Arizona Senate Bill 1070
Dennis Schroader
ENG 122
Andrea Pfaff
June 7, 2010
Regulating immigration and naturalization is one of the chief responsibilities of the federal government as outlined in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Chief among the many reasons for controlling who and what comes into the country is our national security, which is threatened by illegal immigration. This has been a hot issue in American politics since at least 1986 when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration and Reform Control Act.
According to a 2004 report by the Congressional Research Service, the estimated number of illegal aliens residing in the United States increased by more than seven million between 1988 and 2002 (Unauthorized Aliens in the United States: Estimates Since 1986). Varying government and media sources estimate the number of illegal aliens currently residing in the United States anywhere between thirteen million and twenty-three million, with an estimated less than one million coming from nations other than Mexico.
Federal efforts to stem the tide of illegal immigration – from amnesty bills and lackluster crack downs on employers to electronic “virtual fences” and an insulting few 1,200 military troops sent to patrol - have amounted to little more than political showmanship. Arizona’s new immigration law (Senate Bill 1070) picks up where the federal government has dropped the ball.
Let us begin with a brief history of federal efforts, beginning with the last major amnesty bill, Immigration and Reform Control Act (1986). This was a blanket amnesty for over 2.7 million illegal aliens. The argument of the day was that there were just too many illegal aliens to track down and deport for the federal government to handle, so the answer was to enforce the border, crack down on employers and grant amnesty to those who had broken our laws and allow them to live as lawful residents. The idea was that we would stop the influx through the southern border by tougher enforcement, and perhaps that would have worked, if it had ever been implemented.
As it is, it was not, and people continued to pour through our open border by the tens of thousands per month. So great was the draw of America that in 1994, Congress passed another amnesty bill, known as Section 245(i), which was a temporary rolling amnesty affecting an estimated 578,000 illegal immigrants (Congressional Research Service, 2002). This was followed quickly by an extension in 1997. This passed nearly simultaneously with the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (1997), yet another amnesty for close to one millions illegals from Central America, and the Haitian Refugee immigration Fairness Act (1998), which granted legal status to 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti. Two short years later, a bill known as Late Amnesty (2000) passed granting amnesty for some illegal aliens who claim they should have been amnestied under the 1986 IRCA amnesty, for an estimated 400,000 illegal aliens, along with the LIFE Act (2000) which reinstated the rolling Section 245(i) amnesty for an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens.
This brings us up to date on the various amnesty bills enacted in the last twenty-four years. At this point, the American public has grown weary of the constant “second chances”. A Quinnipiac poll (May 19-24, 2010) showed that 59% of registered voters consider illegal immigration a very serious problem and 66% want stricter enforcement of the laws currently on the books. A CBS News poll (April 28 – May 2, 2010) likewise showed the common ground among Americans of differing viewpoints, showing that 65% overall consider it a very serious problem, including 75% of Republicans, 55% of Democrats and 67% of Independents. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll (May 21-23, 2010) revealed 60% support for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants and deporting those found here versus 38% who support legalization/amnesty, and 88% favor increased border patrol and federal law enforcement along Mexican border.
As a result of the growing problem of illegal immigration and the federal government’s ineffective response, the State of Arizona enacted its own law that closely mirrors existing federal codes (Archibold, R., The New York Times, 2010, April 23). This action touched off a media firestorm, which set the political left against the center and right. Even as the Obama Administration criticized Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, CBS News showed in another poll (May 20-24, 2010) that 52% of Americans think the Arizona law is “about right”, including 46% of Democrats and 45% of Independents versus just 40% and 45%, respectively, who believe it goes too far.
The primary argument against the law is that it is seen as “racist”, particularly by Hispanics. According to the New York Times article:
“Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions” (2010, April 23).
Furthermore, critics of the law, which allows police officers, in the course of other legal contact, to ask for proof of legal residency, provided they have reason to suspect otherwise, have attempted to link this provision to the behavior of Nazi’s in World War II. In that, these critics commit the “strawman fallacy” of argument, which is an attempt to defeat the real target by making them seem like a different, more easily assailed enemy, and usually in an unfair and unjust manner (Waller, 2008, Kindle Location 515). The problem with these arguments is that the Arizona law, just like the federal law it mimics, specifically prohibits racial profiling and any other kind of discriminatory act on the part of law enforcement.
The simple conclusion to all of this is that, while it is the role of the United States government to enforce the border and immigration policy, it falls to the border states, so egregiously affected by the onslaught of illegal immigration, to pick up where the feds have failed.
References
CBS News. (2010). CBS News Opinion Poll, May 20-24, 2010. Retrieved on June 4, 2010 from http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm
CNN/Opinion Research Corp. (2010). CNN/Opinion Research Corp Opinion Poll, May 21-23, 2010. Retrieved on June 4 2010 from http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm
Congressional Research Service. (2002). Immigration: Adjustment to Permanent Resident Status Under Section 245(i) (Order Code RL31373). Washington D.C: Government Printing Office.
Congressional Research Service. (2004). Unauthorized Aliens in the United States: Estimates Since 1986 (Order Code RS21938). Washington D.C: Government Printing Office.
Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty of 1998.
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Retrieved on 4 June 2010 from the U.S. Department of Justice website: http://www.justice.gov/crt/cor/byagency/doj1255a.php
Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act of 1997, P.L. 105-100, title II. Retrieved on 4 June 2010 from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration website: http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/PUBLAW/HTML/PUBLAW/0-0-0-15244.html
Quinnipiac University. (2010). Quinnipiac Opinion Poll, May 19-24, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm
Waller, B. (2008). Consider Ethics: Theory, Readings, and Contemporary Issues, Second Edition. New York: Pearson Longman
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Empire: A Brief History of America’s Global Influence
Dennis Schroader
HIS 204
Lynn Elisabeth Marlow
May 4, 2009
“Can you feel it coming? Empire!” (Queensryche, 1990).
America’s rapid rise to global dominance has been steady and a nearly foregone conclusion. With the exception of a few periods of stalled territorial expansion and/or projection of political and economic interests, America’s story is that of rapid expansion, rise to the status of world power and eventual emergence as the sole remaining Superpower. Today, America stands alone as the dominant military, economic and political force in the world.
State of the Union, 1865: Distractions
The War Between the States shook America to its very foundation and challenged the basic principles upon which the country was founded. After the eventual defeat of the Confederacy, America faced the long, arduous task of bringing its fractured pieces back together and reforming the Union, a process called Reconstruction. It was not enough to pass legislation to bring former Confederate states back into the fold. The aim of Reconstruction was primarily to win back the people of the South (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 474).
Another major problem facing America immediately after the Civil War was dealing with the repercussions of the Thirteenth Amendment. Of course, ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was a part of Reconstruction as a whole, but once again, passing laws do not change the hearts of men. Integrating the Freedpeople was more problematic after Lincoln’s assassination than it might otherwise have been. In any event, the whole ordeal made impossible any notion of consolidating America’s power base within the country or expanding American influence abroad.
Manifest Destiny
With the annexation of the Oregon Territory in 1846, America’s reach extended from sea to shining sea and achieved the vision of Manifest Destiny. Of course, with new lands came new challenges. Native Americans were no strangers to the white man, but relations with them became continuously more strained as more and more settlers moved west. Regular skirmishes with settlers and the U.S. Army served only to strengthen the resolve of politicians in Washington D.C. Treaties with the tribal nations were enacted to confine the tribes to specific lands called Reservations. Settlers regularly ignored these treaties when it suited their purposes. Military attention to the Native American “problem” was the most visible sign of the white man’s dominance, but it was the linkage of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 that spelled the eventual doom of their nomadic culture. Rapid transportation meant more people coming west and more land being used by them, and hunters and traders killing off entire herds of buffalo, which the tribes used for much of their subsistence. Eventually, Indian resistance subsided and they retired to their Reservations where they – for the most part – remain to this day, though now by choice rather than force.
These events coupled with the Mexican Cession of 1848 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 from Russia effectively marked the end of American expansion on the North American continent. By 1900, after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, all of the present day states had come under control of the United States government. With the aspirations of domestic imperialists realized, they began to cast their gaze overseas.
Big Stick Moves South
As Americans saw the colonial empires of England, France and Spain reach across the globe, ambitions of parity began to foment. Manifest Destiny not only gave justification for the conquest of what is now the continental United Sates, but also laid a foundation, a way of thinking, which made projection of American influence not merely justifiable but a moral obligation. Charles Denby, lawyer, diplomat, Minister to China and member of the U.S. Philippines Commission said in 1898, “We are stretching out our hands for what nature meant should be ours. We are taking our proper rank among the nations of the world... along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions, and humanity will bless us” (Nostro, 2008). It was this manner of thinking which influenced Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy and shaped the American approach to our neighbors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Spanish-American War, set off by the destruction of the USS Maine in February 1898, was a short-lived but hard-fought conflict over which country would shape the future of Cuba, and by extension the entire Caribbean (Events – Spanish-American War, 1998). Although the exact cause of the explosion on the Maine is still not completely certain, popular opinion at the time was that Spain was at fault. That tragedy, along with the now-long-standing rationale of the Monroe Doctrine, was all Congress needed to authorize military action. After a few months, American forces were victorious, thus confirming America’s dominance in the Caribbean (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 617).
Events in the Philippines went in much the same order, although without the sinking of a U.S. vessel. The Treaty of Paris in 1898 ended the war with Spain and resulted in the U.S. gaining Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The Philippines ended up being more difficult to bring under American rule with a bloody, three year long guerilla war ensuing from the time the U.S. assumed control of the islands. This rebellion was quelled in 1902.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick diplomacy also led to increasing American activity in Latin American affairs. He was once quoted, “If we intend to say hands off to Europe, then sooner or later we must keep order ourselves,” referring to the tenets of the Monroe Doctrine which told Europeans to mind their own hemisphere. This came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary which led to direct American involvement in Latin American affairs (p. 663). This policy led to the building of the Panama Canal and direct U.S. responsibility for territories throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
President Taft, who immediate succeeded Roosevelt, preferred flexing economic muscles. According to the U.S. Department of State’s website:
“From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as "dollar diplomacy." Taft shared the view held by Knox [sic] that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests” (2009).
The State Department’s site goes on to say, “In spite of successes, ‘dollar diplomacy’ failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China” (2009).
By the time of the First World War, the new President (Wilson) had a new idea. He saw the war in Europe as an opportunity for America to emerge as a leader on the world stage. “Only if the United States stood above the fray could it lead the way to a higher peace. ‘Americans must remain impartial in thought as well as action,’ Wilson insisted in 1914” (p 670). For all his good intentions, the Wilson Administration ended up supplying the war effort. At first, both sides could purchase from the United States. The Allied blockade of Central Powers’ ports, however, made America’s pretense of neutrality moot. With the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, Wilson had little choice but to enter the war full force in support of the Allies.
Failure of the League of Nations
Wilson’s dream of American global leadership did not die in the mustard gas filled trenches of Europe. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, was to be Wilson’s masterpiece and he worked tirelessly for a League of Nations. He was successful with the Europeans. Not so much within the halls of Congress. By the time the treaty was passed out of committee, Wilson’s essential Article X, which required member nations to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack, had been all but gutted. The amendments to the bill assumed no responsibility under Article X unless prior Congressional approval was obtained (p 686).
