Political Capital
What is political capital? Can you touch it, measure it? How does it work?
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Transcript
So before we go on and answer that question directly, it seems to me that one of the questions this raises is, if you're in a democracy, then this kind of stuff's difficult. If you're in a dictatorship, then great, you just charge ahead and do it and some like build some dam somewhere and, you know, destroy loads of wildlife. No, big myth. Big myth. Or, but it'd be like the French.
Speaker B:Dictators are worse, it's worse for dictators, I think they have to worry more about where their support is coming from, because it isn't, they don't have this great big democratic mandate. So that, you know, if you look at the way that dictatorships operate, or, you know, countries which sort of have a quite a large non-democratic component, you know, so you on one hand, you've got your kind of North Korea's where it's sort of looks like absolute rule, certainly from the outside, through to things like Iran, which, you know, certainly have a have a sort of sizable democratic element. But also, there's a lot of power invested in non-democratic institutions, you know, through to through to total sort of democracies, like, I suppose, like the US, the UK isn't quite there, is it? But so yeah, I mean, in all of those places, people have to worry about where their power is coming from. And I'd say in a dictatorship, it's not it's, it's different where that power comes from, but it comes from somewhere people don't just have, it's not true that someone could just, you know, if, if, if Kim, you know, decided to do things that all his generals hated, then I suspect, you know, he'd be removed from power pretty quickly. You know, dictators have to worry a lot about, about, you know, the threat of being removed from power, in a way more so because the consequences are often quite fatal.
Speaker A:And it's I guess, it's more clear cut in a democracy where part of your political capital is coming from is the fact that you've got a mandate.
Speaker B:Yeah, so so exactly. So there's that kind of overt element, which you don't necessarily get in a dictatorship. So yeah, I mean, I think political, I would imagine the skills are pretty similar.
Speaker A:Yeah. And so just before you come in, Peter, in somewhere like China, how do you become, you know, the leader in China, you have to accumulate a series of positions, essentially, and yeah, Peter.
Speaker C:Yeah, well, this example of the new runway right next to Heathrow is more or less universally hated by everyone who lives in West London. So and the Mayor of London office being a crucial power base in UK democracy, you've got to keep the Mayor of London on side, which means he's got to keep his voters on side. So if the UK was a dictatorship, it would still be very hard to make to make that happen.
Speaker A:So let's go on to answering some of the questions that that Nick posed there. So what is political capital? How do you get it? How do you maintain it? And there are some other things in there. Peter, do you want to pick up on this?
Speaker C:Well, yeah, I mean, there's lots of political theorists who draw an analogy with currency and political capitalists, some sort of invisible ephemeral money that you can accrue by doing favours for people, by doing things that other people like or want you to do, that you can then cash in. So if I do lots of nice things for you, Fraser, you're more likely to forgive me if I then do something you don't like. So that's me spending... Build a runway in my garden. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if I tend all your flowers, and then you're less likely to hate me if I can build a runway on top of them. So yeah, in very similar ways, it acts like a currency, because it's difficult to spend it more than once. You can't... The market of opinion does keep a good tally on how much, generally, you're disliked. And if you're disliked too much, then you're removed from power, be it through election or through coup. Yeah. So as a currency, you can spend it, and you can spend it to affect the behaviour of other people. So you're essentially buying and trading favours and goodwill.
Speaker A:Do you think it's one of those things where it's the fact that we're discussing it and asking the question, what is political capital, that one of the skills that politicians have is that they maybe have a more nuanced sort of sense than the rest of us about what it is, and they have a feel for, I've got the capital to do this, or I don't have it, or it's slipping away. And that's... Do you think that's part of what defines politicians?
Speaker C:It could be. I mean, the keeping... Being aware of how you are perceived and how much you're liked is probably a skill that you can learn. Probably a skill you get for free if you're a sociopath, but yeah, I can see that being something you can practice and get better at, keeping tabs on that sort of thing. There's an interesting distinction. There's political theorists that draw a distinction between two types of political capital often. One is representative, and one is reputational. And the representative bit is kind of what you get for free being in a certain sort of job. So based on your status, your social status or your job status, the Prime Minister has more representative capital than, say, a lower politician, or just a normal Member of Parliament. But also, the reputational is more about your credibility and reliability, which comes from being seen to be consistent in an ideology or on a side of argument, and being reliable and credible and trustworthy, et cetera. Makes you kind of more bankable. More bankable. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And there's some comment that there's a sort of shift from one to the other in modern politics. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but you could easily generate counter-arguments. But modern politics is more about personality than it ever has been. Like, politics of the 18th, 19th century was more about your social status. And you'd get a lot of cachet just by being the Lord Mountbatten and such. And that's where a lot of your influence comes from, would be your social standing as much as your reliability, as much as your reputational.
