Demosophia

The Centrifugal Politics of "Little Democracy"

Armed Liberal, over on Winds of Change, posted recently about an essay on the Daily Kos, by Chris Bowers. The thesis outlined by Bowers has really been around for quite awhile, and I first encountered it at The Center for Voting and Democracy. It represents what I think is one of the central mythologies of a political orientation that I've been calling "little democracy" because of its tendancy to train a microscope on our own system of governance while consistently missing the larger picture. Chris' version of this political folklore is the most elaborate I've seen in awhile, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to deal with some of his arguments in detail, and then broaden the discussion by looking at some relevant data I happen to have at hand. I'm also interested in addressing a question that Chris does not raise: whether such a political program is good for the country, regardless of whether it happens to be good for the Democratic Party.

Chris' essay, with the unabashed title From Dean to Jackson: How to Revitalize the Democratic Party (and save the country in the process!) is divided into four parts: 1. The apparent problem, 2. The real problem; 3. The solution, from Dean; and 4. To Jackson. Since the crux of the matter really rests on Part 2, and since I think you could label the entire essay "The Apparent Problem and Solution," I'm going to focus almost exclusively on "The Real Problem."

Is the "real problem" the real problem?

First, I'll just comment briefly on some statements from the essay that I think are wildly off the mark. In general Chris seems to be proposing a counter to what he feels has been a successful strategy for Republicans. At the point we enter the essay he is beginning to take potshots at the DLC's electoral strategy, which he feels was based on the "apparent" problem:

While supporting increasingly freer trade policies may have resulted in some significant campaign contributions from Wall Street, once such policies were enacted they have helped to significantly reduce to size of organized labor.

The problem here is that freer trade policies aren't just a ploy of the wealthy to obtain more wealth, or for conservative politicians to get more campaign contributions. They're a way for everyone to obtain more wealth, at least in the minds and hearts of people who believe in Comparative Trade Advantage. There are certainly distributional issues raised by changing the mix of competitive industries to meet trade demands, but these ought to be addressed without undermining the overall advantage of trade to consumers, as much as possible. I could probably just chalk this error up to general ignorance were it not for the almost delusional assumption that the decline of unions is a result of our trade policies. The principle reason organized labor has declined in influence is that when the AFL and CIO merged in the 1950s individual unions became less competitive with one another, and this made the overall union movement less willing and able to meet the needs and demands of their clients: the workers. The start of decline in union density in the US, as S.M. Lipset has observed, can be dated precisely to the formation of the AFL/CIO which was supposed to fix labor's problems by making it more competitive with management and owners. It did the opposite.

Increasing enforcement of the War on Drugs may have made a Democratic nominee look tough on crime to swing voters, but it has also resulted in increasing voter disenfranchisement for drug-related felony convictions among African Americans to over 10% (from less than 2% in 1978).

This is an excellent example of the primary problem of "progressives," and why they really have no hope of fixing things until the myths finally subside. For some reason they simply fail to recognize that a reduction in crime rates benefits the minority community, and they also fail to credit members of minority communities with enough sense to know that. Were this fact slightly more obvious to black and minority voters they might actually begin to change their voting patterns sharply, but at the moment it simply makes some of them less likely to vote at all. While Chris may be correct that the War on Drugs reduced the size of the voting block slightly, that effect is small in comparison to the impact of having treated this constituency as though they hadn't enough sense to get out of the rain. Until progressives correct this kind of condescension (also exemplified in Dean's notorious "confederate flagged pickup" statement) they simply aren't going to be nationally competitive.

During this same period of time, pro-Republican organizations and demographic groups greatly increased in size and in level or organization. The Christian Coalition, an organization that did not exist during the 1970's, arose to become the most powerful activist organization in the country....

The principle reason for the high appeal of religious organizations is the precise opposite of the reason for the decline of unions. The sectarian nature of religion in the US compels the sects to compete with one another for members and contributors, which sharpens their ability to meet the self-identified needs of their members. The countries with a unified church tradition (the analog of the unification of the labor unions in the AFL/CIO) have church membership and attendance levels only a fraction of those in the US. The point is that the resource was there long before it was tapped by the Christian Coalition. They didn't create it, they simply organized it.

The flaw in all of this reasoning is that it assumes Republicans did something deliberate to increase their vote and support base, when what actually happened is that the electorate was simply returning to the ideological consensus of the founding. It is precisely those founding principles that have worked successfully to produce the electoral resource available to the Republican Party. The reason for the shift of the public to the right, and the decline in the fortunes of Democrats is, I'm afraid, far more serious than any Republican strategy to increase the clout of their constituent groups. It is the failure of many Democrats to understand their own country. They have simply been led to regard the founding values as subversive, and so fewer and fewer voters are willing to entrust the care and maintenance of the nation to them. There may still be a wing of the Democratic Party that remains sensitive to these values, but it may be on the verge of becoming completely coopted by the Republicans. And Bowers' strategy would simply accelerate that process.