Congressional Republicans were loathed to cede control of American foreign policy to international treaty. Due to the unwillingness to compromise on the part of the Congressional Republicans and President Wilson alike, the Treaty of Versailles – and by extension the League of Nations – was never ratified by the United States. With Wilson’s failure to bring the United States into the League, global support evaporated. Wilson’s dream died not on the battlefields of Europe, but in the halls of Congress.
According to Charles Townsend, Professor of International History at Keele University:
“How the League would have worked with American participation remains one of the great 'what ifs' of modern history. As it was, the direction of the system was left in the hands of states - primarily Britain and France - whose altruism was questionable and whose economic resources had been crippled by the war” (2003).
After World War I, American attention turned back toward its own hemisphere. By the time of the Coolidge Administration, the appetite for military conflict in Washington had long been sated. Instead of sending troops to deal with Mexican confiscation of American properties, Coolidge sent an ambassador. President Hoover held a similar attitude when he ordered the withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua. This departure from the Roosevelt Corollary came to be known as the “Good Neighbor” policy (p 763).
Franklin Roosevelt wholeheartedly embraced this policy. In 1933 and 1934 his Administration signed agreements renouncing America’s right to involve itself in the internal or external affairs of its neighbors. Roosevelt instead preferred exerting American influence through politics and economics. Unlike Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”, however, Roosevelt was largely successful in spreading American interests and influence abroad.
The Second World War, which arguably started shortly after Adolf Hitler’s accent to the German Chancellorship in 1933, affected U.S. economic interests abroad, but since America was still in the grips of the Great Depression, scant attention was paid to goings on in Europe. Roosevelt struggled in the 1930s to bring America out of the Depression by implementing his New Deal policies and, in part, by advancing U.S. business interests with our neighbors. American economic salvation, as it turned out, was to be delivered not by bills in Congress, but by bombs in Hawaii.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on the naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, galvanized the American populace and government alike, who were otherwise content to sit this one out. The massive industrial mobilization to rebuild the navy, beef up the Army and create an Army air corps (later the U.S. Air Force) was to the American economy what a bucket of ice water is to a sleeping person. With America back at work and a two-front war to fight – some might argue that the North Africa campaign was a third front, but it was really just an extension of the European Theater of War – the United States was once again able to project its military might across oceans. After the Allied defeat of the Axis Powers, the U.S. established a permanent military presence throughout Western Europe – in Germany and England in particular – and in Asia – in Australia, Japan, and other small Pacific islands – primarily to help prevent another such World War.
Cold War Expansion
The defeat of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese threats gave rise to the new threat of global Communism. The Soviet Union sought to expand its influence and territories for much the same reasons as Western powers: to prevent the reoccurrence of the destruction of World War II. Unlike the West, however, Russian expansion meant not self-determination and alliances formed, but the installation of puppet governments whose strings were pulled from Moscow. Soviet Socialism was brutal and benefited only those in power, and left those for whom the powers-that-were had no use out in the cold. By some estimates, Lenin’s non-war-related body count dwarfs even the war deaths caused by Adolf Hitler.
The conflicts in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s through 1975 were, in effect, proxy wars where Communist forces fought against Western, pro-Democracy armies. The Korean conflict was fought to a stand-still which remains to this day. The armistice which ended the fighting did not establish a peace agreement. Accordingly, the De-Militarized Zone is still one of (if not the) most heavily guarded borders in the world and relations between the Communist North Korean government and the rest of the free world can only be described as coolly hostile.
This is contrasted by the results in Vietnam. By all military accounts, the American and South Vietnamese forces utterly destroyed those of the Communist North Vietnamese Army regulars and the Viet Cong guerillas. The body count is not even close. The Communists won this conflict in the media, not the battlefield. It is important also to note that American anti-war sentiment, although certainly present, did not flair to its history making heights until the selective service draft was activated and expanded. Today, however, much of the West has somewhat normalized relations with Vietnam since the government there embraced economic policies more in-line with free societies.
During this period, American ties with pro-democratic governments across the globe were strengthened, as were America’s economic interests. The first country to develop nuclear power (and the only country ever to use it in anger) had become a true global Superpower. The development of nuclear arms and their delivery methods, however, were not the only fronts of the Cold War. Every aspect of national identity became a front in that conflict from the Space Race to the 100 meter dash at the quadrennial Olympic Games.
1970’s – Misery Index and Moral Equivalence
The end of the conflict in Vietnam marked a shift in American thinking. The perception at the time, which endures to this day, was that the Americans lost the war. Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian soldier in the 18th and 19th centuries, famously stated that “War is a continuation of politics by other means” (Brassford, 1994). In so keeping, the American psyche and belief in the irresistible force of Jeffersonian democracy was damaged after the “loss” in Vietnam.
Compounding the problem were the scandal of Watergate surrounding Richard Nixon’s re-election (and eventual resignation), lingering resentment from the Civil Rights movement and the abuse received by veterans returning from Vietnam, and a stagnant economy brought quickly to its knees by oil shortages (Heritage). President Carter, by all accounts a good man, nevertheless presided over what is arguably the worst period in American history since the Great Depression. Under his Administration, the Misery Index rose from 12.72 to 19.72, and averaged out at 16.26, the highest average for any president on record and the second highest raw increase from the beginning to the end of his single term in office (U.S. Misery Index).
So poor was American self-confidence that President Carter spoke about living with and accepting the reality of a long-term Soviet Union. In a commencement address at Notre Dame University in May of 1977, Carter said, “We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear” (Lord, 2009). His disastrous point-of-view made Communism – which was responsible for unimaginable human suffering and corruption – morally equivalent to the governments of the free world.
Tearing Down the Wall - Enter the Gipper
Not surprisingly, Carter was easily defeated in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Reagan ushered in a new era of optimism and spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” (1974) to which the whole freedom-loving world looked and admired. Reagan rebuilt the American military and ramped up spending on defense research projects. His most famous project was nick named Star Wars. In military parlance, it was (and is) known as SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative. For all practical purposes it was a proposal to deploy space-based anti-ballistic missile defenses.
During this time Reagan strengthened alliances throughout the free world which had been damaged by the specter of Vietnam, Nixon’s scandal, and Carter’s neglect, particularly with England and Israel. Reagan also took a page from Theodore Roosevelt’s playbook by taking a more active role in Latin America and ousting Manuel Noriega from Panama. Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are primarily credited with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Middle East
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, America’s role as the lone remaining Superpower has been one of world police force. In 1990, Iraqi forces, under the command of another brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded their oil rich neighbor Kuwait. Through the auspices of the United Nations, the U.S., then under President George H.W. Bush, led a coalition of allied countries in driving Iraq out of Kuwait and containing Iraqi aggression by establishing military bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and using the long standing base at Incirlik, Turkey, to patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones established by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East was seen by many in the Muslim world as an affront to Islam and a return to the Crusades, giving rise to international Islamic terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. Terrorists struck at the U.S. throughout the 1990s with minimal response from the Clinton Administration. It wasn’t until September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew commercial air planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the tragedy aboard American Airlines Flight 93 – where the passengers’ attempt to take back the plane resulted in its crash in a field in Pennsylvania – that America began to take international terrorism seriously.
President George W. Bush, the son of the elder President Bush, declared a Global War on Terror and quickly invaded Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was headquartered and received avid support from the Taliban government. In 2003, the younger President Bush, citing Iraqi defiance of 14 U.N. Security Council resolutions over 12 years, led a multi-national “Coalition of the Willing” in a six week rout of Saddam Hussein’s forces. The long-term occupation of Iraq proved to be much more difficult and controversial, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.
Conclusion: Going Forward Looking Backward
America has come a long way in the 233 years since the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence. In this relatively short period of time, the United States has risen from a rag-tag group of former European colonies into the undisputed leader of the free world. This long term trend of expansion, punctuated by periods of isolationist introspection, seems to lend credence to the 19th century idea of Manifest Destiny.
Whether by means of military, political or economic force, America has grown to a truly global empire. Not an empire under the iron fist of a dictator, such as envisioned by the likes of Roman Caesars and Communist oppressors, but an empire of interrelated societies with freedom of self-determination. Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan would be proud.
References
Bassford, C. (1994). Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945. New York: Oxford University Press
Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M., & Stoff, M. (2007). Nation of Nations, Volume 2, 6th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill
Lord, J. (2009). http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/31/jimmy-carters-spirit-of-notre/print
Nostro, R. (2008). Acquisition of the Philippines and Hawaii. Retrieved on April 29, 2009 from http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/comp/cw26HawaiiPhilippines_3hm.htm#note1
Phillips, J. (1979). The Iranian Oil Crisis. Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from the Heritage Foundation website: http://www.heritage.org/research/middleeast/bg76.cfm
Reagan, R. (1974, January 25). The Shining City Upon A Hill. Retrieved on April 28, 2009, from http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/quotes%20etc/Reagan_The%20Shining%20City%20Upon%20A%20Hill%20speech.htm
Tate, W. (1990). Empire (Recorded by Queensryche). On Empire album: EMI America
Townsend, C. (2003). The League of Nations and the United Nations. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/league_nations_02.shtml
U.S. Department of State. (2009). Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1913. Retrieved on May 2, 2009 from U.S. Department of State website: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ip/16324.htm
U.S. Misery Index. (2009). Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from http://www.miseryindex.us/
U.S. Territorial Maps (1996). Retrieved on May 1, 2009, from University of Virginia website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MAP/terr_hp.html
Dennis Schroader
HIS 204
Lynn Elisabeth Marlow
May 4, 2009
“Can you feel it coming? Empire!” (Queensryche, 1990).
America’s rapid rise to global dominance has been steady and a nearly foregone conclusion. With the exception of a few periods of stalled territorial expansion and/or projection of political and economic interests, America’s story is that of rapid expansion, rise to the status of world power and eventual emergence as the sole remaining Superpower. Today, America stands alone as the dominant military, economic and political force in the world.
State of the Union, 1865: Distractions
The War Between the States shook America to its very foundation and challenged the basic principles upon which the country was founded. After the eventual defeat of the Confederacy, America faced the long, arduous task of bringing its fractured pieces back together and reforming the Union, a process called Reconstruction. It was not enough to pass legislation to bring former Confederate states back into the fold. The aim of Reconstruction was primarily to win back the people of the South (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 474).
Another major problem facing America immediately after the Civil War was dealing with the repercussions of the Thirteenth Amendment. Of course, ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was a part of Reconstruction as a whole, but once again, passing laws do not change the hearts of men. Integrating the Freedpeople was more problematic after Lincoln’s assassination than it might otherwise have been. In any event, the whole ordeal made impossible any notion of consolidating America’s power base within the country or expanding American influence abroad.
Manifest Destiny
With the annexation of the Oregon Territory in 1846, America’s reach extended from sea to shining sea and achieved the vision of Manifest Destiny. Of course, with new lands came new challenges. Native Americans were no strangers to the white man, but relations with them became continuously more strained as more and more settlers moved west. Regular skirmishes with settlers and the U.S. Army served only to strengthen the resolve of politicians in Washington D.C. Treaties with the tribal nations were enacted to confine the tribes to specific lands called Reservations. Settlers regularly ignored these treaties when it suited their purposes. Military attention to the Native American “problem” was the most visible sign of the white man’s dominance, but it was the linkage of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 that spelled the eventual doom of their nomadic culture. Rapid transportation meant more people coming west and more land being used by them, and hunters and traders killing off entire herds of buffalo, which the tribes used for much of their subsistence. Eventually, Indian resistance subsided and they retired to their Reservations where they – for the most part – remain to this day, though now by choice rather than force.
