DOES POLARIZATION RULE?

This writer is currently posting a series of offerings that addresses the issue of policy change.  Policy change can be in the form of new laws, new regulations, or new court decisions.  For example, the court decision that has legalized same sex marriages is such a case.  The connection of this topic to civics education is obvious.  But to make the point, good citizenry in a polity where citizen engagement is not only allowed, but encouraged, its civics education owes its students an accurate account of how the system makes policy.

          To date, this blog has highlighted the policy making attributes of coalition and compromise.  That is, policy change is dependent on a string of players coming together and committing to accomplishing the change.  This writer would argue that this is exactly how the system was supposed to work.  Instead of a parliamentary system in which political parties and their discipline dictate policy change, a congressional/presidential system, like that of the US, depends on a more congregational approach as described above.

          Relying on the research of Matt Grossman,[1] this blog has identified those factors that influence this process.  Of course, the leadership that forms such coalitions is a factor.  Grossman has identified – and this blog has reported – a set of factors beyond this central one.  He has further divided them into types and, in terms of influence, arranged them in a three-tier categorization.

          Tier one includes the internal deal-making characterized by this organizing, bargaining, debating, and compromising among a relatively small number of policy makers.  One can call it internal negotiating.  A middle tier of factors consists of path dependence from the previous attempts to make change, research in the related area, and what is happening in the world, either domestically or abroad. 

And the last tier identifies public opinion along with media coverage, ideas that have taken some currency, court decisions, and international and sub national developments of lesser note.  This last tier deserves special attention in a civics classroom due to the inclusion of public opinion.  In a civics class that adopts federation theory – as is advocated in this blog – the aim should be to upgrade public opinion to, at least, tier two.  But Grossman indicates that there has been, of late, an uptick in the influence that public opinion is having in contemporary politics.

This writer has also noted this shift.  The problem is that increased engagement has taken not a federalist tone, not one that supports the congregational spirit the founders had in mind, but one that resembles the natural rights frame of reference and language.  In short, the current participation language sounds more like “what’s in it for me” rather than “what’s in it for the common good.”  Of course, in action this is probably always the case, but in terms of espoused values – the espoused theory – the natural rights view seems to be guiding the efforts toward change.

This trend can be traced to about 2009 when the effects of the financial crisis took hold. Since then, led by groups such as the Tea Party, politics have become more polarized, ideological, and nationalistic.  It is catering to more personal prejudices and biases.  The last election saw these trends in full display.  Today begins the consequences of such a shift; time will tell what the effects will be.

Rule-making, an essential function of any political system, has gone wanting.  The polarization has made the needed coalitions, negotiations, bargaining, and compromises nearly impossible.  Hence, the system has become dysfunctional.  The government, in many areas of national concern, has become ineffective.

In such a political environment, the call naturally bends toward a demand to shake up the system, for bringing in the outsider.  That is what this election has brought, at least in terms of the executive branch.  The legislative branch has already tapped many outsiders to take up a significant number of the seats in the law-making body.  The outsiders are in control of much of the nation’s decision-making positions.  The question remains: will this new set of policy-makers get the system to make the rules that address the mounting demands among certain segments of the population?

The likelihood of this outcome is a topic for another posting.  This writer does not hold out much hope; if anything, the polarization has just gotten worse.  Here’s hoping he is wrong.  Today is traditionally a day of celebration and in less polarized days, it would be.  But, unfortunately, that is not the case.

To end, here is a Grossman observation:  for elections to be effective instruments of change, they must be consistent and overwhelming in their results.  When that happens, policy-makers will either heed the message an election conveys or it will lead to a new batch of decision-makers.  Unfortunately, the last adjective one would use to describe the last presidential election is decisive in terms of what people want.

---

[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

WHAT GETS THINGS DONE

Since the nation just experienced an election for the presidency, all of the House of Representatives, and one third of the Senate, one question the citizenry can ask is:  what good did it do?  How much say does the citizenry have, through its vote, in determining what public policy (policy change) will be initiated over the coming two years (until the next national election) or four years when again it will decide who the chief executive will be?

          This writer introduced this topic two postings ago and continued the theme in the last posting.  In the latter posting, he provided a list of factors that were found to influence policy change.  This list was provided by Matt Grossman and his research.[1]

That research looked at almost 2000 case studies (policy histories) stretching from 1945 to 2012.  That list is:  supportive president (42.15% of cases in which the factor was listed), pressure of advocacy organization (22.54%), extension of previous policy (21.56%), Congressperson led (15.23%), focusing event (12.40%), change in power of the two parties (12.05%), Congressional committee chair led (11.89%), pressure from corporations (11.48%), earlier choice made more likely (11.01%), government report issued (10.91%), House and Senate reach agreement (10.86%), new data arise (10.40%), important frame for proponents (9.83%), Congressional lobbying (9.57%), affected by economic downturn (9.32%), general media coverage (9.06%), court ruling stimulated action (7.57%), key Congressional floor vote (7.31%), and Congressional party/leadership led (7.05%).

