Persily

Jack Helms – Persily Chapter 3: Asymmetric Polarization

Chapter 3 of Solutions to Political Polarization in America deals with asymmetric polarization. In the United States, the republican party, or “the right” has been moving to the extreme more so than the democratic party or “the left.” According to DW Nominate scores, more conservative or extreme republicans have replaced moderate republicans and southern democrats. Also, GOP supreme court nominations have become more conservative over the past 75 years. Finally, constitutional hardball has become more common. However, this is harder to quantify, and the argument can be made that both sides have done more hard balling. However, there is also evidence that liberal hard balling is always in reaction to the conservatives.

There are multiple reasons why the GOP has become more extreme over the years. First, the GOP base is both large and intense, leading to the candidates needing to be more intense to match their constituents. Also, the GOP media presence is large and extremely partisan, and there is not a match on the left.

To combat the asymmetric polarization, most analysts point to the “Downsian” theory. This theory states that political outcomes will stay central. However, the downsian theory has not explained why asymmetric polarization has not decreased over time. The “downsian corrective” of the fear of losing elections forcing moderation has not happened. The problem with the current downsian theory is that the incentives to moderate are far lower than the pressures to stay extreme.

There are three stated reforms that might be helpful in solving the asymmetric polarization happening right now. First, the norms of moderation must be reestablished. Engaging in political hardball has become the norm because the punishments for doing so are too weak. The best way to raise punishments is through the media and elite discourse. The mainstream media needs to be more aggressive and open about holding politicians accountable. Also, businesses and elites that interact with politicians must hold them accountable as well.

Second, the incentives for obstruction must be lowered. Obstruction commonly refers to filibustering and similar strategies. It has limited policy victories and lowered cooperation between parties. Institutional change is needed for policymakers and reformers.

Finally, the forces of moderation within the GOP need to be strengthened. In the 1980s and 90s, an organization called the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) formed to keep the democratic party moderate. The GOP needs their equivalent to take a stand.

The chapter finishes by saying that no one solution will make a large difference, but rather a combination of multiple solutions finally making the biggest difference in curbing asymmetric polarization.

Jack Buchholz – Persily Chapter 5

In this section, Persily lays out four distinct solutions to the increasing gridlock in Congress caused by polarized elected officials. Before he explains how to best tackle this problem, he emphasizes that these solutions will only partially solve the issue because drastic action is almost impossible to imagine in our current political climate. Below I will summarize how campaign finance and news media reform will alleviate some of the gridlock we see today.

Campaign Finance:

Since Citizen’s United became law, money has been pumped into elections at an astounding rate. Super PACs have unlimited money to spend supporting candidates, especially those who are ideological pure. Persily proposes that that we “fight fire with fire” by spending more to support centrist candidates. (88) He purports that using negative ads to punish ideological extremists will help move the needle back to the middle. Persily also suggests that increased independent spending by party committees will help solve the problem because it will ensure loyalty from the candidate to the party. In the process, parties can get back to focusing on winning majorities, and supporting centrist candidates that they would not have wasted their time on when they had less money to spend. These committees can also allocate money to protect those who have decided to compromise with the other party on things that are essential to keeping the government functional. Lastly, Persily wants the donation limit to candidates to be raised so that they are able to speak for themselves and drown out the more extreme outside influencers. Having more money would allow these candidates to run on things their party would not normally support, which could reduce ideological convergence, and allow for more compromise.

News Media:

The birth of the 24-hour news cycle brought on an onslaught of polarized media. Today it seems like every new source has taken a side, and their positions are steadily diverging. Persily proposes the creation of a new news organization that is devoted to commending mavericks who compromise without qualm, and criticizing partisans whose extreme positions contribute to gridlock. He recognizes that there are already a few outlets who espouse this message, but he says “the challenge is to build an audience of ideologically moderate and politically independent citizens for whom politics is at best a peripheral concern, as well as to attract the selective attention of the more open-minded partisans.” (89) Unfortunately, Persily does not theorize as to where the funding for such an organization would be attained.

