Category Archives: populism

two perspectives on our political paralysis

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Let’s define “governing” in a democracy (and I mean really governing, as opposed to administering or muddling through) as putting an agenda before the people, achieving a mandate, and enacting the agenda before the next election offers a verdict.

No one has governed the United States, in this sense, for at least a quarter century, except for transient and incomplete moments: Reagan cutting taxes in 1980-82, Clinton raising taxes to balance the budget in 1992-4, G.W. Bush cutting taxes and passing the Patriot Act after 9/11, and Obama passing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. But those names also remind us of abandoned agendas. Under Reagan, taxes and spending rose as a percentage of GDP and the federal service added a net 230,000 jobs. In retrospect, it’s hard to say what the domestic policy agendas of Clinton or the two Bushes were. Obama stopped governing (in the sense I mean here) when he lost his House majority in 2010. No one expects anything except paralysis through at least 2016. Gallup reports that “2014 was … the first year since 2007 that the economy was not the top ranking issue, and it was the first year ever in Gallup records that dissatisfaction with government topped the list.”

Here are two ways of interpreting this situation.

First, political scientist Juan Linz would note that every presidential system other than the US has collapsed. Individual legislators are not held accountable for the performance of the country but do get credit for criticizing the president. Thus a legislature has every incentive to undermine the executive branch. When the two branches are separately elected, you are bound to see legislative obstructionism (on one side) and executive unilateralism (on the other) whenever power is split.

That is just what we have seen in the US since ca. 1986. Why not before? Because until the 1980s, Congress always had at least three effective political parties, the Democrats being composed of two radically different wings (the Southern conservatives and Northern liberals). Thus a president could normally put two of the three congressional blocs together to obtain a majority. He was basically in the position of a Prime Minister, assembling a majority in the legislature. That opportunity vanished when the parties sorted neatly into left and right, so now we face the Linzian nightmare. Presidents will rule by executive order and congresses will obstruct until the system fails.

Alternatively, political scientist James A. Morone has argued that the US system was designed to avoid governing (in the sense of this post.) That is not only true of the federal constitution, with its famous checks and balances, but also of new institutions that we have developed subsequently, such as the New Deal regulatory agencies and the ACA. They always incorporate numerous veto points because they cannot come into being unless their opponents are mollified by such barriers–and because Americans profoundly fear governing as a form of tyranny.

Morone argues that at several points in American history, the federal government (blocked by design from changing its policies) has become manifestly out of step with a changing country. To name one example, Washington could not recognize unions but was faced with a militant labor movement ca. 1932. In such cases, Americans typically denounce their hobbled government as corrupt and elitist and demand that power shift to “the people.” They are invoking a myth, because the population is not unified; in fact, one of the reasons that government is paralyzed is that it reflects citizens’ conflicting interests. Nevertheless, by invoking “the people,” the reformers win new political rights or procedures (white male suffrage in the Jacksonian Era, regulatory agencies in the Progressive Era, collective bargaining under the New Deal, community action agencies in the 1960s). These new rights and procedures change who is effectively enfranchised and thus shift policy outcomes. Once a new equilibrium is reached, the system returns to paralysis, but in better alignment with the underlying social/economic situation.

If Linz is right, our challenge is largely unprecedented, and we are in big trouble. If Morone is right, we have faced the same circumstance at least five times before and the time now looks ripe for a new set of populist institutional innovations. Based on the past waves of reform, we should expect “an exuberant mix of democratic images and contemporary organizational methods: open meetings, civic education, broad opportunities to participate, professional staff support” (The Democratic Myth, 1990, p. 28). Today that might mean Participatory Budgeting, online games for city planning, and service corps, among other examples. These reforms will adjust the political balance and policy outcomes before they ultimately disappoint by puncturing the myth of a unified people.