Since the diagnosis of the problem is so mistaken, there's really little chance that the cure (Dean) will be effective. The "cure" that is recommended in Part 3 of his essay really has nothing to do with the "actual problem," which is simply a deep seated ignorance about the country itself. Furthermore the analysis ought to have something to do with the social problems that have been the traditional focus of the Democrats, but what Bowers offers instead is, well, strange:

Although his [Dean's] activist organization probably makes him unbeatable in he primaries (sic), win or lose what Dean has revealed is just the tip of the iceberg. Already, almost $10M has been raised online by Democratic candidates other than Dean (Bush hasn't even raised $1.5M online yet), and either activist groups such as MoveOn and even the Democratic Party itself have raised another several million online. If Dean becomes the nominees (sic), I have no reason to doubt that dean (sic) will come close to $100M in online donations--maybe even more. Further, if he becomes the nominee, his new organization could potentially garner him over one billion hours in volunteer help.

He offers a method of organizing a political movement, as though the effectiveness of the policy solutions that the movement recommends have no relation to its political success. I can understand that you don't even have an opportunity to propose policies unless you can win office, but that's hardly a good reason for such naivete'. Whatever Dean is doing that works could be copied or cloned by the other side since they have a dedicated grassroots as well, and there's little reason to believe it wouldn't work for them just as well as it works for Dean, or better.

Bowers' view is that progressives need to radicalize and polarize their politics in order to energize their base and appeal to voters and supporters. A term that is frequently used in relation to this dynamic is "centrifugal," in the sense that the payoffs in the electoral system encourage opponents and factions toward the ideological fringe. The opposite dynamic is a centripetal system. While any experienced political fundraiser could tell you that a "fight rap" is a lot more likely to get a check than an appeal to cooperation, that's not the real issue for grownups. The real issues are twofold:

1. Does centrifugal politics win elections?
2. Is centrifugal politics good for the country?

Does centrifugal politics win?

"Little democracy" has been arguing for some time that item 1 is true, and they've pointed to examples where non-centrist candidates have won and centrist candidates have lost. But, as a general rule this sort of analysis simply ignores what the opposition is doing. In other words, it doesn't look at electoral contests or races as the unit of analysis, so doesn't accurately represent elections. Without considering the ideology of a winner's opponent you have no way of knowing whether his ideological stance was a help or a hindrance. If, instead of looking at winning or losing canditates, we look at races where the candidates are paired appropriately, what we find is that there is an interesting relationship between the ideology of the district and the ideological distance between candidates. To illustrate this complexity lets look briefly at the 1996 congressional election, the one originally cited, by Rob Richey at the Center for Voting and Democracy, as an example of the contention that polarizing politics works:

In the table below the colums represent the partisan bias of the congressional district
(low, medium and high) without regard to whether the district is conservative or "liberal." The rows represent the ideological distance between candidates, (closer or farther apart). (Races have been omitted if an ideological ranking was unavailable for one of the two major candidates, and if the election was uncontested.) The top number in the cells represents the average amount spent in that grouping of districts by the combined candidates, while the bottom number is the number of districts in that cell category. For instance, in general the closer the candidates are to one another the more the combined expenditures. (The numbers under "Total" in the far right column.) The average combined expenditures for the candidates who were closest to one another ideologically is $1,030,000. In contrast the average combined expenditures for the candidates who were farthest from each other ideologically was only $873,000. Likewise, the most money was spent, on average, in districts that have low partisanship bias ($1,375,000). However, the category of races that had the highest combined expenditures were those where the candidates where the fartherst apart ideologically, but who were competing in the least biased districts. It is these races that best exemplify Chris Bowers' thesis.

Distance Between Candidates	I. Low Bias	II. Medium Bias	III. High Bias	Total
I. Closer	$1,364K (43)	$713K (23)	$723K (23)	$1,030K (89)
II. Middling	$1,338K (40)	$1,006K (31)	$562K (25)	$1,029K (96)
III. Farther	$1,473K (20)	$912K (28)	$588K (46)	$873K (94)
Total	$1,375K (103)	$892K (82)	$614K (94)	$977K (279)

First let's dispense with the 94 districts that have the highest partisan bias. One would normally expect to see the opposite of a centrifugal pattern in such districts, and that's exactly what we do find. A Democratic candidate running in a highly Republican district (or visa versa) simply has to get as close as he can, ideologically, to his Republican rival in order to have a chance of winning. The highest combined expenditures occur in those 23 races where the candidates are closest in terms of their ideology, an indication that only these races are even remotely competitive.

Next, what this table tells us about districts with the lowest partisan bias (the largest category with 103 districts) is that more money is spent there than in any of the three categories of districts where partisan bias is the highest. On average, over twice as much is spent in Column I races ($1,375,000) as in Column III races ($614,000). This, in itself, suggests an overall centripetal pattern where evenly matched districts are more competitive, and therefore attract more contributions. But that alone doesn't tell us whether candidates are encouraged toward the center, because there's also the matter of how partisan the candidates are.

