Political Influences

Impartiality CL4_B ↔ CL3_P
Governmental responses to the needs of society should be neutral and unaffected by the private interests of Officials of all sorts. Whether elected or appointed, Officials should listen carefully, assess independently and choose impartially.

Formality CL4_B ↔ CL3_S
Development of governmental solutions in accord with official obligations, including consultation with representatives, should be handled in a documented and formal way.

Legitimation CL4_B ↔ CL2_B
Government choices are the source of societal laws and regulations administered by Officials. Solutions must be found that accord with the law, or else reasonable legislation must be introduced.

Sabotage CL4_B ↔ CL3_P
The re-shaping of choices due to an Official's direct personal interests (e.g. re-election), or indirect interests associated with inducements or pressures from powerful groups. The result is never in the best interests of society as a whole.

A powerful group… with much to gain or lose can contact and pressure government officials privately. Alternatively, the group may enter into public debates with misinformation and scare tactics. The sabotaging group is often a political party. However, private interests may forcibly distort and undermine a satisfactory solution through pressuring politicians.

Corruption CL4_B ↔ CL3_S
Government officials have private interests that engage, or often consume them, to a degree that leads to them use their duties improperly in shaping the government solution.

Money is the universal solvent… but each official will have certain desires and interests, even weaknesses, that may be used as levers. A darker method is to threaten to expose an official’s previous improper or socially unacceptable activities—i.e. blackmail. Politicians usually like financial contributions to be provided in the form of generous campaign donations, which supports one of their principal preoccupations in life—getting re-elected.

Invalidation CL4_B ↔ CL2_B
The rule of law may proscribe a government's preferred solution. So the aggressive political response is to use bureaucratic procedures that render the judgement futile. A common resort is legislation to prevent undesired but valid legal rulings.

Government officials often… attempt to act illegally when pandering to public opinion, pursuing the so-called national interest, or protecting their own personal dishonesty. Historically, politicians in developed democracies like the UK and USA have been more than willing to ride roughshod over the rights of a few individuals. When the rule of law seems likely to invalidate government action, politicians withhold evidence, pressure witnesses, replace uncooperative officials and even judges. The most authoritative and aggressive response is to pass new legislation, even making it retrospective.

This Channel, or rather the absence of this Channel, is of paramount significance in understanding politics and how things go awry.

No organized group-CL1B can impact directly on government choice-CL4B. The best it can do is ensure that its official representatives-CL3 get access to government officials or give evidence at inquiries.

So all to-and-fro interaction between government and a group or organization takes place between individuals-CL3 who are acting both in accord with the duties inherent in their role, and to some degree from the perspective of their own self-interest (both of which are affected by their own groups)—as described earlier under Individuals in Politics & Government.