Perhaps most importantly, Persily emphasizes that these changes will not have the impact that many expect. He believes that real change will only occur once citizens have finally decided that this level of partisanship is poisonous to democracy. He imagines that the polarized issues that envelope our newsfeed, like ObamaCare and immigration, will eventually be settled. He also believed, when he wrote this book, that the next president will be less divisive than Obama; however, there is still a chance that will be true after Trump.

Stefan Pruessman – Persily Chapter 6: Reform Primaries and Redistricting

One of the proposed solutions to polarization in Chapter 6 (appropriately titled “Solutions to Polarization) is to set up primaries so that turnout is increased, the goal being to increase moderate participation in primaries (which has been low for some time) and draw candidates closer to the center. Regarding primaries, Persily suggests removing closed primaries (where only registered party members can vote in their primaries) or adopting California’s system (where both parties participate in one primary, and the two candidates with the most votes run in the general election). The goal of both is to encourage moderate to vote and run more. The specific aspect of polarization they are meant to address is ideological divergence, the idea that the platforms of the parties have moved further and further apart; these solutions hope to move them closer together by increasing moderate influence and decreasing partisan influence. He also suggests holding all state primaries on the exact same day of the year, so that media coverage encourages participation across the country (rather than in the early states like New Hampshire and at the cost of late state participation); this again falls under solving ideological divergence by increasing moderate turnout and pulling the parties to the center. Another solution is to reform redistricting. The goal here is to solve reduced dimensionality of conflict (drawing district lines used to be distinct from the party-conflict dimension, but today is a key battleground) by letting independent groups conduct redistricting. Persily makes sure to note that both congressional primaries and redistricting together increase polarization rather than acting in a bubble, and so both kinds of reform should be undertaken in order to be effective.

Taylor Jones – Persily Chapter 7: Income Inequality

The perceived polarization of the United States congress by the mass public is very high. Although the party platforms of the two main opposing parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republican, are probably no more polarized than other political parties in other nations worldwide, they are perceived by the public view is that they are extremely polarized. This is reinforced by the party leaders of Congress’s inability to pass bipartisan policies that both opposing parties are able to support. The two-party system in the United States reinforces party platform ideologies and characteristics that they are rarely viewed as diverging from. The representatives within respective parties tend not to be able to deliver on their particular party’s platforms promises because it requires agreement and complex negations with the opposing party. However, members of congress rarely if ever vote for policies of the opposing party due to the increased polarization and control of party leaders. The inability of congressional leaders’ ability to control of the agenda further reinforced the populations belief that the parties are very polarized. Although the viewpoint of increased polarization might not be the case, the public’s opinion of particular parties’ platforms have become increasingly polarized. Political parties are now classified with extreme characteristics that rarely tend to sway from. Democrats have been characterized the party of the lower class, while Republicans often stereotyped as being the party of white upper-class suburban. It appears as though heterogeneous areas have been created with very democratic urban area and also a small conservative pocket, which contributes to increasing extreme polarization.  There is a decreasing number of moderate members of congress that can mediate between the particular policies that are attempting to be implemented. In addition, after World War II not only have the parties become economically divided, but also geographically divided the Republican party is often reserved to rural and Suburban area, while the Democratic platform is normally reserved for the Democratic Party.   In most recent years, a strong relationship can be seen between population density and Democratic voting.  This leads to extreme representatives to appease the pockets of individuals in certain areas.  Voters are usually not willing to vote for someone of due to perceived party platforms even if certain liberal members. It is believed that members have sorted themselves in to geographically similar districts. In order to decrease the perceived polarization some presidents have suggested adopting a parliamentary system or a system in which the house and senate align with one another, but would be very difficult to enact. The author suggests that a more realistic solution is the possibility of re-districting. Gerrymandering further increases the impact for polarization by increasing the demographic trend.  Another idea was instituting a mandatory voting law that would dilute some of the extremists voting and bring in more centralist voters.  

Lea Booth – Percily Chapter 9

Political Scientist Nolan McCarty in his paper “Reducing Polarization by Making Parties Stronger” argues that strengthening political party structures would decrease polarization.

To this end, he recommends giving political party structures more power to influence primary election candidates, and he advocates increasing the amount of money parties can receive from donors and give to campaigns.

