Political Culture and Populism

Like hypertension political culture is both invisible and quite discernible in its effects and consequences. Behavioralists and data-driven analysts hate it because it defines measurement. Seldom “causing” (in a statistical sense) anything, including ED policy, it silently shapes, defines, filters, interprets, underlies expectations, legitimacy and vaguely is “associated”, along with a variety of other dynamics, with policy-making, elections, and system-building and change. Conventionally culture has expressed itself in distinctive “attitudes/opinions” and preferences and priorities for macro “values”, and usually some semi-cosmic “world view”. No wonder it is hard to measure; it is irrationalism, romanticism, and sheer emotion combined. Policy-making is fundamentally conceived as “rational”, and to allege a fundamental part of policy-making is in some way irrational invites ridicule, hostility, and mostly ignoring. Still in the darkest night, at the depths of our deepest depression when everything has gone wrong and defies rational description, we all know it’s there–out there–lurking, and laughing at us.

From my research it is obvious that different political cultures produce different policy systems, which produce distinctive politics, strategies, and programs. It cannot be ignored.

Culture is powerful in motivating individual and group activism; its role in the formation of political and economic ideologies is considerable and well-demonstrated. The study of political culture is persistent, and grudgingly it has been allowed to enter discussion on policy and policy-making. What’s more there is an amazing consistency in the core elements of political culture, how it is transmitted across geography, different populations–and time. Not infrequently, we hear “we vote today as we shot in the Civil War”, and today’s “red state-blue state” looks like a modern day fifty state version of that war. Would it surprise the reader to be told that our Founding Fathers were well aware of that cultural gaps and distinctions–and publicly feared they could bring about a future civil war. The cultural gaps existed previous to the American Constitution, which itself is a battleground.

The impact of culture on politics, elections and partisanship has been a huge dynamic in ED policy-making–even before the formation of our American Republic. The continuity of culture as a key variable has ebbed and flowed a bid, as culture has secularized from its earlier roots, and has delinked itself from particular ethnic, even racial groupings from which it first was observed in our history. Continuity of culture is most observable when one distinguishes between elite cultures and the mass culture. ED policy-making tends to be a closed policy-making system in which elites predominate. The predomination, however, has been repeatedly challenged, and the effect of elite-mass challenge has left a pronounced mark on our history. The intersection of culture with ED policy-making is a core theme in this history. It has also been a key cause in the rise of Community Development, which as shall be discovered includes “elite” and “mass” wings.

This elite-mass policy-making dynamic appears constantly in the chapters of our history. Whenever the subject comes up, the word “populist” is sure to follow. For us, populism is a particular level of the clash of political cultures. Political cultures clash nearly all the time (see next paragraph) but a populist “movement” seldom is composed of only one political culture–for example, much literature links the Scots-Irish (Greater Appalachia) with a populist movement. This is a misunderstanding of a populist movement. Scots-Irish political culture often contains heavy doses of anti-authoritarianism, strong individualism, a preference for anomic action, and constant elite-mass distinction, making it a likely candidate for membership in a populist movement. But a populist movement is powerful and impactful precisely because it attracts adherents from other political cultures. In today’s parlance, their unifying feature, and maybe the only thing they really share, is their determination to replace the “establishment”, the deep swamp-professional experts, or in the Early Republics, “the aristocrats”.

The diverse cultural membership of a populist movement helps, for example, to explain why many populist movements exhibit a distinct left and right tilt–sometimes attacking different elements of the elite, while advocating radically different initiatives and programs. What unites these disparate political culture into a populist movement is a shared sense of an elite-mass crisis–that the elites have in some way overstepped their bounds. In other words the elite-mass conflict become salient to members of several political cultures, and elite-mass conflict is superimposed on each of the major political cultures affected. When the elite-mass conflict subsides, the populist movement loses coherence, mergers with other political forces, or simply fades away. The problem for populists is that an elite-mass struggle is the unifying bond–that is why it is a formidable threat to an existing policy system stability. Commentators who stress individual policies, programs and initiatives miss the point of a populist movement–which is that some invisible boundary between the existing elite and large numbers of the community has been violated. The independence or autonomy of the elite vis-a-vis the general population has created the perception if not reality that a systemic violation of the popular will has occurred because the behavior and direction of the elites has made salient the elite–mass gap to multiple diverse political cultures.