Within the 103 districts with the lowest partisan bias one might expect to see, ironically, the most highly charged ideological races, simply because the contest is more competitive to begin with. But this really depends largely on the ideological variation within the district, and unfortunately I don't have information on that metric. There is no way to tell directly, from my data, whether a district is composed entirely of uniformly moderate voters, or of two evenly matched groups of highly partisan voters. But Bowen's conjecture is that the latter represents the true state of politics in the US, and that there is a pool of highly ideological contributors (and ultimately voters) who haven't been tapped for support by Democrats. We can gain at least a little purchase on the truth of this conjecture by observing (as previously noted) that within these low-bias or evenly matched districts the most money is spent where the distance between canditates is the greatest. In fact more money was spent in these races, on average, than anywhere else in the country ($1,473,000). It is these races that correspond to the national scenario envisioned by the proponents of "little democracy." At this point it looks like Bowers' contention has some merit.

If Chris Bowers is correct, the candidates who distinguish themselves ideologically in these districts are rewarded with more campaign funds. But because of the nature of fundraising it's nearly impossible to untangle whether or not contributors are inspired by an attraction to the ideology of their candidate, or by a loathing for the ideology of the opponent. Either way, I suppose it's a good thing from Bowers' point of view. But notice that this situation of partisan balance and highly ideological candidates is typical of the smallest number of races (only 20) in the entire country. At best Bowers' strategy would work for some sections of the country, but this represents much less than 10% of the national electorate (only 20 out of nearly 300 races). Even within the category of the least biased (and therefore most competitive) districts, these highly charged races are only 20% of the total. And since this is the target at which the Dean campaign is currently aiming it's not entirely surprising that they believe this group is more typical of voters than may actually be the case.

Chris, of course, might argue that this pattern is to be expected, since it was virtually dictated by the DLC strategy. But remember, we are looking here not at the Presidential race, but at congressional races. If the general thesis has any merit whatsoever, we ought to see some reflection of it in this table, especially since "little democracy" itself usually cites congressional races as their primary evidence for the strategy's potential effectiveness.

A somewhat more direct argument can be mounted by running a multiple regression using the 279 competitive districts in this study, with the vote margin as the dependent variable. I've done this for the 1996 election utilizing a number of standard explanatory variables in addition to candidate ideology. These variables include incumbency, spending, district liberalism, candidate experience and the percent of money obtained from PACs (which is a surrogate for the percent obtained from individuals, but with a coefficient of opposite sign). What I found was that candidate liberalism had the least impact of all variables, except for the % of contributions from PACs for Democrats. These are precisely the two variables that Chris proposes are critical to "saving the country!" The fact is that voters simply don't pay much attention to how extreme the candidates are. For their purposes the rough approximation provided by party affiliation is enough. They're far more likely to cast their vote for the more experienced candidate or the candidate closest to their party affiliation, or the candidate who is already in office (if there is one). I should add that the money spent on campaigns is also important, but no more so than district ideology or incumbency.

So, we've looked carefully at the impact of ideology on campaign spending (and therefore indirectly on contributions); and we've also looked at the impact of candidate ideology on votes. There is some evidence to suggest that more radical candidate ideology influences contributions, but only in a small number of districts, and there is no evidence that even this advantage is carried over to the voters. So ultimately there is little evidence that a "centrifugal" strategy would work nationally, either to obtain a congressional majority or to elect a President. It's just bad politics. And I think we're about to get an object lesson in just how bad it is, provided by the Dean campaign.

Is centrifugal politics good for the nation?

The political scientist Mattei Dogan has written a great deal on this topic of partisanship and how it impacts political regimes. He observes:

Among open party systems, the most fundamental distinction involves the degree to which power is centrifugalized (polarizing) or centripetalized (centring). In the context of this distinction, we can better understand the two-party/multiparty contrast. I believe that the survival of presidentialism is promoted by an open centripetal party system and undermined by one that is centrifugal or closed (emphasis added).

Centripetal forces arise when different parties compete mainly for centre votes; that is, the support of regular, mainstream voters who think of themselves as 'independents', willing to support candidates of any party or even willing to split their tickets, as current interests, policy issues or political personalities suggest. By contrast, centrifugal forces prevail when more extreme positions are taken by parties seeking to attract the support of non-voters. This typically involves proposing dramatic, populist, costly and controversial policies likely to win the support of apathetic or alienated citizens who normally cannot or will not vote. Unfortunately, most presidentialist regimes [though not the United States] have developed centrifugal party systems, thereby creating self-destructive spirals based on circular causation. -- (Dogan, Comparing Nations, p. 89)

In general what Dogan and most political scientists who study this phenomenon have to say follows Madisonian logic pretty closely. As one ought to expect, factionalism is bad and cooperation good. The success of the American political system, which is one of the very few successful presidentialist systems in the world, is largely due to the capacity for "crosscutting alliances" that undermine the factional and divisive distinctions between voting blocks. So, in answer to the two issues raised by Chris Bowers' "little democracy" conjecture:

1. Centrifugal politics does not win national elections in the US, nor does it win a large number of local elections; and

2. Centrifugal politics is probably not good for the country.

If the Democrats have come to believe the opposite for some reason, I submit that this puts them even farther from the main stream of American politics than they were before the Dean candidacy.

Posted by Demosophist at November 11, 2003 04:44 PM | TrackBack