McCarty begins with three theoretical frameworks for how parties and the ideologies of their elected officials interact based on the different strengths of each party. He hypothesizes that stronger parties would decrease polarization because both parties have to appeal to the median voter across districts in order to secure victory. In the strong party scenario, polarization is low since the party has the power to guide its elected officials to the middle. McCarty theorizes that, in political systems with weak parties, the parties do not have the influence to coalesce candidates towards a larger message. Instead, candidates focus only on their districts, and since the candidates focus on individual districts, the resulting party delegations have heterogeneous beliefs, causing low levels of polarization. The final case he considers is the intermediate-strength party. McCarty argues that in this scenario, voters use party labels to make informed choices by identifying ideologies like “conservative” and “liberal” in each party. To cater to these voters, candidates converge towards party ideology, creating homogenous elected bodies. The amount of divergence of this homogeneity depends on how strong the parties are. Extreme candidates create divergence between the parties, so strong parties that can screen out these candidates reduce polarization. Because intermediate parties do not screen consistently, extreme candidates cause the parties to diverge from the center. In summary McCarty argues that weak parties and strong parties reduce polarization, while intermediate parties increase polarization.

McCarty references existing literature and conducts his own experiments regarding party strength and polarization, and his results reinforce these theories. He finds that states with semi-closed primary systems, which represent intermediate party systems, are more polarized than truly open or closed primaries, which represent weak and strong parties, respectively. McCarty also studies campaign finance laws and finds that political systems with less restrictive contribution laws are more polarized. These results support his theory because lax contribution laws allow ideologically driven individuals and interest groups to pull candidates away from the center. To test the final portion of his theory, McCarty looks at how polarization changes based on whether parties get their resources from interest groups or from traditional patronage sources. He conducts a statistical analysis on these effects and finds that states with more traditional party structures, and therefore stronger party structures, are less polarized than those without them.

The polarizing effect of intermediate party systems is why McCarty recommends creating stronger parties through closed primaries and campaign finance reform. These measures would reduce the power of ideologically extreme individuals and organizations to influence candidates and therefore to cause ideological divergence between the parties and would enable the political parties to appeal to the median voter, reducing polarization.

Kelsey Vita – Persily Chapter 10

In Chapter 10 of Solutions to Political Polarization in America, Persily argues the issue facing American politics today is not political polarization, but political fragmentation. Persily defines political fragmentation as “the external diffusion of political power away from the political parties as a whole and the internal diffusion of power away from political parties as a whole” (Persily 146). Based off of this definition, it appears that Persily attempts to address both partisan polarization and ideological consistency with his solutions; by bridging gaps between different factions of political parties, thus increasing ideological consistency, Persily hopes to reduce partisan polarization among officeholders.

Persily argues that systemic issues such as communications and elections financing “disarm” political party leaders of tools previously used to maintain party discipline and ideological unity (Persily 148), resulting in rogue members who lead further party division. While Persily accepts that polarization may exist for a long time, he proposes three potential solutions: empowering the electorate more directly, changing the assortment of candidates running, and instituting structural changes within political parties. In this summary, I will discuss two methods: changing the assortment of candidates running for office instituting structural change in political party leadership.

Solution 1: Changing the Assortment of Candidates Running for Office Persily argues that an attempt to change the assortment of candidates seeking office with an emphasis on bringing in centrist candidates has the potential to bridge existing partisan divides. He mentions a few well-known possibilities for instituting this, such as increasing the number of open primaries, allowing independent-design commissions to re-district, and reforming legislative rules, but also some lesser-known options, such as repealing laws that prevent primary losers from running as independent candidates or even getting rid of primary elections (Persily 150).

Solution 2: Political Party Structural Changes Persily states that fragmentation makes parties “incapable of functioning,” with an emphasis on the role of communications and electoral finance in political party structure; he believes that in order to combat fragmentation, political party leaders need more power. The ability of more publicly notable representatives to develop their own brand outside of the political party allows them to manage their own fundraising and create their own faction of the political party, detracting from the ability of party leaders to foster a cohesive party message and lowering ideological consistency. Persily labels these firebrand individuals as “independent entrepreneurs” (Persily 152). He acknowledges that it is too late to attempt to roll back the effects of social media on politics, thus turning his attention from communications to campaign finance. In Persily’s ideal solution, electoral financing would be handled publicly through the political party rather than through individual candidates. However, acknowledging that this solution may be unachievable, Persily adds that banning soft money also could reduce the number of rogue party members starting their own party factions.