These events coupled with the Mexican Cession of 1848 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 from Russia effectively marked the end of American expansion on the North American continent. By 1900, after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, all of the present day states had come under control of the United States government. With the aspirations of domestic imperialists realized, they began to cast their gaze overseas.
Big Stick Moves South
As Americans saw the colonial empires of England, France and Spain reach across the globe, ambitions of parity began to foment. Manifest Destiny not only gave justification for the conquest of what is now the continental United Sates, but also laid a foundation, a way of thinking, which made projection of American influence not merely justifiable but a moral obligation. Charles Denby, lawyer, diplomat, Minister to China and member of the U.S. Philippines Commission said in 1898, “We are stretching out our hands for what nature meant should be ours. We are taking our proper rank among the nations of the world... along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions, and humanity will bless us” (Nostro, 2008). It was this manner of thinking which influenced Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy and shaped the American approach to our neighbors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Spanish-American War, set off by the destruction of the USS Maine in February 1898, was a short-lived but hard-fought conflict over which country would shape the future of Cuba, and by extension the entire Caribbean (Events – Spanish-American War, 1998). Although the exact cause of the explosion on the Maine is still not completely certain, popular opinion at the time was that Spain was at fault. That tragedy, along with the now-long-standing rationale of the Monroe Doctrine, was all Congress needed to authorize military action. After a few months, American forces were victorious, thus confirming America’s dominance in the Caribbean (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 617).
Events in the Philippines went in much the same order, although without the sinking of a U.S. vessel. The Treaty of Paris in 1898 ended the war with Spain and resulted in the U.S. gaining Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The Philippines ended up being more difficult to bring under American rule with a bloody, three year long guerilla war ensuing from the time the U.S. assumed control of the islands. This rebellion was quelled in 1902.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick diplomacy also led to increasing American activity in Latin American affairs. He was once quoted, “If we intend to say hands off to Europe, then sooner or later we must keep order ourselves,” referring to the tenets of the Monroe Doctrine which told Europeans to mind their own hemisphere. This came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary which led to direct American involvement in Latin American affairs (p. 663). This policy led to the building of the Panama Canal and direct U.S. responsibility for territories throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
President Taft, who immediate succeeded Roosevelt, preferred flexing economic muscles. According to the U.S. Department of State’s website:
“From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as "dollar diplomacy." Taft shared the view held by Knox [sic] that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests” (2009).
The State Department’s site goes on to say, “In spite of successes, ‘dollar diplomacy’ failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China” (2009).
By the time of the First World War, the new President (Wilson) had a new idea. He saw the war in Europe as an opportunity for America to emerge as a leader on the world stage. “Only if the United States stood above the fray could it lead the way to a higher peace. ‘Americans must remain impartial in thought as well as action,’ Wilson insisted in 1914” (p 670). For all his good intentions, the Wilson Administration ended up supplying the war effort. At first, both sides could purchase from the United States. The Allied blockade of Central Powers’ ports, however, made America’s pretense of neutrality moot. With the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, Wilson had little choice but to enter the war full force in support of the Allies.
Failure of the League of Nations
Wilson’s dream of American global leadership did not die in the mustard gas filled trenches of Europe. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, was to be Wilson’s masterpiece and he worked tirelessly for a League of Nations. He was successful with the Europeans. Not so much within the halls of Congress. By the time the treaty was passed out of committee, Wilson’s essential Article X, which required member nations to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack, had been all but gutted. The amendments to the bill assumed no responsibility under Article X unless prior Congressional approval was obtained (p 686).
Congressional Republicans were loathed to cede control of American foreign policy to international treaty. Due to the unwillingness to compromise on the part of the Congressional Republicans and President Wilson alike, the Treaty of Versailles – and by extension the League of Nations – was never ratified by the United States. With Wilson’s failure to bring the United States into the League, global support evaporated. Wilson’s dream died not on the battlefields of Europe, but in the halls of Congress.
According to Charles Townsend, Professor of International History at Keele University:
“How the League would have worked with American participation remains one of the great 'what ifs' of modern history. As it was, the direction of the system was left in the hands of states - primarily Britain and France - whose altruism was questionable and whose economic resources had been crippled by the war” (2003).
After World War I, American attention turned back toward its own hemisphere. By the time of the Coolidge Administration, the appetite for military conflict in Washington had long been sated. Instead of sending troops to deal with Mexican confiscation of American properties, Coolidge sent an ambassador. President Hoover held a similar attitude when he ordered the withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua. This departure from the Roosevelt Corollary came to be known as the “Good Neighbor” policy (p 763).
Franklin Roosevelt wholeheartedly embraced this policy. In 1933 and 1934 his Administration signed agreements renouncing America’s right to involve itself in the internal or external affairs of its neighbors. Roosevelt instead preferred exerting American influence through politics and economics. Unlike Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”, however, Roosevelt was largely successful in spreading American interests and influence abroad.
The Second World War, which arguably started shortly after Adolf Hitler’s accent to the German Chancellorship in 1933, affected U.S. economic interests abroad, but since America was still in the grips of the Great Depression, scant attention was paid to goings on in Europe. Roosevelt struggled in the 1930s to bring America out of the Depression by implementing his New Deal policies and, in part, by advancing U.S. business interests with our neighbors. American economic salvation, as it turned out, was to be delivered not by bills in Congress, but by bombs in Hawaii.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on the naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, galvanized the American populace and government alike, who were otherwise content to sit this one out. The massive industrial mobilization to rebuild the navy, beef up the Army and create an Army air corps (later the U.S. Air Force) was to the American economy what a bucket of ice water is to a sleeping person. With America back at work and a two-front war to fight – some might argue that the North Africa campaign was a third front, but it was really just an extension of the European Theater of War – the United States was once again able to project its military might across oceans. After the Allied defeat of the Axis Powers, the U.S. established a permanent military presence throughout Western Europe – in Germany and England in particular – and in Asia – in Australia, Japan, and other small Pacific islands – primarily to help prevent another such World War.
Cold War Expansion
The defeat of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese threats gave rise to the new threat of global Communism. The Soviet Union sought to expand its influence and territories for much the same reasons as Western powers: to prevent the reoccurrence of the destruction of World War II. Unlike the West, however, Russian expansion meant not self-determination and alliances formed, but the installation of puppet governments whose strings were pulled from Moscow. Soviet Socialism was brutal and benefited only those in power, and left those for whom the powers-that-were had no use out in the cold. By some estimates, Lenin’s non-war-related body count dwarfs even the war deaths caused by Adolf Hitler.
The conflicts in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s through 1975 were, in effect, proxy wars where Communist forces fought against Western, pro-Democracy armies. The Korean conflict was fought to a stand-still which remains to this day. The armistice which ended the fighting did not establish a peace agreement. Accordingly, the De-Militarized Zone is still one of (if not the) most heavily guarded borders in the world and relations between the Communist North Korean government and the rest of the free world can only be described as coolly hostile.
This is contrasted by the results in Vietnam. By all military accounts, the American and South Vietnamese forces utterly destroyed those of the Communist North Vietnamese Army regulars and the Viet Cong guerillas. The body count is not even close. The Communists won this conflict in the media, not the battlefield. It is important also to note that American anti-war sentiment, although certainly present, did not flair to its history making heights until the selective service draft was activated and expanded. Today, however, much of the West has somewhat normalized relations with Vietnam since the government there embraced economic policies more in-line with free societies.
During this period, American ties with pro-democratic governments across the globe were strengthened, as were America’s economic interests. The first country to develop nuclear power (and the only country ever to use it in anger) had become a true global Superpower. The development of nuclear arms and their delivery methods, however, were not the only fronts of the Cold War. Every aspect of national identity became a front in that conflict from the Space Race to the 100 meter dash at the quadrennial Olympic Games.
1970’s – Misery Index and Moral Equivalence
The end of the conflict in Vietnam marked a shift in American thinking. The perception at the time, which endures to this day, was that the Americans lost the war. Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian soldier in the 18th and 19th centuries, famously stated that “War is a continuation of politics by other means” (Brassford, 1994). In so keeping, the American psyche and belief in the irresistible force of Jeffersonian democracy was damaged after the “loss” in Vietnam.
Compounding the problem were the scandal of Watergate surrounding Richard Nixon’s re-election (and eventual resignation), lingering resentment from the Civil Rights movement and the abuse received by veterans returning from Vietnam, and a stagnant economy brought quickly to its knees by oil shortages (Heritage). President Carter, by all accounts a good man, nevertheless presided over what is arguably the worst period in American history since the Great Depression. Under his Administration, the Misery Index rose from 12.72 to 19.72, and averaged out at 16.26, the highest average for any president on record and the second highest raw increase from the beginning to the end of his single term in office (U.S. Misery Index).
So poor was American self-confidence that President Carter spoke about living with and accepting the reality of a long-term Soviet Union. In a commencement address at Notre Dame University in May of 1977, Carter said, “We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear” (Lord, 2009). His disastrous point-of-view made Communism – which was responsible for unimaginable human suffering and corruption – morally equivalent to the governments of the free world.
Tearing Down the Wall - Enter the Gipper
Not surprisingly, Carter was easily defeated in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Reagan ushered in a new era of optimism and spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” (1974) to which the whole freedom-loving world looked and admired. Reagan rebuilt the American military and ramped up spending on defense research projects. His most famous project was nick named Star Wars. In military parlance, it was (and is) known as SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative. For all practical purposes it was a proposal to deploy space-based anti-ballistic missile defenses.
During this time Reagan strengthened alliances throughout the free world which had been damaged by the specter of Vietnam, Nixon’s scandal, and Carter’s neglect, particularly with England and Israel. Reagan also took a page from Theodore Roosevelt’s playbook by taking a more active role in Latin America and ousting Manuel Noriega from Panama. Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are primarily credited with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Middle East
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, America’s role as the lone remaining Superpower has been one of world police force. In 1990, Iraqi forces, under the command of another brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded their oil rich neighbor Kuwait. Through the auspices of the United Nations, the U.S., then under President George H.W. Bush, led a coalition of allied countries in driving Iraq out of Kuwait and containing Iraqi aggression by establishing military bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and using the long standing base at Incirlik, Turkey, to patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones established by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East was seen by many in the Muslim world as an affront to Islam and a return to the Crusades, giving rise to international Islamic terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. Terrorists struck at the U.S. throughout the 1990s with minimal response from the Clinton Administration. It wasn’t until September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew commercial air planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the tragedy aboard American Airlines Flight 93 – where the passengers’ attempt to take back the plane resulted in its crash in a field in Pennsylvania – that America began to take international terrorism seriously.
President George W. Bush, the son of the elder President Bush, declared a Global War on Terror and quickly invaded Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was headquartered and received avid support from the Taliban government. In 2003, the younger President Bush, citing Iraqi defiance of 14 U.N. Security Council resolutions over 12 years, led a multi-national “Coalition of the Willing” in a six week rout of Saddam Hussein’s forces. The long-term occupation of Iraq proved to be much more difficult and controversial, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.
Conclusion: Going Forward Looking Backward
America has come a long way in the 233 years since the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence. In this relatively short period of time, the United States has risen from a rag-tag group of former European colonies into the undisputed leader of the free world. This long term trend of expansion, punctuated by periods of isolationist introspection, seems to lend credence to the 19th century idea of Manifest Destiny.
Whether by means of military, political or economic force, America has grown to a truly global empire. Not an empire under the iron fist of a dictator, such as envisioned by the likes of Roman Caesars and Communist oppressors, but an empire of interrelated societies with freedom of self-determination. Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan would be proud.
