{"id":2146,"date":"2013-03-27T15:50:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T15:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/?p=2146"},"modified":"2018-04-30T22:14:28","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T02:14:28","slug":"political-culture-the-mistoffelees-of-economic-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/2013\/03\/political-culture-the-mistoffelees-of-economic-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Culture: the Mistoffelees of Economic Development"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Political Culture as Mistoffolees<\/p><\/div>\n

Mr. Mistoffelees<\/strong><\/h4>\n

He is quiet and small, he is black from his ears to the tip of his tail;<\/em><\/p>\n

He can creep through the tiniest crack, he can walk on the narrowest rail.<\/em><\/p>\n

He can pick any card from the pack, he is equally cunning with dice;<\/em><\/p>\n

He is always deceiving you into believing that he’s only hunting for mice.<\/em><\/p>\n

He can play any trick with a cork or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;<\/em><\/p>\n

If you look for a knife or a fork and you think it is merely misplaced–<\/em><\/p>\n

You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!<\/em><\/p>\n

But you’ll find it next week lying out on the lawn.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Excerpt: T.S. Eliot Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

Many economic developers never leave their home stomping grounds. They may not appreciate this article. Not because they disagree with it, but because they have probably not felt the disorientation that follows taking a new job in a brand new geography. Things are the same, but yet they are radically different. Simply put, the practice of economic development varies as you move around the nation. Why the shifting shapes?<\/p>\n

There are several reasons but, at least in the Curmudgeon’s mind, something called political culture is the most important factor. If you never leave your native political culture, you may never notice that it exists at all. Your native political culture is like glasses or contacts; you hardly ever realize you’re wearing them. Take off those glasses and things get weird.<\/p>\n

The old adage that people think alike and want the same things\u00a0is wrong. The crazy thing is that even through we don’t all think alike and want the same things, we tend to sort ourselves out so that people who\u00a0do think alike tend to live together in the same geography. That is what the book, the Big Sort (see our critique)\u00a0is about. But it get’s even deeper than the Big Sort kind of thinking. If you check out another review, American Nations (see our critique), you can read a credible description that the path of\u00a0migration by the original colonial\u00a0immigrants (back in the 1600-1700’s) set in motion political structures and values that persist to this very day. Big Sort and American Nations (as is Patchwork Nations) are current efforts to tie down and capture a mysterious and cagey creature\/concept called “political culture”.<\/p>\n

Political culture is “out there”; in your heart of hearts you know it is–but you can’t easily see or touch it–only glimpses here and there, now and then. That is why we are using the Mistoffelees’s metaphor; Mistoffelees is a\u00a0rascal cat that gets involved in lots of stuff, but he\u00a0never gets caught–and is rarely seen.
\nPolitical culture is “out there”; in your heart of hearts you know it is–but you can’t easily see or touch it–only glimpses here and there, now and then. Mistoffelees is a rascal cat that gets involved in lots of stuff, but he never gets caught–and is rarely seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting your hands around political culture–well, it just isn’t going to happen. As you might expect, political culture drives data-driven economic developers crazy.\u00a0Political culture\u00a0defies statistical and mathematical description and measurement. So for hard-wired numbers freaks kinds of economic developers, political culture is best ignored or better still relegate it to the status of the imaginary Easter Bunny (which, it must be said, is very real. Come back to life in a hundred years and the Curmudgeon bets you will find people still trying to find where he hid the eggs).<\/p>\n

But every so often, on a cold, \u00a0dark and\u00a0stormy night,\u00a0the correlation coefficients and modeling equations uncover some unexplainable\u00a0finding. And at that point these quantitative specialists become consumed with confusion, (but, of course, never uncertainty). With fear of something numbers can’t explain grabbing their little Grinch hearts, they whistle loudly and sarcastically\u00a0as they dash past the cemetery of dead methodologies.<\/p>\n

Political culture is “out there”. Somewhere. Somehow? Like Mistoffelees\u00a0with the fork and spoon,\u00a0political culture is responsible for a ton\u00a0of the mystery and variation in the practice of local and state\u00a0economic development. In this article we will\u00a0introduce the reader\u00a0to political culture–and suggests ways that it can\u00a0affect local economic development. We shall not attempt to deal with the contemporary\u00a0‘clash of cultures’ or\u00a0‘culture wars’\u00a0dialogues. That would be premature. Our first task in this review is to lay the foundation for reintroducing political culture into economic development. We seek only to catch a glimpse of Mistoffelees. This review, then, has limited objectives. Kind of think of it\u00a0 as the opening lecture in a Political Culture 101 class. In this opening class we want to retrace the early (1960’s) introduction to the concept and how it linked to economic development. Secondly, we will introduce the reader to several ways the reader might catch a glimpse of our rascally cat–the Civic Culture and Social-Political Classes. That should be enough.<\/p>\n

