This is a wonderful and very informative post, thank you! As a US American it's really helpful for understanding some of the different foundations of Pale's political framework.
This actually inspired some questions I was hoping you could answer, or point me in the right direction for learning more? (I'm ravenously curious about this stuff.) There is one thing which doesn't feel quite right to me though, but like ... I know I'm missing context, so I'd love to get your feedback on it because you clearly know a lot about this topic.
Questions first! You mentioned that Canadian minorities tended to secure rights via patronage with Canadian elites in the government whereas US minorities, when they did secure rights, did so with populist action in opposition to the government. However, neither government has ever been without government elites willing to make political deals. Do you have any thoughts on what therefore caused the absence of similar protective patronage in the US? Was the government comparatively weak/decentalized or more democratic from the get-go and therefore unable to provide it? Where US government officials simply more bigoted? Or was it that minority groups in the US were less organized and therefore less able to offer coherent behavior in exchange for patronage? (With enslaved Africans in particular, surely they would have had a difficult time unifying enough to offer something to political patrons?)
The thing I don't get:
More relevantly to Pale specifically, you call the trio (and associated Kennet Below warlords and influential council members as well I assume) political elites. That seems about right to be for their governance style, Kennet at the end of Pale is could really only be called a democracy in the aspirational sense.
But the Canadian government elites in the time period you're discussing presumably had external power bases and structures of support outside of their minority group political clients. This was a political elite whose authority and support were supplemented by minority political clients. They presumably *could* neglect minority needs and still remain in power (and did once they needed to cultivate popular support).
In the context of the Canadian government I can easily see the notional difference between "good elites" and "bad elites". The survival of a minority coalition in that environment has more to do with individual elite personality and private incentives of elites (which the minority coalitioncan influence) than structural incentives.
But Kennet isn't exactly advocating for the elevation of "good elites" within the broader Practioner community, its movement is rooted in secession and the installation of elites whose power is more closely tied to Others' as a population. There is no other population Kennet's elites could fall back on for a base of power and they are at least (for now) dependent on their approval to hold power.
From my American perspective, what I read this as was popular organizing. This was the minority group unifying under sometimes politically contentious compromise candidates for the sake of being able to punch the political system until it stopped trying to take their rights away (for now). I read this is very oppositional to the government, that rights come from organizing against the government rather than flowing from it.
But you've obviously got a rather different perspective on it, where the framing of Kennet's revolution is more about changing the character of the ruling elites to be more friendly to the minority groups. And I can see how that makes sense because they very much still are a system of political elites holding power and it's never been that much of a stretch for political elites to produce self reinforcing power structures which reduce their dependence on public approval.
So if I'm understanding this framework right, the fact that Kennet's elites depend on Other approval at all would be a function of them being "good" elites who aren't too power hungry. Charles obviously rooted his power base in similar secession and demographic concentration with radically different outcomes, which in this framework is because he was a "bad" elite. It's about elevating the right people from whom the protection of interests will flow.
And I realize I'm kind of rambling at this point, but my question is: Where do you see the breakdown between these perspectives? Why do you favor the perspective of Pale as being about the installation of good elites to a rights-giving government more than the popular organization of a demographic to make government endorsement of rights non-optional?
Because clearly there is a whole perspective on this I'm not familiar with. It simply hadn't occurred to me to see this as political patronage relationship with minority allied elites rather than an oppositional popular organizing movement, and there's obviously quite a bit of political history grounding the patronage perspective.
(Terribly sorry for the mess, I feel like I'm back in college and showing up a professor's office hours with the terrible sense that I'm not getting *something* in their lectures but don't even know how to phrase a proper question about it.)
Thanks and Questions
This actually inspired some questions I was hoping you could answer, or point me in the right direction for learning more? (I'm ravenously curious about this stuff.) There is one thing which doesn't feel quite right to me though, but like ... I know I'm missing context, so I'd love to get your feedback on it because you clearly know a lot about this topic.
Questions first! You mentioned that Canadian minorities tended to secure rights via patronage with Canadian elites in the government whereas US minorities, when they did secure rights, did so with populist action in opposition to the government. However, neither government has ever been without government elites willing to make political deals. Do you have any thoughts on what therefore caused the absence of similar protective patronage in the US? Was the government comparatively weak/decentalized or more democratic from the get-go and therefore unable to provide it? Where US government officials simply more bigoted? Or was it that minority groups in the US were less organized and therefore less able to offer coherent behavior in exchange for patronage? (With enslaved Africans in particular, surely they would have had a difficult time unifying enough to offer something to political patrons?)
The thing I don't get:
More relevantly to Pale specifically, you call the trio (and associated Kennet Below warlords and influential council members as well I assume) political elites. That seems about right to be for their governance style, Kennet at the end of Pale is could really only be called a democracy in the aspirational sense.
But the Canadian government elites in the time period you're discussing presumably had external power bases and structures of support outside of their minority group political clients. This was a political elite whose authority and support were supplemented by minority political clients. They presumably *could* neglect minority needs and still remain in power (and did once they needed to cultivate popular support).
In the context of the Canadian government I can easily see the notional difference between "good elites" and "bad elites". The survival of a minority coalition in that environment has more to do with individual elite personality and private incentives of elites (which the minority coalitioncan influence) than structural incentives.
But Kennet isn't exactly advocating for the elevation of "good elites" within the broader Practioner community, its movement is rooted in secession and the installation of elites whose power is more closely tied to Others' as a population. There is no other population Kennet's elites could fall back on for a base of power and they are at least (for now) dependent on their approval to hold power.
From my American perspective, what I read this as was popular organizing. This was the minority group unifying under sometimes politically contentious compromise candidates for the sake of being able to punch the political system until it stopped trying to take their rights away (for now). I read this is very oppositional to the government, that rights come from organizing against the government rather than flowing from it.
But you've obviously got a rather different perspective on it, where the framing of Kennet's revolution is more about changing the character of the ruling elites to be more friendly to the minority groups. And I can see how that makes sense because they very much still are a system of political elites holding power and it's never been that much of a stretch for political elites to produce self reinforcing power structures which reduce their dependence on public approval.
So if I'm understanding this framework right, the fact that Kennet's elites depend on Other approval at all would be a function of them being "good" elites who aren't too power hungry. Charles obviously rooted his power base in similar secession and demographic concentration with radically different outcomes, which in this framework is because he was a "bad" elite. It's about elevating the right people from whom the protection of interests will flow.
And I realize I'm kind of rambling at this point, but my question is: Where do you see the breakdown between these perspectives? Why do you favor the perspective of Pale as being about the installation of good elites to a rights-giving government more than the popular organization of a demographic to make government endorsement of rights non-optional?
Because clearly there is a whole perspective on this I'm not familiar with. It simply hadn't occurred to me to see this as political patronage relationship with minority allied elites rather than an oppositional popular organizing movement, and there's obviously quite a bit of political history grounding the patronage perspective.
(Terribly sorry for the mess, I feel like I'm back in college and showing up a professor's office hours with the terrible sense that I'm not getting *something* in their lectures but don't even know how to phrase a proper question about it.)