke , and Hume are correct, one might conclude that the two most fundamental purposes of government are to protect individuals from one another and to provide public goods (taken together, to promote the general welfare). Through the social contract , citizens agree to give up some of their liberties and their resources in return for protection and public goods. This raises the social contract question: How much liberty should people give up, and how much government (protection and public goods) do they need? If there were no law enforcement, people might have near-total freedom (I can do anything I want without fear of arrest!) but presumably very little order. If there were law enforcement officers at every corner, there might be lots of order but at the cost of highly restricted liberties. What is the right balance? There is no simple answer. This tension between liberty and order, which Hume identified in his essay on the “Origin of Government,” David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1987). remains one of the most important challenges to designing governments and choosing public policies and the major point of disagreement between those wanting freer societies and those wanting more orderly ones. One of the most eloquent statements regarding the purposes of government can be found in the preamble to the United States Constitution: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. According to the preamble, the government’s purpose is to serve the people, provide for peace and prosperity, protect liberty, and promote justice. Has the American government succeeded in providing all of these things to all of its citizens? Certainly it did not initially; when the Constitution was written, women and Native Americans were not protected by its provisions, and Black people were considered property, without any citizenship rights. Even today there is heated debate as to whether the US government has fulfilled its fundamental purposes. Purpose in Practice Did you know that the powerful concepts embedded in the US Constitution also formed the preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, the enslaving states that broke away from the United States prior to the American Civil War? “Constitution of the Confederate States of America,” US Constitution, accessed April 12, 2021, https://usconstitution.net/csa.html#Preamble. Just as no country completely fulfills the goals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), there is no guarantee that the high aspirations and purposes incorporated into a nation’s foundational documents will be put into practice or even that people will agree on what these foundational documents truly say. Constitutions are not written by angels: they are written and implemented by groups of individuals who have their own self-interests and biases as well as their own view of the common good. Regarding the US Constitution, evidence suggests that the economic interests of the founders were certainly important—the framers had their own class interests to protect—but that other factors, such as their ideological beliefs, the opinions of their constituents, and their view of what was best (in the public interest) for their state were equally important. Robert A. McGuire, To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003). History is replete with evidence that the actual purposes of those serving in government align most with preserving or expanding their power, even though they may claim they are acting in the public interest. Consider Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. Ostensibly to protect the country from perceived external and internal threats, Erdoğan has dramatically consolidated his power and the power of his inner circle, leading the formerly democratic country in the direction of authoritarianism . Around the world, numerous countries have used the pretense of the COVID-19 pandemic to become more authoritarian, emphasizing obedience to rulers at the expense of the rights of the citizens. Individuals are often willing to sacrifice some liberty if doing so helps protect them from real or perceived danger (think about increased screening at airports with the stated goal of preventing terrorist attacks), and governments can take good-faith steps to protect their citizens. Still, it is likely that governments expand their powers primarily for their benefit, not for the benefit of their citizens. Erdoğan Moves to Consolidate Power After Failed Military Coup Questions regarding the unsuccessful July 15, 2016 attempted military coup in Turkey suggest that Turkish president Recep Erdoğan may have had some role in arranging the coup to provide a pretext for his efforts to consolidate his political power. Who Should Rule? If governments exist to protect their citizens and those citizens’ rights, who should rule the government? Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016). The possibilities range from a single person with sole and supreme power, to all citizens, with each participating with equal importance in making decisions. In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs ruled for thousands of years under the accepted belief that they were gods. To early Greek philosophers, the rulers should be those best fit to rule: the virtuous philosopher-kings. Today, those countries ruled by a single person—countries such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkmenistan—justify this on the basis of divinity, virtue, or both. Many countries—China, Cuba, and North Vietnam, for example—are constituted on the belief that one party should rule because only that party can represent the true will of the people. The Chinese Communist Party believes that it is the sole legitimate source of political power in that country and thus should make all political decisions. The view that “we, the people” should rule is at the heart of democratic political theory. Most countries in the world today proclaim that they are democracies. But labeling a country a democracy does not answer three main questions each country must ask about who should rule. Who comprises the “we”? All countries limit their “we” to certain groups. The United States did not grant the vote—the ability to participate in making ruling decisions—to African Americans or to women for much of its history, and even today many states are trying to make it harder to vote. Most countries only allow citizens to vote; some countries expand this right to noncitizens. How much power should citizens have? In a pure direct democracy , all political decisions are made collectively by all voters. No country today practices pure direct democracy, for both practical and philosophical reasons. Practically speaking, how do you get millions of people together to discuss and vote on every issue? Philosophically, many believe it is reasonable to ask whether voters are wise and knowledgeable enough to make all of a country’s political decisions and still have time and room in their lives to do all the other things that make a society. Instead, most democratic countries are representative democracies , in which voters elect individuals to represent their interests within a legislature. Is democracy better than other forms of government? This is debatable. Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms.” “The Worst Form of Government,” International Churchill Society, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/. Since antiquity, political philosophers and practitioners have worried that democracy will inevitably become mob rule, with citizens who—rather than make wise decisions in the public interest—seek to exploit minorities, rob the wealthy, and otherwise favor policies and leaders who are nasty and brutish, as Hobbes feared regarding the absence of government. According to some, rather than expanding the right of the people to rule, “ignorant and incompetent” voters—that is, most of them—should be excluded from political decision-making. Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Political philosophy seeks to comprehend the answers to questions concerning the nature of human rights, social justice, and the purpose of government. Political philosophy is not automatically translated into political practice. In practice, human rights, social justice, and governmental purposes are determined by real people in real situations. As a result, it is necessary to turn to the actual behavior of actual humans. As you will learn if you take a course in psychology, social science has four main goals: to describe, explain, predict, and (sometimes) change behavior in general. To the extent that political science seeks to do the same things in the more limited realm of political behavior, it both relies on psychological principles and contributes to them. Political psychology is the subfield of political science that focuses on the mental processes that determine how individuals behave when they engage in or withdraw from political activity. One of the most influential studies in political psychology (cited over 20,000 times by other scholars), written in 1950 but especially relevant today, is The Authoritarian Personality. Theodor W. Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950). It tries to answer questions like “What makes a fascist? Are there character traits that make someone more likely to vote for the far right?” The authors answer their question by claiming that a fascist is a person with certain character traits developed in childhood (such as aggressiveness, destructiveness, and cynicism, among many others) and that people with these traits will be more likely to vote for candidates who are ultranationalist, authoritarian, and nativist. This book unleashed a massive amount of research on whether there are political personalities, how to define them, and what impacts they have on political behavior. Should you take a course in psychology, you will learn more about human personality. What are human rights? What is social justice? What is the purpose of government? Who should rule? Political philosophers focus on questions like these. Various answers have been suggested. None of the answers are universally accepted, in part because any answers are based at least in part on the context in which they are offered. Social justice, for example, has been defined in terms of maximizing social welfare (“utility”) or individual liberty. Marxists define social justice as a system in which all people share equally in the creation and allocation of goods and within which all people are truly free because they are no longer subject to class repression. Rawls’s theory of social justice is based on the concept of the choices rational beings would make behind the “veil of ignorance.” Non-Western thinkers, feminist scholars, and Black philosopher/activists have developed perspectives that challenge the dominant, Western, male definitions of social justice. Real people engaging in political action—not philosophical conceptions of human rights, social justice, the purpose of government, and just rule—determine how these concepts play out in practice. Those who rule a country ultimately determine what the actual purposes of the government will be, what kinds of justice the country will embrace, and what rights will be protected for those living there. authoritarianism a nondemocratic form of government with centralized power and limited civil rights and liberties capitalism an economic system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are privately owned and individuals are assumed to be motivated by acquisitiveness civil liberties individual freedoms, such as free speech or freedom of religion, that are protected from governmental interference civil rights rights that governments must act to protect for individuals in certain groups (such as ethnic groups or sexual identities); for example, for voting rights to exist, the government must provide ballots in a language that the voter can understand communism an economic system in which property is collectively owned and assumed to be used for the common good direct democracy a system of government in which all decisions are made, usually by voting, through the participation of all citizens human rights the fundamental, inalienable rights individuals have by virtue of being persons inalienable that which cannot be taken, transferred, or withdrawn from a person libertarianism the political philosophy that holds that individual rights or liberties should not be restricted unless an individual’s behavior causes direct harm to others Marxism the term that is used to label the political philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which holds that a society is just when both economic and labor contributions and needed resources are distributed properly, without discrimination public goods resources that benefit everyone because they cannot be withheld from anyone and are not used up when individuals benefit from them representative democracy a system of government in which citizens elect individuals to represent their interests within a legislature social contract a hypothetical contract in which individuals collectively give up some of their freedoms in return for receiving protection social justice the equitable distribution of opportunities, resources, and rights within a community utilitarianism the political philosophy holding that the goal of society is to maximize human happiness

Social Sciences


Why Do Humans Make the Political Choices That They Do? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify the principal forms of human decision-making. Distinguish between instrumental, or strategic, and noninstrumental, or expressive, elements of human behavior. Identify the two main interests people have in their political decisions. Human behavior is incredibly complex and not entirely understood, and it varies from person to person. Like fingerprints, each person is unique. No description of human behavior can possibly encompass the total behaviors of every individual. In order to describe human behavior, it is necessary to simplify. In simplifying, it is not possible to explain everything about human behavior, but it is possible to highlight its main features. Humans Make Decisions in Two Main Ways Empirical political science tries to understand two main elements of human political behavior: the directly observable and the indirectly observable. Behaviors themselves are directly observable. Understanding why individuals act as they do when they engage in political action or when they refrain from participating requires an inquiry into mental and psychological processes, which, in the absence of brain scans, are not directly observable. In the real world of politics, it may not be possible to say why individuals do what they do, but it is usually possible to see what they do. Humans make decisions in two main ways, what psychologist Daniel Kahneman characterizes as “ thinking fast ” and “ thinking slow .” Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011). Thinking fast is intuitive; when thinking fast, people don’t realize they are doing it. Thinking slow takes cognitive energy, as when you solve a complex math problem. When politicians craft their speeches, they think slow; when they ad-lib parts of their speeches during delivery, they think fast. When you compare the policy proposals of different political parties in trying to decide how to vote: slow. If you reflexively vote for “your” party: fast. Humans think fast, and they think slow. (credit: “Ephemera, The Hare and the Tortoise” by Frederick Stuart Church/Smithsonian Design Museum, Public Domain) Thinking slow is more difficult than thinking fast. It requires focus and takes time and cognitive energy. Not surprisingly, humans often avoid the hard work of thinking slowly and rely heavily on snap judgments, which are especially prone to all sorts of biases and errors. What is true for human behavior is also true for political behavior, which involves a combination of snap and reflective decisions. Rationality and Thinking Slow Political and other social scientists use the terms rational and irrational in specific ways that may differ from the ways you hear these terms used in conversation. In political science, rational does not simply mean reasonable, and irrational does not simply mean rash or lacking in good judgement. Instead, in political science a rational person is self-interested and strategic. The rational person makes decisions in pursuit of self-serving goals and is calculating in their assessment of which actions are most likely to obtain those goals. The rational person is defined as one who seeks to maximize their own well-being, however they define it. In contrast, in political science an irrational person is one who is neither selfish, nor strategic, nor calculating. An irrational person is not necessarily unpredictable: on the contrary, in many ways such a person can be predictably irrational. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010). Even when people know that they should take better care of their health, save more for the future, or study sooner rather than later, they tend not to do these things. Why not? Because humans often do not act in their own best interest. Consider voting decisions. One might think that a rational voter would study the candidates, compare them against each other, and then vote for the one most likely to maximize that voter’s happiness (or welfare or satisfaction). Research indicates that most voters don’t act this way, instead relying on “factors that enable them to make choices relatively quickly and easily.” John Sides, Daron R. Shaw, Matthew Grossmann, and Keena Lipsitz, Campaigns and Elections: Rules, Reality, Strategy, Choice (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018), 345. People tend to use heuristics in making decisions. A heuristic is a cognitive shortcut for making decisions, in which someone substitutes simple, practical rules for more complex methods. What’s the best thing to order off the menu? You could carefully scrutinize every option or say, “I’ll have the daily special.” That’s using a heuristic. In deciding for whom to vote, individuals could examine the records of all the candidates or decide “I’ll vote for the candidate from my party.” Humans are not always, or perhaps even generally, rational . But if you wish to understand political behavior, and especially if you want to become actively involved in politics, it is helpful to assume that the most skillful political actors tend to be rational: they make strategic decisions, as discussed in Chapter 1: What Is Politics and What Is Political Science? , given the rules and the reality, to maximize their chances of obtaining their goals. Skillful political actors—a political actor is anyone engaging in political activity—will also know the value of exploiting the human propensity for noncognitive decision-making. Intuitive Decision-Making (Thinking Fast) Think about something you do that, at times, you can do automatically, without thinking, but that at other times requires cognitive effort. Maybe for you that is commuting to school or work or doing the laundry. On the first day of your commute, you were almost certainly thinking slowly, reading bus schedules or street signs, paying close attention to finding the right exits, and so forth. If you have been commuting to and from the same place for a while, however, you may know what it’s like to commute on “autopilot,” thinking fast . On the one hand, it’s amazing that you accomplish the complex tasks of navigating without deep concentration; on the other, you’ve got this. Thinking fast simplifies the world for us, but it leaves us prone to many risks. Political actors who are skilled in the psychology of persuasion can—and often do—seek to take advantage of the human biases and prejudices associated with thinking fast to further their aims. Conspiracy theories and misinformation seem to spread faster than the truth because determining truth can require careful analysis, while succumbing to fake news requires only the suspension of critical faculties. (For more discussion of fake news, see Chapter 12: The Media .) Politicians, seeking your support, are less likely to appeal to your head than to your (metaphorical) heart. Humans Behave in Two Main Ways: Strategic and Expressive People often do things to get things. They go to the store to buy food. They study in order to learn or to get higher grades. In other words, they take action in order to achieve their goals. In an ideal world, people would act in ways best suited to obtaining their objectives. If their goal is to earn a high grade, they would devise an approach to studying—or perhaps something else, like cheating—that is most likely to produce the grade they want. If their goal is to win an election, they would presumably make decisions that they deem most likely to win votes. Note that acting strategically does not necessarily imply acting morally. Acting strategically is quite simply choosing the most effective means to achieve a specific end. Even when people try to act strategically, several factors may temper their success. In the first case, even apparently simple goals may have multiple or unclear dimensions. Say your goal is to win an election. Should you spend your time, money, and effort trying to persuade individuals to vote for you? To mobilize those already deemed to be supportive? To “mobilize” your supporters is to get them not just to favor you, but to go out and actually vote for you. To discourage voters likely to support your opponent? Some combination of all of these? Once you clarify your goal—say, to mobilize those who already support you—you have to figure out what is the best way to do this. If you send your supporters frequent text messages, will you excite them or turn them off? Finally, calculations may simply be inaccurate: people might believe that certain actions will mobilize their supporters when in fact those actions do not. Now, multiply the complexities of getting any individual to vote for you to the challenges of getting millions of voters to support you. Acting strategically would be easy if there were a single goal, complete information, and perfect judgement. In the real world, people often have multiple goals, highly imperfect information, and biased or otherwise inaccurate assessments. Still, the political actor with the superior strategy is likely to prevail over an opponent with a weaker strategy, all other things being equal. “All other things being equal” (scholars often write this phrase as “ ceteris paribus ”) is an important phrase in political (and all social) science. In the example above, the candidate with the superior strategy might not win if their opponent has superior resources or support. The phrase all other things being equal means that if two candidates have equal resources and equal support—that is, if the two candidates are equal in other important ways—the one with the superior strategy is likely to win. Those in politics as a vocation have strong incentives to act strategically. When politicians run for office, they ask, “What is the best way for me to get elected?” and then act on their answers to that question. When interest groups consider how to get the policies they want, they