Fundamentalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to be applied to a tendency among certain groups – mainly, although not exclusively, in religion – that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as it is applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group often results from this tendency.

Depending upon the context, the label "fundamentalism" can be a pejorative rather than a neutral characterization, similar to the ways that calling political perspectives "right-wing" or "left-wing" can have negative connotations.

Buddhism

Buddhist fundamentalism has targeted other religious and ethnic groups, as in Myanmar. A Buddhist-dominated country, Myanmar has seen tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2013 Burma anti-Muslim riots (alleged to have been instigated by hardline groups such as the 969 Movement.) and in actions associated with the Rohingya genocide (2016 onwards).

Buddhist fundamentalism also features in Sri Lanka. Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka has seen recent tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka  and in the course of the 2018 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka, allegedly instigated by hardline groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena.

Historic and contemporary examples of Buddhist fundamentalism occur in each of the three main branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. In Japan, a prominent example has been the practice among some members of the Mahayana Nichiren sect of shakubuku — a method of proselytizing involving strident condemnation of other sects as deficient or evil.

Christianity

Christian fundamentalism has been defined by George Marsden as the demand for a strict adherence to certain theological doctrines, in reaction against Modernist theology. The term was originally coined by its supporters to describe what they claimed were five specific classic theological beliefs of Christianity, and that developed into a Christian fundamentalist movement within the Protestant community of the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement's purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of liberal theology and higher criticism.

The concept of "fundamentalism" has roots in the Niagara Bible Conferences that were held annually between 1878 and 1897. During those conferences, the tenets considered fundamental to Christian belief were identified.

"Fundamentalism" was prefigured by The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a collection of twelve pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915, by brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart. It is widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism.

In 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church identified what became known as the five fundamentals:

• Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this
• Virgin birth of Jesus
• Belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin
• Bodily resurrection of Jesus
• Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

In 1920, the word "fundamentalist" was first used in print by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of "The Watchman Examiner," a Baptist newspaper. Laws proposed that those Christians who were fighting for the fundamentals of the faith should be called "fundamentalists."

Theological conservatives who rallied around the five fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists". They rejected the existence of commonalities with theologically related religious traditions, such as the grouping of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into one Abrahamic family of religions. By contrast, while Evangelical groups (such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) typically agree with the "fundamentals" as they are expressed in The Fundamentals, they are often willing to participate in events with religious groups which do not hold to the essential doctrines.

Hinduism

Scholars identify several politically active Hindu movements as part of the "Hindu fundamentalist family."

Islam

Extremism within Islam goes back to the 7th century to the time of the Kharijites. From their essentially political position, they developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to Takfir, whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death.

The Shia and Sunni religious conflicts since the 7th century created an opening for radical ideologues, such as Ali Shariati (1933–77), to merge social revolution with Islamic fundamentalism, as exemplified by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Islamic fundamentalism has appeared in many countries; the Wahhabi version is promoted worldwide and financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan.

The Iran hostage crisis of 1979–80 marked a major turning point in the use of the term "fundamentalism". The media, in an attempt to explain the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution to a Western audience described it as a "fundamentalist version of Islam" by way of analogy to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the U.S. Thus was born the term Islamic fundamentalist, which became a common use of the term in following years.

Judaism

Jewish fundamentalism has been used to characterize militant religious Zionism, and both Ashkenazi and Sephardic versions of Haredi Judaism. Ian S Lustik has characterized Jewish fundamentalism as "an ultranationalist, eschatologically based, irredentist ideology."

Non-religious

Political usage of the term "fundamentalism" has been criticized. It has been used by political groups to berate opponents, using the term flexibly depending on their political interests. According to Judith Nagata, a professor of Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore, "The Afghan mujahiddin, locked in combat with the Soviet enemy in the 1980s, could be praised as 'freedom fighters' by their American backers at the time, while the present Taliban, viewed, among other things, as protectors of American enemy Osama bin Laden, are unequivocally 'fundamentalist'."

