Politics of consensus and compromise

In 1215, the British nobles presented King John with 63 demands that would regulate the relationship between subject and sovereign, birthing the constitutional process of governance in Magna Carta. This form of decision making by written established procedures and rules would culminate in the British Parliament, the United States Congress, and the Robert Rules of Order. Parliamentary procedures regulate competing interests and thereby, assumes an adversarial relationship between parties.

Checks and balances is a hallowed feature American governance. Not having clearly defined and hierarchically delineated social classes, the 225-year experiment of We the People in America does not translate readily to the class struggles found elsewhere, particularly in those countries previously ruled by royalty.

Aristocrat Pericles of Athens promoted democratic governance. However, not everyone was a citizen. Women, servants/slaves and non-property owning residents were excluded. Only men pioneered the practice of civic participation.

The Romans taught that government belongs to the people, res publicae. Regulating the conduct of the landed gentry (senators) and the commoners (tribunes), through assemblies of chosen representatives, the Romans took for granted inherent conflicts and created checks and balances.

In both cases, empire required centralized powers. Rome gave up the republic for efficient imperial rule. Athens vied with martial Sparta for the democratic model. The expediency of the triremes, naval warships, to effect conquest and domination won over deliberative but chaotic acropolis of the anarchic city-states around the Aegean. Vigilant democracies hence recognized that within themselves are carried the contradiction to willfully cede ones’ sovereignty. In the language of the U.S. Department of Interior, the chiefs of American Samoa, in an act of self-determination, chose to subject themselves to the sovereign rule outside of itself! The Greek influence in the current Bush dispensation is very much that of the reactive Spartan model.

Western European thoughts, derived in great part from Greece and Rome, evolved philosophically a holy trinity of thesis-antithesis-systhesis dialectic. This Hegelian model set the foundation of modern scientific inquiry. Karl Marx utilized the conceptual tool for social analysis and concluded that the human journey proceeds on the energy of the conflict inherent in class struggle, eventually ending with the utopian triumph of the proletariat (workers) over the bourgeoisie (property owners).

What has this got to do with the price of Japanese rice at Joeten? Well, nothing directly save that we are in a political election, and the issue of how we make decisions looms high to those interested in the social process. As economics is the use of resources to meet perceived needs and felt wants, making decisions on the way we live is the domain of politics. Politics then is more than just the selection of those we assign to represent our interests in council, it is the process of making decisions.

In one sense, the representative form of government we practice was useful when the U.S. as a new frontier required interstate commerce to be regulated, when transport was time consuming and communication slow. That has all changed. Communication has become instantaneous. Commerce and industry has woven a dynamic global network sensitive only to the requirements of supply and demand, and often oblivious of national boundaries and local aspirations. Transport has empowered a worldwide migratory population. The practice of politics can no longer be confined to electing government officials, nor should the political perspective remain solely that of attaining compromise. We must recover the art of attaining consensus.

Compromise, from the Latin for mutual promise, has come to mean almost the opposite, that is, the settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions. Republican democracy focuses on the dissent of the governed, on the differences of opinions and options of conflicting interests, and on the areas of disagreements among combatants.

Consensus on the other hand, from the Latin for common agreement, is the careful explication of the total needs and wants of a social unit. As practiced in civil society, the focus is on common vision and mission. When seeming differences are seen, they are given the benefit of the doubt and treated as paradoxes capable of coexisting one with another, subject to resolution by budgetary priorities and the graciousness of time. A Democratic Republic invests its efforts on insuring the full participation of everyone in the cultural, political and economic life of a social unit.

Compromise is beholden to the morality of authority; consensus follows the bliss of ethical authenticity.

Since the Spaniards quelled the Chamorro rebellion in Aguiguan in the late 1600s, politics in the Marianas followed the practice of compromise for survival. Subservient to Spain, accommodating of Germany, compliant with Japan, it has been dependent on the United States for decision-making systems and structures created elsewhere for another time and for different purposes. The residue of colonial rule must no longer remain unexamined. The bicameral body, the Constitution and its decade-long review cycle, the budgetary process, and its economic base must now become subject of political discourse in the manner of consensus indigenous to island cultures rather than the hard hitting methods of compromise warfare.

This past week, the 5th and 6th grade classes at San Vicente Elementary School elected four executive officers for their 16-member Student Council. Making decisions will be the focus of this year’s exercise in civics, with a bias towards the soft technology of consensus building. At the end of the school year, the 6th graders engage in a weeklong retreat, which includes a visit to offices up on Capitol Hill. Mayhap, by then, they will be able to tell the executive officers and the legislators how making decisions, the art and discipline of consensus building, is done!