Karan – Percily, Chapter 12: Data Science for the People

Candidates are very strategic about entering races. If voters, starved of the types of information needed to distinguish between candidates on the basis of ideology, fail to sufficiently reward candidates for their centrism and fail to punish others for their extremism, moderates become less likely to bear the cost of entry and less likely to win when they do.

Most experts doubt that ordinary citizens can ‘reason coherently about politics’, in other words they doubt the competence of voters. The question is whether voters actually lack the skills necessary to reason coherently about politics or whether they simply lack the information needed to do so. The key study in this group shows that voters are incapable of distinguishing moderate voters from the rest. Sniderman and Stiglitz examined whether voter competence was due to lack of ability or lack of information by asking whether respondents were able to apply spatial reasoning skills when choosing between candidates if the ideological position of candidates were taken as known.  Their study revealed that voters were able to choose candidates closest to their preference after they were shown a visual cue about positions of candidates. This showed that the lack of voter competence was due to a lack of information not a lack of any inherent reasoning skills. Increasing the supply of candidate-information to voters could thus reduce partisan polarization, assuming that they would be more likely to support moderate candidates.

Many people view political donors as part of the problem, on the contrary they can be seen as part of the solution. Federal and state election agencies collect and disclose contribution records to safeguard democracy by increasing transparency. However, these databases can double as vast repositories of observational data on revealed political preferences. Donors carefully seek out political candidates who share their political preferences and this offers a way to learn about candidates and thus predict how they would behave if elected to office. This offers valuable information regarding the donors’ ideological preferences and the ideology of the candidates they support. Evidence shows that the predicted changes in congressional polarization measured by DW nominate scores track the actual changes. The significance of this methodology is that it can be used to help voters make informed decisions in the ballot booth since the measure can accurately predict how candidates would vote if they were elected to office. It offers an indication of which candidates will be most likely to serve as moderates and which will be most likely to serve as extremists. Until now, most methods to measure ideology have depended on legislative voting records, and these do not have the ability to measure the ideology of non-incumbent candidates before they take office. This has prevented information from being provided to voters regarding non-incumbent candidates. The result of this new method (assuming voters are more likely to support moderates given correct information) would be a reduction in elite polarization. This would eventually lead to more centrist Congressional members being elected and less ideological extreme members.

Tyler Swartzell – Persily, Chapter 16: The Senate Syndrome

The Senate Syndrome is characterized by an ineffective Senate. More specifically, the Senate Syndrome refers to the increasing “pattern of obstruction and restriction”, which leads to higher levels of legislative gridlock (p. 219). This specific pattern can be seen simply by the drastic increase in filings for cloture motions over the past twenty years.

Smith argues that the Senate requires reform based on public opinion data obtained by the author and a colleague. This public opinion data shows that most Americans support the ability of the majority party to bring their legislation to a vote and the right of the minority party to have its amendments considered. Moreover, a vast majority of those polled are not in favor of the right of the minority party to delay or block a vote on legislation, much different from today. While I disagree with the phrasing of one of the polling questions, I won’t discuss that here. Smith used this data to suggest Senate reforms based on a plan championed by former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.

Harkin’s Senate reform plan favors majority rule over minority rights, which is in keeping with Smith’s public opinion data. The main point of the plan is reducing the votes needed to invoke cloture from 60 to 51, a simple majority. Steps would be taken incrementally over a period of weeks to draw down the number of votes required from 60 to 57 to 54 to 51. This strategy gives more time for debate instead of implementing the plan in one vote (p. 226). However, these proposed rules will only be effective if the Senate is not overly polarized.