"Fundamentalist" has been used pejoratively to refer to philosophies perceived as literal-minded or carrying a pretense of being the sole source of objective truth, regardless of whether it is usually called a religion. For instance, the Archbishop of Wales has criticized "atheistic fundamentalism" broadly and said "Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous". He also said, "the new fundamentalism of our age ... leads to the language of expulsion and exclusivity, of extremism and polarisation, and the claim that, because God is on our side, he is not on yours." He claimed it led to situations such as councils calling Christmas "Winterval", schools refusing to put on nativity plays and crosses being removed from chapels. Others have countered that some of these attacks on Christmas are urban legends, not all schools do nativity plays because they choose to perform other traditional plays like A Christmas Carol or The Snow Queen and, because of rising tensions between various religions, opening up public spaces to alternate displays rather than the Nativity scene is an attempt to keep government religion-neutral.

In The New Inquisition, Robert Anton Wilson lampoons the members of skeptical organizations such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal as fundamentalist materialists, alleging that they dogmatically dismiss any evidence that conflicts with materialism as hallucination or fraud.

In France, during a protestation march against the imposition of restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in state-run schools, a banner labeled the ban as "secular fundamentalism". In the United States, private or cultural intolerance of women wearing the hijab (Islamic headcovering) and political activism by Muslims also has been labeled "secular fundamentalism".

The term "fundamentalism" is sometimes applied to signify a counter-cultural fidelity to a principle or set of principles, as in the pejorative term "market fundamentalism", used to imply exaggerated religious-like faith in the ability of unfettered laissez-faire or free-market capitalist economic views or policies to solve economic and social problems. According to economist John Quiggin, the standard features of "economic fundamentalist rhetoric" are "dogmatic" assertions and the claim that anyone who holds contrary views is not a real economist. Retired professor in religious studies Roderick Hindery lists positive qualities attributed to political, economic, or other forms of cultural fundamentalism, including "vitality, enthusiasm, willingness to back up words with actions, and the avoidance of facile compromise" as well as negative aspects such as psychological attitudes, occasionally elitist and pessimistic perspectives, and in some cases literalism.

Criticism

A criticism by Elliot N. Dorff:

In order to carry out the fundamentalist program in practice, one would need a perfect understanding of the ancient language of the original text, if indeed the true text can be discerned from among variants. Furthermore, human beings are the ones who transmit this understanding between generations. Even if one wanted to follow the literal word of God, the need for people first to understand that word necessitates human interpretation. Through that process human fallibility is inextricably mixed into the very meaning of the divine word. As a result, it is impossible to follow the indisputable word of God; one can only achieve a human understanding of God's will.

Howard Thurman was interviewed in the late 1970s for a BBC feature on religion. He told the interviewer:

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought.

Influential criticisms of fundamentalism include James Barr's books on Christian fundamentalism and Bassam Tibi's analysis of Islamic fundamentalism.

A study at the University of Edinburgh found that of its six measured dimensions of religiosity, "lower intelligence is most associated with higher levels of fundamentalism."

Controversy

The Associated Press' AP Stylebook recommends that the term fundamentalist not be used for any group that does not apply the term to itself. Many scholars have adopted a similar position. Other scholars, however, use the term in the broader descriptive sense to refer to various groups in various religious traditions including those groups that would object to being classified as fundamentalists, such as in the Fundamentalism Project.

Tex Sample asserts that it is a mistake to refer to a Muslim, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalist. Rather, a fundamentalist's fundamentalism is their primary concern, over and above other denominational or faith considerations.

Right-wing authoritarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism 

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is an ideological variable studied in political, social and personality psychology. Right-wing authoritarians are people who have a high degree of willingness to submit to authorities they perceive as established and legitimate, who adhere to societal conventions and norms, and who are hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who do not adhere to them. They value uniformity and are in favour of using group authority, including coercion, to achieve it.

In the academic use of the term right-wing authoritarianism, the label right-wing does not automatically match the popular use of the label, with some academics allowing for either left-wing or right-wing politics to motivate people to submit.

History

The concept of right-wing authoritarianism was introduced in 1981 by Canadian-American psychologist Bob Altemeyer as a refinement of the authoritarian personality theory originally pioneered by University of California, Berkeley, researchers Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford.

After extensive questionnaire research and statistical analysis, Altemeyer found that only three of the original nine hypothesized components of the model correlated together: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism. Researchers have traditionally assumed that there was just one kind of authoritarian personality, who could be either a follower or a leader. The discovery that followers and leaders are usually different types of authoritarians is based on research done by Sam McFarland. Altemeyer describes another scale called "Social Dominance" which measures how domineering a person is. Altemeyer calls people who score highly on both his "Right-Wing Authoritarian" and "Social Dominance" scales as "Double Highs".