Laura A. Reese and Raymond A. Rosenfeld, The Civic Culture of Local Economic Development (Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2002)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reese and Rosenfeld make a very serious attempt to wrap their collective arms around our Mistoffelees-like political culture.\u00a0 We are first very thankful to them because, by virtue of their reputations and strong research credibility\u00a0(Reese is presently Editor for Economic Development Quarterly),\u00a0they bring credibility to the reality and potential importance of political culture to economic development. In their book they make a case for their version of political culture (the civic culture) and in so doing they\u00a0summarize a body of previous literature on\u00a0political culture. An economic developer new to political culture ought to be exposed to\u00a0this more than fifty years of literature which has been hidden\u00a0from economic developers by the mists of data, statistics, equations\u00a0and math. Be prepared reader, we are entering the land of leprechauns, wisps, glimpses, and ghosts that go noisily about in dark shadows. Don’t expect to see, feel or touch a political culture, however.<\/p>\n

A Definition of Economic Development Political Culture
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, let’s settle on a good definition.\u00a0Reese and Rosenfeld\u00a0cite a definition of political culture developed by Jackman and Miller (R.W. Jackman and R.A. Miller, “A renaissance of political culture”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 40, 1996, pp. 632-659). Political culture\u00a0is:<\/p>\n

distinctive clusters of attitudes that are widely held across individuals. These durable clusters form subjective world orientations that are highly resistant to change, and are seen as the fundamental generator of economic and political performance. They are, in this sense , more crucial than objective conditions embodied in institutions, and they endure in the face of institutional change. (P.636)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jackman & Miller’s definition is ok in the sense the reader now appreciates that the essential element underlying culture, its DNA, so to speak, are clusters of relevant attitudes (beliefs and feelings)–in our case to that nexus of attitudes, values, beliefs and feelings relevant to economic development.<\/span>\u00a0 Put all these elements together and all individuals in a given geographic area that roughly share this set of elements is a policy cluster. Needless to say, your version is not universally shared–there are other competing clusters of attitudes usually held by fools, dinosaurs,\u00a0wrong-headed idiots, and immoral evil-doers. So each geography will have several clusters of attitudes relevant to economic development. The multiple clusters will then do battle in community-jurisdictions economic development policy process–where economic development policy is made. Usually this is the jurisdiction’s legislature.
\nCommon sense dictates that times obviously change (you no longer wear a toga after all), attitudes ought to adjust to these changes. The observable reality, however, is that attitude-value clusters persist not only for decades but generations. Attitudes and beliefs regarding forces and institutions can last for hundreds of years–passed on from generations to generations.<\/span>
\nOne problem many people have with political culture is that they think it changes more easily than it actually does. Clusters of attitudes are surprisingly durable.<\/span> And despite common sense that while times obviously\u00a0change (you no longer wear a toga\u00a0after all), attitudes ought to\u00a0adjust to these changes. The observable reality, however,\u00a0 is that\u00a0 attitude-value clusters persist\u00a0 not only for decades but generations. Attitudes and beliefs regarding forces and institutions can last for hundreds of years–passed on from generations to generations. The same core, age-old attitude and belief, like granite, remains intact, it just takes off the toga and puts on pants. What is underneath the toga or\u00a0 docker pants is essentially constant over time.<\/p>\n

If your great grandfather could respond to today’s current issues, you and he would probably be much more similar than you’d expect.\u00a0For instance, your great grandfather might not\u00a0have a position on Roe vs. Wade, but\u00a0he is very likely to\u00a0\u00a0have attitudes on when life begins and who or what creates life. Political culture is composed of the latter type of attitudes and beliefs, such as in god and whether god is loving or angry. These core attitudes and beliefs shape derivative attitudes. This is why they endure for considerable periods of time. In many ways, an equivalent comparison is that of political culture with behavioral economics. Other researchers wonder (nobody has come close to proving it) if some culture and economics behavior are\u00a0partially “wired” into humans, possibly through body chemicals and DNA. A bit far-fetched? Maybe?<\/p>\n