Reforming electoral rules is essential to recruiting more moderate candidates. Smith briefly argues for two proposals that does this. The first proposal is the nonpartisan primary. This system uses one general primary where all candidates for a specific office are placed on the primary ballot compared to separate party primaries. The top two candidates then compete in a runoff election. The theory states that the more moderate candidate should win because he or she will be required to appeal to more than one party. However, it is unclear how nonpartisan primaries play out in increasingly party-sorted districts.

The second proposal is instant runoff voting (IRV). Smith states this has the potential to eliminate primary elections and encourages multicandidate general elections. Essentially, voters rank those running for a specific office on their ballot. A candidate will need a majority of the first-ranked votes to win. If this is not achieved, the lowest ranked candidate is eliminated, and a new count takes place until a winner is found. Smith argues that this system has flaws and is less likely to be implemented when compared to nonpartisan primaries.

In conclusion, the partisan polarization that impacts the Senate is not easily ameliorated. Reforming senate rules is unlikely to improve partisan polarization. Moreover, implementing new Senate rules will take a generation to produce more moderate leaning elites.

Cassidy Milne – Persily, Chapter 17: Finding the Center

Chapter 17 focuses on solutions for elite polarization- specifically, reintroducing a middle ground between parties in Congress. Muirhead’s main argument is that the two parties have become so polarized that they are making all issues extreme and double-sided, even ones where realistically, majority of people across parties would be happy compromising. The structure of Congress, with minorities of extremists on both sides, and the rise of polarization is causing gridlock in Congress and preventing legislation that actually represents the views of the latent majority from being passed.

Muirhead gives two solutions to bring back a middle ground on issues and “empower the latent majority”. His first solution is for the minority party in the House to team up with the more moderate members of the majority party to elect a moderate Speaker of the House. Muirhead argues that the current system encourages extremism because since the Speaker is from the majority, there is an unspoken norm (known as the Hastert rule) that they only select bills to be taken to the floor for a vote if they have support from majority of their party, or their party will vote them out. Since getting the majority of the majority party includes the more extreme party members, moderate bills that require certain compromises rarely reach the floor. Muirhead argues that if the more moderate majority party members teamed up with the minority party, they would create their own majority and then the Speaker would not be held to the Hastert rule and would be able to allow more moderate bills to come to the floor, which he argues would be likely to pass because they actually represent the views of the latent majority.

Muirhead also introduces the idea of a Centrist party. While he sees this as an independent party, he argues that it would not have to be a national party, but rather represent a few states/regions that do not fit the traditional party molds. He argues that with even 5-8 Centrist party Senators, they could create a majority to stop filibusters on any issue, making legislation more ideas-based and less party-based. He also argues that the Centrist party House representatives could help transform the Speaker role into more of a bipartisan position in the same way that moderates teaming up with the minority party would.

Both of these solutions, Muirhead argues, would encourage more moderate policy to be passed that better represents the views of the general public without getting wrapped up in party politics, ultimately helping to tackle elite polarization. He argues that trying to tackle elite polarization in other ways, such as through the electoral process, would not be as effective because these solutions would aim more at changing the parties themselves which is less likely and not entirely necessary. Muirhead argues that targeting Congress is the best solution because it allows party divides to continue to exist, but helps to moderate the effects they have on the legislative process.

Sam Burridge – Persily, Chapter 18: Making Deals in Congress

As expected, the solutions presented in Chapter 18: Making Deals in Congress primarily address the ideological polarization of America’s political elite. While the literature has devoted much time to distributive models of Congressional policy negotiation, zero-sum games where one party wins and one loses, the most successful bipartisan policy proposals tend to follow integrative models where both parties win on a proposal by packaging differing policy priorities together: for example, the 2013 Senate immigration bill which doubled border security funding for Republicans while improving paths to citizenship for millions of undocumented residents for Democrats. The solutions discussed in Chapter 18 therefore seek to maximize the number of integrative policy proposals brought forward in Congress.