Assessment

Right-wing authoritarianism is measured by the RWA scale which uses a Likert scale response. The first scored item on the scale states: "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us". People who strongly agree with this are showing a tendency toward authoritarian submission ("Our country desperately needs a mighty leader"), authoritarian aggression ("who will do what has to be done to destroy") and conventionalism ("the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us").

Psychometrically, the RWA scale was a significant improvement over the F-scale which was the original measure of the authoritarian personality. The F-scale was worded so that agreement always indicated an authoritarian response, thus leaving it susceptible to the acquiescence response bias. The RWA scale is balanced to have an equal number of pro and anti authoritarian statements. The RWA scale also has excellent internal reliability, with coefficient alpha typically measuring between 0.85 and 0.94. The RWA scale has been modified over the years as many of the items lost their social significance as society changed. The current version is 22 items long.

Although Altemeyer has continually updated the scale, researchers in different domains have tended to lock-in on particular versions. In the social psychology of religion, the 1992 version of the scale is still commonly used. In addition, the length of the earlier versions (30 items) led many researchers to develop shorter versions of the scale. Some of those are published, but many researchers simply select a subset of items to use in their research, a practice that Altemeyer strongly criticizes.

The uni-dimensionality of the scale has also been challenged recently. Florian Funke showed that it is possible to extract the three underlying dimensions of RWA if the double- and triple-barreled nature of the items is removed. Given the possibility of underlying dimensions emerging from the scale, it is then the case that the scale is no longer balanced since all the items primarily capturing authoritarian aggression are pro-trait worded (higher scores mean more authoritarianism) and all the items primarily measuring conventionalism are con-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism). Work by Winnifred R. Louis, Kenneth I. Mavor and Chris G. Sibley recently demonstrated that the existence of two or three factors in the RWA scale reflects real differences in these dimensions rather than acquiescence response bias.

Attitudes

Right-wing authoritarians want society and social interactions structured in ways that increase uniformity and minimize diversity. In order to achieve that, they tend to be in favour of social control, coercion and the use of group authority to place constraints on the behaviours of people such as political dissidents and immigrants. These constraints might include restrictions on immigration, limits on free speech and association and laws regulating moral behaviour. It is the willingness to support or take action that leads to increased social uniformity that makes right-wing authoritarianism more than just a personal distaste for difference. Right-wing authoritarianism is characterized by obedience to authority, moral absolutism and punitiveness towards dissidents and deviants. In parenting, right-wing authoritarians value children's obedience, neatness and good manners.

In 2013, Boris Bizumic and John Duckitt wrote that RWA measures the support "for the subordination of individual freedom and autonomy to the collective and its authority". Their studies show that it can be split into three distinct factors:

• Authoritarianism: tough attitude towards violations of social rules, norms and laws.
• Conservatism: favoring obedient and respectful support for societal authorities.
• Traditionalism: favoring traditional, religious social norms and values.

The names of these three components of RWA resemble their standard use but actually correspond to the three statistical factors. Right-wing authoritarianism was previously split differently into three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:

1. Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.

The terminology of authoritarianism, authoritarian personality and right-wing authoritarianism tend to be used interchangeably by psychologists, although inclusion of the term personality may indicate a psychodynamic interpretation consistent with the original formulation of the theory.

Left and right

The phrase right-wing in right-wing authoritarianism does not necessarily refer to someone's specific political beliefs, but to his general preference vis-à-vis social equality and hierarchy. The classic definition of left-wing describes somebody who believes in social equality and right-wing describes somebody who believes in social hierarchy. Altemeyer's personal distinction is that a right-wing authoritarian submits to the established authorities in society whereas left-wing authoritarians submit to authorities who want to overthrow the establishment. In his books, Altemeyer writes that right-wing authoritarians are drawn to domineering leaders, who by nature do not believe in equality and thus have something in common. Milton Rokeach's dogmatism scale was an early attempt to measure pure authoritarianism, whether left-wing or right-wing. The scale was carefully designed to measure closed-mindedness without regard to ideology. Nevertheless, researchers found that it correlated with British conservatism. In a similar line of research, Philip Tetlock found that right-wing beliefs are associated with less integrative complexity than left-wing beliefs. People with moderate liberal attitudes had the highest integrative complexity in their cognitions.