try to use their resources most effectively in these efforts. Given the multiple potential actions they could take, their uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of their actions, and the biases they have about which activities are likely to be effective, no actors’ strategies are ever perfect. Think back to the chess example in Chapter 1 . You might expect both players to act strategically, understanding that they both have one single, clear goal: to win the game. There are too many possible ways to do this, and they cannot know them all; they have imperfect information. Beyond that, there is another, more strategic complication at play: the success of one player’s strategies depends in large part on the strategic actions of the other player. In plotting a strategy, then, each player must consider the strategy of their opponent. So it is in politics. Strategic actions do not occur in a vacuum. To successfully achieve political goals, individuals must factor in their opponents’ anticipated strategic actions when devising their own. Acting strategically does not necessarily mean acting ethically. Politics is full of stories of politicians engaging in dirty tricks, employing intimidation and violence, or otherwise engaging in corrupt activities when they believe that doing so will be to their advantage. Political candidates in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico have all been accused of engaging in dishonest social media campaigns—and that’s just in Latin America. (And, of course, dishonesty in social media is not unique to any one part of the globe.) Brett Heinz, “Election Interference in Latin America: A Growing Danger,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, September 30, 2020, https://cepr.net/election-interference-in-latin-america-a-growing-danger/. No country is immune, and the savvy political observer understands that political actors around the world face temptations to engage in corrupt acts and that the quality of a political system might be judged in part by how much it does to prevent such deception. Susan Rose-Ackerman and Bonnie J. Palifka, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Chess players use strategic thinking. (credit: “Playing chess” by Slava Myronov/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The complexity of human action goes far beyond the strategic. Sometimes people act not to get things, but to express emotions. If you have ever sung karaoke, looked up at the stars, played in the snow, or engaged in any of the countless activities that bring joy, demonstrate anger, or simply show you being you, you have engaged in expressive activities. Expressive activities are not done to accomplish anything in particular, but just because you feel like doing them. An alternate view is that all human behavior is goal oriented, and that the goal of expressive behavior is to express emotion, as compared to strategic behavior, which has goals separate from the behavior itself. Expressive behavior sends out signals about the kind of person you are or want others to believe you are (e.g., the kind of person who sings karaoke). Humans are social beings who usually care about how they are perceived by others. Those around us may not actually know us, but they can form perceptions of us based on our expressive behaviors (see: Instagram). Expressive behavior can show how people want to be perceived. (credit: “I moved to Instagram @hmoong” by Khánh Hmoong/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Expressive behaviors are important in politics for a couple of reasons. Much behavior is predicated on how people want to appear, not just (or mainly) what they want to accomplish, and this is as true in politics as it is on Instagram. It is not always possible to say what strategic goals individuals hope to accomplish when they attend political rallies, but it is clear that they wish to express their identities as supporters of a candidate, a party, or a cause. Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans, “The Social Psychology of Protest,” Current Sociology 61, no. 5–6 (September 2013): 886–905. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392113479314. What is called a person’s party ID , shorthand for the political party with which that person identifies, is more closely associated with expressive choices than with strategic ones. Leonie Huddy, Lilliana Mason, and Lene Aarøe, “Expressive Partisanship: Campaign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity,” The American Political Science Review 109, no. 1 (2015): 1–17, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43655021. Strategic and expressive behaviors can overlap, and at times they are difficult to distinguish. Consider, for example, why people vote. Voting might be a strategic behavior that aims to help elect a particular candidate, but voting is also a way to demonstrate to others what kind of person you are. Individuals’ decisions on whether to vote or for whom to vote are also context dependent. In most democracies, voting is optional, but in Argentina, Australia, and Austria, citizens are required to vote. At times, what appears to be expressive behavior is deliberately strategic. Political candidates choose their attire to send messages about who they are as well as why people should support them. Peru’s President Pedro Castillo always campaigns in a traditional Andean straw hat. (credit: “28/07/2021 Cerimônia de posse do Presidente da República do Peru, Pedro Castillo” by Vice-Presidência da República/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Humans Seek Two Different Interests: Self-Interest and the Interests of Others In simple terms, humans apply intuitive and cognitive thinking and strategic and expressive actions to seek two different types of interests: self-interests and public-spirited or altruistic interests. We use “public spirit” rather than “altruism” because altruism indicates an unselfish concern for the welfare of others, while public spirit simply states that the person considers the interests of others in making a decision, not that self-interest is sacrificed to benefit others. See Mark C. Rom, Public Spirit in the Thrift Tragedy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). At a basic level, humans are selfish (but not only selfish: humans are also naturally cooperative and compassionate, with individuals varying as to how selfish or cooperative they are). See, for example, James W. H. Sonne and Don M. Gash, “Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish–Selfless Spectrum.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00575. This is not a moral judgment; it’s an empirical statement. People are selfish in both the narrow biological sense (for example, if they are hungry, they seek food, and if they are tired, they seek rest) and in a broader social way. Although people might seek different things in life, they tend to want more, rather than less, of the things they desire. These desires may be for material goods (money, property) or relational ones (power, fame). In the political world, individuals typically prefer to support the kinds of politicians and policies that they believe will benefit them personally. The benefits can be tangible: better services, safer communities, improved schools, lower taxes, and so forth. The benefits may also be intangible, as, for example, when voters favor politicians who pledge to enhance the social prestige of their supporters or to make their country more respected around the world. Candidate Donald Trump did not campaign primarily on a platform of tax cuts (or any other policies): he campaigned on the promise to “Make America Great Again.” Chinese President Xi Jinping vows not just to make China prosperous: he pledges to make it respected. Graham Allison, “What Xi Jinping Wants,” The Atlantic , May 31, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/what-china-wants/528561/. As Evo Morales , the first Indigenous president of Bolivia, put it, “In Bolivia, Indigenous people govern completely differently. It is something historic, unprecedented—[with] pride.” “Evo Morales Defends Indigenous People After Bolsonaro Ally’s Racist Slur .” Orinoco Tribune , January 19, 2019, https://orinocotribune.com/evo-morales-defends-indigenous-people-after-bolsonaro-allys-racist-slur/. Yet many political behaviors are difficult to square with the idea that political actors are solely acting in their own personal self-interest. Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence (Saint Louis, MO: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2013). Those seeking government protection for endangered species are unlikely to personally benefit if those species are saved from extinction. Those who want to prohibit flag burning are not materially better off if that policy is adopted. Some of the most intense political debates occur not over the distribution of material resources but instead over symbolic or cultural issues. The contest is less about who gets what and more about what kind of country people want to live in. Political Behavior: Developing Communication Skills Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis, both the United States and the USSR considered many possible outcomes of their actions. This game tree models how the two actors would have considered their decisions. It is broken down into a simple form for basic understanding. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) The study of political behavior involves interpretation. While we may know whom an individual voted for, we may never really know why they voted for that person. We can look to exit polls for clues, or we can look to socioeconomic or demographic characteristics to make predictions about voting behavior, but in the end, this is just our interpretation of their behavior. Consider the tense communications involved in the most high stakes situations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was essential that President Kennedy and his advisors were able to communicate with each other the substance of and reasoning behind potential strategies, as well as what specifically they hoped each strategy would achieve. They based their strategies on all the information available to them about the situation and about the Soviets and their perceived values, goals, and ways of thinking. The need for clear communication between the United States and the Soviet Union during the crisis, and the importance of being able to interpret those communications, could not have been greater. A misunderstanding in that situation could have resulted in nuclear conflict. Being able to effectively communicate and being able to effectively interpret the behavior of others are skills that can be beneficial in multiple settings. Regardless of industry, trade, or career path, being able to utilize relevant information to be able to communicate an understanding of a particular topic is a skill that is highly prized and sought after. In some parts of your life you might usefully assume that self-interest dominates our decision-making. If you are ordering a slice of pizza that only you will eat, there is no need for you to consider the welfare of others when you place your order: “Yes, please, put jalapenos on my pizza!” When you are ordering an entire pizza to split with your friends, you might think only of yourself (“I want jalapenos, and I don’t care if you don’t like them”) or only of others (“Order whatever you want, and I’ll eat it”), or you might take into account some combination of your self interest and the interests of others (“We all like cheese, so extra cheese for the entire pizza, but put jalapenos only on one half and pepperoni on the other half”). Of course, it is not possible to directly observe whether individuals care only about their own personal interests, the interests of others, or some combination of the two. It is not possible to see—at least not yet—exactly what is going on in anyone’s mind regarding the factors that influence their behavioral choices, Brain scanning technology can observe which parts of the brain “light up” during various behaviors. There is evidence that altruistic behaviors light up the same “pleasure centers” that are activated when we eat chocolate or have sex. See James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander, “The Helper’s High,” Greater Good Magazine: Science-Based Insights for a Meaningful Life , February 1, 2010, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_helpers_high. nor is it possible to necessarily infer from a behavior the motivations behind it. If you order jalapenos on the pizza because you believe that others also like them, your decision might be a public-spirited one, even if the decision itself is misguided. Or you might just be thinking of your own interests. Or both. People are pretty good at fooling themselves regarding their own motives. Bobby Hoffman, Motivation for Learning and Performance (Boston, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2015); see also Ian Deweese-Boyd, “Self-Deception,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/self-deception/. Did you really think your friends liked jalapenos, or did you just tell yourself that so you could feel good about your desire to order them? Self-interest or public spirit are more likely to dominate in different areas. When you purchase most consumer items (say, shoes or a phone), there may be little reason for you to consider the interests of others. When you engage in communal activities (with your family or a religious, social, or political organization), you likely put these interests ahead of your own, at least from time to time. While it is generally helpful to ask “What is the self-interested reason why that person or group might be doing that?” it is unwise to assume that all political behavior is purely self-interested. When Black people join in a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest, they are saying at least in part that MY life matters. When non-Black people join in a BLM protest, it is possible but unlikely that they do so because they believe themselves to be the main beneficiaries of the protest (although it is certainly possible that they will indirectly benefit from living in a safer and more equitable society). More likely, BLM allies—or the supporters of any social movement, whether conservative or liberal, democratic or authoritarian—join because they support the cause that the movement represents (a strategic reason) and because they want to show that they are the kind of person that supports this movement (an expressive reason). Humans make decisions in two main ways: by thinking fast or thinking slow. People think fast when their decisions seem almost automatic. On the other hand, there are times when people focus to make a thoughtful decision: they think slow. Thinking slow is hard, so humans more often rely on their quick judgments about what to do, whether in politics or in other areas of life. When humans act, they may do so for strategic (or instrumental) or expressive (or emotional) reasons. When people act strategically, they take actions designed to obtain their objectives. When people act expressively, they do so not to achieve a goal but to reveal who they are (or who they want to be perceived to be). Often, behavior can have both elements: people may vote so that their candidate has a better chance of winning, but also to show their peer group that they are the kind of person who votes. Whether people act strategically or expressively, they can do so either because they are acting in their own self-interest or in the interest of a broader community, with an eye to accomplishing broader public purposes. These motives can overlap. Often, what political actors believe to be good for the public also coincides with what they see as beneficial for themselves. A candidate for office may understandably think that working on behalf of their constituents—the public interest—will also benefit the candidate’s electoral interests. fake news stories masquerading as actual news that lack any basis in fact heuristics a cognitive shortcut for making decisions in which simple, practical rules are substituted for more complex methods irrational human behavior that is not devoted to maximizing individual self-interest rational behavior that strategically seeks to maximize an individual’s own well-being, however the individual defines it

