Polarization in the contemporary United States

What Is the Main Cause of Polarization in the Contemporary United States and What, If Anything Can Be Done To Fix It?

Introduction

Since the turn of the millennium, American political parties have become increasingly reinvigorated. Funding and staffing of party organizations has increased significantly. For instance, in 2012, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) raised $290.4 million, $145.9 million, and $183.8 million respectively compared to $52.8 million, $4.1 million, and $3.8 million, respectively raised in 1976 campaigns (all sums in 2012 dollars) (Pew Research Sector 1). Most of these funds come from individual and corporate donations. However, party activists play crucial role in making these parties attractive to donors thus influencing party positions (Birkhead and Hershey 3). In this regard, party activists play a leading role in polarization of parties along several issue dimensions in modern American politics. In this essay, I argue that interest groups, lobbyists and other activists have become integral elements of American political parties. These activists work within party structures to advance their policy goals through selection of candidates for various positions such as the Supreme Court or lobbying elected party officials to adopt certain positions (Baldassarri and Gelman 420). Therefore, unlike conventional party structures, party activism is linked to the increase in polarization in the contemporary American society.

Ensley (223) showed that modern party structures provide several opportunities for activists to influence national agenda. For instance, trends in interest group contributions to candidate campaigns provide strong evidence of activists’ polarization. Furthermore, elected officials have developed even closer relationships with interest groups and party activists thus these activists are able to exert immense pressure on elected officials. Elsewhere, open party primaries and ambitious politicians serve as an encouragement for activists with extreme views to increase their involvement in party politics thus influencing candidates to adopt non-centrist positions on a variety of issues (Layman, et al. 341). Through review of past studies and theories on political trends in the United States, I found tentative evidence suggesting that activists continue to play leading role in partisan conflicts. As a result, I conducted further critical literature review on causes of polarization in the United States to establish the extent of the role political activism in polarization of American society and potential solutions to this problem.

Analysis and Discussion Causes of Polarization in American Politics

Political pluralism model suggests that democratic systems are characterized by disproportionate access to political representation as well as competing interests and identities. Political parties therefore deviate from the center depending on interests they are aligned to thus sharpening the divisions in the political arena while promoting systematic underrepresentation as more people with moderate views are left without sufficient representation (Birkhead and Hershey 5). Based on this model, we can link political polarization to the broader dynamics of activism and political sorting through interest representation. Many scholars concur that as many activists become elected or involved in political party structures, political parties become more likely to take extreme positions on a broad set of policy issues. As the Democratic Party and Republican Party moves far left and far right respectively, studies from the past 40 years suggest that majority of Americans still hold more moderate views. Baldassarri and Gelman (428) suggested that people tend to hold extreme views on some specific issues such as abortion, sexual morality, and war and so on. Therefore, the parties tend to have more extreme positions compared to the rest of population. Party activism is connected to the movement of the party positions to extreme edges in the liberal-conservative political ideology spectrum.

The United States enjoyed a long period of depolarization between the end of World War I and early 1970s. However, from the 1970s, political parties began to move away from the center. DellaVigna and Kaplan (1193) indicated that increasing numbers of elected officials have today aligned themselves at the opposite ends of the liberal–conservative spectrum leading to a considerable reduction in the number of moderate representatives. In the Republican Party, the electoral realignment of the South and the rise of the grassroots conservative groups during the Goldwater campaign are cited as the beginning of the party’s movement towards right (Layman, et al. 326). During this period, moderate Republican congress members were replaced by socially conservative ones. In the north, retiring Democrats were replaced with more liberal ones while southern Democrats numbers decreased significantly. The decline in bipartisanship was also associated with the political issues at stake at the time including socially conservative programs under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s liberal policies on issues such as abortion, health insurance and gay rights among others. Several scholars suggested that party polarization of the 1980s and 1990s was triggered by increasing polarization of party activists (Layman, et al. 333). During this time, the role of party activists was becoming more influential in party nominations. These activists tended to have more radical views than the average citizen.

Party activism has led to realignment of the masses. That is, members of the public are forced to join parties who support the most important issues to them. For example, many women joined Democratic Party due to its stand in reproductive health rights while evangelicals joined Republican Party due to its position on sexual morality (Barber 23). As a result, party activism is can be linked to the increase in mass polarization in the country. For instance, in the last couple of elections, voters have elected extreme representatives resulting in a massive decline in the number of moderate candidates. Furthermore, moderate candidates are finding it increasingly difficult to excite their party bases compared to the far left or far-right politicians. Furthermore, independent voters are choosing to lean towards staunch liberals or conservatives. As a result, even moderate voters are becoming passive victims of strong forces of elite polarization. Abramowitz and Webster (17) showed that there are several factors which are forcing the electorate to move towards the left or right and increasing the gap between Democrats and Republicans. These factors include a range of differences in economic and social topics from taxation and trade policy to abortion and rights of the minority groups of people in the society (Ensley 227). As a result, politics in the United States is becoming deeply personal and partisan with members of the specific parties tending to dislike one another.

