Polarization: It's Pretty Awesome

Yesterday's post taking a brief look at the politics of civil rights in the 1950s serves as a reminder that the much-derided polarization of the contemporary era is in many ways a good thing.

Today, if you live in a state represented by a Republican incumbent, and the GOP controls congress, and you want policy to move in a more liberal direction, you can vote for the incumbent's Democratic challenger who's all-but-guaranteed to be more liberal than the GOP incumbent. And if the GOP incumbent's defeat leads control of the congress to flip, then the GOP Majority Leader will be replaced by a more Democratic Majority Leader and all the Republican committee chairs will be replaced by more liberal Democratic committee chairs.

Back in the day, it wasn't like that. Impacts were unpredictable. Booting a moderate northern Republican in favor of a liberal northern Democrat would shift things to the left. Unless, that is, it flipped control of the Senate in which case it might empower new Dixiecrat committee chairs who were more conservative -- especially on civil rights issues -- than were their GOP predecessors. Beyond that kind of unpredictability, voters were often confused as to what was at stake. In 1952 and then again in 1960 according to the National Election Survey just 50 percent of the public felt it could discern "any important differences in what the
Republicans and Democrats stand for?" In 1966 that fell to forty percent. In 1992 by contrast, it went up to 60 percent and it was all the way up at 76 percent in 2004.

Those, remember, are polls of people who actually voted. So while pundits may not like it when the parties draw clear distinctions, it seems to me that it's clearly preferable for the voters to be put in a situation where they feel like they understand the stakes and there's a relationship between votes cast and policy outcomes. A world in which the electorate is left perpetually baffled by the decisions they face and then the important issues are settled through arcane committee negotiations rather than on election day is just a means of empowering elites, not a path to better governance.

Comments

It's quite instructive to listen to Mort Sahl's old monologues in this respect. He was a big Kennedy supporter but was quite sarcastic about the extent to which a Democratic win would lead to any real progress as long as Dixiecrat Senators controlled the legislative process.

Posted by DCBob | November 21, 2007 2:31 PM

Which is exactly point, Matt; it's not that the good of depolarization brings with it the unfortunate consequence of insulating the government from democratically-induced policy changes. In fact, that's what they're aiming for. If democracy doesn't force change, that leaves all policy to be decided by institutional, status quo opinion. Which is to say, the elite's.

Posted by Zephyrus | November 21, 2007 2:36 PM

I think it's important to differentiate between partisanship on policy matters and partisanship as an enabler of deconstructing the Republic. When partisans put their party loyalty ahead of their Constitutional duties, they are essentially betraying their oaths of office.

I could give you a short list of examples, but I'm trusting you've been paying attention for the past eight years. Let's start with the impeachment of Clinton, move to the SCOTUS intervention in the Election of 2000, and go on from there.

Posted by Whispers | November 21, 2007 2:48 PM

You know, reading about the Dixiecrats makes me feel a little better about the times we live in now, and a little more hopeful. Yes, habeas corpus has recently been gutted and torture has become politically respectable.

But it helps every now and then to remind yourself that today's outrages are just the most recent betrayals of our claimed ideals, and we just have to push back, as decent people have always done. Maybe it sounds trite and maudlin.

But it makes me feel a lot better than thinking that our most recent crowd of scoundrels are dumping two hundred years of traditional liberty. Of course they're not, because we've never lived up to the theory. They're just doing what their kind have always done.

Posted by jbd | November 21, 2007 2:55 PM

Here (pdf) is a paper by James Fowler of UCSD on this very issue -- check it out.

Posted by NCProsecutor | November 21, 2007 3:08 PM

and I think the debate between Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders ("polarization is a mass phenomenon caused by the party differences") and Fiorina ("polarization is an elite phenomenon") captures the political science debate pretty well.

I ascribe to the A&S position. You can find an older version of it here (guest registration required):

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss2/art1/

it is also forthcoming in the Journal of Politics next January. you can email Abramowitz or Saunders to get it.