That supra cultural populist struggle is fundamentally not a policy struggle, although opposition to certain policies may be part of the elite-mass confrontation. The real goal is to affect elite composition or behavior. From another perspective, other than changing elites and restoring their sense of a representative democracy responsive to a common person, a populist movement has no widely shared policy agenda sufficient to allow its adherents to govern. It is not likely that a “long-term” populist policy system follows from a populist movement. As we shall see, when a populist movement affects the writing of a state constitution, however, it leaves in its wake a policy structures, processes and relationships that may or may not prove durable or worse, may be ineffective or exhibit huge unintended consequences (which, of course are always possible in any event). We shall find as we tread through our chapters, that these unanticipated consequences and defective structure, institutions, and relationships seriously impact the course of our economic development history–bending our twig in unimaginable ways.

Since political cultures of state and community’s policy systems are rarely, if ever, monolithic, elements of multiple political cultures coexist in each policy system. The political culture of a policy system’s elite, however, need not, and probably is not likely to be representative of the general policy system. Economic class is also likely to differentiate elite culture from general culture. The potential for elite-mass culture clash exists even in a relatively homogeneous dominant political culture. So cultures clash in the general policy system, and elite/mass cultures can–and do–clash also, depending on the policy system, events and time period. These differing cultural perspectives potentially saturate, or at least tinge, all stages of the policy-making process, and can easily create gaps between policy formulation and policy implementation.

Since we are just beginning our discussion on political culture–and populism-we just remind the reader, our original macro political cultures were tied to ethnic migratory movements and their religious values/priorities, expectation, and their socialized sense of the nature and character of past life and human experience. Their cultures were the creatures of generations past socialized and now extended into the American New World. In this book we will examine closely several dominant macro political cultures including Yankee Puritan, Midland-Quaker/German, Dutch New Netherlands, Tidewater, Scots-Irish or Greater Appalachia, and later Deep South. What is called the First Nation or Native American is also a major feature of our Early Republic especially. There are others which will be considered in due time. Maybe hopeless outnumbered and isolated

Anyone of these cultures can dominate for a period of time any policy system if their adherents have settled early and in sufficient numbers or power to write their cultures into constitutions, political and economic structures/relationships, and by electoral victory. Embedded into probably all societies is a distinction between elites and the “common people”, the masses. Elites gravitate to governance, administration and policy-making of every policy system–by definition. Masses by choice of design are on the outside of policy-making, and depending on turnout even in elections. Mainstream Economic Development is normally a closed, professional or restricted policy area; community development on the other hand aspires to be more mass-based and open. American policy systems since the start of the American Revolution have exhibited a persistent tendency to coalesce along elite or insider versus mass or outsider dimension.

When this occurs, and while always latent is episodic, this history labels the political culture that supports it as “populist”. In such a populist system, multiple political cultures split internally and each faction can, or not, coalesce into an informal coalition or movement–today it is the populists versus the deep swamp or experts. The populist movement combines elements from many cultures, and there is a distinct throw the bums out nature–but more importantly there is also a “them versus us”. Issues, Events and Expectations have combined to the extent that elites are seen as detrimental to the populist self-interest and value system. Those of a Marxian persuasion will see class struggle in this–and the overlap with socio-economic class is too strong for it to be ignored. It is not unusual that the frustrations, adjustments to change, events, and disruptions express themselves through change in generational cohorts and youth/student movements. Disadvantaged versus privileged groupings also can be split into divergent sides of the elite–mass distinction. That such politics and policy-making can be described as polarized is certainly understandable. The label “culture-clash” is in my opinion quite acceptable.