Neither argument is exactly rosy, but both should be taken seriously if we hope to find better ways forward.

disadvantaged youth most likely to credit the rich for their own success

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My friend Connie Flanagan reports on her study of 600 US adolescents:

It was adolescents in the least privileged circumstances (whose parents had lower levels of education, whose schools were located in low-income communities, and whose classmates reported few discussions of current events at home) who were more likely to admire the wealthy for making it and contend that people were poor because they lacked motivation or hadn’t applied themselves in school. In fact, the connection between working hard in school and succeeding in life was palpable [for poor kids, whereas privileged students were more likely to cite structural inequalities.]

This is a deeply important fact about the US, one that helps explain the weakness of economic populism. We just had an election in which the Democrats won the segment of voters with postgraduate degrees and the Republicans won the people whose educations stopped at high school–the working class. Connie proposes that more advantaged kids may have more “opportunities to learn about society,” for instance, in more demanding social studies classes or through media. She also thinks that

It may be easier to attend to the structural roots of inequality from a position of advantage since one’s own group is less likely to suffer the consequences of an unequal system. In other words, the freedom to criticize the system reflects, in part, the safety net of privilege.

In contrast, for those youth who remain in schools where half of their classmates will drop out, an ardent commitment to self-reliance and a belief in the efficacy of individual effort may keep them going. The imperative of self-reliance and the lack of safety nets also seem to be messages that they hear at home: it was youth in the least privileged families who were most likely to report that their parents admonished them that they should work twice as hard as others if they wanted to get a job; that people have to create their own opportunities since nobody hands them to you; that they couldn’t blame others for their problems; and that if they didn’t succeed in life, they would have only themselves to blame.

the Supreme Court reflects the “degeneracy of the times”

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In 1870, Linus Child of Boston, MA hired an attorney to lobby Congress for personal financial relief and promised to pay the attorney one quarter of the value of the award if it came to pass. The attorney was successful, but Child died and his son refused to pay. The Supreme Court ruled in the son’s favor on the ground that the original agreement–“for the sale of the influence and exertions of the lobby agent to bring about the passage of a law for the payment of a private claim, without reference to its merits”–was null and void. The Court cited Roman law: “a promise made to effect a base purpose, as to commit homicide or sacrilege, is not binding.” Likewise, to hire a lobbyist to pursue legislation for money would be “illegal and void because it is contrary to a … sound policy and good morals.”

The Court was eloquent about why lobbying was so immoral as to merit comparison to homicide or sacrilege in Roman law:

The foundation of a republic is the virtue of its citizens. They are at once sovereigns and subjects. As the foundation is undermined, the structure is weakened. When it is destroyed, the fabric must fall. Such is the voice of universal history. The theory of our government is that all public stations are trusts, and that those clothed with them are to be animated in the discharge of their duties solely by considerations of right, justice, and the public good. They are never to descend to a lower plane. But there is a correlative duty resting upon the citizen. In his intercourse with those in authority, whether executive or legislative, touching the performance of their functions, he is bound to exhibit truth, frankness, and integrity. Any departure from the line of rectitude in such cases is not only bad in morals, but involves a public wrong. No people can have any higher public interest, except the preservation of their liberties, than integrity in the administration of their government in all its departments.

The agreement in the present case was for the sale of the influence and exertions of the lobby agent to bring about the passage of a law for the payment of a private claim, without reference to its merits, by means which, if not corrupt, were illegitimate, and considered in connection with the pecuniary interest of the agent at stake, contrary to the plainest principles of public policy. No one has a right in such circumstances to put himself in a position of temptation to do what is regarded as so pernicious in its character. The law forbids the inchoate step, and puts the seal of its reprobation upon the undertaking.

If any of the great corporations of the country were to hire adventurers who make market of themselves in this way, to procure the passage of a general law with a view to the promotion of their private interests, the moral sense of every right-minded man would instinctively denounce the employer and employed as steeped in corruption and the employment as infamous.