Speaker A:And so, sorry, this probably won't be, just to clarify, what were you saying the two types were? You said there's a distinction between two. Yeah.
Speaker C:So representative, that's kind of like what job you've got. Yeah. And reputational, which is sort of how... Okay, cool.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've always found that quite mysterious, actually, because one thing you learn when you become a civil servant is the sort of hierarchy of departments. And so, obviously, the prime minister comes first, even though the prime minister doesn't really have any kind of formal power as such. There's nothing he's in charge of other than all the other departments. She, actually. She, in this case, yeah.
Speaker A:Actually, before you go and explain, and I really want to hear about this, let me take a quick guess as never having been a civil servant. So as you say... So what's the number two job? The exchequer. Yes.
Speaker B:So it's definitely number two.
Speaker A:And then next, I would say the Home Secretary.
Speaker B:Yeah. Well, Foreign Secretary. Oh, really? It's usually judged to be above. But you've got the big... The other two would be Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. You know, even including the MOD, which I found surprising. I was in the MOD, and I thought, I found it surprising that the MOD, which has all the guns, was sort of fairly low status on the cabinet table. And they put a lot of store by literally physically where they sit. You know, the chancellor sits next to the prime minister, I think, or opposite. And, you know, the other departments are quite close to the prime minister. And then as you get lower and lower status, you're more towards the edge of, you know, the cabinet table, which is a very long table. And DWPs in the corridor. Yeah, exactly. DCMS is making the tea, you know. Who's DCMS? Department of Culture, Media, and Sport. Okay. And, yeah, and I just sort of think, well, why? You know, what makes the Foreign Secretary more important? Now, and so this is one of the puzzles for me about political capital is why people do not just do things that are a good idea. Like why you would take into account. So let's put it this way. Let's imagine we had a sort of favor economy where you did me a favor. And then you asked me to do you a favor. And it's, you know, something I really don't want to do. What value should I put in doing you the favor? Why? How much is that worth to me? Like why is it worth anything at all? So what are the negative consequences if I don't reciprocate with that favor? Okay. And that's the puzzle for me about political capital is why people, I suppose the question is this. If I can summarize the question that I have is, does it correspond to anything real, right? Or is it only there only because people believe it exists? So, you know, let's take a favor economy. Let's imagine we have a, there's a street where we all do each other favors. And you've done 10 favors with people. And they owe you a bunch of favors. And that's how it works. Now, you could say, well, does it correspond to anything real in the sense that, you know, sorry. So in a favor economy, if we all suddenly forgot that we had those favors, right? That you'd accrued those favors. If we all woke up one day and forgotten that you had them all together, then they wouldn't exist. They would have no bearing on anything anyone did. Now, is political capital like that? Like, is it a thing that only exists because people believe it exists and they behave that way? Yes. Or does it correspond to something real? So, for example, you know, popularity of a leader seems to me very closely correlated with their political capital. Their approval ratings seem to be important in judging how much people perceive them to be able to achieve. Now, that's a real thing. So, you know, if that...
Speaker C:What is it? What is it, though? If everyone forgot what happened over the last six months, that would include how much they liked the person because they like the person because they do or do certain things.
Speaker B:As far as the political capital economy is concerned, what I'm saying is it's found... Let's say we forgot about political capital. We just forgot that there was a concept of political capital for a minute. The fact would nevertheless remain that this person was a popular prime minister. And if that meant that they could do more stuff, then hey, presto, political capital would de facto reemerge as a concept. And it would be founded on these real things that someone had. Is it founded on their charm and their ability to persuade people and how friendly they are or how intelligent they are?
Speaker C:Is it not simply possible, then, that political capital is partly, if not completely, the same thing as their popularity? Well, that's what I'm asking.
