Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications (Politics, History, and Culture)

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Duke University Press, Language English View all editions Prev Next edition 3 of 3. Check copyright status Cite this Title Ruling oneself out: Physical Description xxxiii, p. Series Politics, history, and culture Subjects Authoritarianism. Germany -- Politics and government -- France -- Politics and government -- The Stage and the Problem 1. Actors and Events 2. Subservience, Common Sense 3. The Terms of the Challenge 6. Were some parliamentarians mistaken about the consequences and meaning of their vote, their misperception should rather be interpreted as a case of voluntary blindness.

Against the miscalculation argument, two further objections of broad analytical significance need to be underscored. As they look for relevant information allowing them to minimize the risks they take, self-delusion becomes more difficult. The second objection points to the public character of the decision. When the choice is public, actors know that somehow they will be held accountable.

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Self-delusion again proves to be a much more arduous task than when the choice remains confined to the private sphere. In these instances, misjudgment does not determine choice. Rather, choice determines misjudgment Let us now consider the third explanation: Here abdication results from a lack of conviction. The members of the group are predisposed to relinquish some, or all, of their rights, possessions, or capacities. The fruit falls because it is a ripe. Vilfredo Pareto views the circulation of elites in this light.

A governing group abdicates without offering any opposition when it no longer believes in itself, or when it takes up the watchwords of its adversaries This explanation is present in accounts of the collapse of Communist regimes in It also feeds analyses of the vote of the Center Party parliamentary delegation on March 23, Their ideology lent too far towards a reactionary, hierarchical, and corporatist vision of society. Hence, they indulged in the idea of finding common grounds with the Nazis Like the explanation in terms of force majeure, an explanation cast in terms of collusion implies a prevalent motivational schema.

Whereas invoking coercion or the pressure of the circumstances posits individuals who feel powerless and act out of resignation or fear, invoking collusion depicts actors who placidly accept their own dispossession or welcome it. Their abdication rests on an act of adherence whether this act is low key or in plain view. At odds with this interpretation are behaviors and attitudes revealing a decisional dilemma: Collusion is scarcely compatible with uncertainty and ambivalence. Witness the hesitations and matters of conscience confronting the Center Party deputies ahead of the vote.

The afternoon meeting on the same day before the deputies cast their ballot took a dramatic turn. What do we learn from this critical overview of commonsensical explanations? Three points are worth underscoring. First, a systematic explanatory framework should be able to shed light on positive and on negative cases.

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That is, it should be able to explain acts of collective abdication as well as acts of collective resistance in the face of challenge. This requirement is of particular importance with regard to the argument of constraint. Coercion is no warrant of its intended effect. When experienced as an intolerable attack on an individual's or a group's integrity, it can become a motive for opposition and refusal.

Second, whether we are considering resistance or abdication, uniform behavior does not necessarily stem from uniform dispositions or beliefs. Like any collective act, abdication makes individual actors alike by virtue of their behavior. In some cases, the production of a shared collective narrative after the event bolsters this uniformity.

Yet, without prior examination, we cannot conclude that actors adopted a similar course of action because they were made of the same fabric.

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Third, abdication implies making a choice. Analyzing its modalities requires analyzing it as a choice-making process Confronted with a situation that threatens their rights, identity, power, or welfare, they waver. The group under challenge finds itself at a crossroads. It can disaggregate, abdicate, or resist. Christine Teusch, Center Party delegate to the Reichstag — Helene Weber, Center Party delegate to the Reichstag — Joseph Wirth, Center party delegate to the Reichstag, prime minister in and minister of home affairs in In the meeting of the Center party delegation that took place in the afternoon of March 23, , Christine Teusch, Helene Weber and Joseph Wirth declared themselves opposed to the tranfer of full powers to Hitler.

Some individuals defect because they believe jumping ship is a good bet or because they do not identify with the group in the line of fire. Still others do not view any course of action other than opposition as acceptable. Uncommitted actors await the signal or the injunction that will put an end to their indeterminacy.

