No links post this morning with the holiday, such as it is. I'm not sure what I'll be writing here today...I will be over at Greg's place and PP.
And new columns. At TAP, I argue for Madisonian democracy against the wave of hits its taken during the shutdown (and in particular, from Dylan Matthews).
Over at Salon over the weekend, I push back against predictions of long-term doom for the GOP. As I've said before, I do think that if Republicans win the presidency in the near future that there's a good chance they'll have difficulty governing, and they're obviously having difficulty governing as far as control of the House is concerned.
One more: back on Friday, I hit Republicans over the debt limit. Remember: it's not just that they're demanding a ransom for the debt limit, which would be pretty bad -- but we're now only days away, and they haven't yet decided on what ransom to ask for.
Meanwhile...here are some links to the ones that I've written about the shutdown/debt limit fight that I think hold up pretty well. Well, mostly pretty well. I thought Boehner was a smart enough politician that he would probably have avoided it (although see the last link). Otherwise, I think these are still useful:
Not another budget apocalypse: the basic structure of the confrontation.
Extortion for the sake of extortion: how I see the basic position of the radicals.
The Day After Shutdown: how things play out if a shutdown happens (and therefore, why Boehner should have avoided it).
My five biggest worries: about why a shutdown could happen even though Boehner should have been avoiding it.
Monday, October 14, 2013
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@ Friday and a Lack of Extortion Demands: Puts me in the mind of Han Solo: "I feel terrible. [...] They never even asked me any questions."
ReplyDeleteWhat, Trekkies should have all the fun?
In the TAP article you defend the American system by noting it encourages a "richer, deeper version of democracy", and it does that mainly by affording individual representatives more freedom vis-a-vis the whims of their party.
ReplyDeleteHere's my question. What is it about a parliamentary system that discourages that "deep" democracy? Sure, most parliamentary systems have strong parties and don't allow the kind of freedom of individual action that, say, John McCain wields. But isn't that just an accident of history? Why couldn't you have a parliamentary system where individual MPs can introduce bills?
The problem with the Madisonian system, in the eyes of critics like Matthews, is mainly that it produces two institutions that can plausibly claim to have a electoral mandate, with no built-in way to resolve the conflict. A parliamentary system, with the executive and legislative bodies fused, solves that problem. I don't see why it necessarily follows that such a system would lead to fewer opportunities for individual MPs to exert influence.
Generally, if the MPs of the governing party or coalition parties break away from the leadership, the government falls and a new election is held. As a practical matter, then, there's not waiting 15 to 18 months to resolve the deadlock.
DeleteAndrew puts his finger on one of the problems with the TAP article, which (I hasten to add) overall is an excellent, serious, substantive defense of Madisonianism. But:
Delete> I hope it was the editors who called critics of our system "haters" in the subhead. That is not serious, substantive or excellent, it's dismissive and obnoxious.
> Yes, there's great diversity among parliamentary systems, and the real issues in contention often pertain to details, some of which it's not fair to attribute to the core design of a "parliamentary" (or, for that matter, a "Madisonian") system as such. You mention the malapportionment of the Senate as this kind of accidental feature of our system. Likewise, a merely robotic or rubber-stamp role for backbench MPs is NOT a necessary feature of a parliamentary system. Britain's House of Commons allows for "private members' bills" and in other ways modestly empowers backbenchers, especially if enough of them get together. (I know this from my long personal friendship with a Labour backbencher -- the "Backbencher of the Year" at one point, according to a major newspaper -- who was continually at odds with Tony Blair during Labour's years in power.) Backbench revolts derailed Cameron's attempt to authorize force in Syria, and also nearly stopped Britain from joining the invasion of Iraq. And not all votes are "whipped" to the same degree: in the Commons, there are three-line, two-line and one-line whips, plus occasional "free votes" or "votes of conscience," with the difference being how constrained the individual MP is.
