PS40 Final Lecture

What does the federal gov’t do?

What does the federal gov’t do?

• Insurance company with an army - provides people with social insurance and a military

• Raises and spends money to provide social insurance and protection

• Funded by a progressive tax system

• Social insurance pools risk of all taxpayers to provide protection from social ills

  • Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

• The government was not designed at the founding to fulfill this insurance company with an army function

What were the Articles of Confederation and what were their characteristics?

• First governing document, ratified in 1781 and operational in 1776

• Mainly to fight the Revolutionary War

• Highly decentralized government

  • Confederation - states grant nat’l gov’t authority rather than the people directly

  • Major laws needed 9/13 states and changing the Constitution required unanimous agreement

  • All laws needed to be executed by the states

Why were the Articles of Confederation ineffective?

• The transaction costs of legislating were extremely high

• They couldn’t enforce gov’t directives, leading to collective action problems

  • Couldn’t levy taxes and raise revenues → not enough to finance war

  • Couldn’t regulate commerce between states → economic recession

  • Couldn’t make states contribute to the militia to defend them from GB

• These problems created a need for the Constitution

How do political scientists think about strategy? (Game theory)

• Prisoner’s dilemma is a way of conceptualizing collective action problems

• Both actors have a dominant strategy to diverge from cooperation and do what is in their own best interest

• Example: colonial defense; taxation

• The best way to solve the prisoner’s dilemma is to provide outside incentives or punishments

How was trade between the colonies a prisoner’s dilemma?

• Free trade is the most economically efficient overall

• But each state can impose trade laws to give an advantage to its citizens

• If this happens, a trade war will start and everyone will be worse off

What are some examples of prisoner’s dilemmas that the government solves?

• Compulsory contributions to gov’t services (taxes)

• Compulsory contributions to clean air (environmental regulations)

• Compulsory contributions to national defense (military draft)

• Punishment for disruptions to domestic peace

How did the Great Compromise/Constitution address flaws in the Articles of Confederation?

• NJ and VA plans reflected 3 important conformity costs that had to be overcome

  • Big states worried small states would be too powerful

  • Slave states concerned that free states would have too much power

  • People who supported states’ rights concerned about too much conformity under federal law

  • VA Plan - big states, powerful federal gov’t

    • Bicameral legislature by population

    • Legislature can make any law

    • Executive elected by the lower house

  • NJ Plan - small states, weaker federal gov’t

    • Unicameral legislature by state

    • Legislature has limited powers

    • Plural executive

• Solution to the contention

  • Split control of leg. Branch b/w population and states

  • House can originate revenue bills

  • Legislation through majority vote in each chamber

  • Independent executive with limited powers

• Prescribes rules for collective action, helping representatives agree to things collectively that they would not individually

• Gives the government enforcing power for its directives

• Enumerates specific powers to the federal government and the states (federalism)

• Consists of an amendment process that imposes high transaction costs but the costs aren’t so high it’s impossible

Is the separation of powers good or bad for lawmaking?

• Bad - representatives in each branch are elected in different ways, meaning they disagree and serve different constituencies

  • This disagreement can create gridlock since it makes transaction costs very high

• Good - Federalist 51

  • These different constituencies and lawmaking responsibilities prevent the concentration of authority in any one branch or group of people

  • Government needs to control itself because people are naturally predisposed to corruption

Are the different legislative branches effective checks on each other, and are there effective checks on them?

• House and Senate differ in terms of constituencies, qualifications for office, terms of office, and power

• House - more “popular” with two-year terms; each state gets 1 rep regardless of size

• Senate - more removed and insulated with longer terms and Senators chosen by state legislatures

• Approval of both chambers needed to pass legislation; a supermajority for a veto

• Necessary and proper clause and commerce clause allow the legislature to extend its power beyond what is enumerated in the Constitution

• Still, limited by Bill of Rights and other specifications (ie. can’t pass bills of attainder or spend money without legislating)

• Importantly, power of judicial review, an important check on legislative power, not specified in the Constitution

  • Judiciary has a different constituency because they have lifetime appointments → theoretically very removed from the people

• Congress is affected by status quo bias due to high transaction costs of legislating

What does the executive do and how is it related to checks and balances, separation of powers?