Speaker A:Well, OK, so isn't... So going back to the beginning of your question there, which I can't quite remember, but... Is it real or is it entirely manufactured? Well, I don't know the answer to that. But let's... What I do know is this. Right. Is the reason why it works, whether we believe, let's say, belief in it works, is because it's the potential to that person to be able to be in a position to actually carry out what they want to do. If you're asking them a favor, OK? And are they able to and are they likely to? And do they have a track record of doing so, for example? And so that's what it is, right? And that's why the Exchequer, the finance ministry, is most powerful, because that's where the money is and money helps make these decisions.
Speaker B:Right. So are we using political capital as a shorthand for lots of real, actual power?
Speaker A:So what's the difference between political capital and power? I guess political capital is...
Speaker B:Well, the idea is that... I mean, I'd say the difference is that the political capital is something... I mean, this is part of the question, but that political capital is something you can sort of build up and accrue over time. It's an abstract thing that you can have lots of quite...
Speaker C:It's sort of like futures in power. Yeah. It's sort of the ability... Power is what you can do right now. That's kind of the measure of power. But political capital is what keeps you in that position to keep doing that. Yeah. So it's like a time derivative of power.
Speaker B:Yeah. But I mean, look, it definitely exists, right? I'm not saying... So what I mean is political capital as a concept works really well. It's a really good metaphor. And you look at things like, you know, all of these phenomena that people get very worked up about, like, you know, the first hundred days of a president, which are judged to be super important. That's the time they can really get things done, you know, like Roosevelt and the New Deal and, you know, Trump and all of the kind of, you know, crazy, crazy Trumpy things that he did, you know, getting them through. And that, I think, works. And the concept of a lame duck is a really useful one. You know, that a prime minister who's, or a president, particularly, you know, in the last few days where they've got no hope of re-election, either because their term's coming up or because they're massively unpopular, cannot get anything done. No one's, everyone is sort of deserts them like a sinking ship. So it definitely works as a metaphor. But I just wonder if it, with the thinking of it as a sort of separate abstract currency adds anything. So, you know, is it possible to imagine someone with no formal power, but lots of political capital?
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely. Name someone. So, for example, in, I'd say two examples, in somewhere like China, when the leader, I mean, their power definitely becomes eroded, but they've still got capital. When they cease to be president of, I forget what the official name is, but when they cease to be president of the country, they still have some power. They still have got some political capital, even though unofficially they may not. Or I can think in jobs I've had where someone's been promoted and people will still go to that person. They might be in another department because they still hold some sway over people.
Speaker C:I think, well, in this country, you have the royal family. They have no direct power. They can't influence any policy, but they can throw their weight around on the international stage. And people love a royal visit. But I think on a sort of micro level where listeners will probably recognize it, it's the guy in the office who's massively popular, but isn't the boss, who everyone in the office will listen to over the boss. Just because he's charismatic or she is charismatic and popular and funny and exciting and attractive or whatever. They exert, they have a form of power, but no formal power.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's what you've described is decomposable into those features of that person, into the feature, the measurable features of that person is having those things. That's what I'm saying is actually, is it just that?
Speaker C:I think it is. I think you could, we could define a model for measuring political capital, which would be, we could test using things like how popular are they? How many policies have they got through? All these sorts of things. And we could correlate with that with measures of success. And I think they would correlate pretty well. So yes, it would be trying to sort of measure someone's kudos. Yeah, so you measure a multifaceted measure of index of kudos and then compare that to how successful they are in career.
Speaker B:We have to decide what one kudo would correspond to, how you would spend that. What the conversion rate between a kudo and a pound was.
Speaker C:This brings me nicely onto a thought that I've had, since it's like a currency, but we just can't see and touch it. And it's obviously very important. Could we formalize it in some way? Could we develop some sort of metric? Oh, cool.
Speaker B:So I can actually have a wallet, like a Bitcoin wallet, but full of political capital. Exactly.
Speaker C:So you're paying a sort of, you're paying political capital to those people that you like. And that gives them power to do stuff with that. So if you like Theresa May at the moment, you could say, OK, I'll give you five kudos every day of my kudo allowance that accrues over time as a voter.
Speaker B:Yeah, but I feel like everyone shouldn't get the same amount of kudos.
Speaker C:Well, how the market flow down works will depend. But if then Theresa May needs to get something done that is massively unpopular, she will use those kudo points to pay off the opposition.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:If she will pay more kudos to those people who are going to be negatively affected by the things she's trying to do, which gives them more political capital in the future to spend on other things that they do want to do.
