Activism and Gresham’s institutional law

I recently posted about two broad lenses you could use to analyze political activism. One form is what I called “activism as production,” which arises when activists are motivated by a desire to help produce some form of public good – better environmental health, an improved legal system, and so on. The other form is what I called “activism as consumption,” which occurs when activists are motivated by the satisfaction they get from activism itself – a sense of community, social status, pride in being “part of the solution” or “ to be at the base’. right side of history,” and so on. As I said in that post, these are not the only two lenses through which we can view activism, nor are they mutually exclusive. Any individual or organization may be motivated by either, or both to varying degrees. But in the long term, we can expect a trend in which one of these trends is most prominent.

This is because activism is subject to what Anthony de Jasay has called “Gresham’s Institutional Law,” which I described for. In economics, Gresham’s law describes the tendency of bad money to drive good money out of circulation, when there is a fixed exchange rate between the two that prevents the situation from moving toward equilibrium. If exchange rates can be adjusted freely in the market, the effects of Gresham’s law are avoided. Anthony de Jasay described Gresham’s institutional law as the tendency of bad institutions to drive out good ones over time.

Institutions that prioritize their own growth and survival over social benefit will drive out institutions that prioritize social benefit over their own growth and survival. Unlike money, there is nothing that serves as an exchange rate and can control this process. As De Jasay puts it: institutions are selected ‘on the basis of the characteristics that are favorable to them their own survival.” The selection pressure for institutions is thus not the survival of the socially most favorable. It is what De Jasay called the “survival-of-the-fittest-to-survive” – meaning the survival of institutions that prioritizing their own growth and expansion over other factors, such as what is most socially beneficial. As this process progresses,

The same thing can happen with activism over time. Suppose there are two activist organizations working to help alleviate the same social problem. One is a ‘good’ attitude, as defined above, while the other is a ‘bad’ attitude. Let’s say that the social problem that both institutions must address is substantially alleviated over time, and may be on the verge of disappearing altogether. A “good” activist organization will recognize progress, acknowledge that there is less need for what they are doing, and reduce the scope and scale of their activism. A “bad” activist organization would deny that any progress has been made, insist that things are worse than ever, and continually seek to increase the scope and scale of their activism. Over time, the second organization would completely drown out the first – not because the second is better, but precisely because it is worse. The bad institution would have a lot to gain by convincing people that the problem it wanted to address is big and growing, even though it is actually small and smaller.

This also applies at an individual level. As mentioned in my first post on this topic, motivation through “activism as consumption” is a matter of degree, not an either/or dichotomy. But for reasons of Gresham’s institutional law, we should expect that over time a greater share of ‘activism as consumption’ will displace ‘activism as production’. At the extreme, those motivated by “activism as consumption” are the kind of people who see “involvement” as a great source of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in their lives. I’ve certainly come across no shortage of people who describe themselves this way. As a social problem improves over time, we should expect those who see “involvement” as a means to an end to be displaced by those who see “involvement” as something to be pursued in its own right .

But how plausible is it that some people engage in ‘activism as consumption’? Two researchers (who themselves are quite sympathetic to activism) watched to this question. They start telling Aristotle‘s idea of ​​“people as political animals by nature. One implication of this idea is that when people engage in political activity, they express a basic motive that is fundamental to being human. If this is true, Aristotle’s logic would further suggest that the extent to which people engage in political activism could be positively associated with their well-being.” That is, political involvement is a deeply felt need that people may feel motivated to pursue for the sake of political involvement.

They sought to measure the extent to which activism provides personal psychological benefits, and under what circumstances. What they discovered should come as no surprise: participating in activism itself provides people with significant personal psychological benefits. As they put it: “Well-being was higher when people identified themselves as activists, expressed their commitment to the activist role, and indicated that they were engaging or planning to engage in activist behavior. Results were similar for measures of hedonic well-being (e.g., life satisfaction and positive affect), eudaimonic well-being (e.g., personal growth, purpose in life, vitality), and social well-being (e.g., social integration). The results of both studies also suggest that activists experience more satisfaction of basic psychological needs, an indicator of more frequent experiences of intrinsic motivation.” Activism-as-consumption therefore has very fertile ground to grow from.

The strength of this effect depends on many other factors, such as how strongly people agree with the statement “Being an activist is central to who I am” – the kind of person I had in mind when I described the more extreme case of people who seek “activism as consumption.” But even if only a small number of potential activists fall into that category, we should expect, because of Gresham’s institutional law, that selection pressures will emerge over time for that group to dominate activist involvement. And if something like Gresham’s institutional law applies to political activism, it could explain what Eric Hoffer noted about mass movements—that every mass movement, over time, “develops into a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”