Rennard's lesson

The Rennard affair sends an important message about politics - one which will be ignored.

So far, the allegations against him seem mild. We're not talking Jimmy Savile or Julian Assange here, but the sort of tiresome groper which any woman with a backbone has long learnt to cope with.

Except that is, for one thing. His main accuser, Susan, says:

I possibly could have knocked my chances of any future success within the party by having said no...
This is a man with an almighty amount of power. At the time he held the purse-strings for any winnable seat, and he could choose which were the starred seats and advise other federal bodies which should be the starred seats.So this was a man who could control your future.

The issue here, then, is not sex, nor crime, but power.If these allegations are correct, it vindicates Lord Acton's famous saying:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

This isn't always a wholly bad thing. One message of Lincoln is that even decent men must sometimes use unpleasant means to achieve worthy ends. But it does pose the question: wouldn't it be remarkable if the only way in which politicians abuse power is to try and get their leg over?

There's another question here. Why was Susan, and presumably women like her, at all surprised by this? It's surely astonishingly naive to think that power will be clean and decent.

One possibility is that they were prone to the optimism bias that afflicts most people entering politics. Another is that they were blinded by tribalism; the misuse of power is something "their side" does, not "ours". This fails to see that the division that matters is not between parties, but between the powerful and the powerless.

Herein, then, lies the big message of the Rennard affair. It's not just about how power can be subtly but insidiously abused, but about how people can try to enter politics whilst being oblivious to this.

I don't expect this message to be noticed, because real power consists in being able to disguise the fact that it is being exercised.The lesson of this affair will not be learned.

Comments

[Matthew]

The issue is still sex to the extent that those in such positions of power are disproportionately men and to the extent that this is one end of a spectrum of ways in which men continually victimise women (specifically sexual behaviour of this sort is uniquely disturbing and almost uniformly something carried out by men towards women). I'm not disagreeing that it's about power; more noting that power relations are inextricably tied up with gender relations as things stand right now. We can't ignore gender when asking why the victims might have felt they couldn't have spoken out more forcefully.

[Andrew]

I can't put my finger on it, but I think Chris you have an unclear understanding of what power is.

If this is misuse of power, what is correct use of it? Is merely reflecting the will of the electorate to the best of your abilities actually any use of power?

Doesn't power imply a degree of discretion to put your own ends above others? And isn't that "immoral"?

If a perfect robot were designed and elected to optimally execute public will, could that mechanism truly be described as wielding power, if in fact its actions are determined (in a strong sense of the word) by voters opinions?

Isn't personal power just the "cut" or margin that agents of other peoples power retain for themselves? The source of the agent problem.

You seem concerned to develop an efficient distribution of that power, keeping those margins as tight as possible, with high competition.

I'm not yet sure how Marx helps with this analysis.

I feel you often fall into a trap of thinking that it can be regulated by the application of top-down concentration of power by the state. But isn't that self-contradictory?

Have you considered what factors might lead to the maintenance of power in a more even distribution? Aren't they mostly going to be down to geography, technology and long term/historical educational and social factors?

[FromArseToElbow]

Re Matthew's comment that "power relations are inextricably tied up with gender relations as things stand right now. We can't ignore gender when asking why the victims might have felt they couldn't have spoken out more forcefully."

The point is not to ignore gender, but to recognise that gender itself reflects power. Left unchecked, any disequilibrium of power will tend to increase. Consequently, the practice of power seeks to exploit and amplify the existing characteristics of that disequilibrium, such as gender. This become the currency of power.

Where men dominate in positions of authority, and women are subordinates seeking access, sex (either in terms of coercive abuse or the extraction of rent) is a means of power. Banter, flirtation and the like are smaller denominations of that currency. We hear less of women abusing men simply because there are fewer women in a position to do so, but it does happen. To that extent, sex is incidental. It is the means of power, not the end.

The change in attitudes towards such abuse, which has been underway for many years now (as the Savile case shows), is actually good news for women, not because it reflects an independent change in moral behaviour, but because it indicates a shift in the balance of gender power that is then reflected through evolving attitudes. This is why women-only shortlists are a more effective way of reducing sexual harrassment than inquiries and slapped wrists.

We'll know that equality has been achieved when a man's claim of sexual harrassment against a more powerful woman isn't treated as a joke.

[pablopatito]

"the sort of tiresome groper which any woman with a backbone has long learnt to cope with."

Really? How depressing.

[dirigible]

"the sort of tiresome groper which any woman with a backbone has long learnt to cope with"

Err no.

Really, no.

[Luis Enrique]

I'm sure it's unintended, but I think unfortunate phrasing gives impression you think women who find being groped extremely distressing (who don't "cope" with it, shrug it off) lack backbone.

[web site]

thanks for sharing

[unlovenox]

You will find some intriguing points in time in this article but I do not know if I see all of them center to heart. There is some validity but I will take hold opinion until I appear into it further. Very good article , thanks and we want more! Added to FeedBurner too


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