Is America's political dialectic broken?

[Uqbar]

Does American political debate across the partisan divide produce enough useful output (inside or outside of Congress), or too much gridlock? Is it broken? if so, how to fix it?

An [AP article](http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-party-certain-other-wrong-162928071.html) says yes, and suggests deep partisanship is partly to blame:
"In gridlocked Washington, what's increasingly striking is that both parties are nearly unanimous in their positions. Each seems certain it's totally right and the other totally wrong."
"Elected Republicans and Democrats speak to constituencies separated by geography and partisan convictions. This self-segregation into conservative and liberal enclaves is shrinking the political middle that once made compromise more attainable and the parties more ideologically diverse."
"In firmly liberal or conservative House districts, the elections that really matter are the party primaries, where strongly ideological voters play outsized roles. This encourages Republican lawmakers to veer hard right, and Democrats to veer hard left, to discourage challenges from their political flanks."

An article in the [Harvard Business Review](http://hbr.org/2012/03/fixing-whats-wrong-with-us-politics/ar/1) also says yes, and suggests deep partisan ideologies:
"A recent [a/o 2012] survey of Harvard Business School alumni suggests that the ... troubled political environment could be among the most important threats to U.S. competitiveness. When asked about 17 elements of the business environment in a survey on U.S. competitiveness, 60% of alumni said the “effectiveness of the political system” was worse in the United States than in other advanced economies."
"Voting in Congress is the most polarized it has been in well over a hundred years."

From Gallup.com, Congress's approval rating as of early May 2014 is around 15%.

(Please no statements to the effect "It's all the other party's / party politician's fault". If you want to weigh in on how that "other party" is to blame, then save it for another thread.)

[Northern_Piper]

These concerns are consistent with Juan Linz’ theory, “The Perils of Presidential Democracy.” (For a summary, see this article.) He noted that stable presidential/Congressional constitutions are rare, as shown by the history of the model in Central and South America. The United States was the major exception, largely because the parties were “big tent” and relatively non-ideological.

That has changed in the past 20 years, leading some to fear that the US may be moving from being the exception, to approaching the same types of constitutional conflict that has triggered constitutional crises and collapses in other presidential/congressional systems.

By contrast, Linz argues that parliamentary systems are much more stable in the long run, because they do not have inherent conflicts built into them in the same way as presidential/congressional systems.

[Fishtar]

George Washington thought political parties were dangerous for a variety of reasons.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

But the party system is now fully engrained and hard to get rid of. I guess stopping the gerrymandering of districts would help a bit with the hyper partisanship. But even that seems politically improbable. This is why nations decline and die. …Because after a while they lack the ability to change. …

[Northern_Piper]

See also this article on Linz: Juan Linz’s Bad News for America:

To see why, start with Linz’s analysis of Latin America in his two-volume series The Failure of Presidential Democracy. The problem, according to Linz, is right there in the title: too much reliance on presidents. In Linz’s telling, successful democracies are governed by prime ministers who have the support of a majority coalition in parliament. Sometimes, as in the British Commonwealth or Sweden or post-Franco Spain, these prime ministers are formally subordinate to a monarch. Other times, as in Germany or Israel or Ireland, there is a largely ceremonial, nonhereditary president who serves as head of state. But in either case, governing authority vests in a prime minister and a cabinet whose authority derives directly from majority support in parliament.

When such a prime minister loses his parliamentary majority, a crisis ensues. Either the parties in parliament must negotiate a new governing coalition and a new cabinet, or else a new election is held. If necessary, the new election will lead to a new parliament and a new coalition. These parliamentary systems are sometimes very stable (see the United Kingdom or Germany) and sometimes quite chaotic (see Israel or Italy), but in either case, persistent legislative disagreement leads directly to new voting.

In a presidential system, by contrast, the president and the congress are elected separately and yet must govern concurrently. If they disagree, they simply disagree. They can point fingers and wave poll results and stomp their feet and talk about “mandates,” but the fact remains that both parties to the dispute won office fair and square. As Linz wrote in his 1990 paper “The Perils of Presidentialism,” when conflict breaks out in such a system, “there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate.” That’s when the military comes out of the barracks, to resolve the conflict on the basis of something—nationalism, security, pure force—other than democracy.

[CarnalK]

Ooooh “political dialectic”. Maybe go back to Russia, fancy word talking guy.

[PastTense]

No. The Democratic party is much the same as it has been the last 50 years. And it is not even the most liberal it has been in this 50 year period–in some areas it is very conservative.

The change has entirely been in the Republican party–it has gone crazy.

