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PoliticsJune Issue, 2010, Potrero View

By Steve J. Moss

For the past decade I’ve taught a graduate-level public policy course at Mills College or San Francisco State University.  One of the issues we examine is who dominates politics in the United States:  a limited number of wealthy, influential individuals and corporations – elites – a broader spectrum of grassroots and organized groups – known as pluralism – or individual citizens, through direct democratic action, as championed in part by the 20th Century Progressive movement.

Last semester my Mills College students read Arthur Fisher Bentley’s The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures, which was first published in 1908.  The book revolves around a single theme:  all politics and all government are the result of group activity.  Bentley wrote The Process of Government at the height of the Progressive Era, when educated, prosperous, high-minded people believed in reform and good government, and viewed interest groups as the enemy of those goals.  Populist Progressives wanted the people as a whole to decide things by direct vote – and to that end created California’s initiative process – élitist Progressives preferred to give authority to experts.  Bentley believed that regardless of one’s preferences, an accurate understanding of how politics actually works centered on group behavior.

Bentley’s century-old treatise is a good description of San Francisco politics.  Group behavior dominates political discourse, and fundamentally determines policy pathways, whether influenced by the Building Owners and Management Association, Democratic County Central Committee, or Tenant’s Union.  The people have their say at the ballot, but the political agenda is substantially set by groups.  While the San Francisco Board of Supervisors can present ballot measures to voters, they generally don’t when threatened by significant opposition from powerful interests.     

Group behavior has its benefits.  It provides communication vehicles, an organized basis for citizens to express their preferences, counteracts the power of elites, and can serve as a platform for negotiating compromises.  But if left unmediated by enlightening political leadership, it can also impose high social costs.  A number of influential San Francisco groups who assert that they’re speaking on behalf of a given community, hardly have any constituency at all.  Yet, because of their constant and often loud presence in policy debates, are treated as if they’re leading an army of citizens.  This has the effect of robbing many of us of our voice, and acts to discourage citizens who don’t belong to or agree with a powerful club from engaging in the policy process.  Politicians negotiate with narrow and shallow interest groups and call democracy done.

The best groups transparently and effectively represent the demographics they serve.  The worst act to misdirect scarce resources away from where they’re needed most.  Some groups have devolved to doggedly protecting their own interests – for economic survival, political power, or to push a particular ideology – rather than the interests of the populations they purport to serve.  Public services can tilt towards patronage; outcomes are measured by satisfying advocates, as opposed to whether lives are fundamentally improved.  It’s a lazy and dangerous way to practice democracy.

The antidote to interest group politics is a deeper engagement in democracy, greater transparency, and a focus on systematic, rather than ad hoc, decision making.  In A Community Organizer’s Tale, former Mission District organizer Mike Miller describes how what he calls “people power” can be used to forge new relationships between under-represented citizens and government.  People power requires a deep commitment to finding and listening to a diverse array of individuals – as well as advocacy groups and spiritual leaders – as a means to understand what they want from government, what they’re willing to pay for, and what trade-offs they’re willing to make.  It depends on organizers who are able to engage in unbiased conversations with under-represented populations to draw out their policy preferences.  And it requires courageous, patient, political leadership.

Ad hoc policymaking needs to be eliminated in favor of three-dimensional planning that enables citizens to make explicit choices between, for example, which open areas should be set aside for dogs, playing fields, nature, or children.  Interminable public engagement strategies that take years to complete, whittling out all but the most die-hard advocates, need to be replaced with goal-oriented discussions, attached to decision-certain outcomes, backed by sustainable funding sources.  Heated battles over scarce resources or policy priorities need to be set aside in favor of civil discourse over what our shared vision for the City is, what paths were going to take to reach that vision, and how we’re going to pay for the journey.

Bentley’s theory of group behavior was largely descriptive, rather than prescriptive.  While he shared the Progressives’ goal of using government to curb the power of big business, as an academic his main concern was accurately cataloguing the way things are, as opposed to how they should be.  Politics, however, isn’t academic.  San Francisco is at a critical juncture, with diminishing sources of high-quality news analysis to enable informed citizens to effectively engage in policy processes, chronic budget deficits, and a new City waiting to emerge in the Southeast neighborhoods.  It’s time to recommit to creating a local democracy in which all of our voices are heard, and where policy success is measured by real progress made by families, neighborhood businesses, and the environment.