There have been a number of other attempts to identify "left-wing authoritarians" in the United States and Canada. These would be people who submit to leftist authorities, are highly conventional to liberal viewpoints and are aggressive to people who oppose left-wing ideology. These attempts have failed because measures of authoritarianism always correlate at least slightly with the right. However, left-wing authoritarians were found in Eastern Europe. There are certainly extremists across the political spectrum, but most psychologists now believe that authoritarianism is a predominantly right-wing phenomenon.

Although authoritarians in North America generally support conservative political parties, this finding must be considered in a historical and cultural context. During the Cold War, authoritarians in the United States were usually anti-communist whereas in the Soviet Union authoritarians generally supported the Soviet Communist Party and were opposed to capitalism. Authoritarians thus generally favor the established ways and oppose social and political change, hence even politics usually labeled as left-wing or right-wing is not descriptive. While communism in the Soviet Union is seen as leftist, it still inspired the same responses. Furthermore, recent research indicates that political progressives can exhibit the qualities of authoritarianism when they are asked about conservative Christians. A 2017 study found evidence that was suggestive of the existence of left-wing authoritarians and a 2015 study suggested that support for political correctness (defined as censoring views that offend or disadvantage a particular group in society) could be a manifestation of left-wing authoritarianism (this was also supported by a 2020 study). A 2012 study criticised research into authoritarianism, arguing that there had been biased and inadequate research into left-wing authoritarianism. Three 2020 papers argued there was increasing evidence for the existence of left-wing authoritarianism.

According to Karen Stenner, an Australian professor who specializes in authoritarianism, authoritarianism is different from conservatism because authoritarianism reflects aversion to difference across space (i.e. diversity of people and beliefs at a given moment) while conservatism reflects aversion to difference over time (i.e. change). Stenner argues that conservatives will embrace racial diversity, civil liberties and moral freedom to the extent they are already institutionalized authoritatively-supported traditions and are therefore supportive of social stability. Conservatives tend to be drawn to authoritarianism when public opinion is fractious and there is a loss of confidence in public institutions, but in general they value stability and certainty over increased uniformity. However, Stenner says that authoritarians also want difference restricted even when so doing would require significant social change and instability.

Research

According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations. Whether right-wing authoritarians are less intelligent than average is disputed, with Stenner arguing that variables such as high verbal ability (indicative of high cognitive capacity) have a very substantial ameliorative effect in diminishing authoritarian tendencies. However, one study suggested the apparent negative relationship between cognition and RWA could be partially explained by methodological issues. Measured against other factors of personality, authoritarians generally score lower on openness to experience and slightly higher on conscientiousness.

Altemeyer suggested that authoritarian politicians are more likely to be in the Conservative or Reform party in Canada, or the Republican Party in the United States. They generally have a conservative economic philosophy, are highly nationalistic, oppose abortion, support capital punishment, oppose gun control legislation and do not value social equality. The RWA scale reliably correlates with political party affiliation, reactions to Watergate, pro-capitalist attitudes, religious orthodoxy and acceptance of covert governmental activities such as illegal wiretaps.

Authoritarians are generally more favorable to punishment and control than personal freedom and diversity. They are more willing to suspend constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights. They are more likely to advocate strict, punitive sentences for criminals and report that punishing such people is satisfying for them. They tend to be ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities and homosexuals. However, Stenner argues that authoritarians will support programs intended to increase opportunities for minority groups, such as affirmative action, if they believe such programs will lead to greater societal uniformity.

In roleplaying situations, authoritarians tend to seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In a study by Altemeyer, 68 authoritarians played a three-hour simulation of the Earth's future entitled the Global Change Game. Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores which resulted in world peace and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.

The vast majority of research on right-wing authoritarianism has been done in the United States and Canada. However, a 2003 cross-cultural study examined the relation between authoritarianism and individualism–collectivism in samples (1,080) from Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland and the United States. Both at the individual level and the societal level, authoritarianism was correlated with vertical individualism or dominance seeking and vertical or hierarchical collectivism which is the tendency to submit to the demands of one's ingroup. A study done on both Israeli and Palestinian students in Israel found that RWA scores of right-wing party supporters were significantly higher than those of left-wing party supporters and scores of secular subjects were lowest.