So, you could easily tweak these features further if there was public pressure to do so -- for instance, eliminate three-line whips altogether, or guarantee that a private members' bill that got 50 or 100 signatures would get a floor debate and a vote. Such reforms would empower individual members without risking the chaos we're seeing Madisonianism give us right now, because there would still be no "dual legitimacy" (i.e. both parties having simultaneous mandates) and there would still be -- and this, it seems to me, is the most important difference between the systems -- the ultimate recourse of "going to the country" in a deadlock by dissolving the Parliament and holding new elections. (Which, I suppose, is a feature that COULD theoretically be introduced into a system like ours as well; there could be a rule, for instance, that the president could call a new election, or the Congress could vote to call one, or that the failure to produce agree on appropriations within such-and-such a time frame automatically triggered one. But then we're up against the other delightful feature of our system, not addressed in the TAP piece, which is its reliance on a written Constitution that is monstrously difficult to amend.)
> And I thought I had a third point, but, as Rick Perry would say, oops.
Haters -- from my editor, not me. But I did use haters on twitter on Friday...it's just teasingly affectionate, I hope.
Delete(Hope to have more time for the substantive point later...)
JB, very much enjoyed the article and its points about the benefits of different modes of democracy and democratic representation.
DeleteI was however surprised by how much you could get behind a full-throated critique of bureaucracy and administration as threatening and oppressive and, relatedly, behind a distaste for "output legitimacy" arguments. These are complicated issues, but it does cut across some of your other inclinations at times to say that, at base, (US) democracy works by letting voters see (good) policy work and deliver for them, not that their representatives closely follow their expressed desires.
I honestly don't understand why you want individual representatives to have a lot of freedom. Democracies are majoritarian. They have to be. You can have countermajoritarian institutions, but they have to be things like independent judiciaries and adminstrative civil servants, not lone wolf members of Congress bucking the party line. 1 member of Congress has no power, and should have no power, by definition. The power comes from forming coalitions. Hence, political parties.
DeleteI see no reason why any member of Congress should be anything other than a replaceable cog in a greater machine.
Remember the big discussion where you guys convinced me that the Republicans were 99% to blame for not passing a clean CR? You guys all adamantly claimed that the Demos are NOT arguing over the levels of funding. I cited a few counterexamples (Hoyer) but you argued, quite reasonably, that if things came to an actual vote the Demos would go for a clean CR at sequester levels.
ReplyDeleteTurns out I was right: Senate Demos are haggling, they want to end the sequester as part of a CR: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/politics/budget-and-debt-limit-debate.html
Now, I still blame the Repubs for starting this, and a last minute CR / Debt Limit bill is the wrong place to make significant demands to something largely unrelated like Obamacare, etc... Unfortunately for the country, it looks like the Senate Demos are being buttheads too. Time to call them out too...
Before the shutdown began, the Senate Democrats wanted to lessen the sequester in the CR previously, which arguably is a return to a normal budget. Then Boehner said "well, I can't get a clean CR on this." Then the Senate Democrats compromised and passed a full sequester-level CR, dropping the funding by 7% to what Boehner said he could get passed. The 6-week CR passed the Senate, where not only did Boehner not allow it to come to a vote, he and the other Republicans tinkered with the standing House parliamentary procedure to prevent it from coming to a vote.
DeleteNow, the Senate is trying to work out a different deal, where the Collins plan initially called for a six-month extension at Sequester levels rather than six week (and they say the ratchet only works one way). Still, the entire point of this was to haggle, to come up with something other than the CR the Senate had passed before the shutdown.
Meanwhile, the specifics of a Senate deal are almost irrelevant, because the limiting reagent in this volatile equation is the House of Representatives. Again, this likely would all be over if they simply let a bill which *already passed the Senate* to come to the floor for a vote.
The wonderful clean Senate CR was only for 6 weeks? Pardon me if I'm not impressed.
DeleteSix weeks is the difference between a pointless, costly shutdown, and not. That's a pretty big difference, and plenty of time if Boehner was willing to negotiate on an actual budget. To that end, the Senate has had a budget together pretty much all year so far, and Boehner has refused to negotiate in non-crisis times all along.
