BUILT-IN POLARIZING FACTORS
[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings. Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject. It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts. The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments. This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]
The last posting pointed out that currently and effectively since World War II an imbalance has evolved concerning the nation’s elections. Surely, the origins of this imbalance can be found in the arrangement the Constitution establishes by setting up winner-take-all, single representative districts for the US House of Representative and, at the state level, the respective state constitutions do likewise for their legislatures.
This feature can be found in British derived systems such as in the US and in Canada.[1] That posting explains how such designations hurt left of center advocates – urban, Democratic voters – and enhances right of center advocates – rural, Republican voters. Therefore, along with right of center voters feeling threatened by demographic factors one can add how the left feels underrepresented.
Ezra Klein points out[2] that by the year 2040, just twenty years from now, 70% of the nation will live in the 15 largest states – and this projection captures the basic problem in that, consequently in the US Senate, those people will be represented by 30 senators and the rest, 30% of the population, will be represented by 70 senators. Add to that the effects of gerrymandering and ignoring the wishes of voters whose candidates lose in winner-take-all elections one can ascertain how frustrating politics can be for urbanites and even suburbanites.
These factors, in effect, disenfranchise significant portions of the electorate, if not, as has often been the case, the majority of voters. In the case of the Senate, its ability to stifle legislation, with its filibuster provision, is particularly egregious. Rural sentiments can unduly block what the majority of Americans wish to be enacted at the national level.
To illustrate, the reader could consider polling results that indicate strong majorities wishing for various policies. This includes such policies as paid maternity leave, government funding for childcare, boosting minimum wage, tuition free state college education, and Medicare for all. It is telling that one can readily categorize these proposed legislation items as liberal or progressive policies.
Federation theory, which this blog supports, promotes a qualified majority rule. It concedes that purely democratic systems – where majority rule has unrestrained power – can lead to policies that trample individual and/or minority rights. The nation’s history can attest to that possibility; occurrences of such policies led to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. But the opposite can also be true.
That is, the minority – read conservative advocates – can block legitimate majority wishes. And under current conditions, the victims of such a feature are the urban, liberal states or, as within state arrangements, cities and their suburban areas. These more congested areas can be shortchanged by what the respective legislative bodies decide policy will be.
This reality or potential was exposed recently when rural states objected to providing urban areas, particularly in the Northeast, of assistance during the initial months of the COVID pandemic. Red states didn’t see it useful to assist blue states (a strategy that subsequently seems to have been shortsighted).
As for fixes, there have been various proposals. One considered by experts of such matters, has been to abandon the winner-take-all model. Instead, representation can adopt the European model in which representative districts are larger than those in the US and provide multi-seat allocations in which more than one representative is chosen in an election. This enfranchises voters who did not vote for the top vote getter in that district. It also results in legislative bodies that more accurately reflect how districts are politically constituted.
So as things stand, the right feels threatened by the demographic changes that the country is experiencing – the shift in the population toward urban areas not to mention the increased numbers of nonwhite and non-European descendants – and the left by being disenfranchised, one can understand the polarization of the national political arena.
These are situations that civics teachers need to address if they are to explain contemporary political realities. Given the events that transpired in Washington this past Wednesday, a citizen needs to appreciate this background to make sense of what happened. And unfortunately, without hyping the situation, the very existence of the republic – if we “can keep it” – seems to be at stake and demands ordinary citizens to know and substantively understand what’s happening and why it is happening.
[1] Jonathan Rodden, Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2019).
[2] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY: Avid Reader Press, 2020).