Speaker B:Well, that's and that's allegedly how it works. Right. So it's actually just making that clearer.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because I was wondering, actually, if political capital, one of my thoughts, which I'm not sure I can develop into anything particularly coherent, is the idea that political capital is actually to do more to do with the it's a sort of metaphor which solves a problem of not actually knowing how popular or successful someone is going to be. But simply having some information about it and, you know, being able to say if someone says, well, I'm really I want this project, you know, is a new policy that I've got. I want to crack down on homeless people or something, something sort of superficially quite unpopular. But, you know, if you if you have enough information about that person's intelligence and their track record and their, you know, ability to marshal people and be persuasive, you know, then that gives you an incentive to support them. Because you're going to say, well, you know, this is going to happen anyway, and I'd rather be on the winning side. So I wonder if it was something to do with, you know, a summary of the information about about someone which is.
Speaker C:Yeah, well, I think it's I'm sorry, Fraser, I'm just going to keep talking over you. I think it's something similar. I've got no capital. Yeah, you haven't. Yeah. I'll have a cup of tea, Fraser, if you're alright. I think it might be a proxy for sort of generally how good an idea is. So popular people, there's lots of people agree with them. So you could you could say, well, if they're having if they want to get something done, then because they're popular, it's more likely that more people are going to like that thing that they want to get done.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, I think the I feel like the notion of it is almost it's what you pay for bad ideas sort of thing. You know, it's you're eating into your political capital when you're pushing something unpopular through. Unpopular doesn't necessarily mean bad.
Speaker C:But only with the people that don't like it. For many issues are contentious in so much as half the population will support it and half the population won't. Think Brexit, more or less, more or less down the middle. So to get Brexit through, you are spending political capital with those people who don't want it to happen. But you are getting more political capital from the people who do want it to happen. It's only it's only in cases where, OK, it's best off for everybody if we if we get rid of the NHS. Let's just say that that's one that's what our party wants to do this term. That's going to be hugely unpopular with nearly everybody. So you're going to have to spend a lot of political capital on everything to get that done. Yeah, but I think the state comes from it's it's more or less impossible to work out what good is in terms of an idea, in terms of a policy, because they're all difficult to difficult to measure.
Speaker B:Well, that's that's but that's what I think, you know, that's that's that's make sense to me that in lieu of being able to really know which things we ought to do. We actually just look at the decision makers and we rate them, you know, look at their upvotes.
Speaker A:OK, we need to draw to a close. But just before we do, very briefly, Nick, how much political capital have you got?
Speaker B:Well, there is this question of whether or not political capital is something you can have in an organisation as well. I feel like you probably can, but it's hard to distinguish it from things like social capital. But I think almost none. I think I've only got political capital as a voter. I mean, as a director of a company, I've got, you know, theory, political, political power within the company. But since the other directors. Hence these portraits of you we see everywhere. Exactly, yes. And the requirement to worship me every morning and that sort of thing, just little stuff like that. Yeah. So but I don't I don't think. Yeah, I mean, my domain is is very small. So I don't certainly compared to someone like Theresa May, my political power is pretty minimal. Political capital is pretty minimal.
Speaker C:Peter? Well, yes, likewise. I mean, I suppose in social groups, I don't believe I've got any reason to think I've got more social capital than anybody else in that group. It's not like I'm a scout leader or something that gives me some sort of authority or officially recognised authority. So, yeah. And as a voter, I've got one little vote every few years. And that's about it.
Speaker A:OK, because this has been something on my mind recently. About three months ago, I started a full time role. And so you come into that organisation fresh. No one knows you and you want to get stuff done, but it's not always easy to get stuff done. And so steadily, one thing I'm quite conscious of is that I'm I'm building and I'm looking to build up my political capital within that organisation. And yeah, and there's progress and it's going well and people know me and sometimes it might just be because they like me. But sometimes, yeah, because you deliver a result and you start sort of, yeah, build a presence within that organisation.
Speaker B:And it's quite a nice feeling when it's going well. Yeah, so I can't I can't be dealing with it anymore. That's one of the reasons I left. Yeah, quite. Yeah. Worry about it anymore. Yeah, but my mind is based on sort of bringing, you know, good things to all people. So, yeah, just being the kind of general sort of the cornucopia of a man that you are. That's the one. That's the one.
Speaker A:OK, right. We're going to wrap up there. So thank you very much for listening. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Yeah. Thank you for listening. And until next time. Goodbye.
