Architects of Change by Jeremy Ghez

Author:Jeremy Ghez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030206840
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

In this interview, he talks about polarization, how the United States got this situation, and potential ways out that could include the private sector.

You have written a lot about political polarization in the United States. What is this phenomenon about in your opinion?

I looked at voting behaviors in roll call votes in the US Congress and observed that polarization between the two sides, the conservatives and the liberals, has grown substantially—meaning the overlap between the two parties is becoming smaller and smaller. Polarization has even accelerated over the past 20 years: conservatives and liberals are now perfectly well sorted into the parties that match their preferences. Each party votes as a single group and consistently—and in opposition to the other. This is a real difference from 40 years ago when politicians crossed the aisle to vote for the other party’s proposed legislation. This made coalitions possible in the Congress. Now, coalitions block each other from passing legislation and make compromises hard.

There is a geographic component in the rise of polarization. There are many districts that are very conservative and others that are very liberal. A politician needs to be one or the other to win in those districts. In addition, very few districts are in the middle of the political spectrum. In practice, geographic polarization has grown rapidly and is well correlated with the rise of polarization in Congress in which increasingly concentrated clusters of partisans are represented.

There is also a demographic component to polarization. People want to live with people who are like themselves—share interests, have similar incomes and education, are family-oriented, and so on. Communities are increasingly homogeneous as a result. For instance, people that are married increasingly live in areas that have high marriage rates and people who are not live in areas that have a low marriage rate. And this trend is correlated with polarization. This is hard to prove, but the prevailing hypothesis is that adherence to traditional family values is higher and conservative leanings are more significant in areas with high marriage rates.

How has the United States become so polarized?

A popular explanation (that is largely wrong until recently) is political parties manipulating the boundaries of congressional districts (that can be redrawn every 10 years) are responsible for polarization. This is what is called “gerrymandering.” But when we look at data by county (whose boundaries cannot be redrawn), we see the same phenomenon of partisan clustering. This could have become more significant after the 2010 Census when districts were redrawn, but before that, there is little sign that gerrymandering is a major driver of polarization.

Others blame the media and its conservative and liberal channels, driving wedges within the US population. This makes sense because we don’t have real news channels in the United States anymore. In fact, the BBC is what comes closest to one if it is available on the local cable service. But it is hard to actually collect data that shows this correlation. We don’t have any real data on exposure to these media.

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