Social Sciences


Human Behavior Is Partially Predictable Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe human predictability. Explain why human behavior can be predicted in general but not in specific cases. Define motivated reasoning. Even though each person is unique, people often act in predictable ways. Given a certain set of rules and a specific set of conditions, it is possible to make pretty good guesses (that is, predictions) about how people will behave. This does not mean that all people act in exactly the same way every time. But it does mean that behavior is not entirely random. What Does It Mean to Be Predictable? Predictability means that it is possible to guess, with some accuracy, how people will behave in certain situations. In the commercial world, this predictability is what allows, say, Netflix to recommend movies. In short, every time you watch a show, Netflix collects data about what you like and then combines that data with information collected from everyone else using Netflix. If you like the same dozen films as a large number of other people and those people have seen and liked a 13th movie, Netflix predicts that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enjoy the 13th movie as well. Why Netflix’s Algorithm Is So Binge-Worthy | Mach | NBC News Political scientists use data to make predictions about political behavior in much the same way that Netflix uses data about its users’ past viewing habits to make predictions about their future viewing behavior. Knowledge about human behavior makes it possible to predict how politicians, public officials, and citizens will respond in various political settings. Political scientists can use knowledge of certain characteristics—for example, an individual’s age, education, and ideology, among many other attributes—to predict how likely it is that they will vote and which party they will vote for. It is possible to predict that politicians will typically seek to increase their political power because they have been observed doing so time and again. One of the central goals of empirical political science is to study how people behave politically in order to make more accurate predictions about how they are likely to behave in the future. This figure shows voting rates by age group in United States elections between 1980 and 2016. (credit: United States Census Bureau, Public Domain) Political analysts collect data on individuals and groups to understand how, for example, voters have behaved in the past and how they are likely to behave in the future. In the United States, voters’ ages are linked to voter turnout rates (the turnout rate is the proportion of eligible voters that actually cast their votes). This graphic shows turnout rates for four voter age categories in presidential elections between 1980 and 2016. During this time, voter turnout rates were highest for voters age 65 and over and lowest for voters age 18 to 29. What does this mean? If we know nothing about a voter but their age, we could make a prediction about their likelihood of turning out to cast a vote. Political candidates and their campaigns might use this knowledge as they strategize how best to allocate their resources. Which Human Behavior Is Predictable, and Which Is Unpredictable? The more information political scientists have about how people have behaved in the past, the better they are able to predict how people will behave in the future—but only within limits, a few of which bear mentioning. When making predictions about what people will do, the typical prediction is usually in the form of “individuals with characteristics like these are likely to do a certain thing,” which is quite different from saying “this individual will do that.” One might predict, for instance, that young, environmentally motivated activists around the world are likely to affiliate with the Green Party of their country. This does not mean that it is possible to accurately predict that Greta Thunberg , perhaps the most famous environmental advocate, is a member of Sweden’s Green Party. Maggie McGrath, “Why Greta Thunberg Is One of the World’s Most Powerful Women,” Forbes, December 12, 2019. Why is it possible to predict political behavior in general but not necessarily in individual cases? One answer is that more and better information results in better predictions: imperfect information leads to imperfect predictions. Just as weather forecasts can be wrong because meteorological relationships are complex and not fully understood, behavior predictions can also be wrong. Moreover, what seems to be the sheer randomness of human behavior should not be discounted. Determinists maintain that all human behavior can be correctly predicted if all relevant facts are known. Those who believe in “free will”—or pure randomness—reject this idea. An event is random when it cannot be predicted. Consider this: although it is possible to predict the outcomes of a coin flip in general (there is a 50 percent chance of getting heads and a 50 percent chance of getting tails), even the most powerful supercomputers cannot accurately predict the outcome of a single coin flip. Whether a single flip comes up heads or tails is random. If you predict the outcome correctly, you just got lucky. In 1962, US intelligence discovered evidence that the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba—only some 100 miles from American soil. Tensions simmered, and at the peak of what is called the Cuban Missile Crisis , the world was on the brink of nuclear war. US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev had a fateful decision to make: With the fate of the world in their hands, should each side escalate the conflict or pull back? No amount of data would have allowed anyone to predict with certainty what their decisions would be: they could have gone either way. Fortunately, they both chose to de-escalate, and the crisis was resolved. What explains this outcome? As the US Secretary of Defense put it, it was “luck. Luck was a factor. . . . It was just luck that [Kennedy and Kruschev] finally acted before they lost control, and before East and West were involved in nuclear war that would have led to destruction of nations. It was that close.” “Good Guys, Bad Guys: Interview with Robert McNamara,” National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/mcnamara1.html. Despite efforts to better predict political outcomes, political polling, which will be discussed further in Chapter 5: Political Participation and Public Opinion , remains fallible. Poll-based predictions about the outcomes of presidential elections in the United States were substantially off in both 2016 and, though they accurately predicted the eventual winner, in 2020. Geoffrey Skelley, “Why Was the National Polling Environment So Off in 2020?” FiveThirtyEight, February 23, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-was-the-national-polling-environment-so-off-in-2020/. Why? Because the polls ask, “Who are you likely to vote for?” but they cannot precisely measure who will actually show up to vote or how they will actually vote. Dennis Quinn, data scientist, writer, researcher, and master’s degree candidate in Yale University’s Public Policy program at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs Please explain what you do for your organization. At the moment I’m a graduate student at Yale, where I build data streams to address the humanitarian and national security impacts of climate change. But before this I was on the Pew Research Center’s data science team for about five years. During that time I managed research projects involving data mining, machine learning, or other computational methodologies. The job also required a lot of communication, writing, and public speaking as well. How did you get involved in your position? In my most recent (paying) job, I joined Pew in 2015 in a pretty standard entry-level position, which I’m pretty sure I was offered because I had skills in Python and R, and they knew they would be expanding into the area soon. That expansion allowed me to build out a role for myself in the new research area—and that’s a big lesson I took from that experience: don’t look for the perfect job. Get the skills you want to use, find a thing you care about, and join an organization that does that thing. Then, try to get them to make a job that you want. It might not work every time, but it’s a solid strategy. What advice would you give students who are interested in your line of work? A good rule of thumb is that opinions are cheap, data is valuable, and facts are even better—and this is a problem in political science because undergraduate education teaches you to argue really well but not to create original knowledge. And this is an area where you can really differentiate yourself as you get into the working world: learn how to create and communicate useful knowledge in the area you care about. In today’s world this often means using data, but it doesn’t have to. It definitely means learning what the questions are, though, and that’s where political science can do really well. But make sure you take that extra leap into knowledge generation—this can mean a (spoken) language, programming, or certain disciplinary focuses like econometrics. All together, this creates a really strong position for you: knowing where the questions are and having the tools to answer them. Consider an extreme example regarding the uncertainty of making predictions and the importance of making accurate ones. During times of war, military leaders have to ask, “Will my soldiers fight, or will they run?” The rational soldier might be tempted to run: What fate could be worse than likely death at the hands of the enemy? The rational calculation would include the probability of getting killed if they stay to fight as well as the chances of being caught, court-martialed, and potentially executed as a deserter. The expressive soldier might stay to demonstrate his loyalty and bravery. But it is not possible to predict with certainty which soldiers will fight and which will flee. The wise military strategist will adopt the strategies believed to increase the probability—the predictability—that the soldier will remain faithful to their side. Will they fight, or will they flee? (credit: “Photograph of US Soldiers Crouching in Position in the First Wave of Helicopter Combat Assault” by Department of Defense/National Archives, Public Domain) How does the strategic political leader increase the odds that individuals will faithfully follow them? By increasing the incentives—the instrumental reasons—for doing so: by raising the costs of defection and the rewards for fidelity, and by raising the importance of expressive values like solidarity, loyalty, and patriotism. It may be tempting to believe that those participating in the political causes you support are seeking the right things or doing so for public-spirited reasons—that they are the good ones—and that those who you see as your political opponents are purely self-interested, if not greedy or corrupt. This can be explained by motivated reasoning , the human tendency to embrace those ideas one wants to believe while rejecting evidence that challenges those beliefs. Toby Bolsen, James N. Druckman, and Fay Lomax Cook, “The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion,” Political Behavior 36, no. 2 (2014): 235–262. doi:10.1007/s11109-013-9238-0. In the United States, for example, a large majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe that the other party is closed-minded, and substantial proportions of both parties believe that members of the other party are lazier or less intelligent, moral, or patriotic than the general public. Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus, “Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Public Opinion Formation,” Political Psychology 35, no. S1 (2014): 129–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.1216. Individuals participate in politics for all sorts of reasons, and there is little justification for the belief that the motivations of those on “our side” are much different from the motivations of those on “their side.” On each side, individuals are likely to have a mix of self-interest and public spirit. Humans are all, literally, unique: not even identical twins are exactly alike, as they will be exposed to differing environments over their lifetimes. Still, human behavior is partially predictable. This means that, with enough information about certain characteristics of persons, it is possible to make predictions about what similar individuals will do in similar circumstances. Predictions might be wrong for any specific person. They can be wrong because individuals often, but not always, act like other similar individuals. More generally, predictions might be wrong because of bad data (for example, when people lie to pollsters) or because people don’t act in the future as they have in the past. The concept of motivated reasoning can explain why individuals can make incorrect judgments in politics, as well as in other areas. Motivated reasoning is a form of bias that leads individuals to arrive at conclusions that they want to believe in rather than to scrutinize the evidence neutrally. motivated reasoning the human tendency to embrace ideas that we want to believe while rejecting evidence that challenges those beliefs

Social Sciences


The Importance of Context for Political Decisions Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain why political scientists use games. Describe the ultimatum game. Discuss what the ultimatum game reveals about human nature. Identify ways in which context matters in political decision-making. How individuals behave politically depends on a wide variety of factors. These factors, considered together, constitute the context in which the decisions take place. This section will bring these various elements together by examining the ultimatum game . Rules Political scientists often use games to interpret and predict human behavior. A game is a set of rules, a set of choices, and a set of decisions. The rules establish what a player is allowed to do. The choices are what the player can do at any turn. The decisions are what the player actually chooses to do. Political scientists examine both hypothetical games, seeking to understand what are the best moves given a set of rules and a specific situation, and real games in which they can observe the decisions that players actually make under various circumstances. The ultimatum game is one way to explore the various dimensions of human decision-making. The game involves two players, Player A