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narcasseRussia prepares to elect Dmitry Medvedev Telegraph.co.uk
While I still have only had a chance to flick through First Person and am hardly familiar with various Russian politicians backgrounds the above article seems to support the suggestion that part of the perceived package of a Russian politician seems to be quite different from a typically publicised British one. Granted, I’m basing a vague assumption on something like a skim of the first few pages of a translation of От Первого Лица, this article and another short article a little while ago about Cossack families and at the current time I’m not likely to really be able to sit down and go through whatever the Russian Analytical Digest has to say on the matter but as a general assumption that’s subject to change, it certainly seems that the ideal image of a Russian politician is rather different to an ideal Tory or, these days, an ideal Labour MP.
I’ll have to look into the matter at a later date but while the stress on the notion of family is seemingly universal, the Russian archetype of the hard-working individual who has risen to power from humble beginnings is much more in keeping with old Labour images. The socio-political foundation of present day Russia would account for that but it’s in many ways far more in keeping with the trustee model of government than the British ideal appears to be.
The trustee model presumes that anyone elected to power is elected on the strength of their character so that you don’t vote for a specific policy necessarily but for the person that you trust to make what you consider good decisions in regard to any events unfolding in the future. And while that began in the 18th century with British landowners voting for other British landowners the principle still stands. But funnily enough somewhere along the line, in the UK at least, something has changed. The privileged are still voting in the privileged but with the widening of voting criteria suddenly they’re trying to appeal to everyone and not just a specific demographic anymore. And what it’s doing is creating definite distance between a political elite who are engaging in politics because they’re typically rich enough and idle enough to have the time to do so and everybody else. It may not be quite as clear cut as those extremes but the gap is still apparent in the expectation of who does and doesn’t hold public office.
At a highly romanticised view the Russian ideal generally may be of hard-working individuals who through their own personal endeavour for the sake of the state have been elevated to positions of power, and regardless of whether or not that’s true it’s in striking contrast to the British conception where the politician is there because he or she is rich enough to be idle and thus has the time to spare to debate policy. And as far as contrasting idealised stereotypes go it’s easy to see why the former is rather more appealing than the latter. Because when it comes down to buying in to the romanticism of an occupation, the story involving individuals who are doing what needs to be done is always going to sound more laudable than the one where they do their jobs simply because they’d like something to chat about in their spare time.
I suspect that the issue with the British political image is probably the breakdown of noblesse oblige because the politician these days isn’t necessarily a peer and thus the sense of duty, whether they like it or not, isn’t quite as ingrained as it should have been among hereditary peers. Nobody owes the state and their fellow man anything anymore and as such the sense of responsibility prevalent is debatable. And while everyone should be accountable to their own sense of self for their actions that’s not terribly easy to enforce as a standard of behaviour because it presumes that every single individual will have the inclination to hold themselves to relatively high moral standards, and ones that automatically are compatible with safe, sane and consensual social interaction anyway. All of which comes right back round to the setup of Leviathan again really, except the minute Leviathan stops being bound by social contract it all starts to go horribly wrong as a result.
While I still have only had a chance to flick through First Person and am hardly familiar with various Russian politicians backgrounds the above article seems to support the suggestion that part of the perceived package of a Russian politician seems to be quite different from a typically publicised British one. Granted, I’m basing a vague assumption on something like a skim of the first few pages of a translation of От Первого Лица, this article and another short article a little while ago about Cossack families and at the current time I’m not likely to really be able to sit down and go through whatever the Russian Analytical Digest has to say on the matter but as a general assumption that’s subject to change, it certainly seems that the ideal image of a Russian politician is rather different to an ideal Tory or, these days, an ideal Labour MP.
I’ll have to look into the matter at a later date but while the stress on the notion of family is seemingly universal, the Russian archetype of the hard-working individual who has risen to power from humble beginnings is much more in keeping with old Labour images. The socio-political foundation of present day Russia would account for that but it’s in many ways far more in keeping with the trustee model of government than the British ideal appears to be.
The trustee model presumes that anyone elected to power is elected on the strength of their character so that you don’t vote for a specific policy necessarily but for the person that you trust to make what you consider good decisions in regard to any events unfolding in the future. And while that began in the 18th century with British landowners voting for other British landowners the principle still stands. But funnily enough somewhere along the line, in the UK at least, something has changed. The privileged are still voting in the privileged but with the widening of voting criteria suddenly they’re trying to appeal to everyone and not just a specific demographic anymore. And what it’s doing is creating definite distance between a political elite who are engaging in politics because they’re typically rich enough and idle enough to have the time to do so and everybody else. It may not be quite as clear cut as those extremes but the gap is still apparent in the expectation of who does and doesn’t hold public office.
At a highly romanticised view the Russian ideal generally may be of hard-working individuals who through their own personal endeavour for the sake of the state have been elevated to positions of power, and regardless of whether or not that’s true it’s in striking contrast to the British conception where the politician is there because he or she is rich enough to be idle and thus has the time to spare to debate policy. And as far as contrasting idealised stereotypes go it’s easy to see why the former is rather more appealing than the latter. Because when it comes down to buying in to the romanticism of an occupation, the story involving individuals who are doing what needs to be done is always going to sound more laudable than the one where they do their jobs simply because they’d like something to chat about in their spare time.
I suspect that the issue with the British political image is probably the breakdown of noblesse oblige because the politician these days isn’t necessarily a peer and thus the sense of duty, whether they like it or not, isn’t quite as ingrained as it should have been among hereditary peers. Nobody owes the state and their fellow man anything anymore and as such the sense of responsibility prevalent is debatable. And while everyone should be accountable to their own sense of self for their actions that’s not terribly easy to enforce as a standard of behaviour because it presumes that every single individual will have the inclination to hold themselves to relatively high moral standards, and ones that automatically are compatible with safe, sane and consensual social interaction anyway. All of which comes right back round to the setup of Leviathan again really, except the minute Leviathan stops being bound by social contract it all starts to go horribly wrong as a result.
