The Dilemma: Integrate or Divide

Social responsibility, where political life commences, is an integrative and unifying phenomenon because it refers to each and all taking on roles in society and feeling responsible for their own lives. It also means joining organizations that, however specialist or small, are part of the panoply of groups required in a diverse society.

However, such commitment is also intrinsically divisive, because a person can only commit to one or two parts of one or two arenas at most. In some arenas, there will be sectional political principles and ideologies that are irreconcilable with others.

So:

Exerting pressure always seeks to promote a group's particular interests and viewpoints. Communications in public settings are blatantly sectional. So political work must be divisive.

However, all political work maintains a balance of power in society. It activates countervailing perspectives and contributes to the development of diverse views, so vital to reducing tensions. So, paradoxically, actively looking after private interests operates in the public interest and political work is therefore simultaneously, and perhaps surprisingly, integrative.

So:

Any mobilization instituted and organized by its leadership seeks special sectional gains. Anti-rallies may develop, but there is no meaning to notions like a «balance of mobilizing» or a «comprehensive diversity» as applied at CG2 and CG1. If the specific desired result is obtained from mobilizing, then that group is ahead. So mobilization, for whatever reason and however organized and authorized, is intrinsically divisive.

People may also mobilize unofficially in the form of spontaneous, unauthorized and unorganised demonstrations. Such demonstrations may take many forms: gathering outside the gates of a shut factory or bankrupt bank, attending a town hall meeting to hear and question a Parliamentary Representative, lining the streets when an unfriendly head of state visits.

Such events are usually neutral or unifying, although they may not produce results beyond media reports that raise awareness of social feelings. When people mobilize themselves spontaneously, they are using freedoms and rights within society which confirms their value. This effect is certainly integrative.

So there are two distinct Centres here:

• Organized Mobilization: CG3_D
• Spontaneous Demonstration: CG-3_I

Dominance: Any well-organized and officially sponsored mobilization will be more powerful than an ad hoc or spontaneous demonstration of the same type. Crowds and other diffuse gatherings of people offer no means for authorities to engage. As a result, organization and officials are quickly generated following spontaneous protests or uprisings around significant enduring issues.

Inquiries are expected to seek benefit for society. The recommendations usually strive to be accepted if not popular. Making documents generally available and consulting on proposals all foster integration.

At the same time, each method is biased to some degree. Particular politicians suggest ideas and particular groups are directly involved in producing policy recommendations. Individuals and groups, so deep in the political process, naturally work from their own sectional or vested perspective. This means that policy proposals cannot avoid being divisive as well.

So:

Arrangements for making changes in a society are specified formally in a constitution &/or by tradition. This formalization is intrinsically unifying and integrating, and endures over time.

However, leadership is also a matter of the particular individuals that have been authorized to take office and that emerge with popular followings at any point in time.

The personalities, idiosyncrasies and power-bases of the particular leaders in society lead to the creation of factions, personality cults, modifications of governance protocols, cronyism and nepotism, corruption and other phenomena. Such all-too-human behaviour splits allegiances. So actual leaders are sectional and inherently divisive for society.

So there are two distinct Centres here:

• Governing Systems and Procedures: CG-5_I
• Society’s Actual Leadership: CG-5_D

Dominance: Society’s governance arrangements are designed within cultural parameters to be reasonable, impartial, respected and enduring. Despite provisions for their modification, it is broadly necessary that institutions control and, if need be, provide for judging and removal of particular leaders—not the other way around.

Leaders are human: with frailties and egotism that undermine themselves and whatever they touch. Leaders must connect with formal bodies and processes, respect their significance for the people, and bring their purpose usefully to life. When they dominate and manipulate those formal institutions, there is a chaotic splitting of society.

Imperatives may reveal themselves as popular pressure for or against a particular reform. This sort of pressure shares no origin with a pressure group or lobby wanting a particular reform, but it does share a key similarity. However beneficial the reform, there will certainly be segments of society that suffer a reduction in their wealth and power, at least in the short-term and perhaps permanently. So reforms, however necessary and popular, split society: they are divisive.

The political will of society is also expressed diffusely by approving sustenance of a particular social order that embodies its culture. The social order refers to the essential values and purposes that inspire, define and organize any society. It enables, validates and stabilizes the system of government and all significant social phenomena and civil society operations. This makes its general approval or disapproval unifying and integrative. 

So there are two distinct Centres again:

• Popular Pressure for Reform: CG-6_D
• Sanction for the Social Order: CG-6_I

Dominance: The social order is a permanent and relatively unchanging phenomenon and its approval needs to be the naturally dominant condition. Pressures for reform, by contrast, move from topic to topic and wax and wane in intensity. The social order may affect where and how popular pressures are likely to build up.

The social order is found within the framework dealing with realizing values in society (sPH6-G7¹).The Hexads in this structural hierarchy are: the citizenry (G6²) and the government (G6¹). From: Ch.12, Working with Values (1995).

Sovereignty ought to be able to generate a peaceful and prosperous order: it depends on the maturity and performance of political institutions. By virtue of sovereignty and through mass action, this Centre is intrinsically integrative and unifying for society.

However, the vision of unity does not deny or remove the existence of diversity and injustices. Discontents will exist that deserve to be remedied, but are not. Maintaining stability will therefore sustain injustices in many cases, and this will foster splitting e.g. between «the haves and the have-nots», or between regions of the country, or between various ethnic groups. So stability/unity is therefore also inherently and simultaneouslydivisive.

So: