Bridging Boundaries: Offe

New Developments

Offe observes that the traditional gap between the political and private, enshrined by liberal theorists, is swiftly disappearing. He points to three phenomena, the rise of "participatory" moods and ideologies compelling citizens to be more actively involved (Homo civicus has awakened!), the increased use of nonconventional and noninstutionalized forms of political participation (protests, demonstrations, etc.), and political demands and conflicts concerning issues that used to be considered "moral" and therefore outside the political domain.

As government insinuates itself into more and more aspects of citizens daily lives citizens have increasing sought alternative means of winning immediate and inclusive control over government elites by way of tactics that many conservatives (Offe actually employs the term "neoconservative", an affront to our dear friend Lipset) view as a threat to the established political order. In contrast, conservatives would seek to limit interaction between the two spheres, keeping the government out of key areas of civic life, like the economy, and on the other shielding political elites from the actions of a mobilized populace. As different as these approaches are Offe makes the ironic observation that they share one key belief, that the issues of the day cannot be resolved within the bureaucratic leader. While neoconservatives attempt to reinstate the family as a realm of decision-making, the "new social movements" claim methods and institutions in an intermediate space between the formally political and the private as a means of freeing itself from the state.

Whereas the liberal political society of the 19th and first half of the 20th century was focused on economic interests, the current climate is one in which values are increasingly the matter of dispute. Its no longer a question of how rewards will be distributed but the very nature of these goods and their worth. The "old paradigm", as Offe refers, to it was marked by consensus not only as far as the focus on interests but also as to the means by which outcomes were to be negotiated. A small number of specialized and institutionalized settings and actors-unions, parties-were dominant. The new movements are marked not only by the heterogeneity of participants, but also by the variety of tactics employed.

Characterizing the New Movements

The "new paradigm" of political activity is marked by the embrace of political themes that cannot "be readily classified in the binary code of social action that underlies liberal political theory. [The new social movements] locate themselves in a their intermediate category, and claim a type of issue that is neither private (in the sense of being of no legitimate concern to others) nor public (in the sense of being recognized as the legitimate object of political institutions and actors" (69).

Other key attributes:

ÅE Such groups can be distinguished from other challengers to the traditional order, such as those posed by private criminality, terrorism, and sociocultural movements, in that their means are recognized as legitimate (if unorthodox). Unlike the efforts of a purely social or religious movement that merely strives for the privilege to pursue their beliefs unmolested, the ends the new movements seek are binding in the sense that they apply to everyone.

ÅE Internal dynamics: informal, ad hoc, and egalitarian

ÅE External dynamics: rely heavily on tactics involving the physical presence of large numbers of people; demands often framed in negative terms (freeze, never, ban). External mode also marked by an emphasis on the "principled and non-negotiable nature " of their concerns. These movements react to other political actors in terms of sharp antinomies. This characteristics the result of two factors: a lack of a coherent set of ideological principles from which can be derived a systematic picture of a desirable society and methodically deduce the steps necessary to achieve it. Such a theory is necessary if groups are to exchange long-term gains for short-term losses. The focus is very much on the battle, rather than a war. Offe makes the interesting observation that the uncompromising quality of these movements is also due in part to the fact that they have no ability to negotiate or to bargain in the mode that is common among institutional actors in that they have nothing to offer in exchange for concessions. The only tactic available to them is vehement insistence.

ÅE They do not look to established political categories for a means of self-identification. They draw their identities from the issues themselves, putting themselves forward as women, residents, and, in the case of the environmental and peace movements, members of the human race.

ÅE Marked by a rejection of progress as inherently beneficial. Are focused on preserving human integrity in the fact of rational and technological developments. The political sphere is something that must be "taken back" by the people and remade in a form that is more dignifying to human communities.

ÅE Demographics: tend to be members of the new middle class, i.e. young, well-educated, employed in personal service (non-manufacturing) occupations, and financially comfortable. Thus they are the consummate class ansich, in that many of their participants possess similar socioeconomic backgrounds but these movements are not organized around economic interests per se. These movements though have also found support among "decommodified or peripheral groups", including housewives and students, i.e. folks not involved in the formal community and with plenty of time on their hands.

Causes

O. rejects the cultural or, in Offe's estimation, psychologizing explanation of Inglehart (see "Political Culture" write ups). He puts forward an alternative explanation that is structural in nature. He traces the emergence of the new movements to three interrelated aspects of postindustrialist societies:

ÅE The broadening of the negative effects of established modes of economic and political rationality

ÅE A qualitative change in the in the methods of social control, a shift from overt authority to reliance, as described by Foucault, on more subtle and comprehensive, thereby inescapable, techniques (deepening)

ÅE The loss, on the part of political and economic institutions, of any capacity of self-regulation or correction (akin to Giddens' notion of the Juggernaut). Offe terms this irreversibility.

These correlate with the broad political base of the new movements, their reliance of metaphors of invasion and "colonization of the life-world", and their explicit concern, not with the inability of the state and society to provide for economic growth and material prosperity (the old paradigm emphasis), with its success, and a desire to examine the human cost of this "success". Rather than reflecting a value change, Offe sees these movements rising out of structural discomfort that has resulted in value selectivity. Sound familiar? This is essentially Harvey's take on post-modernism, the latter representing for him an embrace, again as the result of a profound restructuring of the economy, of certain modern values-diversity, community-over others (progress, rationality).

Offe concludes with an assessment of the prospects of these movements. In that these movements have affinities with both the traditional Right and the traditional Left, there are three potential alliances, one between the new movements and one of the traditional parties, or an alliance of the traditional Right and Left against the movements. Offe sees an alliance of the new movements and the traditional left as the only one which could produce a meaningful challenge to the old paradigm.