DeleteIn re those greatly-exaggerated reports of the GOP's demise: in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints church, kicking off the reformation and 250 years of mostly-uninterrupted war on the continent. That period of war ended poorly for the Catholics, generally, and for the late Medieval Church specifically, that period was a complete catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, fast forward another 250 years, and even as that same Catholic Church struggles with horrendous scandals such as priest sex abuse, they're doing alright, no? At the dawn of the secular French and American revolutions, we might not have predicted the power still held by that institution 250 years later.
The Republicans will be fine.
Horrible analogy. Political parties and organized churches are not the same thing.
DeleteBesides, the positions of today's republicans are about as diametrically opposed to the positions of Lincoln republicans that it's the same party in name only.
There may be a party named "republican" 50 years from now, but I have no doubt it will look different from today's party. Heck, the democratic party will probably be very different as well.
...I have no doubt it will look different from today's party.
DeleteThe primary theological dispute between the warring Catholics and Protestants was the importance of grace (Protestant) vs. works (Catholic) as the road to salvation.
I'm no theological scholar, but grace has become dogma for the Catholics.
The Republicans will be fine.
Neither party has held any sort of dogma nearly as strongly in the past 150-odd years, though. I mean, Lincoln was about non-expansion of slavery, railroads, public education, and industrial (as opposed to agricultural) growth. Democrats are similarly unrecognisable between now and 150 years ago.
DeleteHowever, in the short term, I don't see Republicans being anything other than mostly fine. Between geographic partisanship, closed information loops, and single-issue voters, I can't really see either party dropping out in a way as spectacular as the Liberal Party of Canada or the Bloc Quebecois in 2011.
About the whole different democratic systems argument. It certainly is an interesting to think about, although it's completely pointless because the Constitution isn't going anywhere soon, but I really wish that people who argued for parliamentary systems would spend less time hating on Madison and more time reading about how the operate in the particulars.
ReplyDeleteI recently watched the great BBC film "The Deal" about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and I really think anyone who thinks the Westminster system is "better" needs to take some time and do the same. The basic story is that Blair and Brown both came to Parliament in the Labour wipe-out election of 1983 and became friends and political allies because they had to share the same ratty office starting out. They later rose to power by being good at making fun of Tories in meetings and to the press (the Brown character admits there's not much to do substantially at all because, "what can you do against a majority of that size?") Later they work their way into the inner circle of the Labour opposition leader John Smith who dies suddenly and in about 36 hours Blair is able to outmaneuver Brown to become opposition leader mainly because Brown is a dour Scottish dude who broods over the death of his friend rather than line up 150 odd backbenchers from West Middle-whatever to support him.
So the climax of the movie is a 15 minute meeting between Brown and Blair at a trendy London bistro (Blair orders the rabbit) where they then decide that Blair gets to be Prime Minister first and then after 5 years it's Gordon's turn (didn't really work out that way, but the UK got those two PM's in that order). And that's how the political future for the next 12 odd years of Britain was decided.
I've never meet Pareene or Mathews or any of the others but I bet if they had to live in a system where the political trajectory of their country was decided in that fashion they'd probably want to jump out the window.
Oh, if we think our gerrymander (more accurately, geographical-partisanship) problems are bad, just look a little north. Steven Harper's Conservative Party won a majority of 166 MPs out of 308 seats on a mere 39.6% of the vote in 2011. This is more of a First-Past-the-Post problem, but it's part of a related group of problems where representative democracy isn't.
DeleteWait, there's a country to the north? :-)
Deletelongwalk, an example that I've always liked is West Germany, where the Social Democrats came to power in 1969, kept it for 13 years, and then lost it to the Christian Democrats in 1982, with both changes due to the small Free Democratic Party switching sides.
DeleteThat's a great one. Or just imagine a Yglesias or Pareene trying to write about politics in a place like Japan where one party controls the government for 50 years or so. The interesting thing for me is how people would support a system of choosing leaders that makes the pre-reform system look open and democratic. I mean JFK really did have to run in a couple of primaries before the party big wigs gave him the nod. Blair and Brown worked it out quite literally as a gentleman's agreement and only because John Smith didn't designate his successor before he died. Or for that matter just imagine how Pareene or Mathews would have dealt with a Thatcher style inter-party coup. A bunch of Congressmen come out of a building and basically say "We gave Hillary the hook because she's been around forever and we are very resentful of her success as a woman, so we are getting rid of her and Martin O'Malley get's to be President now." And then end the press conference.