The paradox is that this expectation insofar as it is shared, far from offering a way out, makes the group the locus of an open choice, a vanishing point without any definite content. The remark by Ludwig Kaas, chairman of the Center Party, during a meeting of the parliamentary delegation on March 23, before the vote, is telling in this regard: No one can take the responsibility of casting an isolated vote. Given the risks and stakes involved, Kaas stated the need for collective alignment. The challenge elicits on their part the desire to be subsumed in a collective decision that, since it is collective, absolves them to a certain extent.

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It also motivates them to appropriate the reasons that subsequently will provide the thread of a justifying narrative. Two scenarios are then possible. The first is a behavioral cascade. Some group members publicly commit themselves to a course of action. Their involvement tips individuals who otherwise would have remained on the sidelines. These in turn tip other group members, and so on and so forth. Alignment is sequential The second scenario rests on a process of expectation formation.

In the absence of sequential alignment, actors seek to anticipate the behavior of the group as a whole. Alignment occurs by anticipation This explanatory schema grants a central place to the heterogeneity of dispositions and motivations. Because of this heterogeneity alignment has a temporality of its own. Individual propensities to conform to the mold vary. Given what is at stake, some protagonists act autonomously, without regard for the stance adopted by others. Most decide to make themselves indistinguishable from a collective stance.

Let us now go back to the night of August 4, , with which this examination of abdication and regime collapse opened. Contemporaneous accounts stress the collective outburst of joy. The event is thus exceptional in three respects: Joy and euphoria stood in sharp contrast to the antagonisms voiced in the preceding weeks.

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This joyful effusion is all the more surprising when attention is paid to the context: Throughout the month of July, news of castles being sacked reached the deputies gathered in Versailles For the aristocratic delegates, these pieces of news were particularly worrisome. Its intent was repressive Given these contextual elements it is hardly surprising that authors who reflected on the event interpreted the outpouring of joy that accompanied the resolutions passed on the night of August 4 as an instance of irrational group behavior: Only the force of collective effervescence, it seems, can account for such a puzzling decision.

Le Bon and Freud laid the premises of this reading. From their perspective, collective situations characterized by a high density of interpersonal relations are particularly prone to mimetic and contagious moves Once these dynamics are in motion, actors lose control. Mimicking each other, actors are incapable of a strategic assessment of consequences In a consonant vein, Durkheim interpreted August 4, as a moment of collective effusion in which adhesion to the group took precedence over any other consideration, motivating individuals to transcend egotistic interests Seen in this light, the night of August 4 has all the trappings of a typical case.

The delegates renounced their privileges in a state of general ebullience. The comte of Lally-Tolendal did not fail to observe it in a note he handed to the chair of the assembly, Isaac Le Chapelier, during the debate: Renunciations and calls for reform rained down as if avoiding being outdone in sacrifice was now the priority. While the emotional dimension of the event is quite obvious, the role played by enthusiasm in this collective dynamic remains open to question. On this issue, two remarks are in order.

First, the fact that protagonists were overwhelmed by joy tells us nothing about the process that brought this effusion about.

Second, the exact role played by emotions in the etiology of abdication remains to be elucidated. In this respect, the night of August 4 provides a privileged field for inquiry. A detailed sequential analysis of the event shows that effusion and ebullience were not bound to happen. Indignant reactions to the diatribes against feudal abuses at the beginning of the meeting indicate that the resurgence of antagonisms belonged to the realm of the possible. A Theory of Collective Abdications Author s: Politics, History, and Culture Series Editor s: The Stage and the Problem 1 1.

Actors and Events 3 2. Constitutional Abdication 37 Part II: Subservience, Common Sense 59 3. The Terms of the Challenge 6. Three Processes 7. Diffusion Part IV: Collective Stances 8.

The Production of Consent 9. Vacillations, Convergence Part V: Judgments of Significance The Consistency of Inconsistency The Event as Statement Appendix A:

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