References
Bassford, C. (1994). Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945. New York: Oxford University Press
Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M., & Stoff, M. (2007). Nation of Nations, Volume 2, 6th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill
Lord, J. (2009). http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/31/jimmy-carters-spirit-of-notre/print
Nostro, R. (2008). Acquisition of the Philippines and Hawaii. Retrieved on April 29, 2009 from http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/comp/cw26HawaiiPhilippines_3hm.htm#note1
Phillips, J. (1979). The Iranian Oil Crisis. Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from the Heritage Foundation website: http://www.heritage.org/research/middleeast/bg76.cfm
Reagan, R. (1974, January 25). The Shining City Upon A Hill. Retrieved on April 28, 2009, from http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/quotes%20etc/Reagan_The%20Shining%20City%20Upon%20A%20Hill%20speech.htm
Tate, W. (1990). Empire (Recorded by Queensryche). On Empire album: EMI America
Townsend, C. (2003). The League of Nations and the United Nations. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/league_nations_02.shtml
U.S. Department of State. (2009). Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1913. Retrieved on May 2, 2009 from U.S. Department of State website: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ip/16324.htm
U.S. Misery Index. (2009). Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from http://www.miseryindex.us/
U.S. Territorial Maps (1996). Retrieved on May 1, 2009, from University of Virginia website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MAP/terr_hp.html
Effective Group Leadership
Effective Group Leadership
Dennis Schroader
MGMT 415
Theresa Thurman
September 22, 2008
Group leadership is a complex field of study with hundreds of studies and thousands of books, papers and websites dedicated to the subject. For the purpose of this paper, this writer has chosen to limit the discussion to material written for the text book used in this class and that written by Dale Carnegie; arguably the most famous proponent of public relations skills in history.
In order to be an effective leader of any group, one must understand the nature of leadership itself, decision making in a group setting, and team building and development. Underlying all of these topics is the necessity for interpersonal relationship skills. Someone in a position of authority within an organization can understand all the theories and strategies as laid out by the countless “gurus” peddling leadership courses, seminars and coaching, but if that person does not understand the fundamentals of how to deal with people, the theory is useless.
This paper will discuss the basics of leadership theory, group decision making and team building and development. This writer will discuss the learning included in the text by Johnson and Johnson (2009) followed by personal analysis of each of the aforementioned categories. This paper will conclude with learning drawn from Dale Carnegie’s famous “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936).
Johnson and Johnson (2009) discuss leadership at length, thoroughly describing the five major theories of effective leadership: genetic trait, styles of leadership, ability to influence others, occupying a position of authority and ability to provide situational leadership (p 169).
Genetic trait theory suggests that effective leaders are born with a natural ability to lead or are granted leadership by virtue of birthright, which is further broken down into the major categories of charismatic leaders and Machiavellian leaders (pp 177-182). Charismatic leaders are able to gain the support of their followers based more upon the power of their personality than the merits of their ideas. A good example of a charismatic leader is United States Senator and Presidential candidate Barak Obama, who is a fantastic orator but who has an extremely limited amount of experience when compared with historical Presidential candidates. Machiavellian leaders rise to power through duplicity and manipulation. They view and use others as objects that either help or hinder their own progress, not as people.
Leadership style theory suggests that a leader’s effectiveness is determined by which style they implement: Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-Faire (pp 183-184). Autocratic leaders are dictators exercising complete control over their subordinates and processes. Josef Stalin is a prime example of an autocratic leader. Laissez-Faire leaders are exactly opposite in that they take an extreme hands-off approach to leadership. Roman Emperor Nero, who is said to have played music while Rome burned, could be described as having a laissez-faire approach to leadership. Democratic leaders involve their subordinates in decision making, build consensus, and foster teamwork and cooperation. President Ronald Reagan is an example of a democratic leader due to his ability to effectively communicate his ideas and agenda for the country and build a strong national consensus (he won a forty-nine state landslide victory in his 1984 re-election bid).
Influential leadership theory suggests that a reciprocal role relationship exists between leaders and followers in which an exchange, or transaction, takes place. Without followers there can be no leader, and without a leader there can be no followers (p 185). In this theory, leadership is defined as the ability to influence others. This ability is not affected by the success or failure of the group as a whole. The leader’s ability to motivate, manipulate, or otherwise persuade the group to work together in support of the leader’s agenda. Adolf Hitler was an influential leader due to the fierce loyalty of his followers, some of whom have nearly deified him since his death.
Role Position theory suggests that leadership within groups begins with the formal role structure that defines the group’s hierarchy of authority (p 186). A leader has the authority – the legitimate power – to make decisions based upon his or her job title. The mere virtue of their position within the leadership structure of the organization is the bases for that authority. Role Position theory applies particularly well to the military and corporate America.
Situational leadership theory suggests that leadership is provided by group members varying their behavior to provide the actions a group needs at that specific time (p 191). Situational leaders arise in response to what is going on around them. Most such leaders, but for the specific situation, would probably not have otherwise gained notoriety. As the text notes, Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who led others to freedom, is an example of a situational leader.
Organizational leadership is all about changing business as usual, or as Johnson and Johnson put it, ”challenging the status quo” (p 215). In addition, organizational leaders must inspire a mutual vision empower individuals through teams, lead by example, and keep up morale. Donald Trump is a notable example of an organizational leader. This is differentiated from management, which is defined as maintaining the status quo.
Organizational leadership, by my own analysis, needs to incorporate some aspects of all of the leadership theories to be effective. In order to shake up the status quo, a leader must have some measure of charisma to inspire his followers to get behind his ideas. A leader must also implement a democratic style to give his followers a sense of ownership in the mission at hand. A leader must also recognize the influential relationship between himself and his subordinates. An organizational leader must be in an appropriate role with the required authority to implement his vision and requires the right person to be in the right role at the right time. Finally, an effective organizational leader must implement good decision making practices.
Few, if any, decisions are made in a vacuum. A leader must rely on his or her advisors. This group can be called a board of directors, a committee, or even an ad hoc advisory group, but whatever the name, the group must consist of people competent in the right arenas to form solid opinions and judgments to pass on to the boss. According to the text, effective group decisions must meet the following five criteria:
1. The resources of the group members are fully utilized.
2. Time is well used.
3. The decision is correct or of high quality.
4. The decision is implemented fully by all the required group members.
5. The problem-solving ability of the group is improved, or at least not lessened (pp 266-167).
Group decisions are often superior to individual decisions due to “process gain: the interaction among group members results in ideas, insights, and strategies that no one member previously had thought of on his or her own” (p 269). The danger of group decision making lies in the phenomenon known as “social impairment” (p 171). When the task at hand is difficult or unfamiliar, the presence of others hinders individual performance. Furthermore, group polarization, “the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members” (p 272) can cause further ill effects on the group decision.
For these reasons, a good organizational leaders needs to exercise sound judgment both in selecting the members of his or her group and in evaluating the group’s recommendations. The leader needs to ensure that the group members are not only competent, but also non-homogenous. A diverse team of people who complement each other’s knowledge, skills and characteristics is more productive and will frequently find more novel, innovative solutions to the situation at hand (p 278).
In some cases group decisions are not better than individual decisions. Sometimes the group does not have or effectively share accurate or relevant information or it may process the information in a biased manner (p 279). That is why it is important for the leader of the organization to weigh the conclusions and recommendations of the group and make his or her decision from there. Our text refers to this as “Method 4: Decision by Authority after Group Discussion” (p 286). Due to the potential for mistakes among group decisions, the leader must also work diligently on team development and training to ensure he or she has the best, most effective group possible.
Team building is all about improving the team’s performance and the manner by which the members interact with one another. The most important parts of achieving that goal are establishing positive interdependence and individual and team accountability. The former is necessary for the latter. Once both are achieved, team commitment follows.
According to Johnson and Johnson:
“The team is presented with a compelling mission that can be achieved if and only if all members work together effectively. [sic] Members sink or swim together. The members jointly redefine the mission into specific team goals and then translate the goals into measurable tasks they need to complete. Through this process members become committed to the team and accept ownership of its goals” (2009, p 538).
This is an expansion of the definition of positive interdependence from page 93. Johnson and Johnson further assert:
“The team must be accountable for achieving its goals, and each team member must be accountable for contributing his or her share of the work. The team must succeed, and all team members must contribute in concrete ways to the team’s success and do equivalent amounts of real work” (p 538).
While this establishes what team and individual accountability are, further exploration of these concepts is needed to realize their importance to team development.
Individual accountability is fairly easy to define, measure, and enforce. Each team member knows their role, responsibilities and expectations. Fulfilling these is the purpose of their job. Achieving and/or exceeding their mission gains rewards such as raises, bonuses and promotions. Failure results in counseling and possible demotion or termination. Care should be taken, however, to emphasize the positive consequences of success rather than the negatives of failure.
A good organizational leader needs to hold his or her team members accountable in such a way that individuals experience a personal sense of responsibility to the team and the mission. This is done through positive affirmation rather than criticism and ridicule. Dale Carnegie, world famous author of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936), wrote:
“If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism – no matter how certain we are that it is justified” (p 14).
In discussing the folly of criticism, he continues:
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and fools often do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving” (p 14).
Instead of criticism, a good leader should discover the causes of poor performance or objectionable behavior and address those. Carnegie writes, “That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness” (p 17).
Once an individual has accepted personal ownership of the mission and made his or her own commitment to the team, the goal of team accountability has been achieved. When each individual is accountable to themselves and each other, the team is bolstered. When a real sense of team accountability is realized, the individual members work more effectively together and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts (Johnson & Johnson, p 539).
In practical application, this means that an effective leader must get to know his or her people. A leader should discover what matters to them, why they chose the jobs they have, and where they want to be in the future. Once the leader knows these facts, he or she can work to link their subordinates’ individual motivations to the organization’s goals.
In conclusion, a leader must possess in some degree the traits of all of the leadership theories described by Johnson and Johnson (2009). These include charisma, a democratic (or quasi-democratic) leadership style, ability to positively influence others, occupation of an authority role, and an ability to adapt and provide leadership appropriate to the situation. The effective group leader must also know how to make good decisions including utilizing his or her people to assist in that process. Finally, a leader within any organization needs to know how to build and develop effective teams.
References
Carnegie, D. (1981). How to Win Friends & Influence People, Revised Edition. New York: Pocket Books
Johnson, D., & Johnson, F. (2009). Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills. Columbus: Pearson.
Leadership (2008). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on September 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership
Dennis Schroader
MGMT 415
Theresa Thurman
September 22, 2008
Group leadership is a complex field of study with hundreds of studies and thousands of books, papers and websites dedicated to the subject. For the purpose of this paper, this writer has chosen to limit the discussion to material written for the text book used in this class and that written by Dale Carnegie; arguably the most famous proponent of public relations skills in history.
In order to be an effective leader of any group, one must understand the nature of leadership itself, decision making in a group setting, and team building and development. Underlying all of these topics is the necessity for interpersonal relationship skills. Someone in a position of authority within an organization can understand all the theories and strategies as laid out by the countless “gurus” peddling leadership courses, seminars and coaching, but if that person does not understand the fundamentals of how to deal with people, the theory is useless.
This paper will discuss the basics of leadership theory, group decision making and team building and development. This writer will discuss the learning included in the text by Johnson and Johnson (2009) followed by personal analysis of each of the aforementioned categories. This paper will conclude with learning drawn from Dale Carnegie’s famous “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936).