• A unitary executive that carries out the laws

  • Veto pwr, fills offices

• Has command authority as commander in chief

• No agenda-setting power in Congress → different from today

• Under original Constitution, states had a lot of latitude, but less so today

What is a coordination game and how can it be solved?

• People disagree about what is best, but have a shared interest in cooperating

• Solved with providing a cue to rally around a collective decision (ie. party leader)

Why is the Senate malapportioned?

• All states receive the same amount of representation regardless of the size of their populations

• US Senate close to most malapportioned chamber in the world

• Means Senators representing a minority of the population can vote down laws

• Also means electoral college is malapportioned

What is federalism and how does it work in the US?

• Different elected bodies share different responsibilities and powers with overlapping jurisdiction

• States have their own constitutional authority and are semi-sovereign; all powers not delegated to the federal gov’t are delegated to the states

  • Fed gov’t: nat’l defense, universal pension/elderly healthcare, sends $ to states, unbalanced budget ok

  • State gov’t: administer welfare programs, work w/local gov’t to run K-12 schools and higher edu, prison system, run elections, constrained by balanced budget

  • Both: tax, borrow money, charter banks, regulate property

• Each state typically has a mini-federal gov’t that can charter local gov’ts

• Increasingly think of local elections in terms of national issues, even though jurisdictions are separate → nationalization of politics

  • Decreased accountability - feeling that one has to stay with elected officials of one’s party, even if that party isn’t addressing the problems

  • Cause: Fed gov’t gets more media attention that local gov’t

  • Cause: Local and federal politics more aligned with the decline of the Southern Democrats

What are grants and mandates?

• Grant - the federal gov’t gives money to the states, usually for a particular use

  • Medicaid, SNAP

• Mandate - the federal gov’t tells a state to do something but doesn’t give them any money to do it

  • Americans with Disabilities Act, federal education standards

What are the benefits of federalism?

• Pooled risk - states share the risks of having people who need welfare; all states have to provide welfare evenly

• Laboratories of democracy - states can test out policy that federal gov’t can’t

• Room for local preferences - states can tailor policy to what their populations want

What are the drawbacks of federalism?

• Supreme Court can strike down local preferences

• Hampered accountability - voters can’t easily discern whether federal or state actors are responsible for policy failures, so elections aren’t as effective at holding them accountable

• Cutthroat competition/race to the bottom - states will try to outdo other states to attract business or resources at the expense of their populations

What are the contents and themes of the Bill of Rights?

• Protections for civil liberties at odds with democracy

• Supreme Court decides on the meaning of the amendments

• Broadly: freedom of expression, criminal protections

• First amendment - Congress can’t make laws that endorse or prohibit religion, limit freedom of speech, limit freedom of the press, limit freedom of assembly

  • No speech to organize criminal activity

  • No speech/press to baselessly undermine someone’s reputation - slander and libel

• Second amendment - guns

• Third amendment - qaurtering of soldiers

• Fourth amendment - security against unreasonable searches and seizures (without probable cause)

• Fifth amendment - Due process; no witness against self; no taking of private property w/o compensation

• Sixth amendment - right to a speedy public trial

• Seventh amendment - Jury trial

• Eight amendment - cruel and unusual punishment/excessive bail

• Ninth amendment - rights can be added thru amendment and judicial interpretation

  • Ie. Right to privacy

• Tenth amendment - remaining powers to the states

What is incorporation and why is it important?

• Basis for modern civil rights

• SC held states had to enforce certain amendments through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th amendment

• Most amendments are incorporated

What is the difference between civil rights and civil liberties?

• Powers conferred to citizens by the state → civil rights; pro-majoritarian

• Constraints on the state vis-à-vis citizens → civil liberties; anti-majoritarian

Is the Bill of Rights necessary to protect civil liberties?