Posted by Davis | November 21, 2007 3:24 PM

and I think the debate between Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders ("polarization is a mass phenomenon caused by the party differences") and Fiorina ("polarization is an elite phenomenon") captures the political science debate pretty well.

I ascribe to the A&S position. You can find an older version of it here (guest registration required):

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss2/art1/

it is also forthcoming in the Journal of Politics next January. you can email Abramowitz or Saunders to get it.

Posted by Davis | November 21, 2007 3:25 PM

and I think the debate between Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders ("polarization is a mass phenomenon caused by the party differences") and Fiorina ("polarization is an elite phenomenon") captures the political science debate pretty well.

I ascribe to the A&S position. You can find an older version of it here (guest registration required):

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss2/art1/

it is also forthcoming in the Journal of Politics next January. you can email Abramowitz or Saunders to get it.

Posted by Davis | November 21, 2007 3:26 PM

But what about turnout? Isn't turnout an indicator of public interest in an election? Turnout in 1960 (either among reg'd voters or voting age pop) was notably higher than in 1992 or 2004, at least outside the South (in the south, turnout increased dramatically after 1965). Its not clear to me that the consensual politics of the fifties and early sixties actually led to people being bored with politics, nor do the more polarized politics of today generate more public attention or participation. Polarization may be inevitable, normal, natural, and logical, but it isn't necessarily awesome as far as political engagement and participation goes.

Though I would say that the typically lower levels of turnout since the sixties have more to do with the decline of the unions than with polarization per se.

Posted by Rich C | November 21, 2007 3:36 PM

The GOP confuses things by a policy of the Infinite Tease. It's against their interests to actually overturn Roe v. Wade so they never actually do anything substantive about it. That's polarization by an elite.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 21, 2007 3:42 PM

As the Republican Party collapses and the Democratic Party is fated to be the one, dominated political party, maybe a few pundits or wonks can start a discussion on what will happen when the Democratic Party is the only political party.

Instead of worrying about elections fifty years ago, what is going to happen when the Democratic Primary is the only relevant election. Will Iowa, NH and SC be left to decide who the president is? Will primaries still occur in January when the inauguration will occur a year later. How will the public view politics when the general election is a meaningless exercise to affirm the Democratic candidate?

In a one party state, will there be more challengers in the primaries or will most incumbents be re-elected without a meaningful opponent? Will the Democratic establishment move to closed primaries? Will referendum and initiatives become more or less prevalent? Will former Republican voters who will begin to vote in the Democratic Primary cause the Democratic Party to be more moderate?

How will district lines be draw when only political party is relevant to politics? Which core groups of the current Democratic Primary establishment will benefit or lose in such a situation?

Most of the current bloggers and pundits are too accustom to the current situation to realize that the Republican Party hit its high water mark in 200 and has now begun to fade away. Thus, they keep fighting old political battles that are now meaningless.

Posted by superdestroyer | November 21, 2007 3:48 PM

I'm not convinced that the Democratic candidate will win the presidency next year (and I say this as a liberal whose values align most closely to Kuchinich). A lot of people feel like the Democrats won the 2006 elections to end the war, and they haven't done shit to do so. With casualties dropping in Iraq and troops being brought home next Spring due to the unsustainable surge, the Republicans will say we won in Iraq, which would totally defuse the issue.

Posted by croatoan | November 21, 2007 4:02 PM

It's against their interests to actually overturn Roe v. Wade so they never actually do anything substantive about it.

Appointing Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito to the Supreme Court = "nothing substantive"? Really?

Posted by Tom | November 21, 2007 4:29 PM

Looking at your ANES Guide link I can't discern any consistent match up between a high "Yes, a difference" answer and a switch of which political party controlled the house, senate, white house, or any combo of the three. Nor with a low answer.

So, contra your post, there seems to be *no* correlation between a measure of polarization before an election and a change in policy outcomes.

Posted by Kenny | November 21, 2007 11:42 PM

I consider Matt's posting to be an anti-Obama manifesto, and to that extent I endorse it. I want a candidate who's not embarrassed to attack, and who values victory over consensus.

Posted by Rich | November 23, 2007 11:21 AM