Right-wing authoritarianism has been found to correlate only slightly with social dominance orientation (SDO). The two measures can be thought of as two sides of the same coin as RWA provides submissive followers and SDO provides power-seeking leaders.

Relationship to personality traits

Research comparing RWA with the Big Five personality traits has found that RWA is positively correlated with conscientiousness (r = 0.15) and negatively correlated with openness to experience (r = −0.36). SDO has a somewhat different pattern of correlations with the Big Five, as it is also associated with low openness to experience (r = −0.16), but is not significantly correlated with conscientiousness (r = −0.05) and instead has a negative correlation with agreeableness (r = −0.29). Low openness to experience and high conscientiousness have been found to be predictive of social conformity. People low in openness to experience tend to prefer clear, unambiguous moral rules and are more likely to support the existing social order insofar as it provides clear guidance about social norms for behavior and how the world should be. People low in openness to experience are also more sensitive to threats (both real and symbolic) to the social order and hence tend to view outgroups who deviate from traditional social norms and values as a threat to ingroup norms and values. Conscientiousness is associated with a preference for order, structure and security, hence this might explain the connection with RWA.

Criticism and development

A recent refinement to this body of research was presented in Karen Stenner's 2005 book, The Authoritarian Dynamic. Stenner argues that RWA is best understood as expressing a dynamic response to external threat, not a static disposition based only on the traits of submission, aggression and conventionalism. Stenner is critical of Altemeyer's social learning interpretation and argues that it cannot account for how levels of authoritarianism fluctuate with social conditions. She argues that the RWA Scale can be viewed as a measure of expressed authoritarianism, but that other measures are needed to assess authoritarian predispositions which interact with threatening circumstances to produce the authoritarian response.

Recent criticism has also come as a result of treating RWA as uni-dimensional even in contexts where it makes no sense to do so. This include RWA being used in regression analyses with fundamentalism as another predictor and attitudes to homosexuality and racism as the outcomes. This research seemed to show that fundamentalism would be associated with reduced racism once the authoritarian component was removed and this was summarized in a recent review of the field. However, since the RWA scale has items that also measure fundamentalist religiosity and attitudes to homosexuality, this undermines the interpretation of such analyses. Even worse is the possibility that the unrecognised dimensionality in RWA can cause a statistical artifact to arise in such regressions which can reduce or even reverse some of the relationships. Mavor and colleagues have argued that this artifact eliminates or even reverses any apparent tendency for fundamentalism to reduce racism once RWA is controlled. The implication is that in some domains such as the social psychology of religion it is not only preferable to think of RWA as consisting of at least two components, but it is essential in order to avoid statistical errors and incorrect conclusions. Several options currently exist for scales that acknowledge at least the two main underlying components in the scale (aggression/submission and conventionalism).

Altemeyer's research on authoritarianism has been challenged by psychologist John J. Ray, who questions the sampling methods used and the ability of the RWA Scale to predict authoritarian behavior and provides evidence that the RWA Scale measures conservatism rather than "directiveness", a construct that John J. Ray invented and that he relates to authoritarianism. However, Ray's approach is a minority position among researchers and other psychologists have found that both the RWA scale and the original F-scale are good predictors of both attitudes and behavior.

In 2012, the American Journal of Political Science published an article discussing the correlation between conservatism and psychoticism which they associated with authoritarianism, among other traits. In 2015, they released an erratum showing mixed correlations.

In 2017, the new Regality Theory suggested a reinterpretation of RWA in the light of evolutionary psychology. Regality theory agrees that authoritarianism is a dynamic response to external threats, but rather than seeing it as a psychological aberration, regality theory posits that authoritarianism is an evolved response to perceived collective danger. The tendency to support a strong leader when faced with common existential threats has contributed to Darwinian fitness in human prehistory because it helped solve the collective action problem in war and suppress free riders. It is argued that regality theory adds a deeper level of analysis to our understanding of authoritarianism and avoids the political bias that the research in the authoritarian personality and RWA is often criticized for.

In 2019, Ronald Inglehart combined RWA with his theory of postmaterialism, arguing that both reflected the tendency of insecure environments to produce individuals whose worldview values conformism over self-expression.