Of the solutions presented in Chapter 18, two stand out as significantly more feasible to implement than the rest. The first, expertise, involves members of Congress’ outreach to research groups neutral and partisan. To craft an integrative proposal that can satisfy multiple, often-opposed interest groups on either side of the aisle and therefore garner support in most of Congress, the first step is to ascertain what exactly the priorities of these interest groups are and how they would be affected by the proposed policy. In the status quo, members of Congress often cite analysis from neutral research groups such as the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office when it supports their prior conceptions of an issue, since it brings their proposals legitimacy free of partisan bias; otherwise, they ignore these groups. Equally necessary, however, are research groups and think tanks with partisan agendas. These groups often develop policy proposals which reflect the agendas of interest groups ideologically-aligned with them, so listening to them is in effect listening to what the interest groups want from Congress in terms of policy. Encouraging the growth and ideological diversity of these research groups, even despite their biases, will bring a broader number of possible policy proposals to the negotiating table, allowing a larger variety of policy packages which satisfy both parties and increasing the probability of finding integrative proposals that are win-wins for both parties.

The second solution, repeated interactions, is something we’re familiar with from our in-class presentations. Just as friends are better collaborators than strangers, the amount of integrative solutions that can be made increases as members of Congress across the aisle develop personal relationships and spend more time with each other. Current Congressional norms have reduced the opportunities for members of Congress to interact with each other outside of work. Some examples include the shorter Congressional work week encouraging living outside of DC and the Congressional softball teams becoming more partisan in their membership. Reversing this trend would help develop more Congressional friendships, which leads directly to integrative solutions. Chapter 18 quotes former Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) who noted that on every legislative success he “always had a Republican partner, every time.” These win-win integrative solutions built upon Congressional personal relationships foster bipartisanship and the depolarization of Congress.

Claudia Chen – Persily 19: Helping Congress Negotiate

In this chapter, Mansbridge states that putting negotiation at the core is the solution to our status of immutable elite polarization.

Mansbridge’s two characteristics of a successful negotiation are having zero middle ground and having parties acknowledging their differences. Zero middle ground pushes parties to make agreements, and acknowledging their differences facilitates the effectiveness of the agreement. However, there are two biases that prevent successful negotiations: self-serving bias and fixed-pie bias. Self-serving bias turns us toward optimism, ignoring the zero middle ground and accepting worse deals. Fixed-pie bias locks parties in thinking it is impossible to benefit both parties on different grounds, limiting the “size of the pie”, thus reducing the number of issues that can be solved. To demolish these roadblocks, Mansbridge states that institutions should be familiar with the opposite side’s perspective, allowing both sides to benefit by “enlarging the pie”. Putting negotiation at the core is crucial because by lessening biases, we can decrease sources of human errors.

Mansbridge proposes that successful negotiations require two levels of success. First-level success includes transparency (privacy), repeated interaction, and access to side payments. Privacy allows parties to realize that there are different perspectives and look at their situations critically. Repeated interactions are ensured by long incumbencies, which are achieved by legitimating contested elections. The long incumbencies benefit congressmen as they allow them to build long-term relationships, realizing who is trustworthy and understanding others’ perspectives. The last part of first-level success is access to side payments. The action of bringing a variety of issues to the table, whether beneficial to one’s own party or to others, is called “logrolling”. Logrolling increases the number of issues being discussed and allows both parties to gain joint benefits. Though “logrolling” is not largely favored among taxpayers as it seems like their money is going toward unknown public goods, Congress is able to bring large numbers of issues to the table and “second-level success” ensures that logrolling still contributes toward successful negotiations. 

Second-level success is strengthening the trust between constituents and their representatives. Constituents believe their representative’s credibility has largely decreased due to evolving perceptions and how people think about representation. In the near past, there have been two models of selecting representatives: the current dominating sanction model which claims that voters choose representatives that respond to their every demand for fear of not being reelected, and the selection model where voters choose the most politically aligned candidates. The selection model is more beneficial society as candidates are decided based on their everyday lives, reputation, and consistency. Trust facilitated from the selection model is essential because voters will stand by their candidates’ side even with unexpected outcomes of negotiations.

In conclusion, Mansbridge promotes negotiation in Congress as a solution to elite polarization. By putting negotiation to the core, Congress will be ensuring privacy, repeated interaction, access to side payments, and trust between constituents and their representatives, allowing both parties to receive benefits that were previously ignored.