Power & Politics in America Midterm

Politics (n).

The means by which human communities resolve real or apparent conflict, violently or otherwise

What are sources of conflict on Politics?

Differences in interest, ideology, perception, power

Define interest

People have different stakes/agency that they evaluate policy

Define Ideology

a comprehensive doctrine by the way the world ought to be (more difficult to find compromise)

Define Perceptions

Disagree because we have different beliefs of how the world works.

Power (n).

Resources to achieve one’s goals (in the face of opposition)

Polarization & Political Conflict

• Parties have caused a change in 1st Dimension

• No longer a blend but a polarization

What are the consequences of this polarization?

• More money spent on campaigns instead of public policy

• Mass political violence in U.S.

  • ex: Civil War: 620,000 dead (2% of the population)

  • Lynching

  • Bombing

• Politics doesn’t suffer from conflict, Politics is conflict

Positive analysis

Studying the world as it is

1. Understand origins and consequences of domestic political institutions

2. Explaining (not justifying or condemning) political behavior & outcomes

3. Logic and evidence, not just ideology

Normative analysis

Some baseline criteria (studying the world as it should be)

1. Does political system yield policies that approximate the collective demands of citizens?

2. To what extent do these policies (or lack of policies) generate costly power or unproductive conflict?

3. How is political power distributed?

4. What is the structure of incentive?

Positive Analysis vs. Normative Analysis

positive analysis: what actual behavior and policies are

normative analysis: describe what should or ought to be done

- individual interests can outweigh normative justifications

PA- about facts

NA- a matter of values and opinions

Models

Criteria for evaluation

What questions do you want to ask when you encounter a model?

A. Correspondence with reality: 1. What is the correspondence with the model to the world?

B. Insight: 2. Did the analysis of the model teach me something about the world that I didn’t already know?

C. Fragility: 3. Is there something in the world that is missing in my model that will materially change the outcome? (If no, model is good)

“Thin” rationality

rational preferences and choices (Only from material self interest)

“Thicker” rationality

Thinking about context

What do you think about in Thicker Rationality?

1. Psychology: How do people …

   • Evaluate risk?

   • Compare present and future?

   • Update beliefs given new info?

   • Make choices given cognitive constraints & biases

2. Strategic Settings: How do people make choices in strategic settings?

   • Domain of game theory

3. Prior substantive knowledge: origins of preferences and beliefs: What do people want & what are their options?

   • Requires knowing something about the world

Fundamental political problems

1. Coordination

2. Collective action

3. Commitment problems

Coordination

Situations in which groups of individuals benefit from synchronizing behavior even when they may disagree about how to do so (Incentives captured in BoTIGC)

BoTIGC Game

Conflict emerges because of mixed motives of participants

• From player’s perspective: give what they believe about what the other player is doing, what is my best response?

Nash equilibrium

a set of strategies that are best responses to each other

A role for governing institutions

equilibrium selection, aligning expectations

◦ Constitutions and laws

◦ Leadership

◦ Culture

What are the two roles for governing institutions?

Make (sell, pay) SPNE for private citizens

cultivate long-term reputation for honoring commitments

Collective action

Situations in which individually rational behavior yields collectively bad results (Incentives captured in prisoner’s dilemma)

Incentives captured in prisoner’s dilemma

a.) Tragedies of the commons (over-exploiting commonly held resources)

b.) Public goods provision (the free-rider problem)

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

◦ (Defect, Defect) is a dominant strategy equilibrium

◦ Collectively bad

T or F: A dominate strategy equilibrium is a kind of Nash equilibrium, but not necessarily vice versa.

True

Commitment Problems

a situation in which people cannot achieve their goals because of an inability to make credible threats or promises

when do Commitment Problems occur?

situations where

◦ A’s fear of future exploitation by B keeps A from taking beneficial action

◦ A’s lack of fear of future punishment by B in future leads A to take harmful action

(Incentives captured in some extensive form games)

What is a Buyer-Seller extensive form game?

A “stateless” market transaction

Backward induction: start at the end of the game

What is a role for governing institutions in extensive form games?

Arrest

What is a Subgame perfect Nash Equilibrium (SPNE)?

An equilibrium/ best response with known punishment

What are the benefits of government? (aka the good)

• Facilitate solutions to large - scale coordination problems

• Mitigate collective action problems

• Reduce commitment problems, enable trade

What is “the bad” of Government?

1. Conformity Costs: political losers must line with unappealing collective choices

2. Agency Loss from perverse incentives: empowering public officials to state collective problems may create perverse incentives

What is “the ugly” of Government?