If the instances were numerous, open, and tolerated, they would be regarded as measuring the decay of the public morals and the degeneracy of the times. No prophetic spirit would be needed to foretell the consequences near at hand.

In 2013, despite very weak disclosure laws, we know that $3.24 billion was spent to influence the federal government, and 12,353 people registered as federal lobbyists. The Court that decided Trist v Child would conclude that our public morals have decayed to the point that we no longer deserve the name “republic.”

Contrast the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which views corporate donations to favored candidates as protected speech and doesn’t even hint at the threat to “public morals”:

Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence. Laws burdening such speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires the Government to prove that the restriction “furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.” … Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. … There is no basis for the proposition that, in the political speech context, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers. Both history and logic lead to this conclusion.

I came upon Trist v Child in David Cole’s review of Zephyr Teachout’s new book on corruption. I agree with Cole that lobbying and campaign finance raise First Amendment as well as anti-corruption concerns. It would be possible to over-regulate money in politics and thereby violate individual rights. I would not endorse the Court’s ruling in Trist that made lobbying illegal: individuals should be able to petition Congress. I was a registered federal lobbyist in 1991-3. I lobbied on behalf of Common Cause and believed that our goals were patriotic and idealistic, but Common Cause is a corporation, and it paid my salary. Thus I do not favor a ban on money in politics or a blanket law against political speech by corporations.

But we used to have a social norm that it was basically ignoble in a republic to hire someone to lobby or to influence the government for money, especially if cash were the primary motive for the petitioner or his agent. That social norm has decayed in popular opinion and vanished in jurisprudence. As I write in We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (p. 115)

The Court [in Citizens United] meant that it was entirely appropriate for corporations to exercise power in their own interests by spending money to influence elections. This decision capped a century-long process in which special interests became “civil society,” Madison’s factions became “constituencies” or “stakeholders,” propaganda became “public relations” and “communications,” corporate pressure became “government relations,” and lobbying morphed from a disreputable matter of hanging around hotel lobbies and button-holing politicians into a white-collar profession.

However we reform the laws that govern money in politics, we must also recover the moral intuitions that the Court found self-evident in 1874. People who seek money to influence Congress, regardless of the merits of the case, are “adventurers” abhorrent to the “moral sense of every right-minded man,” “steeped in corruption,” whose proliferation would mark “the decay of the public morals and the degeneracy of the times.”

what should an individual citizen do about money in politics?

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(New York City): I am on a Washington-New York-Boston trip in which many of my meetings coincidentally touch on the same topic: what should we do about money in politics? Per my usual rant, the question is not what should be done. That is relatively easy. The question is: What should you and I do, granting that courts and legislatures are not going to do what should be done?

This is a question not only for you and for me, but also for the national organizations that work on this topic, such as my beloved first employer, Common Cause (now under the dynamic and visionary leadership of Miles Rapoport). Such organizations can communicate with the public and can enroll members, but ultimately they must ask citizens to do stuff. What should they ask?

They can’t just ask people to change their minds. Public opinion is at the heart of some problems. For example, climate change is worse because many voters do not believe it is happening, do not consider it a serious threat, or doubt that we can realistically do anything about it. Motivation is also a factor, because individuals, communities, and nations benefit by generating the problem (in this case, carbon emissions), and anyone who takes individual or collective action to limit pollution bears the price of that action. Climate change is thus the Mother of All Collective Action Problems, made worse by false opinions (which, in turn, result from targeted investments in misinformation). It is worth changing people’s minds to believe the facts and to vote and act differently.

Campaign finance is a different kind of problem. The public already thinks it’s terrible. Most people do not contribute to the problem, since only 0.18% of the population gives $200 or more. But it is against the interest of the majority of elected officials to do anything about money in politics, since they were elected under the current system. Democratic politicians tend to be more hypocritical than Republicans on this topic; neither party does anything about it, but some Republicans would defend the status quo on philosophical grounds.

Hobson, who offered one particular horse or none at all, and called that a choice.