Activists and mass polarization leads to election of radical members through favorable redistricting i.e. gerrymandering. Gerrymandering can be defined as a practice that establishes unfair political advantages to a particular party through manipulation of district boundaries which are commonly used in the first-past-the-post electoral systems. Gerrymandering works by wasting the votes of minority voters in those districts. Cox and McCubbins (31) suggested that the power of the state legislatures to draw congressional districts leads to overwhelmingly partisan and safe districts which free the candidate from the need to compete for the moderate voters. Though the effect of gerrymandering in small states with single congressional districts is negligible as the district has to conform to the state boundaries, in large states, it leads to drawing of boundaries which are consistent with the majority party in those states. As a result, states, where one party has only a small popular advantage over the other can send representatives who lean to only one party (McCarty 668). This argument holds as several moderate districts in the United States have become extremely partisan districts. Due to gerrymandering, districts that vote largely for the Democratic Party during presidential elections is considered to have liberal constituents compared to those with small Democratic vote share. Representatives from these districts will tend to vote in line with this assumption ignoring the vastly different political preferences.

Open party primaries offer an opportunity for activists to influence the ideological positions of their party. According to McConnell et al. (7), primary elections allow activists to sort their political parties ideologically as they sponsor candidates who share their interests. As a result only conservatives are winning Republican primaries while only liberals can win Democratic primaries. The contemporary party politics are making it relatively hard for moderate candidates to win nominations. For example, the party rules in most states do not allow for independents to participate in the nominations. McGhee (345) rejected the argument that party primaries contributed to polarization given that polarization significantly increased in the past 40 years despite opening up of many primaries to nonpartisans. Studies on whether open primaries can reduce polarization have so far shown sparse support for the argument (Simas et al. 263). McCarty et al. (670) indicated that presidential primary voters in states with open primaries tend to hold political views which are similar to the general public while in closed primaries; the participants are often ideologically distinct from the general public. Besides, legislators chosen through open primaries are closely aligned to the wishes of the district while candidates nominated through closed primary systems often suffer an electoral penalty as their views are far from the electorate. This finding, therefore, implies that the public plays a significant role in electing people with distinct political views to the Congress, leading to a polarized Congress.

Money from private campaign financiers may influence party positions on various issues. Poole and Rosenthal (111) indicated that polarization was directed related to private campaign finance used in American elections. These assumptions are premised on the argument that politicians often pursue extremist policy positions consistent with the views of their special-interest groups. Sinclair (66) suggested a subtle and complex connection between campaign financing and polarization. Besides, recent studies showed that fundraising for congressional candidates have become even more important in contemporary American elections, as evident in the sheer amounts of money these candidates can raise. The amount of money spent in the U.S. House election has nearly doubled in the last two decades with some sources of money being consequential to polarization. Furthermore, the difference between the two largest sources of money for candidates, i.e., individual donors and political action committees (PACs) has considerably reduced. Often, PACs are more interested in getting their candidates to the Congress and less concerned about the overall ideology of the politicians. On the other hand, individual donors are more interested in candidates whose ideologies are consistent with theirs (Hare and Poole 430). As a result, candidates can marshal massive financial support from a section of the society in exchange with fronting their perhaps radical views in the Congress, leading to further polarization.

Subsequently, Barber (16) found that individuals ideological positions were more extreme that PACs and interest groups. With candidates increasingly relying on ideologically extreme donors, they are forced to move towards ideological poles to raise sufficient funds (Iyengar 22). This kind of resource mobilization is said to be motivating more ideological PACs to emerge. Since individual donors contribute to the large proportion of finance to congressional candidates, PACs are also changing their positions to be in line with those held by individual donors. Similarly, the proportion of donation originating from ideologically motivated out-of-district donors has also significantly increased. Together, this data implies that there is a direct association between individual contributions and polarization in American politics. However, there is a need for more studies on the relationship between individual contributions and polarization. Elsewhere, breakdown in bipartisan norms also contributed to a polarized Congress as it has become increasingly difficult to forge a cross-partisan relationship (Campbell 140).

Finally, political party pressure is also considered a potential contributor to polarization in American politics. Party leaders in the Senate and House are increasingly powerful thus can apply considerable pressure on the members to vote along party lines. Interviews with former and current members of the Congress suggested that party pressures have increased over the years (Layman et al. 330). The institutional reach of the roles of speakers and majority leaders have expanded over the last thirty years. The party leaders can coax members to vote along party lines by offering rewards to their members, such as committee memberships in exchange for votes on the party agenda. Researchers acknowledged that the party pressure has become strong in modern politics although it is hard to establish the magnitude and the extent at which it impacts on polarization. Bail et al. (4) indicated that the party’s position on issues takes precedence over personal ideological inclinations when they are on the floor of the house. Nonetheless, Bartels (41) found specific policy areas where party pressure was more common but failed to determine whether this pressure was commensurate with the rise in polarization in the last four decades.

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