Erik Moberg ã:
A Theory of Democratic Politics
 
 

8.1 - TWO KINDS OF COMPROMISES

In part 8 I said that the actors' behavior was uncoordinated when they just voted their minds, whereas coordination involved discussion and negotiations between the actors. When coordinating, the actors are thus likely to adjust their positions and behavior in various ways in order to achieve benefits, for instance by forming and entering favorable decisive constellations, or at least blocking ones. That of course requires compromises, but political compromises may be of different kinds and the differences are of considerable interest. Here I will describe two kinds of compromises.

Imagine two actors, A and B, which respectively have the opinions, or take the positions, a₁-a_m and b₁-b_n. Now, for any pair of positions with one position from each actor, it is interesting to ask whether the positions are compatible or not. Each cell in the figure below represents one such comparison, and a few answers are also inserted as illustrations. Thus the positions a₂ and b_n, and a₃ and b₂, are compatible, whereas the positions a₁ and b₁, and a_m and b₂, are not compatible.
 
 
 

Now, in politics, both compatibility and non-compatibility are common. In principle the issue of compatibility has to be judged in each individual case, but two general rules, with possible exceptions, may however be hypothesized.

• Different ideological positions are likely to be in conflict with each other, and thus not compatible. A society can, for instance, not be built in accordance with both socialistic and capitalistic principles. It has to be the one way or the other. Socialism and capitalism are not compatible. Or, to take another example, a position on a spatial left-right scale is not compatible with another position on the same scale. Thus, an actor cannot adopt several positions on such a scale, it has to be just one.

• Positions about interests may, on the contrary, very well be compatible. The position that a certain group in society, say small farmers, should be supported is thus perfectly compatible with the position that another group, say widows with small means, should also be supported. There is no problem in adopting the two positions simultaneously.

• The first type of compromise consists in agreeing about a common program involving compatible positions from the actors concerned. Using the example in the figure the actors A and B may for example compromise about a program involving A's positions a₂ and a₃ and B's positions b₂ and b_n. The common policy or program thus is a₂ + a₃ + b₂ + b_n + ... . Such a compromise is likely to be quite easy to reach, since no adjustments of original positions are needed. It is only required that all actors feel that a fair amount of their original positions are included in the final common policy.

• The second type of compromise, which in the general case should be much more difficult to reach, requires adjustments of positions which originally are incompatible. An example would be a compromise between A and B in the figure about the positions a₁ and b₁. If both actors adjust their positions they may finally become compatible, or perhaps even identical, and thus represent a possible compromise. a₁ and b₁ may for instance be two different positions on a spatial left-right scale, and the actors may agree to settle for a specific position between a₁ and b₁. This is however likely to be difficult since it requires that both actors change their original positions in favor of a new one.