Although some earlier scholars had claimed that a comparable construct of left-wing authoritarinism (LWA) on the political left does not exist and compared the search for LWA to trying to find the Loch Ness monster, more recent work suggests the possibility that LWA does exist and that it predicts similar outcomes as RWA. This has spurred debate about whether liberals might be similarly authoritarian as conservatives.

Honeycutt et al argue that RWA scores may be misrepresented by distribution as high-scorers on the scale may actually have moderate scores and are only "high" relative to lower scorers, rather than scoring high on the scale in any absolute sense. Thus differences between "high" and "low" scorers may be exaggerated.

Crony capitalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism 

Crony capitalism is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class. This is often achieved by using state power rather than competition in managing permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other forms of state intervention over resources where the state exercises monopolist control over public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works. Money is then made not merely by making a profit in the market, but through profiteering by rent seeking using this monopoly or oligopoly. Entrepreneurship and innovative practices which seek to reward risk are stifled since the value-added is little by crony businesses, as hardly anything of significant value is created by them, with transactions taking the form of trading. Crony capitalism spills over into the government, the politics, and the media, when this nexus distorts the economy and affects society to an extent it corrupts public-serving economic, political, and social ideals.

Historical usage

The first extensive use of the term "crony capitalism" came about in the 1980s, to characterize the Philippine economy under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Early uses of this term to describe the economic practices of the Marcos regime included that of Ricardo Manapat, who introduced it in his 1979 pamphlet "Some are Smarter than Others," which was later published in 1991; former Time magazine business editor George M. Taber, who used the term in a Time magazine article in 1980,^[4] and activist (and later Finance Minister) Jaime Ongpin, who used the term extensively in his writing and is sometimes credited for having coined it.

The term crony capitalism made a significant impact in the public as an explanation of the Asian financial crisis.

It is also used to describe governmental decisions favoring cronies of governmental officials. In this context, the term is often used comparatively with corporate welfare, a technical term often used to assess government bailouts and favoritistic monetary policy as opposed to the economic theory described by crony capitalism. The extent of difference between these terms is whether a government action can be said to benefit the individual rather than the industry.

In practice

South Korean President Park Geun-hye at a breakfast meeting with business magnates Lee Kun-hee and Chung Mong-koo. A group of massive, mostly family-run business conglomerates, called chaebol, dominates South Korea's economy.

Crony capitalism exists along a continuum. In its lightest form, crony capitalism consists of collusion among market players which is officially tolerated or encouraged by the government. While perhaps lightly competing against each other, they will present a unified front (sometimes called a trade association or industry trade group) to the government in requesting subsidies or aid or regulation. For instance, newcomers to a market then need to surmount significant barriers to entry in seeking loans, acquiring shelf space, or receiving official sanction. Some such systems are very formalized, such as sports leagues and the Medallion System of the taxicabs of New York City, but often the process is more subtle, such as expanding training and certification exams to make it more expensive for new entrants to enter a market and thereby limiting potential competition. In technological fields, there may evolve a system whereby new entrants may be accused of infringing on patents that the established competitors never assert against each other. In spite of this, some competitors may succeed when the legal barriers are light. The term crony capitalism is generally used when these practices either come to dominate the economy as a whole, or come to dominate the most valuable industries in an economy. Intentionally ambiguous laws and regulations are common in such systems. Taken strictly, such laws would greatly impede practically all business activity, but in practice they are only erratically enforced. The specter of having such laws suddenly brought down upon a business provides an incentive to stay in the good graces of political officials. Troublesome rivals who have overstepped their bounds can have these laws suddenly enforced against them, leading to fines or even jail time. Even in high-income democracies with well-established legal systems and freedom of the press in place, a larger state is generally associated with increased political corruption.

The term crony capitalism was initially applied to states involved in the 1997 Asian financial crisis such as Thailand and Indonesia. In these cases, the term was used to point out how family members of the ruling leaders become extremely wealthy with no non-political justification. Southeast Asian nations, such as Hong Kong and Malaysia, still score very poorly in rankings measuring this. The term has also been applied to the system of oligarchs in Russia. Other states to which the term has been applied include India, in particular the system after the 1990s liberalization, whereby land and other resources were given at throwaway prices in the name of public private partnerships, the more recent coal-gate scam and cheap allocation of land and resources to Adani SEZ under the Congress and BJP governments.