• Inequitable distribution of voice and exist options

• Inequitable burdens of collective solutions

• Outright subjugation of part of the population

Define Legitimacy

Acceptance of the exercise of power with which one disagrees (ex: Don’t agree with policy choice but accept it)

The buy-in problem

1. Decisive actors must agree to participate

2. Infusing power with legitimacy from perspective of decisive actors

   a. upper bounds on conformity costs

   b. Mechanisms to reduce agency loss

3. The “parchment barrier” problem (Federalist #48)

The Constitution: historical background

A. Lead-up to the debates: crisis & failure of collective action, 1781 - 1787

B. Federalist & Antifederalists

Federalists

Advocates of document (aka constitution) go to States to go to convince to see if will be ratified Articles of Confederation

Anti-Federalist

On the opposite side one the people who are skeptical, express fear that will give too much power to government and conform cost

republican government

1. Consent and accountability

2. The problem of “popular passions” & the experience of the 1780s

What did the federalist and Anti-federalist agree on?

• Both wanted a republicanism

• Both wanted representatives Democracy and Separation of Powers

• Republicanism of accountability

Define Constitution

set of guiding principles placing substrative and procedural boundaries on government power

What is legitimation through limitation?

Reducing conformity costs

What is Rationale?

lower conformity costs, higher buy-in

What are the two Antifederalist complaints?

a. Judiciary and the Supremacy Clause

b. Necessary & Proper Clause

(worried National Government is going to control the states)

What did the Antifederalist complain about in regards to Individual rights?

No bill of rights

Faction

group of people who assemble in pursuit of their interest instead of the promised common interest

What were the Antifederalists solutions to Factions?

1. Community Standards, religion

2. Small Republics

   (By embodying community standards when they divide into factions will advocate to make people moral) (Idea that fewer factions equals more liberty)

What were the Federalist Solutions to Factions?

1. Love of Self

   • as a safeguard against tyranny shouldn’t count on the government to make people good but to understand their self love (self-awareness )

2. Large Republics (Federalist #10)

   • If the government expands will bring more diverse people which will make it harder to create a majority faction to suppress minority (larger Republic can lessen effect)

   • More people = coordination problems

Small Republic

will have less differences/ more similarities

Large Republic

more people will create coordination problems and decrease the chances of suppressing the minority group (factions are harder to sustain)

Federalism

a system of government that constitutionally apportions authority between central and regional governments.

Decentralization

Central government does not have much power over the states and little to no government intervention

Centralization

Central government does have power over the states and more government intervention

Apparent Advantages of decentralization

• closer match of policy to reference (fewer “losers”)

• Information: awareness of local circumstances

  • But losers may lose more

Apparent Advantages of centralization

• might provide goods more efficiently (economies of scale)

• Reduce free-rider props

• Potentially greater protection of local minority

  • But might create more losers

Who favored more centralization

States with large war debts; mercantile interest; populism-fearing elites

Who favored less centralization

residents of small states fearing culture under threat; white southern planter elite

What was the debate between the Federalist and Antifederalist?

• Conflict over evaluation of trade offs - Politics

• Disagreement about institutions invariably reflect disagreement about interest, ideologies, & power

Articles of Confederation: “the status quo”

government currently (useless), decentralized

The Virginia Plan

Madison’s plan (national government, gets to decide if states are doing a bad job and regulate, congress can veto law made by state, if don’t pay taxes will call the army on them)

What was the politics of compromise surrounding the Constitution?

all actors must be as least as well off as under the articles of confederation

Constitutional Ambiguity

• Commerce Clause

• Guarantee Clause

• Necessary and proper Clause

• McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819)

How does the 1787 constitution deal with slavery?

punts on it. doesn't mention it by name, but has a 3/5 compromise, a fugitive slave clause, slave trade clause, and the origins of the second amendment were based on wanting slaves not to have guns

Engines of Federalism expansion

1. Crisis: Foreign & domestic (civil war, world war, international intervention)

2. Spillover & demand for uniformity (regulatory standards)

What was the unanticipated but critical feature of contemporary federalism?

