Activism and Institutional Gresham’s Law

I recently posted about two broad lenses one could use to analyze political activism. One form is what I called “activism as production,” which occurs when activists are motivated by a desire to help produce some form of public good – better environmental health, an improved justice system, and so on. The other form is what I called “activism as consumption,” which occurs when activists are motivated by the satisfaction they gain from activism itself – a feeling of community, social status, pride in “being part of the solution” or being “on the right side of history,” and so on. As I mentioned in that post, these are not the only two lenses by which we can view activism, nor are they mutually exclusive. Any given individual or organization can be motivated by either, or by both in varying degrees. But over the long term, we should expect to see a trend in which of these is more prominent. 

This is because activism is subject to what Anthony de Jasay has called “Institutional Gresham’s Law,” which I’ve described before. In economics, Gresham’s Law describes the tendency of bad money to drive good money out of circulation, when there is a fixed exchange rate between the two that prevents the situation from moving towards an equilibrium. If exchange rates are allowed to adjust freely on the market, the effects of Gresham’s Law are prevented. Anthony de Jasay described Institutional Gresham’s Law as the tendency for bad institutions to drive out good ones over time.

Institutions that prioritize their own growth and survival over being socially beneficial will drive out institutions that prioritize being socially beneficial over their own growth and survival. Unlike with money, there is nothing that serves as an exchange rate that can keep this process in check. As de Jasay phrases it, institutions are selected “for the characteristics favorable to their own survival.” The selection pressure for institutions, then, is not survival of the most socially beneficial. It is what de Jasay called the “survival-of-the-fittest-to-survive” – which means survival of institutions that prioritize their own growth and expansion over other factors like what is most socially beneficial. As this process goes on, 

The same thing can happen over time with activism. Suppose there are two activist organizations dedicated to helping alleviate the same social problem. One is a “good” institution, as defined above, while the other is a “bad” one. Let’s say over time, the social problem both institutions are meant to address becomes substantially alleviated, and is perhaps on the verge of disappearing altogether. A “good” activist organization will acknowledge the progress, recognize there is less need for what they are doing, and reduce the scope and scale of their activism. A “bad” activist organization would deny that any progress has been made, insist that things are worse than ever, and seek to continually increase the scope and scale of their activism. Over time, the second organization would completely drown out the former – not because the second one is better, but precisely because it is worse. The bad institution would have a lot to gain by convincing people that the problem it formed to address is large and growing, even if it is actually small and shrinking.

This also holds true at the individual level. As mentioned in my initial post on this topic, being motivated by “activism as consumption” is a matter of degree, not a either/or dichotomy. But for reasons of Institutional Gresham’s Law, we should expect over time to see a greater proportion of “activism as consumption” crowd out “activism as production.” In the extreme, those who are motivated by “activism as consumption” are the kind of people who find “being involved” as a great source of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in their lives. I’ve certainly met no shortage of people who describe themselves in this way. As a social problem improves over time, we should expect to see those who see “being involved” as a means to an end being driven out by those who see “being involved” as something to be pursued for its own sake.

But how plausible is it that some people engage in “activism as consumption”? Two researchers (themselves quite sympathetic to activism) looked at this very question. They start off by recounting Aristotle’s notion of “humans as political animals by nature. One implication of this idea is that when people engage in political activity, they are expressing a basic motive fundamental to being human. If this is true, then Aristotle’s logic would further suggest that the extent to which people engage in political activism might be positively associated with their well-being.” That is, political engagement is a deeply felt need that people can feel motivated to pursue for its own sake. 

They sought to measure the extent to which activism provides personal psychological benefits, and in what circumstances. What they found shouldn’t be surprising – engaging in activism, in and of itself, provides people with significant personal psychological benefits. As they put it, “well-being was higher to the extent people self-identified as an activist, expressed commitment to the activist role, and reported engaging or intending to engage in activist behaviors. Results were similar across measures of hedonic well-being (e.g., life satisfaction and positive affect), eudaimonic well-being (e.g., personal growth, purpose in life, vitality), and social well-being (e.g., social integration). The results of both studies also suggest that activists are more likely to experience the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, an indicator of more frequent experiences of intrinsic motivation.” Thus, activism-as-consumption has a very fertile ground out of which to grow. 

The strength of this effect depends on numerous other factors, such as how strongly people agreed with the statement “Being an activist is central to who I am” – the kind of person I had in mind when I described the more extreme case of those seeking “activism as consumption.” But even if only a tiny number of potential activists fall into that category, because of Institutional Gresham’s Law, we should expect there to be selection pressure over time for that group to dominate activist engagement. And if something like Institutional Gresham’s Law applies to political activism, it could provide an explanation for what Eric Hoffer observed about mass movements – that in time, each mass movement “ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”