Grievance Politics: Testing Canadian Confederation's Possible Bifurcation into a Mid-level of Selection

Last post I made a fairly unorthodox speculation that grievance based sacred value creation in divide and rule, weak empire networks, function less as a tool for between-group competition and more as a process tool to stabilize mid-levels of selection.

This post I want to test to see how accurate this idea may be.  I have not idea what to expect. The idea emanated from my reading of Nixon's "Struggle For Power in Early Modern Europe" which analyzes the 16th and 17th century European war of religions through a relational network lens.

Tests will include

1. Canadian confederation (1800 - 1867)
2. US confederation  (1790's to Civil War)
3. US' ~1820's Great Religious Awakening
4. US 1960's cultural destabilization (or great moral awakening)

I am no great historian so don't expect any great rigour.

CANADIAN CONFEDERATION TEST

French - English wars were foundational to Canadian North America. Protestant - Catholic divides were pronounced. After the Haudenosaunee confederacy's loss of Upper Canada under Tecumseh, Canadian confederation was functionally between two founding nations, the British which dominated Upper Canada and the French which dominated Lower Canada.

That both Upper and Lower Canada were ruled via weak empires under divisional based governance is uncontroversial. Power, the degree of colonial independence throws a wrench into things. Canada was at a long arm's distance from their central empires. After the US war of Independence, British policy was extremely conciliatory with respect to its Canadian colony. France increasingly left Lower Canada to its own devices.

Wikipedia lists a number of influences leading to Confederation. It also has a rather untrustworthy sounding section on the role of ideology in Confederation.

The major failing of this case for my theory is that French and English Canada represented colonial interests of two very different empires. A Quebecois grievance against the Canadian British would produce no special conciliation from their French empire.

Joint governance was always an unlikely scenario. Despite high tensions between the two colonies' politics and customs, a pluralistic outcome emerged. Britain headed off the US' sacralization of independence via extraordinarily generous concessions and "welfare" pay offs.

What seems to have happened is that as the tensions for assimilative compromise heightened, both parties pulled back and agreed upon "good-enough" borders for their cultures and values. During this process, one can argue that Quebecois culture gradually got sacralized. I'm not sure what happened on the English side? A bit of sacralization of "progressive" destiny? Sacralization of english westward expansion?

At any rate, it seems like both sides (potential) sacralizations served to head off the increasing frictions compromise was engendering. Pluralism emerged.

Was this a new level of selection as per my original theory? No.

Well....maybe a little?

Initially though, you ended up with no North American polity sized changes. Both groups largely dissed their old empires. The result of that split didn't really change the polity sizes that were already in play in terms of North America itself. But, one could argue that sacralization prevented immediate assimilation into a single large polity size. It also prevented Balkanization back into "city" sized sub-states. Population centres, Eastern Canada, and the territories, were able to connect with one of the founding nations. The line, "clear lines make for good neighbours" comes to mind. Canada has functionally stabilized at a two polity sized solution.  It is currently tending to a three-nation confederacy under strong federalism.


CONCLUSION
I think it is more than a bit of a stretch to say Canadian confederation supports my supposition that sacred value emergence in weak empires facilitates mid-sized polity size development and stabilization. However, I don't think the Canadian case disproves things. There just isn't enough information to support either conclusion. Arms-length colonialism split between two rival empires also confounds things.

Grievance Politics: A Historical Lens for Functional Analysis

The French Religion Wars

I’m going through Daniel Nixon’s “The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe” as a foil for the dynamics of our current Great Religious Awakening and schism.  To what extent do the socio-political dynamics of the original Protestant-Catholic religious wars illuminate our own Progressive culture wars?

I think the answer is… a lot.

Here’s one example.

The steps toward “Castilianization” taken under Charles V reached fruition under Philip, not only because the loss of the eastern Habsburg domains left Castile the clear epicentre of its “Spanish” successor, but alone decisions taken by Charles to consolidate his position in Castile after the Comuneros revolt. Catholicism and Castile conjoined under Philip in ways that limited his ability to engage in multivocal signalling with respect to other domains.  - p. 189

Weak empire "Divide-and-rule" relational network

Nixon’s basic thesis is that division based empires, such as those from the middle ages, survive because each polity has a unique set of accommodations that pre-clude cross-polity unification.  For example, accommodations for Castile come off the back of Flanders. Zero-sum empires gain some dynastic stability via divisional based strategies. This increases the number of small to moderate revolts. But, it minimizes the cohesiveness large revolts require.

