When Joe Biden assumes the presidency on Jan. 20, he will lead a deeply polarized nation facing historic challenges. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, with more than 11 million U.S. cases and 246,000 deaths, Americans and their elected leaders can’t even agree on basic measures to protect public health.
How did we become so divided?
Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science, has examined the origins of political polarization. In his 2018 book, “Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself,” co-authored with Yale colleague Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Shapiro argues that the transfer of political power to the grassroots has eroded trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating in the rise of divisive, populist politics in the United States and abroad.
Ian Shapiro (Photo credit: Mara Lavitt)
Shapiro recently spoke to YaleNews about what’s ailing American politics. The interview has been edited and condensed.
How have the last four years affected the country’s political institutions?
Many people are concerned about the damage Trump has inflicted on America’s political institutions. What they are missing is that Trump is a product of bad political institutions. The main infirmity is that the United States has very weak political parties. They are weak because they are subject to control by unrepresentative voters on their fringes and those who fund them.
Why do voters on the fringes have such influence?
It’s due to the role of primaries at the presidential level and the interaction of primaries and safe seats in Congress. Primaries are not new; we’ve had them since the Progressive era. The basic problem with them today is they are usually marked by very low turnout and the people on the fringes of the parties vote disproportionately in them. The same is true of caucuses. Donald Trump was selected as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 by less than 5% of the U.S. electorate.
A similar dynamic plays out in Congress. The Tea Party’s takeover of the Republican Party after 2009 was driven by candidates who won very low-turnout primaries. We’re talking 12% to 15% turnout. This is true of the Democrats, too. In 2016, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading voice of the party’s left wing, won her primary against the incumbent Joe Crowley, a moderate Democrat, with an 11% turnout in New York’s 14th congressional district.
What changed about primaries to make them so polarizing?
What’s changed is the steady increase in safe seats for the both parties in the House and Senate. If a seat is safe for the party, this means that the only election that matters is the primary. That’s what produces polarization: The primary voters are pulling candidates toward the fringes. If you ignore your party’s fringe, then you’ll get knocked off in the primary. It creates incentives to demonize opponents and embrace extreme policies.
It used to be true that politicians in Congress were more polarized than the electorate. In recent years the electorate has also become more polarized. Frances Rosenbluth and I are examining this dynamic with our research group at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs on effective democratic governance. People think that politicians respond to voters, but that’s an artificial view of how voter mobilization works. Actually, politicians frame issues for voters.
How does that play out in elections?
Well, it’s not as if there were 63 million people in America in 2015 saying, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if some candidate would call for building a wall on the border with Mexico?” That’s not how people get mobilized. What happened was that a candidate emerged who was telling financially insecure and politically alienated people that their jobs were going to Mexico, immigrants were causing crime, that self-dealing elites were ignoring this, and we’ve got to do something about it. Angry, vulnerable people then embraced that message. In other words, voters’ preferences don’t fall out of the sky. Voters are mobilized by political entrepreneurs.
What’s the focus of your current research amid this intensifying polarization?
We’re studying this as a two-step process. The primaries and caucuses pull the candidates to the extremes, but they want their party to win in the general election. They know that if they move to the center, they’re going to get attacked in the next primary. So instead, they try to move more moderate voters toward the extremes, so that there will be less pressure on them from party leaders to moderate their views once elected. In this way, the polarization of Congress didn’t follow the polarization of the population, it preceded it. Think of it as push-polling writ large. Candidates get pulled to the extremes by primary voters and then attempt to mainstream those extremist views to make it easier for their party to win the general election.
At the presidential level, primaries only became important in the 1970s, but a similar dynamic operates. Consider Trump. In 2016, the Republican establishment could not stop him. They had 16 candidates and they would have taken almost any of the others over Trump. But they couldn’t prevent his mobilizing primary voters with promises to build his wall for which Mexico would pay, end illusory increases in crime and illegal immigration, restore obsolete mining and manufacturing jobs, and other things he wasn’t actually going to be able to do. Our basic problem is that weak parties are vulnerable to hostile takeovers of this sort.
How did all the safe seats develop?
It’s a combination of things. It’s partly demographic sorting. Urbanization creates blue cities in red states, producing non-diverse constituencies. Partisan gerrymandering compounds this, as parties create safe districts for themselves when they control state legislatures. By the way, we also get bipartisan gerrymandering, where the parties cut deals and carve up the states into safe districts for each. Majority-minority districts have the same effect: The price of increasing minority representation in this way is that districts become more politically homogeneous. The net effect is more safe seats, which make the party primaries all the more important.
The Electoral College has come under criticism from the left for being anti-democratic and facilitating Trump’s election. Would the country be better off without it?
It is understandable why people want to abolish the Electoral College. They think it systematically disfavors the Democrats because it empowers predominantly southern, predominantly rural, predominantly Republican states. Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016 if we didn’t have the Electoral College. Without it, there would be no issue about Biden’s victory, but he’s going to win anyway.
Here’s the cost of getting rid of the Electoral College: If you think the basic institutional dysfunction in American politics is weak parties in the legislature, strengthening the independent legitimacy of the president would make them even weaker. The direct election of the president would make our system more like Argentina’s or Brazil’s. The president would find it easier to insist that “only I have been elected by the American people.” This is catnip for populist candidates. It enhances executive power, further weakening parties in the legislature.
How could the nomination of populist candidates be avoided?
Before the 1830s, the congressional parties chose the presidential candidates. It made the U.S. operate more like a parliamentary system because these congressional caucuses would pick candidates who they believed they could run and win with. America’s first populist revolt began when Andrew Jackson attacked this system as a bastion of Eastern elites after it declined to select him in 1824. In the early 1830s it was replaced by party conventions. I would much like to see us return to giving the congressional parties a bigger role in picking presidential candidates. In 2016, there is no way the congressional Republicans would have chosen Donald Trump. They would have gone for Jeb Bush or someone like him.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