Anyway, this persistence occurs because political culture is based on really core fundamental attitudes about things like “how much you trust government”, “who and what is included in economic development–and who and what is not”, or “who\u00a0should be\u00a0the primary beneficiary of economic development”. These basic fundamental attitudes (and others) are easily transmitted over long periods of time, across generations, by families, neighbors, schools and, perhaps surprisingly, churches and the media. Religious-based attitudes, in particular, are an important component of political and economic development political culture.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the Curmudgeon thinks the Jackman and Miller (J&M) definition is a bit too academic and a bit jargon-filled. He wants a definition\u00a0which\u00a0uses words that he can relate to.\u00a0So we also offer an older definition by Banfield and Wilson (Edward C. Banfield & James Q. Wilson, City Politics (Cambridge, Harvard\u00a0University Press, 1963), p. 58 ) to supplement J&M’s definition. For Banfield and Wilson, local political culture is:<\/p>\n

the attachment people have to a city … based on a set of common expectations about how others will behave in civic and political affairs. These common expectations might be called the city’s ‘political culture’ that like culture generally, is ‘learned’ by the members. A participant [think citizen, voter]\u00a0acquires a more or less stable set of beliefs about who runs things, how to get things done, whom to see, who wants what, and where ‘the bodies are buried’.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s more helpful. Essentially the economic development policy process of each jurisdiction is the clash between and among\u00a0 these multiple clusters which differ in how they value and approach economic development. Economic development policy-strategy is the output from this clash. The clash continues as that economic development policy-strategy is carried out or implemented by an economic developer.This is the everyday stuff that economic developers must face. cope with, and endure. People, institutions (organized labor, for instance), the other political party, certain parts of the city or certain income-social classes of people are constant thorns and allies because their attitude-value clusters agree or disagree with what it is the economic developer is doing. To be sure, some agreement and disagreement is personality\/specific event-related, but Hatfield-McCoy type struggles are more likely to be based on differences in how these clusters perceive economic development. They may not like the economic developer, but that is secondary.<\/p>\n

and a Founding Father of Political Culture
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

So now we are done with definitions. At this point, the Curmudgeon thinks it best to start\u00a0our\u00a0talk about political culture\u00a0by introducing the reader to\u00a0the scholar, who through\u00a0decades devoted to the concept,\u00a0has to be thought of as political culture’s\u00a0“founding father”: Daniel Elazar.<\/p>\n

Elazar observes that political culture shapes government and governmental outputs in three ways: (1) through the expectations citizens and residents have\u00a0on the appropriate role of government and politics in economic development (and, of course,\u00a0other public policies); (2) by identifying who (which groups and individuals in the community)\u00a0has legitimacy to participate in the discussion and making of economic development policy; (3) by shaping not only the making of policy but its subsequent implementation and administration. We shall call this a “public policy” approach to political culture. Elazar is really shaping how clusters of attitudes affect the making\/implementation of a public policy like economic development.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elazar is, arguably,\u00a0most famous for his identification of\u00a0three macro-state subcultures on the basis of the attitudes and world views of their inhabitants (attitudes and world views\u00a0inherited from and imparted through socialization ( by families, schools,\u00a0religion, and political structures like the state constitution)\u00a0from the state’s original settlers). Elazar categorized each of the fifty states as Individualistic, Moralistic, and Traditionalist. The reality of these three subcultures is that any one state can\u00a0exhibit one or all of these subcultures, but usually in\u00a0contiguous,\u00a0geographic patterns.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Individualistic cultures favor limited government and preferring only those activities that are necessary to maintain free market operations. Participation in policy making, to the extent possible, is limited and closed only to those relevant to the public policy . Economic development organizations (EDOs)\u00a0are acceptable participants but their role is more of an efficient administrator of economic development programs.<\/p>\n

Moralistic political cultures “place a greater emphasis” on the community and the public interest–the greater good of economic development in a broad sense of its meaning. Individual political cultures use policy to assist private enterprise and the market, moralistic cultures protect the community and its public welfare. There is a much greater role for citizens and an open political process. EDOs are seen as neutral administrators in a rational policy implementation which fosters economic development but not at the expense of the community.<\/p>\n

Traditionalist political\u00a0cultures “do not trust the marketplace” or open citizen participation in policy-making. Policy-making is restricted to the community’s elites and these elites try to protect their own interests (and the “way of life which exists–avoid change). Social status, sometimes family ties (an insider policy process) are key determinants of policy decisions. EDOs carry out the will of the elites if the elites themselves cannot “cut the deal”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The weakness of Elazar’s approach, especially if one is quantitatively-oriented, is that classification of geographies into one or another subcultures, without survey research, is judgmental.<\/span>
\nThe weakness of Elazar’s approach, especially if one is quantitatively-oriented, is that classification of geographies into one or another subcultures, without survey research, is judgmental. “Elazar did not explicitly operationalize his conception of political culture by identifying indicators that could then be measured quantitatively” (p. 21) There is, in short, no objective way to validate or update the map of these three subcultures. [The classification utilized in American Nations is strongly related to Elazar in some respects and American Nations is based on its author’s judgment in the classification of geographies].<\/p>\n

