Democracy, Power and Status

Better Aid Needs Better Politics

There are many definitions of democracy – we could argue about them all night – but they certainly include:

A system where government decisions on policy are vested in elected representatives;
Free, fair and frequent election of these representatives;
Freedom of expression; citizens being able to say what they think;
Access to alternative sources of information from government - a free media;
Having the right to form and join independent associations; and
Inclusive citizenship where no-one is excluded or discriminated against.
It is these characteristics of political democracy that enable us to join with others who share a vision of a better world; to make our views heard; to choose leaders to represent our views; and to hold our leaders to account. And for those of us so inclined, it gives us the freedom to seek the privilege of holding public office.

So democracy as we know is about so much more than just having a vote. It’s a set of values and institutions. And while democracy is about rights, it’s also about responsibilities. It demands something of us. That’s why politics is about more than just shopping for policies.

It is democracy that has sustained and shared out the prosperity we have achieved here in Britain. Our history tells us how those who had been excluded from society acted on their conviction that without political representation things would never change.

So we can look back at our long and slow progress to democracy. We can look back to the first elected Parliament called by Simon de Montfort in the thirteenth century, to Cromwell's angry young soldiers debating their right to universal suffrage with their officers at Putney in the seventeenth century, to a hundred years ago when Labour first achieved representation in the House of Commons. As our election Manifesto of 1906 said: “The House of Commons is supposed to be the people’s House, and yet the people are not there.” 29 Labour MPs changed all that, and showed that democracy could evolve.

What we have also learned is that what we now call the institutions of good governance do not emerge overnight. And they certainly cannot be transplanted or imposed from outside. As Ghandi said, “…the spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It must come from within.”

Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, Speech at Demos, Westminster Hall


Power and Status

Issues of power and status have long been a subject of focal interest for social scientists (e.g. Weber, 1924). Efforts to better understand the role of power in governing and influencing human behavior take account of social dilemmas. Social dilemmas may be grounds for betrayal of expectations, for someone that was expected to contribute to a public good, or managee harvesting a common resource and fails to do so - causing negative outcomes for everyone else. A group of researchers examined the impact of power and status on the judgments people make about justifications that are offered after these failures (Massey et al. 1997). Justifications are assertions that behaviours that seem a violation of the rules or norms are not violations at all. Broad acceptance of a justification can redefine fundamental understandings and rules of behavior. Four interesting findings include a) an offending act being judged less proper if the justification was invalid, b) when an offending individual had higher status than other group members. Strikingly an offending individual’s higher status was a liability if the justification was invalid; c) an offending individual’s greater level of power had a positive impact on others’ public judgments of the offending act’s propriety, but not on their private judgments; d) Finally, if an offending individual had both high status and greater power, the combination resulted in a positive impact on even others’ private judgments about the act’s propriety.

These findings may implicate that those with status and power are in a privileged position in defining propriety concerning resource distribution strategies. One study compared the resource distribution as a function of discount rate – of what the value of resources would be over time (Mannix, 1991) - led to the findings that rapid devaluation increase competition, destructive behaviour and form excluding coalitions which is alarming for those who manage resources. It is argued that imbalance of power and uncertainties within groups drawing on common resources lead to individual group members not focusing on mutual gains and instead focus on protecting their own interests. Here coalitions have marked significant negative efforts on a group’s overall outcomes because they can deprive individuals and subgroups of access to the resources they require to succeed or survive. It is found that groups with power imbalances made less efficient use of available resources and included fewer people in resource utilization across multiple rounds. One of the ways to balance power was suggested to assemble group members from the same position in the hierarchy who have various sources of expertise, since, while they would still have their own interests but might not be as threatened by the positions of other group members (Mannix 1993: 18-19). Other studies show that levels of egocentrism affect individuals’ and groups’ perceptions of fairness and that over harvesting behaviour are positively correlated with levels of egocentrism. Findings to decrease egocentric biases led to establishing discussion which has positive effect on cooperation in social dilemmas in general. Over harvesting behaviour also depended on participants’ beliefs about other participants reactions. Also related to the study of coalitions and power distribution is researchon voting institutions. Walker et al (2000) found that voting substantially increases the efficiency of the outcomes in commons dilemma. “The very act of making a proposal and voting on a set of proposals signals limited information to all involved. In particular, it appears to generate information that enables a learning process to occur”. (p. 231)

The conditions under which group members opt to appoint a leader to aid them in achieving their goals in social dilemma was studied indicating that groups will opt for leader when they fail to manage resource efficiently triggering inequalities in harvesting. Studies on public goods also point out that leaders are not autocratic decision makers but rather need some form of legitimacy in order to be effective in persuading members to cooperate (VNVGT AND De cremer, 1999). Wit and Wilke (1988) examining the role of leaders allocation decisions for endorsement of their leadership found that leader “endorsement was weakest when the leader over paid himself or herself” and when the participant making the evaluation had been underpaid relative to other group members.

The result of one study on water shortages found that people who take pride in their community and perceive procedures to be fair express strong support for the regulating authorities and care less about their personal outcomes. (Tyler and Degoey (1995: 482) A number of recent findings speak to contingency issues related to leadership and administration in social dilemma settings. The role of who present rewards and punishments in a social dilemma, and to whom they are presented came under study. The comparison between company managers concerned with making waste storage versus waste treatment decisions was experiemented. The former choice was in participants’ short term financial interests, while the latter choice was better for the community and promised greater long term value. For 124 undergraduates they found no difference between the effectiveness of rewards or punishment on their choices, regardless of whether they were presented by the government or by their parent companies. In contrast,for239 managers, rewards supplied by the parent company were highly effective, while those supplied by government were actually counterproductive. This finding suggests an interesting consideration for those attempting to manage dilemmas in the real world. What source of sanctioning is most likely to be embraced and respected by the people who make the important decisions?