DeleteAlex Pareene would really move to Canada at that point.
Oh, I don't know. I suspect that many people who favor parliamentary democracy would be okay with that kind of thing. I certainly would. The problem that motivates many "haters" of Madison is not representation or political maneuvering per se, but rather Madison's fatal flaw, the severe status quo bias and the extreme difficulty of making systemic changes.
DeleteTo me the big problem with the Madisonian system is not the gridlock and shutdowns in themselves. It's the larger issue that the out party has not only the desire (as in most systems) for the economy to be bad, but sometimes the power to make it bad.
ReplyDeleteJonathan, I have a question.
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog for quite a little while now and am very familiar with your reasoning regarding Boehner and his sticky position. You've said many times, if he allows a vote on X (which has the support of most or all Democrats in the House plus enough moderate Republicans to allow it to pass), thereby violating the Hastert Rule, his speakership is probably not in jeopardy because he would have had the consent of the vast majority of Republicans in the House, who are more or less mainstream conservatives, ahead of the actual vote. These mainstream conservatives (does that exist anymore?) won't vote for such a bill, but they won't punish Boehner from allowing it to pass with little Republican support.
I do agree with your premise here, and the basic idea that the real problem is the "Fraidy Cat Caucus." But I also wonder - is it possible that if he does allow a vote on bill X (let's say it's the debt ceiling/gov shutdown deal that Reid and McConnell are apparently working out now) that well-funded ultra conservative groups will put pressure on mainstream Republicans in the House, via the threat of being primaried, to vote Boehner out of the speakership for violating Hastert?
It seems to me that what ultra conservative rabble rousers have gotten really good at doing is focusing on one issue and using it to gin up the base, through Limbaugh, Beck, Fox News, etc. What's to stop them from making "that traitor RINO Boehner" and the fact that he "caved" on the debt ceiling and shutdown into just such an issue, whereby House members would feel pressured into removing Boehner from the speakership, DESPITE the fact that they gave their tacit permission for Boehner to bring the bill to a vote?
If anybody else has any thoughts about this, I'd be interested to hear 'em!
A non-professional comments: the whacko wing may be sufficiently divided and cowed by recent events (and polls) that they declare victory and surrender. And when the Koch Brothers washed their hands of this, it was either another deception or a signal that on shutdown and default the big money is moving on.
DeleteI think it's certainly possible that Boehner could become the target of the two minute tea party hate. But he seems good at avoiding that so far, and his waiting till the eleventh hour might be based on trying to dodge blame for the eventual cave. I've started reading Erick Erickson over at Red State to get better insight into the crazy and he is thumping the tub to label Mitch McConnell the evil RINO. Which is funny because McConnell should probably get a MVP award for Republicans in the Obama era.
DeleteHere's JB's take on why Boehner isn't going anywhere, basically the problems he faces are structural and so any Speaker for a GOP House would face them too: http://prospect.org/article/john-boehner-has-speaker-tenure-life%E2%80%94if-he-wants-it
I think this demands some kind of response from Jonathan: http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/tea-party-yankees/. Did you know that Madison was a determined opponent of democracy and is responsible for us being the least democratic Western nation? And Jonathan is presumably part of this conspiracy of elites determined to maintain the status quo, which is the only reason Tea Partiers get elected...
ReplyDeleteWell I can't speak for JB but think that Ackerman really misses it by trying to blame the current dysfunction of the GOP on "the regime of repressed competition." It's a pretty silly argument really, after all lots of Democrats during the Bush years (and now) came from safe districts but they didn't shutdown the government or hold the economy hostage over a cap and trade bill or a public option. The idea that safe districts cause Representatives to act like this is just weird.
ReplyDeleteAs I see it, these tend to be just "the grass is always greener" type arguments. You could imagine a hypothetical scenario with a Westminster style system in America that ushers in Prime Minister Ted Cruz who dismantles the entire welfare state and bizzaro Ackerman would probably be writing about how "we need separation of powers to ensure coherent policy making over the long term!" Or a Home Secretary Santorum presiding over the American Values Act that outlaws abortion, divorce and gay marriage and Bizzaro Ackerman would probably scream something like "we need and independent judiciary to safeguard individual rights!" Something they don't have the Jolly Olde England.