[Rick_Kitchen]

Don’t parliamentary democracies run into the problem of not being able to develop a majority, because of the splintering of parties? How long did Belgium go without a government for so long, recently?

[Lord_Feldon]

@Rick_Kitchen

Don’t parliamentary democracies run into the problem of not being able to develop a majority, because of the splintering of parties?

That’s caused by the method of election, not the parliamentary system. ETA: And in the case of Belgium specifically, regionalism/nationalism.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Rick_Kitchen

Don’t parliamentary democracies run into the problem of not being able to develop a majority, because of the splintering of parties?

Yeah, but there are numerous simple and effective ways around this - germany has the “5% hurdle” where your party only gets proportional representation in congress if it gets 5% or more of the vote, which certainly helps a lot.

[blindboyard]

@Rick_Kitchen

Don’t parliamentary democracies run into the problem of not being able to develop a majority, because of the splintering of parties? How long did Belgium go without a government for so long, recently?

Isn’t that constantly the problem in America? If you have a parliamentary majority you can get stuff done, in America you need both houses of Congress and the President and the Supreme Court if you actually want to do anything. Hence Obama will leave office 24 years after Clinton was elected to reform healthcare having achieved a system almost equivalent to what Britain had before the first world war.

[Ken001]

@Rick_Kitchen

Don’t parliamentary democracies run into the problem of not being able to develop a majority, because of the splintering of parties? How long did Belgium go without a government for so long, recently?

Its not as big a problem as you would expect. Several European countries of which Italy is the star player have experienced minority governments and the people on the street have thrived and prospered.

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Yeah, but there are numerous simple and effective ways around this - germany has the “5% hurdle” where your party only gets proportional representation in congress if it gets 5% or more of the vote, which certainly helps a lot.

NZ also has the 5% threshold and it works. The 95% voters grumble but it works in practise.

[Ken001]

Actually while on this topic, why on earth does America only have two political parties? Seems very odd to me given there are 300 million people who must have widely differing ideas.

[Acsenray]

@Ken001

Actually while on this topic, why on earth does America only have two political parties? Seems very odd to me given there are 300 million people who must have widely differing ideas.

There are actually many other parties, but because of the winner-take-all (first-past-the-post) election system, third parties are hobbled. It’s very difficult for them to win any elections and that further pushes voters toward the two major parties. Whenever a third party did make some headway, eventually it’s platform was absorbed by one of the two major parties.

Also, traditionally, the two major parties were not ideological parties, so there was no connection between “ideas” and “parties.”

[Sitnam]

@Acsenray

Also, traditionally, the two major parties were not ideological parties, so there was no connection between “ideas” and “parties.”

:dubious: Ideology was deeply ingrained in American political parties since jump street.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Sitnam

:dubious: Ideology was deeply ingrained in American political parties since jump street.

If that was true, the Southern Strategy and related race-based ideas wouldn’t have caused such a dramatic realignment from 1948-1984-ish.

[John_Mace]

@Bryan_Ekers

If that was true, the Southern Strategy and related race-based ideas wouldn’t have caused such a dramatic realignment from 1948-1984-ish.

That does not prove there was no ideological difference between the parties, only that some members of both parties agreed on race-related issues, and maybe a few others.

[Tom_Tildrum]

Recent changes in US politics, in my view, have come about through the disintermediation of the traditional gatekeepers that steered political dialogue to the center: Primary voting and campaign-finance restrictions have stripped the political parties of most of the control they used to exercise over candidate selection, and the internet has enabled voices on the left and the right, previously screened by the major press outlets, to be heard and to join together.

@Northern_Piper

The United States was the major exception, largely because the parties were “big tent” and relatively non-ideological.

I think it’s more salient to say that the US was the exception because the executive branch was not especially powerful.

@Northern_Piper

By contrast, Linz argues that parliamentary systems are much more stable in the long run, because they do not have inherent conflicts built into them in the same way as presidential/congressional systems.

It seems to me that Linz only gets there by overlooking the examples that don’t fit. Kerensky ran a parliamentary system, as did Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.

@Ken001

Actually while on this topic, why on earth does America only have two political parties? Seems very odd to me given there are 300 million people who must have widely differing ideas.

The first-past-the-post system awards nothing for finishing with less than 51%, so parties coalesce into two large coalitions, similaar to what happens after voting in a proportional-rep system.

[Czarcasm]

@PastTense

No. The Democratic party is much the same as it has been the last 50 years. And it is not even the most liberal it has been in this 50 year period–in some areas it is very conservative.

The change has entirely been in the Republican party–it has gone crazy.

It’s a necessary throwaway line. Otherwise, the study will automatically be rejected by those on the right.

[Uqbar]

Upthread some interesting posts and cites.