and Player B. Player A is given a sum of money—say, $10—and has to decide whether and how much of this money to offer to Player B. Player A can offer none of the money, some of it, or all of it. Player B can accept the offer or reject it; hence, the offer is a “take it or leave it” ultimatum. If Player B accepts, both players keep their share of the money. If Player B rejects the offer, neither player keeps any money. As an example, if Player A offers Player B $4 and Player B accepts, Player A keeps $6 and Player B keeps $4. If Player B rejects the offer, neither player takes home anything. Scholars can use these rules and choices to make predictions about what players might do and why they might make these choices. As it turns out, this game has actually been played in a wide variety of settings, and so there is evidence of how humans actually behave. Situations What do you think Player A and Player B are likely to do? How would you play the ultimatum game? You may have a quick-thinking intuitive sense of how much you would offer if you were Player A or of the smallest amount you would demand if you were Player B. Further slow reasoning might lead you to change your mind. Let’s consider some possibilities. It is possible, but highly unlikely, that Player A would offer the entire $10 to Player B, as few people are entirely altruistic. In contrast, Player A could offer Player B nothing, but this is also unlikely because Player B would almost certainly reject that offer, leaving each player with nothing. It is most likely that Player A will offer an amount that falls somewhere between $0 and $10. But what amount? If both players were entirely rational—that is, if they were entirely strategic and self-interested, Player A would make a very small offer, maybe $1, calculating that Player B would reluctantly accept the offer. Player A might think that Player B would of course want a larger offer but that Player B would accept this small offer because getting even $1 is better than getting nothing. In a perfectly rational world, players would make and accept highly uneven offers. In a perfectly cooperative world, in contrast, players would offer and accept 50-50 splits. The Ultimatum Game Experiments in which people played the ultimatum game have shown the complexity and variations in, and therefore the difficulties in predicting, human behavior. Experimental data demonstrates that in reality players are not entirely self-interested. Hessel Oosterbeek, Randolph Sloof, and Gijs van de Kuilen, “Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis,” Experimental Economics: A Journal of the Economic Science Association 7, no. 2 (2004): 171–188. doi:10.1023/B:EXEC.0000026978.14316.74. Players routinely reject offers that deviate substantially from a 50-50 split. The split need not be 50-50 for Player B to consider it fair, however; players commonly offer and accept $6-4 or even $7-3 splits. Political scientists suggest a variety of reasons why Player B might be willing to reject unfair offers, to voluntarily sacrifice any financial gain. One key explanation is that players seek not only to maximize their own selfish interests, but also to ensure basic fairness. For these players, those who violate fairness must be punished. There are other strategic reasons to make fair offers or to reject unfair ones. Player A will likely be uncertain of the minimal offer that Player B will accept: given this uncertainty, it makes sense for Player A to make offers that are pretty fair. If they play multiple times in the same roles, it would be sensible for Player B to reject an unfair offer because, once an unfair offer is accepted, it is possible to predict that unfair offers will continue to be made. If I learn that Player B will accept $2, why would I offer B more? Offers are more likely to be fair—closer to a 50-50 split—if players already know each other and the game is played face-to-face, as compared to strangers playing the game remotely on computers. The total amount of the prize also surely matters. Player B is likely to be more willing to refuse $1 in a $10 game than to refuse $100,000 in a $1,000,000 game, even though the fairness of the offers are mathematically the same. What if the rules changed so that Player B got to keep their share of the pot when they reject the offer, with only Player A losing their portion? This rule change would shift power to Player B, and Player A would almost certainly make more generous offers. The ultimatum game is a simplified illustration of interactions involving bargaining strategies, but it offers abundant lessons for politics, whether one is looking inside parliamentary institutions, considering the relations between politicians and their constituents, or studying mass movements. In many political situations, there is some resource—tangible or intangible—that one set of actors has and another one wants, and the players have to decide how to share that resource. The real game of politics is much more complicated. Usually there are many players, and those players may seek to change the rules while they are playing. The size and nature of the resource under negotiation may not be set in stone, and the players are not limited to making, accepting, or rejecting offers, but may also use threats and deception. The more complex a negotiation, the more difficult it is to predict how it will play out. Game Theory The ultimatum game is one of many strategic games that examine human decision-making given varied rules and contexts. To learn more about them, you can explore courses in game theory. These courses can be highly abstract and technical, or they can be more applied; they are often offered within economics departments. In a game theory course you will have the chance to learn about the best (or optimal) strategies for winning a game. The games studied in this course are all political: they involve two or more players seeking to obtain their goals (to win the game) given a set of rules and a specific situation. What is the best strategy, the one most likely to win the game? In some games, at some points, the best strategy might be to be generous to your opponent; at other times, you might want to be vengeful. Political scientists use games to make predictions about how humans will behave in politics because political action has many of the characteristics of a game, with the players making decisions under a certain set of rules and a given set of circumstances. These predictions can be logical, based on what political scientists consider to be rational behavior, or empirical, based on how individuals actually do behave. The ultimatum game is one example of this. The rules allow players to make choices about how to share a resource, and the choices they make determine the allocation. The choices they make depend largely on the context—for example, whether they have a relationship with the other player, or if they will play again, or how large the prize is. Studying such games can provide valuable insights into human behavior. Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions . New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. Bryson, Valerie. Feminist Political Theory . 3rd ed. New York: Palgrave, 2016. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow . New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. Parekh, Bhikhu C. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory . 2nd ed. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Rawls, John, and Erin Kelly. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Wolff, Jonathan. An Introduction to Political Philosophy . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016. game a competition between participants who make strategic choices, under known rules, aiming to win

Social Sciences