• Yes; necessary and proper clause, commerce clause

• No; Constitution already prevents certain civil rights violations like bills of attainder and suspending habeas corpus

How do districts and gerrymandering work?

• Unlike in most countries, US legislators represent districts, with different districts for each chamber

• In Senate, no gerrymandering, but House can have gerrymandering in reapportionment process

  • Spread voters for their party across districts to win more seats - cracking

  • Concentrate voters in existing districts so incumbents win - packing

What are the effects of gerrymandering?

• Doesn’t affect partisan polarization since gerrymanderers use a mixture of packing and cracking

• Limited to equal population districts (Baker v Carr) and cannot be done by race

• Even if not gerrymandering, probably will have a few extreme majority D districts and a lot of slight majority R districts since D tend to live in cities and R tend to be more rural

What is the median voter theorem?

• Assumption: people prefer candidate whose position is closest to their policy preference → spatial voting

• Strategic moderation: candidates moderate their positions to be in close proximity to as many voters as possible

• Median voter theorem states that because of these tendencies, majority rule system will select the outcome most preferred by the median voter

• Evidence that candidates further from their electorates typically lose

• At the same time, candidates will never completely converge on the median voter

Is the incumbency advantage inherently undemocratic?

• Incumbents do possess resources like media, a brand name, and experience which might give them an advantage

• But challengers have the advantage of a clean record and outsider status

• Incumbents might win simply because they’re good at catering to their constituencies (Mayhew)

• Candidates might choose to retire because they know they’re going to lose

How does a bill become a law?

• A member of Congress introduces it

• It is assigned to a committee

  • Specialize in a certain legislative area and responsible for conducting research, holding hearings on the bill, and making changes to a bill

  • Can bypass this step with a discharge petition

  • Most bills die in committee

• Chamber consideration

  • House Rules Committee sets rules for debate and amendment voted on by a majority

  • Senate operates on unanimous consent to rules for debate and amendment

    • To end the filibuster, the Senate requires 60 votes, so effectively 60 Senators have to agree to legislation in order for it to pass

• Other chamber consideration

  • Can completely change the bill from the other chamber

  • Formal way to get chambers to agree is conference committee; otherwise, informal ping pong

• President

  • Can sign, veto, or ignore the bill

What are some examples of legislative gatekeepers?

• Party leaders - if they aren’t pushing something, it usually doesn’t receive action

• Committee chairs

• Majority of the House

• 41 Senators (to block a filibuster)

• The president can veto a bill

• Overall, easier to kill than pass a bill

What kinds of bills succeed?

• A legislator’s vote is a choice between the status quo and a proposal

• The trick is moving the status quo in your direction so you can eventually get what you want

• Both chambers are subject to a pull in the direction of the median voter of the population because leaders and committee chairs are appointed by majority rule

• Desire to be involved in bill writing is a big motivator in Congress because then Congresspeople can claim credit for their constituents

• Median voter in Congress is typically the deciding vote; currently Joe Manchin

What about parties, committees, and staff support?

• Party leaders elected by members of the party at the beginning of each session

  • Assign bills to committees and set schedules for debate

  • Most important - Senate majority leader and speaker of the house

  • Therefore, they are gatekeepers in their own right

• Despite expansion of Congressional staff with expansion of the federal gov’t, Congress has become increasingly frugal

Why might it be hard for legislators to get things done?

• Their party might not fully control gov’t

• They have limited resources (time, information)

• Many veto players

How can voters tell a legislator is doing a good job?

• They feel that their legislator is “one of them” and acts in their best interest

• The legislator brings home particularistic benefits (pork)

Why are primaries important in electing the president?

• Each party nominates candidates through an “invisible primary” in which the public figures out who is prominent enough to be nominated

• Caucus or primary - state determines which

  • Primaries usually closed to voters registered with a certain party

  • Early states often provide signals of who is doing well and it’s pretty clear who the nominee is once you get to later states

  • Early endorsements, media attention, and spending or receiving money all indicate viability in primaries, although voters are typically indecisive

How is the general election important in electing the president?