1. Regulatory federalism (ex: clean air enforcement - set a policy and let them enforce it)

2. Fiscal federalism (transfer resources across government (fed to state) (grant transfer)

3. State noncompliance with national directives

What were some solutions to the fears surrounding the separation of powers?

republicanism

filtration principle

indirect elections as an accountability mechanism

define Separation of powers

ambition combating ambition

• Division of power at national level among branches

• logic: a stable constitution must be self-enforcing (parchment barriers inadequate)

Philosophical foundations: the self-enforcing constitution

Federalist 51-lays the philosophical ground for why separation of power

Historical Antecedents

1. Colonial Assemblies

2. Expectation of presidential candidate weakness

What was the origin of bicameralism?

large states favored population based representation, small states favored state based representation, connecticut compromise melded the two

• Virginia plan, New Jersey plan, and Connecticut Compromise (Buy-in revised)

Political Consequences of Separation of Power - related compromises

A. Potential for gridlock

• opposes changes = nothing accomplish

• heterogeneity= opposing preferences

• different constituencies electing two different chambers

B. Malapportionment in the Senate

• Different voters depending on where they live can have more or less representation

C. Extra representation in the slave states: the 3/5 rule (Senate & House)

• dehumanizing, wanted number to be higher because allowed for more political representation in the slave holding states

D. Bicameralism entrenches power of slave states

1. Virginia in the House

2. Smaller slave states exercise disproportionate power in Senate

3. Combined power in the electoral college IV.

Does the separation of powers work as advertised?

Restriction/constraints on the completion/execution of action

ex: Impeachment (completion of votes to go to trial)

Four normative criteria for evaluating a political system

1787 Constitution punts on the ugliest aspects of the political system

1. Slavery and the constitution

2. Questions about franchise

3. Tremendous differences in de facto political and economic power

Some common critiques specific to the US

• Money and power in elections and policymaking

• Voter demobilization and disenfranchisement

• Gerrymandering

• Candidate Selection

• Undemocratic institutions entrench status quo

Embedded assumptions in Madisonian constitutionalism A. Explicit premises

1. Gridlock-inducing national institutions

2. Preference diversity

3. Federalism as shared sovereignty

Best case scenarios: “Fail-Safe” Federalism

1. In the absence of national consensus

2. In the presence of national consensus

Four problematic assumptions

1. Expectation of coordination failure (does not anticipate political parties)

2. Expectation that common problems will create consensus

3. Expectation that the national government will be small relative to the states

4. Expectation that interstate heterogeneity will exceed intrastate heterogeneity

Classifying and measuring democracy and the rule of law

A. Contestation B. Inclusivity C. Caveats

What is Contestation?

• elected legislature and cheif executive

• Multiple political parties

• Losers leave (alternation in power)

What is Inclusivity?

• Generally defined W.R.T suffrage

What is the correlation between money and elections?

the more money a person spends, if they are the challenger, they are more likely to win. However, if an incumbent spends a lot of money, there is a small chance that they will actually affect the outcome of the election all that much.

What are some scenarios of Caveats?

• Suffrage criteria tend to ignor cost of voting

• Federalism and variation within States

  • voting is not fully represented/ to be trusted for Democracy “score”

“Perils of Presidentialism”

A. Linz’s (1990) argument concerning presidential systems and democratic crises

• competing claims to represent majority will instead of republicanism

• Zero-sum nature of presidential elections may contribute to polarization (compared to constructive coalition building)

• Regime crises created by gridlock may yield

  • executive power grabs (large proportion of democratic breakdown)

  • Military Coups (Linz’s area of expertise was Latin America)

B. Does the United States remain a “happy exception”?

• The electoral college and democratic legitimacy

Backsliding

• Rise of authoritarian parties (Ziblatt and Levitsky)

Dangers of backsliding

1. Coordination failure

2. Some antecedents of backsliding

Antecedents of backsliding

a. Stakes of holding power

b. Polarization

c. Mismatch between de facto and de jure power

Interest shape what?

Preferences over institutions

The Status quo matters

True

Contextualizing what to the framers’ authority is important?

Appeals

What were three critical lessons about the Constitution?

underlying interests shape preferences over interests

the reversion matters

beware appeals to framers' authority

Define political culture

a shared way of thinking about how political/economic/social life ought to be carried out

• related: norms as shared expectations guiding behavior

Effects of political culture

a. Reduce need for formal institutions

b. Reduce political frictions

• shared identity

• keeping certain policies off agenda

Shared cultural background =

self enforcing equilibrium / less coordination problems

The idea of a homogeneous political culture

Attitudes in U.S. that are commonly held but unusual in the world

What are some shared beliefs in the US that may constrain political action?

individual responsibility

it is the responsibility of the government to take care of the very poor people who can't take care of themselves

how important is that that god plays a role in morality

Origins of Initial circumstances

• settlers seeking religious toleration

• low settler morality and high rates of literacy

• relative ease of acquiring land

• common cultural background (among free white settlers)

Origins Immigration

• on average, immigrants tend to be

  • Middle class

  • Risk-takers

  • Those with families already in the U.S (economic safety net)

  • Young