What I read about Linz was interesting, along with the observation we have fewer intermediaries in the information stream to filter voices from far off center.

@Ken001

Actually while on this topic, why on earth does America only have two political parties? Seems very odd to me given there are 300 million people who must have widely differing ideas.

I've wondered this too, and Acsenray's response upthread covers it (for more detailed info, see [Duverger's law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law)). I've also read that two party systems tend to be more stable, though I don't have a good cite for this.

So, yeah, you could change the US system to a parliamentary system, but, and I know I'm not alone in this, can't we expect better performance from our politicians with the system as-is, or are they just victims of their immoderate party roles?

[ol]
[li]can’t politicans shift to more moderate stances in order to get measures passed?[/li][li]can’t they curb their “unrelenting competition for control of Congress and the White House, which is itself an historical anomaly”, for the sake of more efficient politics? (the quote from a very recent article (5/26) by Thomas Mann of the Atlantic; it’s a bit alarmist in the beginning, and not for sensitive republicans in the middle, but topical)[/li][li]and, which is more in line with the OP, can we preserve constructive debate and political outcomes in spite of deep partisan divides?[/li][/ol]

We seem to be using partisan poles less for the purpose of producing useful debate, better ideas, more informed voters, etc., and more for the fantasy of steering the nation into one of them (from [Harvard Business Review](http://hbr.org/2012/03/fixing-whats-wrong-with-us-politics/ar/1): "Look closely at U.S. history, and you’ll see that deep philosophical differences aren’t new and that some of the most ideologically charged periods produced important policy advances, often delivering the best ideas from both sides."--seems like we're overdue)

To call them ideologies seems something of a joke. Where is the philosophical-level discussion and debate, the dialectic to accompany these high-minded "ideologies"? For a sampling of how far things have gone in a partisanship-at-the-expense-of-debate direction, I picked a random day within the past month or so out of online House and Senate transcripts; this a sample from different speakers from the House, April 9th (it was the first day I picked, honest):

[Mr. MAFFEI] Unfortunately, this year's Ryan budget is more of the same recklessness and extreme partisanship that we have seen year after year from the House Republican leadership. 
[Mr. CICILLINE]  Instead of bringing the American Jobs Act to the floor, an act which would create nearly 2 million new jobs, my Republican colleagues remain obsessed with trying to repeal ObamaCare. 
[Mr. RUIZ] I urge my colleagues to end the partisan political gamesmanship and put American families and our seniors first. 
[Ms. EDWARDS] Unfortunately the fiscal year 2015 Republican budget introduced by Paul Ryan takes the opposite approach. It benefits the few at the top by showering tax breaks on millionaires and corporate special interests, while shifting the burden of the Federal budget to middle class families.... Now, of course, the Ryan budget doesn't touch tax breaks for big oil and gas companies that ship jobs overseas....Republicans are raising taxes on middle class families with children by an average of at least $2,000 a year in order to cut taxes for millionaires....I want to repeat that for the American people. The Ryan budget reopens the doughnut hole that Democrats closed....Indeed, the Republican plan would draw traditional Medicare into a death spiral. It would end it as we know it.

...and then we have the "debate" as it trickles down to (or up from?) the voters (a random sampling from an unmoderated discussion below an [article](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/26/3441556/california-shooting-renews-congressional-demand-for-gun-control/) on the recent Santa Barbara shooting):

(RIGHT) Libturds can only blame Republicans, NRA or Tea Party, that's all these A$$ Monkey's are allowed to do by their left wing leaders. Deloris statement that "blood is on all their hands" shows what drama queens can do when they decide to debate the issue (that'll be a little sarcasm for you lefties)
(LEFT) This is the most bizarre set of right wing lies I've ever seen. The delusional postings here are getting scary.
(RIGHT) In 1865 a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.; In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States who later died from the wound.; In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. [etc., a long list meant to implicate (with stinging irony no doubt) the left in gun use]
(LEFT) Republicans think masking their insecurities is more important than everyone else staying alive.
(RIGHT) Same Old song dance from the left, why don't you just come out and say it, "You want a Police State"! You want to subject all Americans to your liberal ideological mandates, and if they don't, they are evil according to you!

[septimus]

@Uqbar

can’t they curb their “unrelenting competition for control of Congress and the White House, which is itself an historical anomaly”, for the sake of more efficient politics? (the quote from a very recent article (5/26) by Thomas Mann of the Atlantic …

Thanks for this link. The article by top-ranking political scientist Thomas Mann should be required reading for all contestants in SDMB political debates.

(I’m letting my own Atlantic print subscription lapse, in part due to mail delays. I just now received the March issue. :smack: )