The creation/emergence of sacred values within a dissident or uncomfortably ruled population precludes a weak empire’s divide-and-rule governance. What Nixon’s work seems to show is that Protestant grievances weren’t “designed” for easy reconciliation or buy-off. The grievances that had “power” were the ones that evolved into sacred value space and which also precluded easy comprehension by hegemonic groups.  Hegemonic attempts to reconcile doctrinal differences usually resulted in the emergence of finer and finer grained intractions.

Habsburg weak empire's relational network

In one sense, you could say that Protestant evolved into a position where it was impossible not to see the core of Catholicism as anything other than irredeemably rotten. Therefore any meaningful rationalization with it was flawed. (sound familiar structural racists?)

Accommodations could be made, but these ultimately served to empower grievance dynamics and did absolutely nothing to diffuse "true grievances". That’s because viewing dissatisfaction in terms of rational transactions is flawed. I contend that this is because “dissatisfaction”, in these landscapes, has more to do with group level dynamics than simple power or theological/rational issues.

GREIVANCE DYNAMICS & LEVELS OF SELECTION

Weak empires are incapable of maintaining cohesion at a higher level of selection. But, the localized polities over which divide-and-rule empires govern, eventually become too low a level of selection. In the 16th century, this was city states.  It was not the bigger duchies, sub-kingdoms and princedoms. These changed hands too quickly. 

Over time, a variety of sacred value experimentations rise up, most of which are unfit and are quickly quashed. But, over time, the adjacent-possible landscape shifts. A revolutionary movement stumbles upon a “good-enough” solution, leverages grievance dynamics and produces a sacred value based bifurcation.

Protestantism forced a weak emperor into a no-win situation where any side he took would alienate one group or another. It precluded divide-and-rule strategy. The only sense I can make of this, is that such revolutionary strategies are less about usurping governance and more about stumbling into a mid-polity sized solution (i.e. a mid-level of selection solution).

Thus, evolutionarily, the 16th and 17th century wars of religion were less about between group dominance (i.e. which socio-political system was more fit) and more about the process by which mid sized groupings were formed and stabilized.

This has some very interesting implications for today’s grievance based culture wars. For one, it implies that Western nations may be experiencing the rise of grievance politics because:

• they have evolved into de facto divide-and-rule governance strategies
• their governance systems, while seemingly strong, are actually weak with respect to the levels of diversity they have to manage
• radical social justice grievance politics have evolved into sacred value terrain in order to de-legitimize hegemonic buy-offs and force no-win governance conundrums
• nation states and nation state confederacies (such as the US) may see the emergence of mid-sized polities. In the EU, this may be the unification of small country blocks (e.g. Poland + Hungary + Czech or Germany + France + Sweden). In the US it may be the unification of various States (or the de-facto weakening of federalism into smaller competing blocks such as the progressive coastal states and the conservative interior states).

CONCLUSION

I am certainly not saying that any of this is intentional. What I am exploring is what evolutionary role grievance based bifurcations play in social and political realms. Why do most socio-political schisms evolve into sacred value battles? 

On the surface, one can interpret it as an effective inter-group competition tool. I certainly think this is correct. But, the grievance dynamics make this an incomplete picture. Why not use grievances to gain a better negotiated settlement? Why do grievances seemingly evolve into intractable fights that almost purposefully preclude settlement via sacred value dynamics (and their natural intractability for negotiated settlement)? This is just such an unfit position that it seems there has to be a higher level of selection at play for it to make evolutionary sense...

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Point 1
Tests for this rather unorthodox theory might be found during any levels of selection transition. Ideally, tests should be situated at the point where unstable higher levels of selection solidify. This might include:

• Nation state solidification during the early to mid 1900's
• Canadian confederation
• US confederation during the late 1700's and early to mid 1800's
• Egypt during the end of it's classical empire era
• Rome during the end of it's classical empire era
• US civil right's movement

I'll probably take a quick look at some of these test cases this weak to see to what extent my theory is falsified.

Point 2
The main counterpoint to this theory is that sacred value based grievances induce hegemons into giving away the farm. For instance, how many political concessions did Lutherans and Calvinists get or potentially get during the various conciliatory meetings with Charles?  Modern grievances can be seen as shifting the Overton window for their own benefit without giving up much if anything in return.

This is a solid argument. Grievance sacralization risk is that is inspires the hegemon into treating the group as unwindable, and hence ripe for extermination. Evolutionarily, this may still be fit, if martyrdom inspires insurgency and greater group cohesion. Suicide bombers probably reflect this dynamic.