Johnson and Johnson (2009) discuss leadership at length, thoroughly describing the five major theories of effective leadership: genetic trait, styles of leadership, ability to influence others, occupying a position of authority and ability to provide situational leadership (p 169).
Genetic trait theory suggests that effective leaders are born with a natural ability to lead or are granted leadership by virtue of birthright, which is further broken down into the major categories of charismatic leaders and Machiavellian leaders (pp 177-182). Charismatic leaders are able to gain the support of their followers based more upon the power of their personality than the merits of their ideas. A good example of a charismatic leader is United States Senator and Presidential candidate Barak Obama, who is a fantastic orator but who has an extremely limited amount of experience when compared with historical Presidential candidates. Machiavellian leaders rise to power through duplicity and manipulation. They view and use others as objects that either help or hinder their own progress, not as people.
Leadership style theory suggests that a leader’s effectiveness is determined by which style they implement: Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-Faire (pp 183-184). Autocratic leaders are dictators exercising complete control over their subordinates and processes. Josef Stalin is a prime example of an autocratic leader. Laissez-Faire leaders are exactly opposite in that they take an extreme hands-off approach to leadership. Roman Emperor Nero, who is said to have played music while Rome burned, could be described as having a laissez-faire approach to leadership. Democratic leaders involve their subordinates in decision making, build consensus, and foster teamwork and cooperation. President Ronald Reagan is an example of a democratic leader due to his ability to effectively communicate his ideas and agenda for the country and build a strong national consensus (he won a forty-nine state landslide victory in his 1984 re-election bid).
Influential leadership theory suggests that a reciprocal role relationship exists between leaders and followers in which an exchange, or transaction, takes place. Without followers there can be no leader, and without a leader there can be no followers (p 185). In this theory, leadership is defined as the ability to influence others. This ability is not affected by the success or failure of the group as a whole. The leader’s ability to motivate, manipulate, or otherwise persuade the group to work together in support of the leader’s agenda. Adolf Hitler was an influential leader due to the fierce loyalty of his followers, some of whom have nearly deified him since his death.
Role Position theory suggests that leadership within groups begins with the formal role structure that defines the group’s hierarchy of authority (p 186). A leader has the authority – the legitimate power – to make decisions based upon his or her job title. The mere virtue of their position within the leadership structure of the organization is the bases for that authority. Role Position theory applies particularly well to the military and corporate America.
Situational leadership theory suggests that leadership is provided by group members varying their behavior to provide the actions a group needs at that specific time (p 191). Situational leaders arise in response to what is going on around them. Most such leaders, but for the specific situation, would probably not have otherwise gained notoriety. As the text notes, Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who led others to freedom, is an example of a situational leader.
Organizational leadership is all about changing business as usual, or as Johnson and Johnson put it, ”challenging the status quo” (p 215). In addition, organizational leaders must inspire a mutual vision empower individuals through teams, lead by example, and keep up morale. Donald Trump is a notable example of an organizational leader. This is differentiated from management, which is defined as maintaining the status quo.
Organizational leadership, by my own analysis, needs to incorporate some aspects of all of the leadership theories to be effective. In order to shake up the status quo, a leader must have some measure of charisma to inspire his followers to get behind his ideas. A leader must also implement a democratic style to give his followers a sense of ownership in the mission at hand. A leader must also recognize the influential relationship between himself and his subordinates. An organizational leader must be in an appropriate role with the required authority to implement his vision and requires the right person to be in the right role at the right time. Finally, an effective organizational leader must implement good decision making practices.
Few, if any, decisions are made in a vacuum. A leader must rely on his or her advisors. This group can be called a board of directors, a committee, or even an ad hoc advisory group, but whatever the name, the group must consist of people competent in the right arenas to form solid opinions and judgments to pass on to the boss. According to the text, effective group decisions must meet the following five criteria:
1. The resources of the group members are fully utilized.
2. Time is well used.
3. The decision is correct or of high quality.
4. The decision is implemented fully by all the required group members.
5. The problem-solving ability of the group is improved, or at least not lessened (pp 266-167).
Group decisions are often superior to individual decisions due to “process gain: the interaction among group members results in ideas, insights, and strategies that no one member previously had thought of on his or her own” (p 269). The danger of group decision making lies in the phenomenon known as “social impairment” (p 171). When the task at hand is difficult or unfamiliar, the presence of others hinders individual performance. Furthermore, group polarization, “the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members” (p 272) can cause further ill effects on the group decision.
For these reasons, a good organizational leaders needs to exercise sound judgment both in selecting the members of his or her group and in evaluating the group’s recommendations. The leader needs to ensure that the group members are not only competent, but also non-homogenous. A diverse team of people who complement each other’s knowledge, skills and characteristics is more productive and will frequently find more novel, innovative solutions to the situation at hand (p 278).
In some cases group decisions are not better than individual decisions. Sometimes the group does not have or effectively share accurate or relevant information or it may process the information in a biased manner (p 279). That is why it is important for the leader of the organization to weigh the conclusions and recommendations of the group and make his or her decision from there. Our text refers to this as “Method 4: Decision by Authority after Group Discussion” (p 286). Due to the potential for mistakes among group decisions, the leader must also work diligently on team development and training to ensure he or she has the best, most effective group possible.
Team building is all about improving the team’s performance and the manner by which the members interact with one another. The most important parts of achieving that goal are establishing positive interdependence and individual and team accountability. The former is necessary for the latter. Once both are achieved, team commitment follows.
According to Johnson and Johnson:
“The team is presented with a compelling mission that can be achieved if and only if all members work together effectively. [sic] Members sink or swim together. The members jointly redefine the mission into specific team goals and then translate the goals into measurable tasks they need to complete. Through this process members become committed to the team and accept ownership of its goals” (2009, p 538).
This is an expansion of the definition of positive interdependence from page 93. Johnson and Johnson further assert:
“The team must be accountable for achieving its goals, and each team member must be accountable for contributing his or her share of the work. The team must succeed, and all team members must contribute in concrete ways to the team’s success and do equivalent amounts of real work” (p 538).
While this establishes what team and individual accountability are, further exploration of these concepts is needed to realize their importance to team development.
Individual accountability is fairly easy to define, measure, and enforce. Each team member knows their role, responsibilities and expectations. Fulfilling these is the purpose of their job. Achieving and/or exceeding their mission gains rewards such as raises, bonuses and promotions. Failure results in counseling and possible demotion or termination. Care should be taken, however, to emphasize the positive consequences of success rather than the negatives of failure.
A good organizational leader needs to hold his or her team members accountable in such a way that individuals experience a personal sense of responsibility to the team and the mission. This is done through positive affirmation rather than criticism and ridicule. Dale Carnegie, world famous author of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936), wrote:
“If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism – no matter how certain we are that it is justified” (p 14).
In discussing the folly of criticism, he continues:
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and fools often do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving” (p 14).
Instead of criticism, a good leader should discover the causes of poor performance or objectionable behavior and address those. Carnegie writes, “That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness” (p 17).
Once an individual has accepted personal ownership of the mission and made his or her own commitment to the team, the goal of team accountability has been achieved. When each individual is accountable to themselves and each other, the team is bolstered. When a real sense of team accountability is realized, the individual members work more effectively together and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts (Johnson & Johnson, p 539).
In practical application, this means that an effective leader must get to know his or her people. A leader should discover what matters to them, why they chose the jobs they have, and where they want to be in the future. Once the leader knows these facts, he or she can work to link their subordinates’ individual motivations to the organization’s goals.
In conclusion, a leader must possess in some degree the traits of all of the leadership theories described by Johnson and Johnson (2009). These include charisma, a democratic (or quasi-democratic) leadership style, ability to positively influence others, occupation of an authority role, and an ability to adapt and provide leadership appropriate to the situation. The effective group leader must also know how to make good decisions including utilizing his or her people to assist in that process. Finally, a leader within any organization needs to know how to build and develop effective teams.
References
Carnegie, D. (1981). How to Win Friends & Influence People, Revised Edition. New York: Pocket Books
Johnson, D., & Johnson, F. (2009). Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills. Columbus: Pearson.
Leadership (2008). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on September 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership
The Problem with the CRA
The Problem with the CRA
Dennis Schroader
BUS 311
Karen Bond
January 26, 2009
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) has caused a great deal of trouble for the American economy. Originally passed to help end discriminatory lending practices, its effect has been to cause lending institutions to write mortgage loans for borrowers and properties which may not otherwise qualify. This paper asserts that the CRA is primarily responsible for the current mortgage crisis and resultant recession.
This paper will discuss the political factors which influenced the passage of the CRA in the first place and those which have arisen from it, the legal precedent upon which the act was founded, the legal effect it has had on lending institutions, and its role in leading to the American housing market collapse and the widespread economic recession to which it gave birth.
Political Factors
As with all legislation, political influence played a large role in getting the CRA passed. The political reality of the day – unequal lending practices and racial animosity from the ongoing Civil Rights movement – ensured passage. Over the last thirty years, lobbyists and politicians have continued to exert political pressure.
Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland, wrote concerning the CRA, “…the Fed and other financial regulators have pressured/extorted banks into making more loans to less-than-creditworthy borrowers than they would normally be willing to risk” (The CRA Scam and its Defenders, 2008).
Legal Precedent
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Carter in 1977. This Act was a direct result of pressure from activist groups to address the conditions of lower-income and minority neighborhoods. It followed similar legislation passed to reduce discrimination in the credit and housing markets including the Fair Housing Act (1968), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974). The Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or other personal characteristics. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requires that financial institutions publicly disclose mortgage lending and application data. In contrast with those acts, the CRA seeks to ensure the provision of credit to all parts of a community without regard to the relative wealth or poverty of a neighborhood.
Legal Effect
When considering the legal impact of this legislation, it is important to keep in mind not only the intended outcomes – ending redlining and making lending practices fairer – but also the unintended results. To better understand the whole of the law, it is best to consult a legal expert. In a 1994 memorandum to Eugene Ludwig, then Comptroller of the Currency, Walter Dellinger, then Assistant Attorney General, wrote:
“The purpose of the CRA is 'to require each appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency to use its authority when examining financial institutions, to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.' 12 U.S.C. § 2901(b). To further this end, the CRA requires the agencies to assess an 'institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community,' 12 U.S.C. § 2903(1), and to 'take such record into account in its evaluation of an application for a deposit facility by such institution.' 12 U.S.C. § 2903(2). ;Application for a deposit facility' is defined to include applications for approval to open a branch, to relocate a main or branch office, or to merge with or acquire another institution. 12 U.S.C. § 2902(3)” (Dellinger, Authority of the Federal Financial Supervisory Agencies Under the Community Reinvestment Act, 1994).
From this legal opinion and from the text of the legislation itself, one concludes that this Act is intended to give federal regulatory agencies the authority to review lending practices. While they do not have the authority to impose fines or sanctions (that authority is granted under separate laws), these agencies get a say when a financial institution wants permission to grow. Financial institutions are businesses. Business wants to grow and expand.
An honest analysis of American government and political culture, however, reveals the perils for financial institutions which do not look impeccable on these reports. Although the law specifically mentions lending within “safe and sound operations”, if a bank or credit union is not lending enough within its geographical area, a bureaucrat may block further expansion or mergers with other institutions. Also, this may give cause for a special interest group to file a law suit. For example, in the case of Buycks-Robertson v Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank (1998), the plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Citibank under the CRA. According to Snopes.Com (2008), “The case was eventually settled out of court, with some class members receiving cash payments and Citibank agreeing to help ease the way for low- and moderate-income people to apply for mortgages.”