I think Jacobin publishes some good stuff now and then but it basically is a magazine by and for socialists. The reason we have conservative politicians in America isn't because of some bad system, it's because there are lots of conservative voters in America.
Very nice post. I'd add that conservative voters have at least one good reason to exist: legit concerns about the US debt. Now, their plans to deal with it may be incoherent or flawed, but, IMO, the problem is real and I'm not hearing any particularly good Demo plans to deal with it either.
Deletelots of Democrats during the Bush years (and now) came from safe districts but they didn't shutdown the government
DeleteBut the whole point is that the current GOP House majority is different. Of course there are safe seats for both parties, in every Congress. There are more seats that are more safe for the GOP at this point in time than ever before.
these tend to be just "the grass is always greener" type arguments.
Not in this case. There's nothing inherent about a parliamentary system that means it can't have an independent judiciary enforcing constitutional norms. (Just like there's nothing inherent about a parliamentary system that means individual MPs won't have the opportunity to exert influence, see above).
When people complain about our system the response tends to be "you wouldn't like the other system either." But that's a non-sequitur. Of course every system has its problems. That's not a reason to ignore the problems in your own system.
Exactly. The flaws in the Madisonian system are all too obvious. Those that defend the system, like JB, need to either argue as to why those flaws should be tolerated or else how they can be fixed. Madison's system leads to a status quo bias? Well, mitigate the bias. The system promotes gridloc?. Grease the wheels. Energized minorities can cause havoc? Reduce their ability to do that. Just throwing up one's hands in the face of such obvious flaws, and in the face of much better systems, is worse than no answer at all.
DeleteI still don't think anyone has answered the question of why having "safe seats" causes a party to behave in a massively dysfunctional way. I actually have no idea why the GOP shutdown the government, and it appears that they don't either. Furthermore its completely unclear what their demands are now, just a few days before default. Take a dysfunctional party and put it in any system and you get problems, for example Greece's "better" and "more democratic" system has given Golden Dawn, a party that settles policy disputes with knives and clubs and won less than 7% of the vote, quite a few seats in government.
DeleteAs I see it people like to come up with these constitutional or gerrymander dodges because they don't want to address the fact that lots of Americans do in fact agree with conservative policy priorities and while they might be in the minority of the population they tend to be more heavily involved in politics. Ackerman's arguments strike me as being more about punditry than anything else, they allow the writer to ignore the agency of Americans that disagree with them and blame something on something that will never, ever be actually changed. It's a perfect solution from a column writing standpoint, but it's kind of pointless as this is the system we are stuck with.
why having "safe seats" causes a party to behave in a massively dysfunctional way
DeleteI didn't even realize this was a question in need of an answer. It's obvious. If you're in a very safe seat, you can do what the majority of your constituents want, screw everyone else, and not have to worry about the consequences. If you're in a competitive seat, you at least have to pay lip service to minority interests, because they may become the majority as soon as the next election.
In other words, the GOP shut down the government because their constituents - the ones who will return them to office almost unconditionally - didn't think it was such a big deal.
Take a dysfunctional party and put it in any system and you get problems
No. Golden Dawn may be a dysfunctional party but which of Greece's problems did it create? None, because though it has seats in parliament, it has no power, as a minority, to exert its will over the majority.
Give a US version of Golden Dawn even one seat in the Senate, and it would be a different story.
As I see it people like to come up with these constitutional or gerrymander dodges because they don't want to address the fact that lots of Americans do in fact agree with conservative policy priorities
You're seeing it in the wrong way. Of course lots of Americans have conservative policy preferences. The point is that a majority of Americans (or, at least, a majority of Americans who vote) do not have those preferences.
In the end, it is inarguable that the parliamentary western democracies provide a healthier, safer life for their people than the US. And they are still representative.
ReplyDeleteThis above all is the proof that US system as it is right now, is inferior.