• Whichever candidate wins the majority of the 538 electors wins the presidency

• Most states allocate electors in a winner takes all system

  • Consequence: minority party voters have less influence

  • Consequence: discrepancy between the popular vote and the electoral college outcome

What does the president do?

• Head of state/commander in chief

  • War powers: can initiate conflict as commander in chief even though only Congress can declare war

  • Conduct foreign policy with advice and consent of Senate

• Public face of the party

  • Get most of the media coverage for the party, allowing them to use the bully pulpit - appeal directly to the public on issues in Congress to put pressure on legislators

  • Can give a lot of minor addresses to interact with the public, giving them advantage over legislators

• Psuedo-legislator

  • State of the union address

  • Large gap between actual presidential power and the policy demands placed on the president, since media largely focuses on the president

  • Access to cabinet as well as unelected bureaucrats

What are some of the most powerful actions the president can take?

• Executive orders carry the weight of law even though not enacted by Congress

  • Limited by the laws that have been passed and the Constitution

  • Can be overturned by Congress

  • Use increased over time to address gap between presidential authority and presidential expectations

• Executive privilege - president can deny Congress info because it must be kept confidential

• Power to pardon

• Issue signing statements with legislation specifying how they will carry out a law; they can be very different from what Congress intended

• Ability to veto

  • Used as a bargaining chip to get legislation to pass - threaten to veto if legislators don’t make certain changes

  • More common in divided gov’t

• Can propose legislation

  • Usually gets consideration but limited by gatekeepers of the legislative process

What does the bureaucracy look like?

• Created by Congress to achieve policy goals, with most reporting to president

• Agents of Congress

• Implement laws and policy goals

• Settle disputes

• Create public goods

• Make and enforce rules

• Consists of 15 executive departments, but the cabinet secretaries aren’t necessarily the heads of these departments

Does the bureaucracy do what it’s designed to do?

• Supposed to enforce the laws, elaborate on the law based on what they think it means, and carry out the rulings of the courts

• Many agencies required to have public hearings explaining when they make a new regulation, allowing Congressional oversight

  • But some like the Federal Reserve completely isolated from public policy for conflict of interest reasons

Who is the bureaucracy accountable to?

• There is always a gap between what Congress (principal) wants and what the bureaucracy (agent) does → agency loss

  • The principal was unclear

  • Agents have their own interests

  • Example: ATF gun tracking program just ended up putting more guns on the streets for ppl to commit gun crimes

• Fire alarm monitoring

  • Whistleblower job protection laws

  • Inspector general investigations

  • Government Accountability Office

  • Public hearings to allow for complaints

• Subject to interest group monitoring

What are the conflicting incentives surrounding media?

• People increasingly get news online or on TV rather than in newspapers

• Owners want to make money, which doesn’t necessarily yield journalism that is the best for democracy

• Journalists are motivated by norms of integrity and professionalism → in conflict with politicians who want to be portrayed in the best light

• Owners who want to cut costs are constantly in a battle with politicians who want to reach the public

• Viewers probably motivated by entertainment

• Biased towards drama or “big” story; avoid things like tax policy

What is meant by the phrase “fourth branch”?

• Free, open, and unregulated media fosters free exchange of ideas, variety of opinions, and serves as a skeptical watchdog for gov’t

• Provides people with information needed to hold politicians accountable

• Helps members of gov’t learn about what other members are doing

Does the media actually play a good role in democracy?

• Campaign coverage provides info about candidates

  • Typically covers who is ahead/behind rather than policy perspectives

• Day to day politics

• Uncovering malfeasance

• Politicians can engage in various strategies not to be muckraked, including:

  • Providing exclusive scoops to journalists

  • Issuing press releases and having press conferences

Does the media enable informed democratic citizenship?

• Soft news increasingly popular as TV market grew - story-oriented, “human interest,” sensationalized; present news as entertainment

  • Decrease the cost of political information for the average citizen who might not otherwise watch the news

  • People are smart enough to ignore irrelevant information in soft news

  • Viewers of soft news tend to be more informed, since hard news doesn’t really focus on policy much

Is the media biased?

