Albert O. Hirschman I (cont.)--Exit, Voice and Loyalty

At the end of my last Pulitzer Prize-winning post reviewing Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty, I indicated that I'd be moving onto others of his works. However, there are still a couple of points from the first book that need to be emphasized due to their relevance to major current events. If you missed that review and don't want to peruse our quality books on the left, here's the basic point of his essay: In organized interactions, if one party is dissatisfied with the results, products, whatever, that party has the option of "exit" (leaving the relationship, for others or doing without), "loyalty" (staying and hoping for change), or "voice" (expressing the dissatisfaction and demanding the change). Hirschman's insight was that, for the organized interaction to prosper, all were needed in proper equilibrium. Loyalty retained the resources for continuity and recuperation, voice told what needed change, and exit gave the first two credibility by showing that failure was a real option if they weren't listened to. This isn't that profound (we see it regularly in debates over whether staying or going is really what is needed in any organized interaction--from our sweeties to our jobs to our softball teams and bands), but Hirschman pulls it together as a framework that has obvious application to so many of our problems today.

For example, this side of the blogosphere has a love/hate thing with the news media. There is an ideal under the First Amendment that the "press" (print and broadcast) is required to meet if our democratic republic is to function properly. However, the "press" is both a business with its own, opposed demands and an institution with its culture, perks, and self-absorbed priorities. So, tension develops between the cross-buffeted press and those who love the press in the ideal but not in the practice. Do we dump the New York Times or Washington Post (in my case, YES) or hang in there, voicing displeasure and demanding change but still providing enough loyalty to give them the resources and time to change? Clearly, the same dynamic is going on within the Democratic Party itself. (One might also add The Boy's psychotic attachment/fury with a certain baseball team if one were sadistic.) Hirschman's answer is "yes" to both questions. For the press, Dems, P---tes to right themselves, they need people to flee them in order to give power and possibility to those who stay demanding change. Too many exiters and the organized interaction fails, too much loyalty and there's no incentive to change, voice with too much loyalty and too little exiting and the voices can safely be ignored.

You may have noticed a couple of shortcomings with the argument, though, as you read these specific examples. One is the necessity for exiters of having somewhere to go. There's always the "do without" option, and it's often the right thing to do, even if painful, but that pain can be great. If your career is nailing shoes onto horses' hooves, your boss, the race track owner, can pretty much do anything he wants to you without fear of your exiting. (Of course, if you're the only one around, the shoe's on the other . . . sorry, can't finish it.) In other words, the economists' famous "sunk costs" can make exit all but impossible, and, if it is, there goes voice's ability to effect change, too.

Another shortcoming should be obvious from the press example. We like to claim that we criticize the press in America because we want it to live up to its First Amendment function while the other side criticizes it because it wants to kill the ideal completely and either have Pravda or nothing. In other words, the press gets hit by "voice" from people who deny the legitimacy of the organized interaction itself. If the organization responds to these outside "voices," it admits illegitimacy and drives away those who would support the function for which it was created. Which means, when it comes to the press, that our side has to be doubly aware of the importance of voice and exit but also of loyalty. Those of us who just can't stomach the venality, superficiality, and irrelevance of today's news media have to be offset by those who hold on despite hope and those who can use the example of each to make clear to these media that a viable future is possible, as is a viable death. As hard as it is for me to admit that losing these people would be a bad thing. As hard as it is for those people to understand that where they're heading is worse than having nothing if they continue their path.

Lastly, the P---ates' example point out another thing. If the organized interaction ends up receiving resources from outsiders (as Major League Baseball subsidizes its owners, come good team or bad Double A equivalent), why should they listen to the receivers of their product? If one or two rich guys are willing to subsidize unmentioned ideological rags that call themselves opinion magazines past the point of actual financial viability, why should those rags respond to critiques, even from loyal voicers, or worry about loss of subscribers and buyers? Only loss of the external support may bring the providers back to reality, if there's still time. (Or new and/or enlightened sponsors or owners, like the Detroit Tigers, whose GM once exchanged a couple of very funny letters with me and who are a true turnaround and who would reward loyalty better, are you listening, P---ate fan?)

The point is that Hirschman shines a lot of light on a vitally important aspect of vitally important everyday activity, the need to balance credible threat of exit with sufficient remaining loyalty to give voice a chance to change things, but the dilemmas remain. Simply reading Exit, Voice and Loyalty won't provide the answers to all the problems to which it applies (I'm sure you came up with a lot just reading these examples), but it does provide guidance that you're not getting elsewhere. It's worth your time, all our time. If we get the problems to which it applies dealt with better, we can turn to the ones that threaten our civilization itself--weather, water, and energy--from which there is no exit, loyalty won't matter, and voice (that is, democracy, choice, markets) will thus be hard to maintain. Dana Blankenhorn and Al Gore are your gurus for that, though (or Morris Berman's Dark Age America). It's time now to look at the arguments we know we'll face, which Hirschman has also framed better than practically anyone else.

That really will be the next post on him.