This example illustrates how the CRA can and has been used to bully banks and other lending institutions into altering lending policy so as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. That is no bad thing in and of itself, however, when that policy change induces an institution to make riskier loans, the results can be catastrophic when taken in aggregate.
The Housing Bubble, 2002-2007
Among other reasons, the housing bubble resulted from a culture of importance placed upon home ownership, belief that housing is always a good investment, promotion in the media, historically low interest rates, and risky mortgage products and lax lending standards (Wikipedia, Causes of the United States Housing Bubble, 2009). While the CRA does not specifically require lax lending, it does set up an environment conducive to such, as previously discussed. One of the new practices regarding mortgages was called “securitization”. Among complex economic topics, this one is extremely complex and far beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that turning mortgages (not real estate) into traded securities has been controversial, to put it mildly.
According to Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia, “Bubbles can be definitively identified only in hindsight after a market correction, which in the U.S. housing market began in 2005–2006. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said ‘We had a bubble in housing’, and also said in the wake of the subprime mortgage and credit crisis in 2007, ‘I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006’” (United States Housing Bubble, 2009). Alan Greenspan is widely regarded as the single greatest economic mind of the last two decades. His assertion that he didn’t get it both strains credulity and lends credence to those who protest that they in no way foresaw what was coming next.
The Housing Crash, 2007-2008 The Great Debate
There are plenty of very smart people who completely disagree with each other on the CRA’s role in the housing crash. Paul Weyrich, former Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, wrote concerning the CRA. “It is among the factors responsible for the worst housing crisis in America since 1932” (The Subprime Causation Fiasco Continues, 2008). Aaron Pressman writes, “CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley”
Lahle Wolfe of About.Com, a part of the New York Times Company, wrote, “There was no mortgage crisis prior to [2005] when CRA regulations were substantially weakened by Bush, but in the years following we saw a sharp increase and beginnings of a wide spread problem with subprime mortgages. It is also extremely important to note that the bulk of unfair and high-risk loans were offered by lenders who were not even subject to CRA regulations” (Is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to Blame for the Mortgage Crisis? 2009). This is only included to illustrate that there are also plenty of smart people who are also completely unqualified to comment on certain topics. Ms. Wolfe should have consulted with Mr. Greenspan.
The Recession, 2008 - ?
It is difficult to discuss a recession and its likely causes without entering into a complex economic analysis. Since the only purpose of discussing this recession and its causes is to analyze the affect of bad law, the parameters of this discussion will be extremely limited. That being said, this brief investigation into the cause of economic recession will focus on how a housing market crash can cause widespread problems.
J.W. Elphinstone of the Associated Press reported, “Unlike downturns in some sectors, a slowdown in housing can affect jobs across many industries from financial services to construction to home furnishing retailers, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc.” (Housing Woes a Recession Catalyst? 2007). This is because so many industries are tied to housing. According to Wikipedia, “Any collapse of the U.S. Housing Bubble has a direct impact not only on home valuations, but the nation's mortgage markets, home builders, real estate, home supply retail outlets, Wall Street hedge funds held by large institutional investors, and foreign banks, increasing the risk of a nationwide recession” (2009).
Real estate agents and brokers and mortgage loan officers make their living based solely on the number of sales they close. The same is true of home inspectors and title and escrow companies. Construction companies get fewer contracts. Insurance agents sell fewer homeowners insurance policies. These are typically higher paying career fields.
All of these people have mortgages, credit cards and car payments of their own. When their income is affected, they have to start making decisions about whether to take the annual family vacation or send the kid to college. Tourism drops. Service industry businesses lose business and cut back on their hourly employees’ hours. These, the lowest paid of the American workforce, now have to cut out the daily Starbucks, switch to generic peanut butter, and cancel HBO and Showtime. Even governments begin to report lesser tax receipts.
Slowly but surely, everyone starts to feel the pressure. Those who own homes try to maintain their standard of living with a home equity line of credit, only to find out that their home is not worth what it used to be and the banks are more stringent with their lending guidelines. At this point, financial institutions – which have financed the whole show, up to this point – are frantically trying to off-load the bad debt and shore up their portfolios. This is a recession which, if unarrested, may degenerate into a depression.
The Ethical Argument Against the CRA
Wolfe (2009) also wrote in the same piece previous cited, “I am not an economist, nor a politician, I am a business women but it is hard to see how a 30-year-old law that has been substantially watered-down (revised in May 1995 by Bill Clinton to strengthen the CRA and amended in August 2005 by George Bush to weaken CRA law) is now to blame for the mortgage crisis.” She is right. She is neither a politician nor an economist. As such, it is understandable that she fails to see how the CRA is to blame for our current troubles. Economics is a difficult field of study to fully understand. American politics is absolutely impossible!
The CRA created a climate – albeit unintentionally – where financial institutions needed to look as good as possible to federal regulators and diversity groups for good PR and to avoid costly litigation. It doesn’t even matter if the institution wins or settles the lawsuit. The cost to fight it can be extraordinary and the PR damage nearly impossible to undo. While certainly well intentioned, the actual effect of this law has been to influence lending institutions to make risky loans and confuse otherwise intelligent people who nevertheless lack either the capacity or inclination to fully research the topic.
It is unfortunate, but true, that politics plays a role in nearly every aspect of American life. It is reasonable to assume that the same is true of other nations, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. Political influences cause legislation to be passed, usually with good intentions, but without full consideration of the potential unintended consequences.
In the case of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the Congress and President Carter surely only intended to eliminate redlining and other discriminatory lending practices. What resulted was a law by which activist groups can (and have) threaten financial institutions with costly lawsuits in order to further their own agendas. Home mortgage lenders have revised their lending criteria to ensure that they look good in the eyes of these special interest groups. It is a general truism that when special interests are being served, the common interest is neglected. The CRA is a prime example of this, as can be readily seen by the economic carnage of the last two years.
References:
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 94 C 4094 (N.D. Ill.). (1998)
Dellinger, W. (1994, December 15). Authority of the Federal Financial Supervisory Agencies Under the Community Reinvestment Act. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from U.S. Department of Justice website: http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/cra.htm
DiLorenzo, T. (2008). The CRA Scam and its Defenders. Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved January 20, 2009 from http://mises.org/story/2963
Elphinstone, J. (2007). Housing Woes a Recession Catalyst? CBS News Online. Retrieved on January 23, 2009 from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/19/2007/main3632153.shtml?source=related_story
Loan Arranger, The. (2008). Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/loans.asp
Pressman, A. (2008). Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis. Business Week. Retrieved January 20, 2009 from http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html
Weyrich, P. (2008). The Subprime Causation Fiasco Continues. Townhall.Com. Retrieved January 20, 2009, from http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulWeyrich/2008/12/09/the_subprime_causation_fiasco_continues
Wikipedia. (2008). Causes of the United States Housing Bubble. Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_United_States_housing_bubble
Wikipedia. (2009). United States Housing Bubble. Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble
Wolfe, L. (2009). Is The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to Blame for the Mortgage Crisis? About.Com. Retrieved January 22, 2009 from http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/womenspolitics/a/cra-lie-truths.htm
Dennis Schroader
BUS 311
Karen Bond
January 26, 2009
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) has caused a great deal of trouble for the American economy. Originally passed to help end discriminatory lending practices, its effect has been to cause lending institutions to write mortgage loans for borrowers and properties which may not otherwise qualify. This paper asserts that the CRA is primarily responsible for the current mortgage crisis and resultant recession.
This paper will discuss the political factors which influenced the passage of the CRA in the first place and those which have arisen from it, the legal precedent upon which the act was founded, the legal effect it has had on lending institutions, and its role in leading to the American housing market collapse and the widespread economic recession to which it gave birth.
Political Factors
As with all legislation, political influence played a large role in getting the CRA passed. The political reality of the day – unequal lending practices and racial animosity from the ongoing Civil Rights movement – ensured passage. Over the last thirty years, lobbyists and politicians have continued to exert political pressure.
Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland, wrote concerning the CRA, “…the Fed and other financial regulators have pressured/extorted banks into making more loans to less-than-creditworthy borrowers than they would normally be willing to risk” (The CRA Scam and its Defenders, 2008).
Legal Precedent
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Carter in 1977. This Act was a direct result of pressure from activist groups to address the conditions of lower-income and minority neighborhoods. It followed similar legislation passed to reduce discrimination in the credit and housing markets including the Fair Housing Act (1968), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974). The Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or other personal characteristics. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requires that financial institutions publicly disclose mortgage lending and application data. In contrast with those acts, the CRA seeks to ensure the provision of credit to all parts of a community without regard to the relative wealth or poverty of a neighborhood.
Legal Effect
When considering the legal impact of this legislation, it is important to keep in mind not only the intended outcomes – ending redlining and making lending practices fairer – but also the unintended results. To better understand the whole of the law, it is best to consult a legal expert. In a 1994 memorandum to Eugene Ludwig, then Comptroller of the Currency, Walter Dellinger, then Assistant Attorney General, wrote:
“The purpose of the CRA is 'to require each appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency to use its authority when examining financial institutions, to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.' 12 U.S.C. § 2901(b). To further this end, the CRA requires the agencies to assess an 'institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community,' 12 U.S.C. § 2903(1), and to 'take such record into account in its evaluation of an application for a deposit facility by such institution.' 12 U.S.C. § 2903(2). ;Application for a deposit facility' is defined to include applications for approval to open a branch, to relocate a main or branch office, or to merge with or acquire another institution. 12 U.S.C. § 2902(3)” (Dellinger, Authority of the Federal Financial Supervisory Agencies Under the Community Reinvestment Act, 1994).
From this legal opinion and from the text of the legislation itself, one concludes that this Act is intended to give federal regulatory agencies the authority to review lending practices. While they do not have the authority to impose fines or sanctions (that authority is granted under separate laws), these agencies get a say when a financial institution wants permission to grow. Financial institutions are businesses. Business wants to grow and expand.
An honest analysis of American government and political culture, however, reveals the perils for financial institutions which do not look impeccable on these reports. Although the law specifically mentions lending within “safe and sound operations”, if a bank or credit union is not lending enough within its geographical area, a bureaucrat may block further expansion or mergers with other institutions. Also, this may give cause for a special interest group to file a law suit. For example, in the case of Buycks-Robertson v Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank (1998), the plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Citibank under the CRA. According to Snopes.Com (2008), “The case was eventually settled out of court, with some class members receiving cash payments and Citibank agreeing to help ease the way for low- and moderate-income people to apply for mortgages.”
This example illustrates how the CRA can and has been used to bully banks and other lending institutions into altering lending policy so as to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. That is no bad thing in and of itself, however, when that policy change induces an institution to make riskier loans, the results can be catastrophic when taken in aggregate.
The Housing Bubble, 2002-2007
Among other reasons, the housing bubble resulted from a culture of importance placed upon home ownership, belief that housing is always a good investment, promotion in the media, historically low interest rates, and risky mortgage products and lax lending standards (Wikipedia, Causes of the United States Housing Bubble, 2009). While the CRA does not specifically require lax lending, it does set up an environment conducive to such, as previously discussed. One of the new practices regarding mortgages was called “securitization”. Among complex economic topics, this one is extremely complex and far beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that turning mortgages (not real estate) into traded securities has been controversial, to put it mildly.