 

China's ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang was the first Politburo Standing Committee member investigated for corruption in history

Similar references to crony capitalism have been made to other countries such as Argentina and Greece. Wu Jinglian, one of China's leading economists and a longtime advocate of its transition to free markets, says that it faces two starkly contrasting futures, namely a market economy under the rule of law or crony capitalism. A dozen years later, prominent political scientist Pei Minxin had concluded that the latter course had become deeply embedded in China. The anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping (2012–2017) has seen more than 100,000 high- and low-ranking Chinese officials indicted and jailed.

Many prosperous nations have also had varying amounts of cronyism throughout their history, including the United Kingdom especially in the 1600s and 1700s, the United States and Japan.

Crony capitalism index

The Economist benchmarks countries based on a crony-capitalism index calculated via how much economic activity occurs in industries prone to cronyism. Its 2014 Crony Capitalism Index ranking listed Hong Kong, Russia and Malaysia in the top three spots.

In finance

Crony capitalism in finance was found in the Second Bank of the United States. It was a private company, but its largest stockholder was the federal government which owned 20%. It was an early bank regulator and grew to be one being the most powerful organizations in the country due largely to being the depository of the government's revenue.

The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999 completely removed Glass–Steagall’s separation between commercial banks and investment banks. After this repeal, commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies combined their lobbying efforts. Critics claim this was instrumental in the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.

In sections of an economy

"The Bosses of the Senate", corporate interests as giant money bags looming over U.S. senators.

More direct government involvement in a specific sector can also lead to specific areas of crony capitalism, even if the economy as a whole may be competitive. This is most common in natural resource sectors through the granting of mining or drilling concessions, but it is also possible through a process known as regulatory capture where the government agencies in charge of regulating an industry come to be controlled by that industry. Governments will often establish in good faith government agencies to regulate an industry. However, the members of an industry have a very strong interest in the actions of that regulatory body while the rest of the citizenry are only lightly affected. As a result, it is not uncommon for current industry players to gain control of the watchdog and to use it against competitors. This typically takes the form of making it very expensive for a new entrant to enter the market. An 1824 landmark United States Supreme Court ruling overturned a New York State-granted monopoly ("a veritable model of state munificence" facilitated by Robert R. Livingston, one of the Founding Fathers) for the then-revolutionary technology of steamboats. Leveraging the Supreme Court's establishment of Congressional supremacy over commerce, the Interstate Commerce Commission was established in 1887 with the intent of regulating railroad robber barons. President Grover Cleveland appointed Thomas M. Cooley, a railroad ally, as its first chairman and a permit system was used to deny access to new entrants and legalize price fixing.

The defense industry in the United States is often described as an example of crony capitalism in an industry. Connections with the Pentagon and lobbyists in Washington are described by critics as more important than actual competition due to the political and secretive nature of defense contracts. In the Airbus-Boeing WTO dispute, Airbus (which receives outright subsidies from European governments) has stated Boeing receives similar subsidies which are hidden as inefficient defense contracts. Other American defense companies were put under scrutiny for no-bid contracts for Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina related contracts purportedly due to having cronies in the Bush administration.

Gerald P. O'Driscoll, former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, stated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became examples of crony capitalism as government backing let Fannie and Freddie dominate mortgage underwriting, saying. "The politicians created the mortgage giants, which then returned some of the profits to the pols—sometimes directly, as campaign funds; sometimes as "contributions" to favored constituents".

In developing economies

In its worst form, crony capitalism can devolve into simple corruption where any pretense of a free market is dispensed with. Bribes to government officials are considered de rigueur and tax evasion is common. This is seen in many parts of Africa and is sometimes called plutocracy (rule by wealth) or kleptocracy (rule by theft).Kenyan economist David Ndii has repeatedly brought to light how this system has manifested over time, occasioned by the reign of Uhuru Kenyatta as president.

Corrupt governments may favor one set of business owners who have close ties to the government over others. This may also be done with, religious, or ethnic favoritism. For instance, Alawites in Syria have a disproportionate share of power in the government and business there (President Assad himself is an Alawite). This can be explained by considering personal relationships as a social network. As government and business leaders try to accomplish various things, they naturally turn to other powerful people for support in their endeavors. These people form hubs in the network. In a developing country those hubs may be very few, thus concentrating economic and political power in a small interlocking group.