• Misreporting is not the norm for major news outlets

• But lack of objectivity may manifest itself when outlets are deciding what stories to cover

• What the audience wants may shape the news media we actually get

What does the American judicial system look like?

• States implement social change-related policies first and then the Supreme Court rules on them

• Most cases heard in state trial courts, with federal and appellate courts receiving fewer

  • Arbitrate violations of civil codes or criminal codes through trial or settlement

  • Criminal law - plaintiff is the state or federal (if across state lines) gov’t

  • Civil law - deals with rights and obligations of citizens to each other

• Can be escalated to state appellate courts or courts of appeals

• Can then be escalated to state supreme court

• Appellate courts and state supreme courts can escalate cases to the Supreme Court

• Supreme Court offers both judicial review and statutory interpretation, often a larger function

Can courts effectively provide a veto/check?

• Judicial review is not in the Constitution, but with increased use following Marbury v Madison (1803) and became a fundamental purpose of the court

• But Supreme Court nominated by the president/confirmed by the Senate, so may have similar views to these two bodies

How does the Supreme Court interpret cases and decide what cases to hear?

• Three theories of Constitutional interpretation, used to determine Constitutionality of laws in addition to existing precedent

  • Plain meaning of the text theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law in terms of what the Constitution literally says

  • Original intent theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law by inferring the original intent of those who wrote and ratified the constitution

    • Argument for is that it prevents the SC from legislating from the bench too much

  • Living Constitution theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law in the context of American history as a whole, based on American experience at founding through today

• Influences all other courts through selective review and setting precedent

  • Stare decisis - obeying previous decisions of the court about what the law means

  • Justices work together to grant writs of certiorari to lower courts

    • Typically granted when there is legal uncertainty on an issue or when the lower court is wrong

What is the relationship between ideology and the judiciary?

• Opinions often have different divisions with varying patterns of dissent because:

  • Legal realism - justices care about policy, so they care about the outcomes of cases; judicial decisions are not apolitical

    • Appeal to Constitution, jurisprudence, and precent because they want to convince US policymakers that they’re right under the law

• Still, justices tend to fall into voting blocs with consistent coalitions

• The median voter theorem also applies to the Supreme Court - probably Kavanaugh

• Increase in polarized and decrease in unanimous decisions

Is public opinion rational?

• Rationality = using instrumental (considering outcome) and optimal (considering your best preference) basis for making choices

• Individual opinions are unstable, inaccurate, and contradictory

• Non-attitudes: Zaller and Converse

  • Peoples’ views are just a sample of the considerations they have encountered recently, and therefore surveys are inaccurate

  • People experience demand effects on surveys/are motivated to provide the answer that the survey deliverer will like

• But aggregate opinion is rationalizeable and relatively stable

  • Condorcet jury theorem - if the chance that an individual has rational opinions is greater than 50%, then the chance that the whole population arrives at a rational viewpoint increases with more people

  • Presidential approval rates; same sex marriage; abortion

Are peoples’ values organized by political ideology?

• Ideology - system of beliefs centered around issues in politics

  • Liberal - gov’t should play role in redressing injustices and inequalities while addressing social problems

  • Conservative - gov’t should play a minimal role in society and not force people to participate in social advancement; uphold tradition; law enforcement

• Converse: belief systems and constraint

  • Political elites tend to have views that are systematic, but this relationship is weaker for the general public (less constrained)

  • The general public is not thinking about issues as systematically as elected officials

• Being non-ideological is not the same as being non-rational

• Can people hear and accept conflicting information (motivated reasoning)?

  • People have a tendency to find arguments in favor of the conclusions they want to believe stronger

    • Reason to believe people don’t reason correctly

  • Don’t want to believe facts that conflict with arguments they believe → example: partisan divergence in how serious coronavirus was

• How do we know what the public thinks?

  • Public opinion polling: take a small sample of the public and ask what they think

    • Random sampling almost guarantees an accurate result with a high enough sample size

    • Caveat - there is almost always a nonresponse bias in polls, so there usually isn’t complete accuracy

      • Mitigated by measuring bias and accounting for it

  • Measurement error - the problem is who gets asked

  • Response error - the problem is how the question is asked

  • Latent opinion - people care about things meaningfully but don’t always have a particular idea or policy they prefer

What are the basics of the US election system?