The pace, nature, and composition of political, social and economic change and the coping of policy systems with such change often triggers serious gaps between elites and masses and sufficiently stimulated over time, this coalition of masses forms. In the extreme, policy system change, electoral realignment, and worse can result–changes in policy outputs, and political structures including constitutions and municipal charters do occur. Panics, recessions and depressions often, close to always, trigger some sort of populist coalition. Heaven forbid we lose a war. In the Early Republic, emerging from the Late Medieval into the Early Modern Ages, a very critical dimension was land ownership and property (including people as property) and its relationship with laws, constitutions, political structures, and who benefits (cui bono) from its outputs. The nature of change of society, politics and economics from one Age to that dominant in another is also pronounced–way of life, and how disruptive the pace of change in adjusting that way of life enters into the populist picture. Needless to imagine these dynamics can serious affect the course of our economic development history, and necessarily weave a serious and critical thread through our history. That this populist dynamic can penetrate, disrupt, hyper-charge the relationship between our two alternate American ED approaches (MED and CD) makes this topic unavoidable.

Revolution Interrupted: Tennessee/Kentucky Populism and Tidewater Federalism

Our two state comparison offers insights into how the Federalist Tribe Consensus interrelates with the 1790’s Rise of Populist D-R forming a hitherto unique policy system style. That unique style, will overlap into subsequent new Early Republic state initial policy systems. To refresh the reader, we discovered in Chapter 1, 2, and 3 that the American Revolution comprised at least two major groupings, an immensely dissatisfied and frustrated combination of ethnic, working and lower middle classes that coalesced into a “mass “based mobilization against British and royalist provincial rule–and an upper and upper middle class gentry and merchant “propertied” elite. Against them were a third “loyalist” grouping which was also a combination of ethnic (Highland Scots) and traditional valued mélange of classes, which included runaway African slaves in search of freedom. Probably most of the population numerically sat somewhere in the middle between patriots and loyalists, not sufficiently activated to mobilize or resist, but serving as a sort of silent majority carefully trying to cope with the consequences of war.

From the Patriot perspective, the Revolution was activated and sustained by the adherence of the first “mass” group, but after 1773 its leadership was taken over the second grouping.   The non-propertied coalition of  American revolutionary, our populists, thought independence was only the first step to a “revolution” that involved restructuring society, economy and government to meaningfully (in light of their expectations/definitions) participate in those sectors. We would see this transition from overthrow of the existing corrupt system to revolutionary redistribution of power and sector participation by all classes in the later phases of the French Revolution.

On the other hand. the propertied and now leadership elite, in the course of writing the Declaration of Independence, constructing the Articles of Confederation, and somehow muddling through to attract the French and then hang tough until the British tired of the enterprise, formed a loose bond, a common identity resting on its definition of the War as independence from Great Britain, and the American transition to a temperate independent “republic” which above all protected the economic, if not social status, interest in property. Over the course of the Revolution, but especially after the 1781 victory at Yorktown, the propertied elite ventured ideas, engaged in debate and experimentation in states and with the national government, Articles which in due course jelled sufficiently to comprise a loose agenda of that this independent republic and its economy should look like. We called this the Federalist Tribe Consensus.

The Articles simply put did not provide sufficient national integration to maintain national independence, and thirteen sovereign states only got in their own and the other state’s way as each tried to “grow”, prosper and develop. The result, initiated by Washington in his frustration with the Patowmack Canal, led to the rewriting of the Articles and the approval of a new constitution for a fresh Early Republic of the United States. Writing that constitution was more than sufficient to peel off a layer from the Revolutionary War Federalist Tribe; an anti-Federalist, states and individual rights element emerged and for the most part refused to sign the new Constitution until a Bill of (individual) Rights was immediately inserted into the Constitution–which it was by 1791. Papered over, a weakened Federalist Tribe Consensus, was finally and irreparably ruptured by Washington (and Hamilton’s) federal nation-building institutionalization strategy. A rival Tribe, the D-Rs, broke off and jelled as an alternative sufficiently to bitterly contest the 1796 election and the succession from charismatic Washington administration to his more disruptive, and anything but charismatic Federalist successor, John Adams. Tennessee and Virginia drove to statehood and established their initial policy systems in this atmosphere.

