Tyranny Of The Minority Summary

“The Framers created a system that protected political minorities from majority tyranny—in order to prevent the majority from limiting the rights of the minority. This is accomplished by creating institutions that share power in order to make it difficult to change policy.” However, the problem with this is that it is assumed that the minorities have resources that they do not really have. In Ben Bishin’s novel, Tyranny of the Minority, he explains how his Sub Constituency Politics Theory can effectively resolve many of the issues with minorities and under what circumstances minorities can prevail in American politics by using the three general themes of groups, individuals, and legislators that address the behavior and motivation of the theory’s

core actors.
To begin with, Bishin explains Subconstituency Politics almost immediately within the second chapter.

According to him, “Sub Constituency politics explains why and how politicians appeal to groups. Borrowing from social psychology, the theory explains how one’s socializing experiences inform the groups with which one identifies and how candidates exploit individuals’ social identities to encourage beneficial political behavior“ (19). Basically, how politicians and political groups act to receive the approval of the people. For example, Bishin brings up the example of the Democratic vice presidential candidate of 2000, Joe Lieberman. As Lieberman was about to go live on television in front of thousands of people, his aide suggested that he fix the hair poking out of his shirt but instead he refused and essentially said it was fine. This exact moment displayed how “candidates and campaigns view voters not as atomistic individuals, but as groups of individuals clustered around shared experiences and common interests” (19). By doing this, it groups the people by the same qualities and does not see them as complex

individuals.
This Sub Constituency Politics Theory is composed of only three major themes; groups, individuals, and candidates. The first theme is in regards to groups. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, “groups” are defined as a number of individuals assembled together or having some unifying relationship. In this same way, Bishin writes “ groups as people who interact, the product of which leads to shared attitudes and beliefs. While people may share opinions or attributes, it is only through physical interaction that an organization of political consequence can be formed” (20). If this first theme within the theory fails to function then the minority groups lacking power get the policy they want in the face of both majority opposition and an institutional design that seeks to thwart change?rest of the theory will not succeed as well. However, there is a problem with groups and the definitions. The most obvious problem is that “While these definitions seem appropriate for the study of organized interests, they overlook the fact that some groups are not formally organized. Individuals who have neither met nor formally joined an organization may share identities and, hence, attitudes stemming from shared experiences and interests. Consequently, studies of group behavior overlook an important aspect of political participation: that groups need not be organized to be influential” (20). Meaning that if a group is not “formally organized” they still have the power to create a difference and as long as they participate it can be strong. Furthermore, this will lead to politicians changing certain aspects about their practice like taking advantage of the people by making appeals that the public could relate to and identify with/ If they could see a politician is with them and feels the same way, these groups will further push the envelope and become energized about certain issues. According to Bishin’s Sub Constituency Politics Theory, politicians must “overcome the problem of lack of interest among citizens by exploiting the fact that people coalesce through common experiences, outlooks, and interests” (20). In this way, minority groups lacking power get the policy they want in the face of both majority opposition and an institutional design that seeks to thwart change. By forming groups they will in turn find individuals who also share some social identity. Like discussed in class, social identity is “part of a person’s sense of who they are” and it is “derived from group memberships or association” (Bishin).
The following theme is quite important as well to the Sub Constituency theory, individuals.

Individuals need to be informed that they play a major role in politics and their relevance. At the start of this section it says “A particularly important aspect of social identity is that individuals have multiple group identities that stem from their categorizations, roles, and experiences” (23). Who or what the individual involves themselves with, defines them essentially. It’s like when people would say in high school or college, you are who you hang out with. People can change their social identities and even choose which ones they find more important to them as well. Someone might try to put emphasis and focus on a particular issue over another, thus affecting their social identities as a whole. For example, “Events may lead individuals to subordinate the importance of one issue and raise the prominence of another in the face of events that activate another identity. In this way, an exogenous shock may temporarily supplant primary issues and lead to a change in active identities” (24). Like in the Sopranos episode we watched in class, the main issue that arose was in regards to the Columbus statue in their nearby park. The Native Americans wanted to take it down because Columbus killed a lot of the natives when he explored to America creating a genocide. However, the Italians in the city thought taking down the statue would ruin their American pride and it will look bad taking

town a hero like Columbus. The two groups social identities were clashing and a compromise was required. The example Bishin discusses is in regards to the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in September 2001. After they occurred, “ the major political parties put aside their issue differences, as a nationalist American identity was activated. Individual associations with different groups vary but are activated based on the social context” (24). In this case, a new social identity arose as a result of a global event and people reacted a certain way. This brings it back to issue intensity and what we talked about in class. There are two types of group associations, substantive and descriptive. Substantive group association is “membership imbued owing to an identification with the group. A psychological attachment. A social identity” while a descriptive group association is “membership imbued owing to some physical or tangible characteristic” (Bishin). A substantive example would be like a person getting involved with an issue because it affects the jocks of the school and they are an athlete as well. On the other hand, a descriptive group association would be an issue targeting handicapped people and the individual has a broken leg joining into the conversation. All in all, individuals and their social identities play a major role in the Sub Constituency Theory and it is often overlooked how much they could affect group membership.