Voters are typically offered a Hobson’s Choice: Vote for Candidate A–who shares your views on important issues like climate change but won’t do anything about campaign finance–or vote for Candidate B, who opposes your views of those other essential issues and won’t do anything about campaign finance.

I think that to some extent, politicians also face a Hobson’s Choice because of the recalcitrance of all the other politicians, a classic collective action problem. They can A) burn their capital trying to pass campaign finance reform, or B) actually pass health insurance reform, Wall Street reform, and environmental laws. Basically, my reading of President Obama is that he chose option B.

We would like everyone (voters and politicians) to change their priorities and put campaign finance reform higher–but in order to do what?

Well, there are things you can do. Join Common Cause, because it’s a robust membership organization that fights indefatigably for reform. Give money to Mayday PAC, which will intervene in “five districts during this election cycle, in a way that makes it clear that the most important issue was the role that money plays in politics.” Donate to Fund for the Republic, too. Tell your elected officials, even if they stand with you on other issues, that they risk losing your support unless they sign onto something like H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act.

I think these are worthy steps, but I am not overly optimistic they will work even if quite a few people do them. That is why I am obsessed with the problem of leverage, or how to turn ethical civic action into large-scale change in a given system of incentives and constraints, against dedicated opponents. After all, Margaret Mead was wrong: we should doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. They usually fail–or grow into a large group, maybe achieve something, and cease to be thoughtful and committed along the way. We must turn from a bunch of citizens who are angry about the status quo (and who perhaps take some modest actions) into an effective mass movement. That is a problem of organization and structure that I do not think we have cracked.

The Mayday PAC widget:

Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Picketty

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In the earlier times of the colony, when lands were to be obtained for little or nothing, some provident individuals procured large grants; and, desirous of founding great families for themselves, settled them on their descendants in fee tail. The transmission of this property from generation to generation, in the same name, raised up a distinct set of families, who, being privileged by law in the perpetuation of their wealth, were thus formed into a Patrician order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their establishments. From this order, too, the king habitually selected his counsellors of State; the hope of which distinction devoted the whole corps to the interests and will of the crown. To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.

—Thomas Jefferson, recalling his own Bill for the Abolition of Entails, August 11, 1776

Thomas Picketty has become the world’s best-selling economist with a simple argument. Normally, he says, the people who own capital not only become richer (which would helpfully encourage investment), but their wealth grows consistently faster than the economy. Thus, even if they lounge around–even if they fall into comas–their share of GDP will grow, giving them disproportionate political as well as economic influence. That pattern was suspended for most of the 20th century but is now returning.

Picketty has been called Marxist and anti-American, but Thomas Jefferson shared his concerns. In colonial Virginia, capital took the form of land and slaves. Some of the earlier settlers had put their families on course to dominate the colony by writing wills that passed their estates to their first-born sons and prevented their land from being sold or divided. Since the British were blocking westward expansion, holding together a large estate meant gaining a growing share of the colony’s wealth as the population expanded. Jefferson thought this was a recipe for an “aristocracy of wealth” that was incompatible with republican government. He passed bills to abolish the “entails” that kept family estates from splitting.

Scholars seem to disagree about the economic and social consequences of his legislation. But he saw his own bills as radical efforts and as components of a multi-pronged strategy:

I considered 4 of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth in select families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain. The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these too might be added, as a further security, the introduction of the trial by jury, into the Chancery courts, which have already ingulfed and continue to ingulf, so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our property.

Jefferson certainly should have favored (instead of opposed) the abolition of slavery. But note his explicit class theory; his concern with “future” as well as “antient” aristocracy; and his willingness to use a combination of economic, cultural, legal/governmental, and educational strategies to produce the “foundation … for a government truly republican.” I think the nation’s third president would view today’s proposals for combatting oligarchy as but weak and tentative.

See also: why is oligarchy everywhere? and why is oligarchy everywhere? (part 2).