Optics and fairness

Lawrence Powell WORLD WATCH

"Cutting the Cabinet, that's optics, borders on being frivolous."

Was Omar Davies right to dismiss visible sacrifices at the top - in the form of a smaller Cabinet and pay cuts for politicians - as mere "optics"? Is it "frivolous" to consider making such sacrifices in sympathy with those of the rest of Jamaica, during tough times?

In other societies - Singapore, France, Bolivia, Bermuda - ministers have embraced such cuts at the top. And although the actual economic impact is probably minimal, that generous symbolic gesture did much to reassure a restive populace that austerity-related sacrifices would be fair. (See Gleaner, March 3, Singapore, symbolism and 'shared sacrifice'.)

Why not in Jamaica? Omar's argument that this amounts to mere optical frivolity assumes that symbolic sacrifice, and people's perceptions of that, don't really matter and will have no serious political consequences. It also assumes that we don't know much about how Jamaicans view the fairness of such things, and that those fairness views need not be taken seriously in developing policies to put the nation back on its feet.

But actually, we do know something about this. 'Fair sacrifice' questions haven't yet been explored in-depth in current polls, but we do have some relevant evidence from other surveys done over the past decade. Those surveys contained questions on Jamaicans' norms of fairness, and on how they felt the benefits and sacrifices of the economy, ought to be distributed among different groups within the society - if done 'fairly'.

NO JUSTICE

So what do those existing surveys tell us that is relevant to 'fair sacrifice'? Well, one survey, in particular, examined in detail how Jamaican citizens view the 'fairness' or 'justice' between various groups within their society. In order to measure the 'fairness' of how resources and opportunities are distributed, in October 2002, a sample of 197 Jamaican university students at the University of the West Indies were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

They were asked to carefully assess the 'contributions' made to society and the 'rewards' derived from society by various groups within the larger Jamaican society. Assessed groups were related to class, occupation, employment status and other visible categories (e.g., the middle class, politicians, bankers, preachers, higglers, dons, etc.)

Our university students rated each of these evaluated groups on two dimensions of 'fairness' - their 'contributions' to society, and their 'rewards' from society. We had originally asked the students to rate a total of 54 different groups. I've simplified things a bit here, and boiled that down to 25 key groups in the summary table on this page.

What we found was that Jamaicans see politicians, the upper class, executives of large companies, doctors, lawyers, sports figures, dons, and bankers as receiving the highest 'rewards'.

Among the groups seen as receiving the lowest rewards are the unemployed, the lower class, disabled, and persons with lower-prestige jobs like cleaners, factory workers, farmers and domestic helpers.

However, when it comes to 'contributions' to society, the ratings look very different. Groups like farmers, civil servants, taxpayers, owners of small businesses, musicians and artists, police, and factory workers cluster near the top. Jamaicans see these groups as contributing the most to Jamaican society.

And this is where it begins to get very interesting. Some of the groups that Jamaicans ranked near the top, in terms of perceived 'rewards', are located near the bottom of the 'contributions to society' rankings - politicians, lawyers, the upper class, bankers, dons. The perceptions of 'unfairness' in comparing the two is hard to miss. If some of these groups receive very high rewards from Jamaican society, yet are seen as making low contributions, that must create cognitive dissonance, a sense of equity distress. It tells us Jamaicans are seeing this situation as grossly unfair.

GRAVE INEQUITY

To render these figures easier to interpret, I've included a 'fairness index' that compares what a group is seen as contributing and what it gets in society's rewards - simply subtracting the one rank from the other. You'll immediately notice, from the negative ranking of -20 on this index, that of all of these 25 groups, 'politicians' have the worst overall fairness rating! They are ranked first in rewards received, but 21st in contributions, indicating a very large discrepancy between their perceived inputs to Jamaican society and what they get out of it.

Other groups with relatively high unfairness ratings on this index include the upper class, dons, lawyers, executives, and gang members - all of whom are seen as taking much more than they give back.

Conversely, the 'generous' groups whose perceived contributions greatly outweigh their rewards on this fairness index include farmers, taxpayers, factory workers, civil servants, and cleaners. This, too, conveys a sense of unfairness - but in this case, they are seen as under-rewarded for what they do. They deserve much more than what they are getting, in the eyes of Jamaicans who rated them.

So what can we reasonably conclude, from this decade-old UWI-based research project, about the present austerity situation in Jamaica? Well, if politicians are seen as getting the highest rewards in the entire society, and they also have the greatest discrepancy between those rewards and what they are seen as contributing, Jamaicans are not likely to find it 'fair' for them to be exempting themselves from sacrifices when needed to save the economy.

PNP GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN

In fact, these findings indicate the opposite - that given the inequities already seen to exist in their rewards/contributions ratio, politicians might reasonably be expected to sacrifice somewhat more than the average Jamaican during tough economic times. And because groups such as civil servants, farmers and taxpayers are already seen as contributing considerably more than they are getting back in rewards, it will be seen as especially unfair if the burdens of austerity now fall heavily on those groups, and yet politicians remain untouched.

So what might these figures foretell for the political future? Well, unless Jamaican fairness attitudes have magically changed in the intervening years, it looks like Omar and the People's National Party (PNP) will find themselves going against the grain of popular sentiment if they assume shared sacrifice is politically irrelevant, and that the perceived disparities between treatment of privileged and underprivileged groups are "frivolous", and don't matter.

They obviously do matter. As you can see from the table on this page, those disparities produce 'cognitive dissonance' in the minds of many Jamaicans when they think about 'what is fair, and what is not'. That is to say, many will regard the unbalanced contributions to solving the country's financial crisis (like raiding the National Housing Trustand raising taxes, while the Cabinet gets new posts and vehicles) as being inherently unjust. It gives them equity distress just to think about it.

If that's true (and recent reactions against Omar's 'optics' statement seem to verify this), it would be politically unwise, leading into future elections, for the PNP to be seen as brashly ignoring those dominant cultural fairness norms - by asking others to sacrifice, while politicians visibly do not.

Understandably, the economics and law training that most government ministers receive tends to overlook the importance of psychological and cultural factors in governance. So it's not too surprising that they might miss the political importance of this fairness symbolism, and how strongly many people actually feel about it.

But if they continue to ignore it, and the sense of 'unfair sacrifice' grows, come next election, the Opposition may be talking not of 'optics', but of 'myopics'.

Lawrence Alfred Powell is the former polling director for the Centre for Leadership and Governance at UWI, Mona. Email feedback to lapowell.auckland@ymail.com.

Perceived rewards, contributions and fairness of 25 groups within Jamaican society

Figures are averaged ratings for each judged group, in University of the West Indies undergraduate sample (2002, n = 197).

A positive score (+) indicates a group contributes more to society than rewards received. A negative score (-) indicates higher rewards than contributions.