But the point at hand is while all this was going on, how did the non-propertied populists behave? The aftermath of the War and independence did not bring any serious “revolution” beyond the political sphere. With the Federalist Tribe very much in control of affairs, and populists for the most part either left out of the debate on the Federalist economic and social agenda, except as “spoken for” by a sympathetic element in the Federalist Tribe (our budding community developers), they were pushed off to the sidelines and in today’s terminology “marginalized”. That didn’t go over very well, and with hard economic times, and ungrateful treatment of the common solder’s pay and pension, the populist core articulated its grievances in what academics call anomic behavior–tarrying and feathering tax collectors, heckling and disrespect, simply ignoring laws and regulations, and Pennsylvania’s resistance to a state bank and Massachusetts’s Shays Rebellion.

In effect this was their reaction to what they regarded as “the Interrupted Revolution”. Resurrected from the old English Civil War Leveller Movement Revolt, populists were again asking that age old question in a post-revolution context: “Have you shook this nation like an earthquake to produce no more than this for us?” This Interrupted Revolution one should remember not only included empowerment politically, but new forms of economy, and an egalitarian society, with minimal distinctions of wealth and property. The populist unfilled agenda extended deep into the economy and economic development-related issues and strategies.

The latter insurrections call attention to how the more tenacious of the populists reacted to the imposition of Federalist Tribe rule by fleeing and settling the western geographies of the thirteen original states–and Vermont–where control by eastern Federalist elites was tenuous at best. The pre-Early Republic insurrections were in western territories of the thirteen Articles states. When the Federalists started enforcing laws associated with earlier-approved nation-building institutionalization in 1794, the 1791 whiskey tax in particular, all hell broke loose–including Washington and Hamilton personally leading a 12,000 man army into the disquieted counties. History books today describe western Pennsylvania, where the Rebellion first started, as the ground zero of this populist reaction. The reader will discover in this chapter that western Virginia (West Virginia), North Carolina, and Kentucky-Tennessee were also ground zero as well. In the latter two states, a serious emerging economic cluster, liquor distilling and export, had already taken roots–literally. Jeffersonian Democratic Societies formed in these small and remote communities, they became strongholds of the coalescing Democrat-Republican Tribe, and with a national Congress-Presidency still controlled by Federalists off to statehood they went.

Crossing the Appalachian Mountains for the first time, the Union was now engaged in settling its interior, newly acquired in the 1783 Treaty with Great Britain–an interior still contested by Native Americans and foreign European powers. “Westernization” was itself a national strategy, and it was both a controversial partisan strategy that divided Federalists still further, and potentially fueled the rise of their opposition Tribe. Underlying this was western, trans-Appalachian states and territories were populated by large numbers of populists, predominately in Kentucky and Tennessee by Scots-Irish. For many of these western state’s migrants, western settlement was an opportunity to continue the more radical phases of Revolution by settling up new policy systems, more democratic, egalitarian, and congruent with the agricultural hinterland, yeoman-hardscrabble economic base and society. It was their hope and expectation that the Interrupted Revolution witnessed in the thirteen original states could and should be completed. Inevitably, as this chapter will relate, a struggle with Tidewater Federalists, in one form or other, was bound to occur. The drive to statehood, the writing of their constitutions, and the initial policy systems were seriously impacted by this mass-elite struggle, and while the implications in the early decades of the Early Republic were muted by other pressing concerns (Settlement-Conquest and incursions for the global competitive hierarchy), the populist Interrupted Revolution never went away, built up steam, and spasmodically entered into the agenda and output of these new state polities.