• The delegation of authority to agents raises the possibility of agency loss, and elections partially solve this problem

• The states run elections and parties determine the methods/timing of primaries

• Both the state and federal gov’ts control campaign finance

• Voting is optional in the US, so the electorate that is voting is different every election

• In each election, usually a nominating phase (partisan) and a general election

  • Nomination phase typically consists of within-party plurality vote for the nominee

What are the pathologies of first-past-the-post elections?

• The candidate who wins any pairwise competition (Condorcet winner) might not win and in fact can easily lose

  • Candidates winning doesn’t necessarily indicate a lot of popular support

• Duverger’s law: plurality or majoritarian elections tend to cultivate two-party systems

  • Parties that come in third often don’t have a shot at winning or any meaningful payoff

  • Although third parties can influence existing coalitions: Free Soil

• Strategic moderation is a product of the two-party system

  • Candidates moderate their positions in order to win a majority of the vote (median voter theorem)

How do voters make decisions?

• Use cues and heuristics as cognitive shortcuts to avoid the transaction costs of becoming informed

• Retrospective voting - assess past performance of incumbents or majority party

  • But difficult to assign credit for lg bodies like the House

  • Example: economic voting (voting for a candidate that presided over a good economy)

  • Also may take the form of assessing their personal experience and media coverage during the incumbent’s tenure

• Partisan voting - vote based on party affiliation

  • Most important shortcut voters use to make predictions

  • Using party heuristics is the hardest for people in the middle and they have the least incentive to be informed, but they have to make the most important decision - swing voter’s curse

Why do election predictions work?

• Use economy, public opinion, length of party control, and historical patterns to predict elections

• Peoples’ decisions converge with the prediction closer to the election as they decide who to vote for

What are the ways that interest groups influence politics?

• Lobbying - aimed to directly influence decisions made by public officials

• Interest group - an organization with common interests that engages in politics of behalf of its members

• Offer elected officials information about their constituencies

• Engage in social lobbying

• Grassroots lobbying conducted by constituents

• Issue advocacy to influence public opinion of constituents

• Litigation in the courts

• Campaign finance to decrease funding burden

  • FECA limits individual donations to campaigns, but not how much a campaign can spend

  • 2020 election was the most expensive ever

How much does lobbying influence politics?

• Lobbyists gain revenue/success from connections to politicians still in office

• Lobbyists who spend more money in politics tend to have lower taxes (correlation not causation)

• Social lobbying is generally more influential than lobbying in an official setting (Grose et. al randomized experiment)

• There are complaints about how much lobbying influences politics

  • Lobbyists can make representative accountable to them instead of their constituents

  • Direct attention away from national interest and those of ordinary citizens

• Lobbying might be good for democracy

  • Interest groups on both sides of the issue cancel each other out → pluralism

  • Interest groups have incentives to develop best and strongest arguments

• But interest group membership has an upper clas bias → exacerbated with increase in income inequality

How can we understand campaign finance?

• Buckley v Valeo (1976): expenditure limits by campaigns struck down but contribution limits for individuals and PACs upheld

  • PAC: organization that raises or spends money in politics on behalf of a corporation

  • Established that gov’t has a valid interest in preventing the appearance of corruption

  • Limiting campaign expenditures limits candidates’ right to free speech

• Corporations can’t contribute directly to political campaigns, neither can foreign nationals or gov’t contractors

• Independent expenditures - express advocacy for or against a candidate independently

  • As long as they are not coordinating with the campaign itself

• Citizens United v FEC (2010)

  • Only quid pro quo corruption is a concern in campaign finance laws

  • Independent expenditures don’t give rise to corruption

• SpeechNow.org v FEC (2010) - contributions to groups that make independent expenditures cannot be limited

• Before citizens united, Super PACs were the only way that corporations could donate to campaigns without reporting expenditures → still had to stay within the contribution limits

How effective is campaign finance?