But once again Mistoffelees reappears. Despite is considerable imprecision, researchers, as cited by Reese and Rosenfeld (P. 24) continually\u00a0 have found positive correlations between these subcultures and per capita taxes and spending levels,\u00a0 interest on debt, and educational spending, partisanship, and political ideology. That is a rather formidable list of important dynamics and policy areas. To be sure, other efforts to link public policy and political variables have yielded mixed results and the Curmudgeon’s attempt to link right to work legislation to Elazar was also a mixed bag. Overall, Elazar’s schemata does not seem to work–BUT, 100% of Traditionalist dominant are right to work states and there is only one state (New Hampshire) that is Moralistic dominant. Until Michigan, there was no right to work state in which the Individualist culture was dominant. Of the fourteen states which approved right to work previous to 1947 all were either Traditionalist dominant or were mixed Traditionalist.<\/p>\n

With Elazar, the reader can see the ephemeral “now it’s there, now it isn’t” Mistoffelees-like quality to political culture. Still, his concepts are very much alive. If the reader wants to see how a modern day derivative of Elazar’s approach to political culture can account for post 2000 political behavior,\u00a0partisan affiliation\u00a0and elections, see our review of Woodard’s American Nations or better still read his book.<\/p>\n

The Civic Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point, we would ask the reader to consider a more current attempt to understand and apply political culture to economic development. Reese and Rosenfeld (Laura A. Reese and Raymond A. Rosenfeld, The Civic Culture of Local Economic Development (Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2002)<\/strong> offer an approach to political culture which is based on local communities, not states or groupings of states. In essence, they are trying to see if our Mistoffelees can be found (and measured) more easily if we look elsewhere. Let’s see if we can catch a better glimpse.<\/p>\n

Reese & Rosenfeld adopt a bit less demanding definition of political culture. For them\u00a0 political culture is a<\/p>\n

“disposition that causes individuals and groups to act in certain ways and by acting in conformity to this disposition the policies and programs in geographic areas in which a\u00a0 particular disposition dominates will reflect these dispositional interactions and be different than a geographic area in which another disposition dominates”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

R&R look to find these dispositions at the community\/municipal level and the label the community level manifestation of dispositions as “the civic culture”. The civic culture “denotes patterns or way of life in a local community” (p. 41)<\/p>\n

Civic culture includes the structure of the local economic development decision-making enterprise, the process through which decisions are made, the interests that are involved in decision-making, and the decision-making styles evident in the local public arena. The structure of economic development decision-making includes the nature and extent of community resources devoted to economic development, the external competitive environment of the l0cality vis-a-vis other cities, and the structure of the [EDO itself, i.e. a chamber or government department] (p. 41-42–we did inject some wording at the end which we belief faithfully identifies in fewer words what the author described).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In embracing this definition of political culture [which, by the way, we would label as a ‘public policy’-related definition], the authors expect and can explain why two city managers (same form of government) or two identical economic bases can arrive at different policy outputs, i.e. different economic development programs and strategies. That difference can be explained [hopefully] by different civic cultures.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of moving parts in R&R’s dynamic civic culture (included as elements are sub-clusters based on structures, the locus of power and decision-making styles–if interested see pp. 44-49). R&R develop entire chapters on how to develop quantitative indicators to measure and model the civic culture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Using a (Canada-USA) database developed through survey research, R&R identify four “general” civic cultures: (1) mayor-dominated, (2) externally driven, (3) politically inclusive, and (4) elite -dominated. They also find the cultures whose economic base is strong and which have reformed governments (city managers, at large elections) are more likely to use “Type II” economic development strategies (claw backs, and presumably other Progressive economic development practices).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Civic Culture as Adapted by the Curmudgeon<\/strong><\/p>\n

R&R does offer some conceptual understanding of how political culture operates at the community level.
\nBut its practical utility to an economic developer is limited at best. It is much too complicated and one take away from their book is that not all aspects of economic development can be traced to political culture. Some aspects can; others can’t. How are we supposed to know which is which? To offer some practical utility for having read this review,\u00a0 the Curmudgeon will offer several ideas\/dispositions that might be of use to an “in the field” economic developer. The Curmudgeon hopes that the reader understands that all this is a fool’s enterprise. But the Curmudgeon, who is most definitely a fool, is willing to embrace this fool’s errand and suggest, ON HIS OWN, the following observations.<\/p>\n

It is the Curmudgeon’s sense that cluster-dispositions which commonly divides communities-jurisdictions are:<\/p>\n

(1) support either government or private sector primacy in economic development leadership and governance<\/p>\n

(2) define how economic development can best serve<\/span> the community by either<\/p>\n