Nancy Rosenblum’s apology for partisanship put me in mind of some thoughts on the perils of strong party identification in the section on inequality and democracy in my forthcoming Cato paper.
[T]he danger of “capture” in democratic politics is not primarily a matter of systemic conflicts of economic interest between those occupying different strata of the income distribution. Rather, the problem is that political power in democracies flows to those able to put together winning electoral coalitions, and this ability necessarily involves maintaining the loyalties of special interests whose demands may not be in the public interest.
[...]
[W]e’re unlikely to make real progress in improving the quality of public policy if otherwise sophisticated minds continue to be surprised by the fact that the party promising security may leave us less secure, or that the party promising to lift up the poor may leave them stranded. Strong partisan identification is dangerous because it can pressure even the best and brightest into accepting that the policies best for the electoral success of their favorite party — a fragile and contingent consortium of often conflicting interests — will somehow turn out best for the country.
[...]
It is not enough for the privileged and the powerful to wish with their whole hearts to make ours a society in which all people have a real chance to make the most of their liberties and lives. Our democracy has to deliver the policies that can actually make this happen. But just as special interests can capture democratic coalitions, our coalitional minds can be captured by democratic politics. What the poor need is not party faith, but good faith in the effort to find policies that really deliver.
That “our coalitional minds can be captured by democratic politics” is my main concern about partisanship. Party ID can become a powerful social signal of moral rectitude. But electoral dynamics provide strong reasons to believe that each major party must rule out of bounds some policies that would be best for the poor. Perversely, the more strongly a particular party ID signals care for the poor, the more protected will be large factions within the party whose interests oppose the poor. This is how our coalitional minds reason: Because the success of the party is so important to the welfare of poor, and these factions are so important to the successes of the party, their interests are ipso facto important to the welfare of the poor. And so their actual antagonism to policies in the interests of the poor becomes most invisible to those most eager to communicate their solidarity with the poor through party identification. Our need to signal care can produce viciously careless results.
Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of ours [Burke] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. “I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party,” said he; “that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot be well separated. But, to blind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove.”
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
I used to be more of a Johnson man, although even he is not negating parties entirely. Now I'm a Burke man. The reason is that being in a party habituates one to compromise. Believe me, in order to be a Democrat, I have had to learn to compromise. This can facilitate compromise between the parties in order to ensure the slow and steady movements of political change, as opposed to uneasy lurches. As Burke says:
“All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)
The odd thing about strong party identification is that at the level of realpolitik being a Democrat or Republican means compromise, as Don says – there aint no other parties at the table (despite the uptick in partisanship in Congressional voting in recent years). At the grassroots level it means the most rah-rah superficial cheerleading, as if the high ranking Ds and Rs don't compromise constantly to produce the very system their respective loyalists believe is dominated and directed (or obstructed) by their enemies (the superior virtue of the oppressed).
Coalitions aren't, by definition, populist? That takes 1,000 words to say?
“that each major party must rule out of bounds some policies that would be best for the poor”
——
They cannot forever, and continue to hold together, right?
What was once out-of-bounds, sooner or later, must come into bounds, or the party coalition fails (except to the extent that someone is trying a coalition with truly irreconcilable values/goals).
And, so as long as 'special interests' may or may not be in the public interest, the 'perils' of hardcore party identification are contingent, not absolute.
You are absolutely spot on Dain!
One question is what are the alternatives.
A highly fragmented system of parties (say, 10-20 parties) might allow such fine control over signalling that people don't change their opinions due to social indoctrination. If social indoctrination becomes less effective at driving consensus, you might have to have more “real debates” to achieve consensus. Maybe that's a good thing.
But there is plenty of substantive argument already within a coalitional party like the Dem. or Repub. party. When Obama makes a FISA decision or whatever, the blogosphere is all atwitter.
Alternatively, you could have two parties but just make people feel bad about being partisan. We already sort of do that, but partisanship is effective for members of a coalition, at least in the short run, so I don't think “make people feel bad” is a route to a desired stable equilibrium.
thanks!
Pingback: The Hope and Horror of Liberaltarian Alignments
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Just a quick note to say that this is an excellent book which is out of copyright and can be read online – just search in Google. Boswell wrote a small number of books and his biography of his travel companion is said to be the finest biography ever written in the English language (this is also out of copyright).
Pingback: Are Political Parties Bad for the Poor? « Sapien Games