• Money in politics is not everything

  • Trump raised less money than all of the other Republican candidates but still won the nomination

• Candidates raise lots of money when they expect a competitive race, so the candidate that raises less money doesn’t always lose

• Money does make it easier to get attention, giving self-financing candidates an advantage

  • Candidates who don’t fit the usual barriers to entry can circumvent party barriers to entry

If there can only be two parties, how do party systems change?

• Political parties solve collective action problems by giving anyone a vehicle to become active in politics

• Goals of parties to gain control of the gov’t but also implement their preferred policies may force concessions

• Third party influence can bring new issues/platforms to the attention of major parties

• Changing geographic alliances can change party coalitions

What are the features of past party systems?

• Political parties began as a way to manage voting in the first Congress

• Modern Democratic and Republican parties have roots with Jefferson and Hamilton, respectively but they have changed a lot since their founding

• First party system - federalist vs. democratic republicans

  • Key features were tensions over power in the federal government and the creation of national political parties

• Second party system - Democrats vs. Nat’l Republicans

  • Key features were the development of patronage politics, the beginning of party conventions, and the beginning of national political campaigns

  • Centralized campaign organization, bargained over platform and candidates

• Third and fourth party systems - the rise and fall of political party machines

  • Key developments were civil service, Australian ballot, and primary elections

• Fifth party system - Democrats vs. Republicans

  • New Deal policies like Social Security, public works, subsidies and housing support divided Democrats and Republicans along lines reminiscent of the present

  • Democrats want to fix social problems and Republicans think that the gov’t is imposing burdens on its citizens

  • Southern Democrats split off during the 1950s

What are the features of the current party system?

• Arguably we have a new sixth party system today

  • Characterized by TV ads and the primary system of presidential nominations

  • Key issues are taxes, racial equity, healthcare, civil rights

  • Closely contested elections, more than any other party system

  • Increase in the number of independents, but they lean towards one party or another

What is polarization?

• Ideological polarization - people are moving away from the middle in their political beliefs and extreme views are becoming more common

• Partisan polarization - parties are becoming more homogeneous and there is a smaller diversity of views within each party

• Affective polarization - people have increasingly negative feelings towards people who are different from them and increasingly positive views towards people similar to them

How have officeholders changed over time (in terms of polarization)?

• The diversity of views within each party has decreased, with Democrats becoming more liberal and Republicans becoming more conservative

  • Republicans: low taxes, regulation and welfare; anti-abortion; religion in public life; gun ownership

  • Democrats: high taxes, environmental protection, legal abortions, welfare, secular public life, gov’t should correct racial inequalities

  • Primaries less diverse than they were in the 1970s

• Nominate scores based on roll call votes used to determine polarization over time

  • People are rarely in the “wrong party”

  • When someone switches parties, they change their views to be consistent with the party

  • Both partisan and ideological polarization

How has the public changed over time (in terms of polarization)?

• Most Americans are in the middle as they have been for a long time, so not as much ideological polarization

• However, Americans generally tend to be better at sorting themselves into the parties consistent with their ideological predispositions

How is it possible that Republicans and Democrats in the public are farther apart i people in the public are not more extreme than they used to be?

• It’s clearer what the parties stand for than it has been in the past, so partisan sorting is easier for citizens

• As independents switched into parties that matched their ideologies, primaries elected more homogenous candidates, leading to partisan polarization in Congress

• Still, voters are less ideologically constrained than politicians and will tend to be more of a mixture of liberal and conservative

What are the effects of polarization?

• Costly disruption of federal activities; ie. gov’t shutdown

• Increased receptiveness to theories about the other party, increasing affective polarization

  • Worse conduct by officeholders

• Harder for Congressional chambers to pass legislation

  • More power to the president/decrease in separation of powers

What are the big moments in the history of Black civil rights in the United States?