According to Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia, “Bubbles can be definitively identified only in hindsight after a market correction, which in the U.S. housing market began in 2005–2006. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said ‘We had a bubble in housing’, and also said in the wake of the subprime mortgage and credit crisis in 2007, ‘I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006’” (United States Housing Bubble, 2009). Alan Greenspan is widely regarded as the single greatest economic mind of the last two decades. His assertion that he didn’t get it both strains credulity and lends credence to those who protest that they in no way foresaw what was coming next.
The Housing Crash, 2007-2008 The Great Debate
There are plenty of very smart people who completely disagree with each other on the CRA’s role in the housing crash. Paul Weyrich, former Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, wrote concerning the CRA. “It is among the factors responsible for the worst housing crisis in America since 1932” (The Subprime Causation Fiasco Continues, 2008). Aaron Pressman writes, “CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley”
Lahle Wolfe of About.Com, a part of the New York Times Company, wrote, “There was no mortgage crisis prior to [2005] when CRA regulations were substantially weakened by Bush, but in the years following we saw a sharp increase and beginnings of a wide spread problem with subprime mortgages. It is also extremely important to note that the bulk of unfair and high-risk loans were offered by lenders who were not even subject to CRA regulations” (Is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to Blame for the Mortgage Crisis? 2009). This is only included to illustrate that there are also plenty of smart people who are also completely unqualified to comment on certain topics. Ms. Wolfe should have consulted with Mr. Greenspan.
The Recession, 2008 - ?
It is difficult to discuss a recession and its likely causes without entering into a complex economic analysis. Since the only purpose of discussing this recession and its causes is to analyze the affect of bad law, the parameters of this discussion will be extremely limited. That being said, this brief investigation into the cause of economic recession will focus on how a housing market crash can cause widespread problems.
J.W. Elphinstone of the Associated Press reported, “Unlike downturns in some sectors, a slowdown in housing can affect jobs across many industries from financial services to construction to home furnishing retailers, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc.” (Housing Woes a Recession Catalyst? 2007). This is because so many industries are tied to housing. According to Wikipedia, “Any collapse of the U.S. Housing Bubble has a direct impact not only on home valuations, but the nation's mortgage markets, home builders, real estate, home supply retail outlets, Wall Street hedge funds held by large institutional investors, and foreign banks, increasing the risk of a nationwide recession” (2009).
Real estate agents and brokers and mortgage loan officers make their living based solely on the number of sales they close. The same is true of home inspectors and title and escrow companies. Construction companies get fewer contracts. Insurance agents sell fewer homeowners insurance policies. These are typically higher paying career fields.
All of these people have mortgages, credit cards and car payments of their own. When their income is affected, they have to start making decisions about whether to take the annual family vacation or send the kid to college. Tourism drops. Service industry businesses lose business and cut back on their hourly employees’ hours. These, the lowest paid of the American workforce, now have to cut out the daily Starbucks, switch to generic peanut butter, and cancel HBO and Showtime. Even governments begin to report lesser tax receipts.
Slowly but surely, everyone starts to feel the pressure. Those who own homes try to maintain their standard of living with a home equity line of credit, only to find out that their home is not worth what it used to be and the banks are more stringent with their lending guidelines. At this point, financial institutions – which have financed the whole show, up to this point – are frantically trying to off-load the bad debt and shore up their portfolios. This is a recession which, if unarrested, may degenerate into a depression.
The Ethical Argument Against the CRA
Wolfe (2009) also wrote in the same piece previous cited, “I am not an economist, nor a politician, I am a business women but it is hard to see how a 30-year-old law that has been substantially watered-down (revised in May 1995 by Bill Clinton to strengthen the CRA and amended in August 2005 by George Bush to weaken CRA law) is now to blame for the mortgage crisis.” She is right. She is neither a politician nor an economist. As such, it is understandable that she fails to see how the CRA is to blame for our current troubles. Economics is a difficult field of study to fully understand. American politics is absolutely impossible!
The CRA created a climate – albeit unintentionally – where financial institutions needed to look as good as possible to federal regulators and diversity groups for good PR and to avoid costly litigation. It doesn’t even matter if the institution wins or settles the lawsuit. The cost to fight it can be extraordinary and the PR damage nearly impossible to undo. While certainly well intentioned, the actual effect of this law has been to influence lending institutions to make risky loans and confuse otherwise intelligent people who nevertheless lack either the capacity or inclination to fully research the topic.
It is unfortunate, but true, that politics plays a role in nearly every aspect of American life. It is reasonable to assume that the same is true of other nations, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. Political influences cause legislation to be passed, usually with good intentions, but without full consideration of the potential unintended consequences.
In the case of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the Congress and President Carter surely only intended to eliminate redlining and other discriminatory lending practices. What resulted was a law by which activist groups can (and have) threaten financial institutions with costly lawsuits in order to further their own agendas. Home mortgage lenders have revised their lending criteria to ensure that they look good in the eyes of these special interest groups. It is a general truism that when special interests are being served, the common interest is neglected. The CRA is a prime example of this, as can be readily seen by the economic carnage of the last two years.
References:
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 94 C 4094 (N.D. Ill.). (1998)
Dellinger, W. (1994, December 15). Authority of the Federal Financial Supervisory Agencies Under the Community Reinvestment Act. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from U.S. Department of Justice website: http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/cra.htm
DiLorenzo, T. (2008). The CRA Scam and its Defenders. Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved January 20, 2009 from http://mises.org/story/2963
Elphinstone, J. (2007). Housing Woes a Recession Catalyst? CBS News Online. Retrieved on January 23, 2009 from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/19/2007/main3632153.shtml?source=related_story
Loan Arranger, The. (2008). Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/loans.asp
Pressman, A. (2008). Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis. Business Week. Retrieved January 20, 2009 from http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html
Weyrich, P. (2008). The Subprime Causation Fiasco Continues. Townhall.Com. Retrieved January 20, 2009, from http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulWeyrich/2008/12/09/the_subprime_causation_fiasco_continues
Wikipedia. (2008). Causes of the United States Housing Bubble. Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_United_States_housing_bubble
Wikipedia. (2009). United States Housing Bubble. Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble
Wolfe, L. (2009). Is The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to Blame for the Mortgage Crisis? About.Com. Retrieved January 22, 2009 from http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/womenspolitics/a/cra-lie-truths.htm
Government & the Economy
Government & the Economy
Dennis Schroader
SOC 101
Brianne Larsen
May 24, 2010
As social institutions go, the two that have the greatest impact on the everyday lives of people are government and the economy. As stated in the text:
“It’s hard to imagine two social institutions more intertwined than government and the economy. Besides serving as the largest employer in the nation, government at all levels regulates commerce and entry into many occupations. At the same time, the economy generates the revenue to support government services” (Schaefer, 2009, p 345).
The governmental/political system is the means through which a society implements policy and procedure to achieve its goals. This is a universal institution, differing only in scope and scale. The institution of the federal government in the United States of America, for example, began as a body of extremely limited authority, deferring instead to the sovereignty of the several states (US Constitution, Amendment X). Today, the scope of federal involvement in the everyday affairs of American citizens has evolved to the point at which it is nearly absolute.
According to the text, “The term economic system refers to the social institution through which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed” (p 344). Government regulates everyday behavior by this primary means. This as opposed to using police and military forces to respond to criminal and extraordinary events, or schools and media outlets for long-term social control.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and describe the role of the joint institutions of the government and economy as viewed through the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives.
The functionalist view “emphasizes the way in which the parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability” (Schaefer, 2009, p 14). Adherents to this theory view the parts of society as different organs of the body, which work together for the survival of the whole. The first tenet of Functionalism as it applies to a government or society is, “Any group or society must replace personnel when they die, leave, or become incapacitated… through such means as immigration, annexation of neighboring groups, acquisition of slaves, or sexual reproduction” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). This seems self-evident. A failure to accomplish this fundamental task necessarily leads to the decline and ultimate irrelevancy of a society as illustrated in the description of the Shakers in the text (p 113). An opposite example is that of the United States of America, which has been so successful at attracting new people that there is currently a major national debate about immigration control.
The second tenet of the Functionalist view is that, “…finding or producing new members is not sufficient; the group or society must also encourage recruits to learn and accept its values and customs” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). This is done through most directly through schools, but governments also have other means by which they can influence society’s values. Some governments, such as China, Venezuela and Cuba among others, overtly control all aspects of the media. In this way, they can prevent dissenting points of view from entering the mass media market. Other nations, such as the United States, do not exercise direct media control, but influence media outlets through other means, such as subsidies or interview exclusives. In the United States, certain social values are also promoted through what research is funded, particularly at the college level. For instance, the US government has funded research into “global warming” to determine what can and should be done to alter the course, yet the same government has not funded a single project to question and challenge the assumptions of the phenomenon itself. By so doing, the government implicitly places its stamp of approval on the notion of man-caused global warming.
The third tenet of the Functionalist view is that, “Any relatively permanent group or society must provide and distribute desired goods and services to its members” and, “The group must satisfy the needs of most members to some extent, or it will risk the possibility of discontent and ultimately disorder” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). Governments achieve this through their interaction with their economic system.
The two basic types of economic models are capitalism and socialism (p 344). The capitalist system, as originally envisioned by Adam Smith in his work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), takes the position that the individual – rather than the collective – is best able to meet the needs and desires for himself and his family when he is free to do so without artificial external interferences, such as from government (Smith & Cannan (Ed), 1904). Smith’s philosophy is based on the principle of voluntary exchange. He noticed “a propensity in human nature… to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another… It is common to all men, and to be found in no other… animals… Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog” (Smith, in O’Sullivan, Sheffrin, & Perez, 2008). Smith theorized that a natural force – that he dubbed an “invisible hand” – would cause markets to function for the greatest benefit of society and reach equilibrium. In theory, this would require businesses to compete and evolve to best meet the needs and desires of their customers, thereby promoting the best interests of the company and consumer alike. The major flaw of capitalism is the non-existence of Smith’s ideal of a “perfectly free market” in which every consumer has perfect and immediate information about the companies with which they do business and products they purchase. Because it does not exist, markets must necessarily be regulated by government to protect against corporate abuses and excesses.
Socialism rejects free-market principles in favor of collective ownership of the means of production. “The basic objective of [socialism] is to meet people’s needs rather than to maximize profits” (Schaefer, 2009, p 346). The socialist theory as defined by Karl Marx criticizes capitalism as an exploitative institution whereby the rich business owners (the bourgeoisie) oppress their employees (the proletariat) by controlling the means of production. Marxist theory takes what is to them the next logical step by claiming, “A central government, acting as the representative of the people, should make basic economic decisions” (Schaefer, 2009, p 346). The “evolution” of this theory, according to Marx, is communism, in which the collective – by way of the state – owns all property and there are no social distinctions. This ideal has never worked through history, although proponents would argue that its failure has been one of implementation rather than a flaw in the philosophical and economic models. This is, in essence, the “it would work if you would just do it right” argument which does nothing to support or advance the theory. The major flaw in this theory is that it discounts human nature. Some people will work until they die for a cause they believe in, others will only work for so long until they demand results, and the rest will only work as hard as they have to in order to get by. This is illustrated in George Orwell’s dystopian satire of the now fallen Soviet Union, “Animal Farm” (1945).
The fourth tenet of Functionalism is that of preserving order. “Failure to preserve order and defend against conquest leads to the death not only of a people, but of a culture” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). One of the major points of concern in the immigration debate is that the illegal immigration represents a failure of the American society to preserve order and defend against conquest.