The posting then provided this same list in terms of types of factors.  That list is as follows:   Congressional (41.17%), executive branch (53.17%), judicial branch (9.47%), interest groups (36.13%), research (24.96%), public opinion (17.04%), media (10.19%), state/local (6.74%), international (5.35%), path dependence – referring to ongoing action – (28.87%), events (26.04%), and ideas (13.84%).  Of course, since these numbers in both lists exceed one hundred percent, it indicates that more than one of these factors categories is affecting policy change in any one case.

This writer then reported that public opinion does not show up until Grossman categorizes the factors (which numbered 60 in total) into types and then  was identified in only 17% of the cases.  This indicates that public opinion, at least in the years studied, was not an overwhelming determinant in most cases of policy change.

Later in his reporting, Grossman identifies public opinion, interest groups, and research as the three influential sources of input emanating from outside the government.  Yet none of them should be considered as a determinant by itself as to what will be adopted as policy.  Then one could ask:  what is a determinant?  Well, the lists above give the reader strong indications as to what are the more determinant factors.

The research Grossman reports indicates that of the factors listed, all can and do have an influential function from time to time, but some have more influence than others.  What seems far more important in the process are the internal institutional factors at play, such as presidential backing or central Congressional figures.  Yes, interest groups are important, especially those that represent large and wealthy business entities, but only when they can coalesce with other entities.

Other non-actor factors that can have influence on a more than random basis are path dependence (prior work and attention to a proposed change), research, and events, but even then, what really makes the difference is when a coalition of institutional players (the President and/or Congressional members) decide to make the change happen.

So, can one attribute policy change to the product of liberal and conservatives in Congress coming together and working out a compromise which results in a new policy?  One can ask this question because most of the rhetoric in election campaigns falls along the liberal (or far liberal) and conservative (or far conservative) divide.

When one says there are blue and red states, one readily envisions the distinction being between liberal (blue) and conservative (red) state biases.  Of course, there are also purple states (a mixture of blue and red) where neither side can attain dominance, but the rhetoric there still falls within the ideological distinction of these two camps.

          When discussing this aspect of the nation’s politics, Grossman reports:

A majority of actors were not easily categorized as liberal or conservative; these included government organizations, individual activists, and nonpartisan interest groups … More telling, liberal organizations were more than twice as common as conservative organizations.  This likely reflects the liberal nature of most policy changes and the more common liberal ideological direction of policy making since 1945.[2]

This observation relates to two conditions:  one, the time covered by the research reflects a particularly liberal time in the nation’s politics.  Grossman writes of the extended policy change era that he calls the Long Great Society period, in which policy initiatives by the Lyndon Johnson administration almost dominated central government efforts during and well after Johnson’s time in office.

And two, most people who get involved in the nuts and bolts of policy change are motivated by the practical issues a policy change entails.  They are less motivated by grandiose ideological positions.

Another important observation that Grossman offers is that more than half of the governmental actors who are identified are mentioned only in relation to one change effort.  But when one further analyzes the data, it turns out that a relatively few are involved with many efforts.  These more influential politicians are what Grossman calls institutional entrepreneurs and can be judged to be central figures in the policy change business.  As it turns out, it is these individuals who are crucial in formulating the necessary coalitions to get the change accomplished.

Here is how Grossman describes it:

Although many actors occasionally influence policy, only a few constitute institutionalized entrepreneurs with repeated influence.  Because these actors influence policy with numerous allies and partners in compromise, they become central in governing networks.  These well-connected actors tend to be presidents, long-serving legislators, and prominent interest groups.[3]

          An overall description of the policy change process is:  the process is noted for the level of cooperation institutional actors exert, but not the work of a single actor.  No one actor is critical to getting things done, not even the president.  Yes, some are more influential than others and as a member of a coalesced group, they are very important, but no one is indispensable.

The other generalization that can be made is that public opinion is enjoying a more prominent position as of late.  The work of the Tea Party can be cited and now there is a liberal version trying to get off the ground, especially after the last election.  For political junkies – those who are not so entangled with the substantive aspects of policy, but see it as sport – the coming years might be entertaining.

---

[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

[2] Ibid., location 3142 (Kindle designation).

[3] Ibid., location 3148 (Kindle designation).