• Civil rights: active protections by government

• The balanced entry of slave and free states and the MO Compromise of 1820

  • State-based representation in the Senate meant that the issue of slavery was off the policy table

• The victory of the Free Soil party by claiming that slave labor was competing with unpaid white labor

  • Showed an anti-slavery platform could be electorally successful

• Dred Scott v Sanford - federal gov’t couldn’t regulate slavery in the territories

  • Galvanized northern abolitionists and free soilers into the republican party

• Election of 1860 - major Republican wins showed that slavery would no longer be tolerated and resulted in the civil war

• The end of Reconstruction

  • The protection of the 14th and 15th amendments were no longer federally enforced, resulting in apartheid and vigilante violence

• Jim Crow laws and Plessy v Ferguson

  • Segregation and disenfranchisement of Blacks under seperate but equal doctrine

  • Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clause, understanding clause

• Migration of Black Americans incentivized by poor conditions in the South

  • Resulted in increased importance of Black Americans as a voting bloc and the civil rights issue became part of the democratic platform

• Truman’s integration of the armed services and Fair Employment proposal

  • Alienated Southern Democrats and they departed from the party

• Successes in the courts in Brown v Board of Education

• Civil disobediance and issue advocacy by the SCLC and others moved public opinion in favor of civil rights and emphasized police abuses

  • Bloody Sunday

  • Bus boycott

  • Lunch counter sit-ins

• Voting Rights Act of 1965 first meaningful enforcement of Black voting rights

What are the contemporary politics of race like?

• Defending people from discrimination is not equality and we have a long way to go

• Aggressive policing and criminal justice are top issues in current advocacy for Black civil rights

  • Treyvon Martin and George Floyd

• George Floyd protests were the largest mass protest movement in American history and notable for the proportion of non-Black participants and people across the political spectrum who participated or endorsed it

  • Conservatives focused on issues with looting

• Increased awareness of discrimination and support for quick fixes like banning police chokeholds

What are the lessons of the civil rights movement in terms of effecting change in American politics?

• It’s hard to achieve change due to status quo bias even with morally outrageous policies

• Creating new coalitions and vote incentives are key to achieving change

• Necessary to adjust advocacy to demographic, economic, or technological wave

• Still, change is achievable through:

  • Constitutional amendments

  • State and local attempts at similar policy

  • Getting the bureaucracy on board

  • Appealing to the courts

  • Changing party coalitions

  • Changing elite opinion or public opinion

• When demand for action is great enough, the difficulties of status quo bias can be overcome

Why is inequality such a significant issue in American politics?

• It involves redistribution efforts like Social Security, which consistently divide the parties and drive polarization

• Different values  - left tends to value fairness and equality while right prioritizes stability and property rights

• Liberals support addressing inequality because:

  • Gov’t redistribution is good for economic growth

  • The government can promote meritocracy

  • So greater equality is better for almost everyone

• Conservatives are against addressing inequality because:

  • Redistribution hurts economic growth

  • Low taxes and small gov’t can increase growth by letting the market work

  • So markets are good for almost everyone

What is the state of inequality in the US?

• People understimate wealth inequality and would like it to be less

• Conservatives argue that Americans are still among the richest people in the world, decreasing poverty is generally associated with richer countries, and income is equal enough

• Most of the wealth growth over the past few decades has accrued to the top 1%

• Multiple possible sources: international trade, technological changes, failure of gov’t policy

• Income mobility is middling in the US

• Richer people tend to be more Republican and less wealthy people tend to be more Democratic, but only up to incomes of about 50,000

Why doesn’t democracy address rising inequality?

• US is less redistributive in spending but more redistributive in terms of tax policy

• Public opinion just doesn’t want to see inequality addressed

  • Tyranny of the majority of the poor expressed in Federalist 10 and current opinion polls indicate that the ideals of self-determination are deeply rooted in American history

• Politicians cater to wealthy constituents - Hacker and Peirson

  • Majority of people say the rich pay less tax than they should

  • Low support for tax cuts if there are other options

  • Politicians can manage to pass policies that are directly at odds with majority views

• Status quo bias makes it too hard

  • There’s not enough of a consensus among and between parties that addressing inequality is a serious concern