The fifth and final tenet of the functionalist view is, “People must feel motivated to continue as members of a group or society in order to fulfill the first four requirements.” Further, “Patriotism, then, assists some people in developing and maintaining a sense of purpose” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). Recalling the reference to Animal Farm, this tenet is fundamentally represented by the character “Boxer”, the workhorse, who was driven by his sense of duty to sacrifice himself for the purpose of providing a better future for his society. Alternatively, one of the other horse characters, “Mollie”, was far more vain and self-indulgent and quickly left the farm when it became necessary to contribute. In this example, “Mollie’s” lack of purpose as it applies to the society influenced her to seek another society where her true purpose – being pampered by humans – could be realized.
The conflict perspective disagrees with functionalism. While both views agree that governments exist to “meet basic social needs”, the conflict theory objects to idea that outcome is efficient or desirable (p 114). In similar fashion with Marxist theory, the conflict perspective insists that major institutions exist to maintain the privileges of the powerful, thereby contributing to the powerlessness of others. Conflict theorists believe government is inherently conservative (resistant to change) and discriminatory.
A person who subscribes to the conflict view may take a radical stance or action to affect the social change they seek. William Ayers – a domestic terrorist who bombed the New York City Police Department headquarters, the US Capitol Building and the Pentagon in the early 1970’s - is a prime example of conflict theory in action. Other domestic examples include Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols – the bombers of the Oklahoma City federal building – and Adam “Azzam Al-Ameriki” Gadahn – the California-born traitor who joined al Qaeda to fight against the United States and its allies.
The interactionist view “emphasizes that social behavior is conditioned by the roles and statuses we accept, the groups to which we belong, and the institutions within which we function” (Schaefer, 2009, p 114). In contrast with the other two perspectives discussed, this viewpoint takes a “bottom-up” or micro-sociological approach to “explain society as a whole” (p 16). This theory focuses on the everyday interaction among members of society as the means of social change. The text discusses increased globalization – greater interaction among diverse members of different societies – and specifically the recent evolution of the Chinese economy into one that represents an ever-growing capitalist presence because of this interaction (pp 348 – 349).
The primary effect of the interactionist view is on the individual level. As people interact more and more with others in a non-homogenous environment, an informal cultural exchange takes place. The American sees aspects of Indian culture worthy of emulating. The Chinese sees the benefits of moving to a free-market system through their interaction with Americans and American businesses. Social change is accomplished by planting these seeds in the individual rather than through sweeping legislation or massive social movements.
Each theory makes its own case for the state of society in general and how its adherents might affect social change. This brief and far from exhaustive glimpse of different sociological perspectives on the joint institution of the government and economy reveals the incredible impact on the populace as a whole. As humanity as a whole and the societies within evolve, these theories are tested and modified to likewise evolve. The institution of government and the economy, both resistant to change through social inertia, serves the purpose of establishing the guidelines and protocols through which activists of all sorts may attempt to bring about their vision of society.
References
Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. London: Secker & Warburg.
Schaefer, R. (2009). Sociology: A Brief Introduction, 8th Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Smith, A., Cannan, E. (Ed.). (1904). Wealth of Nations, Cannan Edition, 5th edition. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
US Const., amend. X.
Dennis Schroader
SOC 101
Brianne Larsen
May 24, 2010
As social institutions go, the two that have the greatest impact on the everyday lives of people are government and the economy. As stated in the text:
“It’s hard to imagine two social institutions more intertwined than government and the economy. Besides serving as the largest employer in the nation, government at all levels regulates commerce and entry into many occupations. At the same time, the economy generates the revenue to support government services” (Schaefer, 2009, p 345).
The governmental/political system is the means through which a society implements policy and procedure to achieve its goals. This is a universal institution, differing only in scope and scale. The institution of the federal government in the United States of America, for example, began as a body of extremely limited authority, deferring instead to the sovereignty of the several states (US Constitution, Amendment X). Today, the scope of federal involvement in the everyday affairs of American citizens has evolved to the point at which it is nearly absolute.
According to the text, “The term economic system refers to the social institution through which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed” (p 344). Government regulates everyday behavior by this primary means. This as opposed to using police and military forces to respond to criminal and extraordinary events, or schools and media outlets for long-term social control.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and describe the role of the joint institutions of the government and economy as viewed through the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives.
The functionalist view “emphasizes the way in which the parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability” (Schaefer, 2009, p 14). Adherents to this theory view the parts of society as different organs of the body, which work together for the survival of the whole. The first tenet of Functionalism as it applies to a government or society is, “Any group or society must replace personnel when they die, leave, or become incapacitated… through such means as immigration, annexation of neighboring groups, acquisition of slaves, or sexual reproduction” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). This seems self-evident. A failure to accomplish this fundamental task necessarily leads to the decline and ultimate irrelevancy of a society as illustrated in the description of the Shakers in the text (p 113). An opposite example is that of the United States of America, which has been so successful at attracting new people that there is currently a major national debate about immigration control.
The second tenet of the Functionalist view is that, “…finding or producing new members is not sufficient; the group or society must also encourage recruits to learn and accept its values and customs” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). This is done through most directly through schools, but governments also have other means by which they can influence society’s values. Some governments, such as China, Venezuela and Cuba among others, overtly control all aspects of the media. In this way, they can prevent dissenting points of view from entering the mass media market. Other nations, such as the United States, do not exercise direct media control, but influence media outlets through other means, such as subsidies or interview exclusives. In the United States, certain social values are also promoted through what research is funded, particularly at the college level. For instance, the US government has funded research into “global warming” to determine what can and should be done to alter the course, yet the same government has not funded a single project to question and challenge the assumptions of the phenomenon itself. By so doing, the government implicitly places its stamp of approval on the notion of man-caused global warming.
The third tenet of the Functionalist view is that, “Any relatively permanent group or society must provide and distribute desired goods and services to its members” and, “The group must satisfy the needs of most members to some extent, or it will risk the possibility of discontent and ultimately disorder” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). Governments achieve this through their interaction with their economic system.
The two basic types of economic models are capitalism and socialism (p 344). The capitalist system, as originally envisioned by Adam Smith in his work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), takes the position that the individual – rather than the collective – is best able to meet the needs and desires for himself and his family when he is free to do so without artificial external interferences, such as from government (Smith & Cannan (Ed), 1904). Smith’s philosophy is based on the principle of voluntary exchange. He noticed “a propensity in human nature… to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another… It is common to all men, and to be found in no other… animals… Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog” (Smith, in O’Sullivan, Sheffrin, & Perez, 2008). Smith theorized that a natural force – that he dubbed an “invisible hand” – would cause markets to function for the greatest benefit of society and reach equilibrium. In theory, this would require businesses to compete and evolve to best meet the needs and desires of their customers, thereby promoting the best interests of the company and consumer alike. The major flaw of capitalism is the non-existence of Smith’s ideal of a “perfectly free market” in which every consumer has perfect and immediate information about the companies with which they do business and products they purchase. Because it does not exist, markets must necessarily be regulated by government to protect against corporate abuses and excesses.
Socialism rejects free-market principles in favor of collective ownership of the means of production. “The basic objective of [socialism] is to meet people’s needs rather than to maximize profits” (Schaefer, 2009, p 346). The socialist theory as defined by Karl Marx criticizes capitalism as an exploitative institution whereby the rich business owners (the bourgeoisie) oppress their employees (the proletariat) by controlling the means of production. Marxist theory takes what is to them the next logical step by claiming, “A central government, acting as the representative of the people, should make basic economic decisions” (Schaefer, 2009, p 346). The “evolution” of this theory, according to Marx, is communism, in which the collective – by way of the state – owns all property and there are no social distinctions. This ideal has never worked through history, although proponents would argue that its failure has been one of implementation rather than a flaw in the philosophical and economic models. This is, in essence, the “it would work if you would just do it right” argument which does nothing to support or advance the theory. The major flaw in this theory is that it discounts human nature. Some people will work until they die for a cause they believe in, others will only work for so long until they demand results, and the rest will only work as hard as they have to in order to get by. This is illustrated in George Orwell’s dystopian satire of the now fallen Soviet Union, “Animal Farm” (1945).
The fourth tenet of Functionalism is that of preserving order. “Failure to preserve order and defend against conquest leads to the death not only of a people, but of a culture” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). One of the major points of concern in the immigration debate is that the illegal immigration represents a failure of the American society to preserve order and defend against conquest.
The fifth and final tenet of the functionalist view is, “People must feel motivated to continue as members of a group or society in order to fulfill the first four requirements.” Further, “Patriotism, then, assists some people in developing and maintaining a sense of purpose” (Schaefer, 2009, p 113). Recalling the reference to Animal Farm, this tenet is fundamentally represented by the character “Boxer”, the workhorse, who was driven by his sense of duty to sacrifice himself for the purpose of providing a better future for his society. Alternatively, one of the other horse characters, “Mollie”, was far more vain and self-indulgent and quickly left the farm when it became necessary to contribute. In this example, “Mollie’s” lack of purpose as it applies to the society influenced her to seek another society where her true purpose – being pampered by humans – could be realized.
The conflict perspective disagrees with functionalism. While both views agree that governments exist to “meet basic social needs”, the conflict theory objects to idea that outcome is efficient or desirable (p 114). In similar fashion with Marxist theory, the conflict perspective insists that major institutions exist to maintain the privileges of the powerful, thereby contributing to the powerlessness of others. Conflict theorists believe government is inherently conservative (resistant to change) and discriminatory.
A person who subscribes to the conflict view may take a radical stance or action to affect the social change they seek. William Ayers – a domestic terrorist who bombed the New York City Police Department headquarters, the US Capitol Building and the Pentagon in the early 1970’s - is a prime example of conflict theory in action. Other domestic examples include Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols – the bombers of the Oklahoma City federal building – and Adam “Azzam Al-Ameriki” Gadahn – the California-born traitor who joined al Qaeda to fight against the United States and its allies.
The interactionist view “emphasizes that social behavior is conditioned by the roles and statuses we accept, the groups to which we belong, and the institutions within which we function” (Schaefer, 2009, p 114). In contrast with the other two perspectives discussed, this viewpoint takes a “bottom-up” or micro-sociological approach to “explain society as a whole” (p 16). This theory focuses on the everyday interaction among members of society as the means of social change. The text discusses increased globalization – greater interaction among diverse members of different societies – and specifically the recent evolution of the Chinese economy into one that represents an ever-growing capitalist presence because of this interaction (pp 348 – 349).
The primary effect of the interactionist view is on the individual level. As people interact more and more with others in a non-homogenous environment, an informal cultural exchange takes place. The American sees aspects of Indian culture worthy of emulating. The Chinese sees the benefits of moving to a free-market system through their interaction with Americans and American businesses. Social change is accomplished by planting these seeds in the individual rather than through sweeping legislation or massive social movements.
Each theory makes its own case for the state of society in general and how its adherents might affect social change. This brief and far from exhaustive glimpse of different sociological perspectives on the joint institution of the government and economy reveals the incredible impact on the populace as a whole. As humanity as a whole and the societies within evolve, these theories are tested and modified to likewise evolve. The institution of government and the economy, both resistant to change through social inertia, serves the purpose of establishing the guidelines and protocols through which activists of all sorts may attempt to bring about their vision of society.
References
Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. London: Secker & Warburg.
Schaefer, R. (2009). Sociology: A Brief Introduction, 8th Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Smith, A., Cannan, E. (Ed.). (1904). Wealth of Nations, Cannan Edition, 5th edition. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
US Const., amend. X.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)