Normally, this will be untenable to maintain in business as new entrants will affect the market. However, if business and government are entwined, then the government can maintain the small-hub network.

Raymond Vernon, specialist in economics and international affairs, wrote that the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain because they were the first to successfully limit the power of veto groups (typically cronies of those with power in government) to block innovations, writing: "Unlike most other national environments, the British environment of the early 19th century contained relatively few threats to those who improved and applied existing inventions, whether from business competitors, labor, or the government itself. In other European countries, by contrast, the merchant guilds [...] were a pervasive source of veto for many centuries. This power was typically bestowed upon them by government". For example, a Russian inventor produced a steam engine in 1766 and disappeared without a trace.

Vermon further stated that "a steam powered horseless carriage produced in France in 1769 was officially suppressed". James Watt began experimenting with steam in 1763, got a patent in 1769 and began commercial production in 1775.

Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has said: "One of the greatest dangers to the growth of developing countries is the middle income trap, where crony capitalism creates oligarchies that slow down growth. If the debate during the elections is any pointer, this is a very real concern of the public in India today". Tavleen Singh, columnist for The Indian Express, has disagreed. According to Singh, India's corporate success is not a product of crony capitalism, but because India is no longer under the influence of crony socialism.

Political viewpoints

While the problem is generally accepted across the political spectrum, ideology shades the view of the problem's causes and therefore its solutions. Political views mostly fall into two camps which might be called the socialist and capitalist critique. The socialist position is that crony capitalism is the inevitable result of any strictly capitalist system and thus broadly democratic government must regulate economic, or wealthy, interests to restrict monopoly. The capitalist position is that natural monopolies are rare, therefore governmental regulations generally abet established wealthy interests by restricting competition.

Socialist critique

Critics of crony capitalism including socialists and anti-capitalists often assert that crony capitalism is the inevitable result of any strictly capitalist system. Jane Jacobs described it as a natural consequence of collusion between those managing power and trade while Noam Chomsky has argued that the word crony is superfluous when describing capitalism. Since businesses make money and money leads to political power, business will inevitably use their power to influence governments. Much of the impetus behind campaign finance reform in the United States and in other countries is an attempt to prevent economic power being used to take political power.

Ravi Batra argues that "all official economic measures adopted since 1981 ... have devastated the middle class" and that the Occupy Wall Street movement should push for their repeal and thus end the influence of the super wealthy in the political process which he considers a manifestation of crony capitalism.

Socialist economists, such as Robin Hahnel, have criticized the term as an ideologically motivated attempt to cast what is in their view the fundamental problems of capitalism as avoidable irregularities. Socialist economists dismiss the term as an apologetic for failures of neoliberal policy and more fundamentally their perception of the weaknesses of market allocation.

Capitalist critique

Supporters of capitalism also generally oppose crony capitalism and supporters such as classical liberals, neoliberals and right-libertarians consider it an aberration brought on by governmental favors incompatible with free market. Such proponents of capitalism tend to regard the term as an oxymoron, arguing that crony capitalism is not capitalism at all. In the capitalist view, cronyism is the result of an excess of interference in the market which inherently will result in a toxic combination of corporations and government officials running the sector of the economy. Some advocates prefer to equate this problem with terms such as corporatocracy or corporatism, considered "a modern form of mercantilism", to emphasize that the only way to run a profitable business in such a system is to have help from corrupt government officials.

Even if the initial regulation was well-intentioned (to curb actual abuses) and even if the initial lobbying by corporations was well-intentioned (to reduce illogical regulations), the mixture of business and government stifle competition, a collusive result called regulatory capture. Burton W. Folsom Jr. distinguishes those that engage in crony capitalism—designated by him political entrepreneurs—from those who compete in the marketplace without special aid from government, whom he calls market entrepreneurs. The market entrepreneurs such as James J. Hill, Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller succeeded by producing a quality product at a competitive price. For example, the political entrepreneurs such as Edward Collins in steamships and the leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad in railroads were men who used the power of government to succeed. They tried to gain subsidies or in some way use government to stop competitors.