Preamble
When you make changes in a complex system, the consequences are unpredictable. In this post, I will be exploring the idea that the dynamics of democratic governance have been drastically shifted by changes that have been made to rules around transparency, pork barrelling, and campaign fundraising.
First, let me clarify the scale of this reflection. This is primarily a reflection on Jonathan Rauch's article How American Politics Went Insane. This article is obviously America-focused. However, much of the political phenomena that Rauch points out also seem evident in other countries. I am also primarily focusing on explaining his account rather than justifying it.
I will, for the purposes of this reflection, be taking the aforementioned political phenomena as a given. Namely, I am assuming that trust in government has fallen, that political discourse and practice has become increasingly polarized, and that in several prominent democracies the capacity of governments to govern effectively has decreased (particularly in the USA and the UK).
Introduction
Communication and information technology have had a radical impact on politics in recent decades. The capacity of the public to observe, respond to, and participate in the political process has been increasing at an incredible rate.
However, the more that we, the public, participates in politics, the more that we seems to distrust it. Sixty years ago over 75% of US citizens trusted their government to do what was right 'most of the time. Now that number is down to 17% (link). According to Edelman's Trust Barometer, Canada trust in institutions has fallen below the 50% mark in the last few years (link). There have also been political unrest and rising populism in numerous European countries, such as the UK, France, and Germany.
A common diagnosis for this decrease in trust is the duplicity and bad behaviours of politicians, and some of the most commonly prescribed remedies include increased transparency, restrictions on bad political behaviour, and regulation of campaign financing.
Rauch puts forward an alternative account. Fundamentally, his proposal is that having an established political class capable of making agreements behind closed doors facilitates stable governance, and that our efforts to increase transparency and enforce 'good' political behaviour has undermined governance.
Rauch's Theory of Governance
Core to Rauch's argument is the idea that political insiders facilitate moderation and stability while enabling collaborative governance. Political insiders include career politicians, prominent civil servants, and political party elders. They are strongly invested in the long-term functioning of government, are generally pragmatic rather than ideological, and they exert a strong influence over those entering the political system.
Political insiders act as gatekeepers into the political system, exerting influence over the success and failure of new blood. Party elders oversee who receives political backing and financial support, while career politicans and civil servants cooperate and support those who abide by the rules of the game. Those seeking entry into the system are more likely to succeed if they cooperate with the establishment, while those who refuse to play ball will find their efforts undermined.
A significant component of policy-making for political insiders is brokering agreements, which is enabled by a number of mechanisms. One prominent example is 'pork barrel politics', or the practice of trading political support for measures which will further ones political career (e.g. money for a new community centre in a politician's constituency). Practices such as these facilitate the flow of decision-making, mechanisms through which opposing parties can come to agreement.
This picture does not dismiss the need for political outsiders, but rather positions them as a galvanizing force. In Canada, for example, the Green Party has not been a serious contender for national government, but has served to make environmental issues more prominent on the national policy agenda. Political outsiders disrupt the everyday business of government, driving policy innovation. However, being an ideological advocate is very different from the actual business of governing.
Governance Undermined
In the preceding section, I set out how Rauch proposes political insiders enable stable governance. The real focus of his article, however, is on how relatively recent regulations on transparency, pork barrelling, and campaign fundraising undermine this picture of governance. Again, Rauch's analysis primary pertains to the States, but I also see strong policy parallels in other countries and political analysis.
Transparency is important for democratic governance because it helps ensure good political behaviour, or so the theory goes. However, Rauch proposes that it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and that transparency potentially has a dark side. The problem is that good governance is a complex process that requires a significant amount of compromise. At the same time, politicians in the public eye are strongly incentivized to stick to their ideological guns. The argument is not that all transparency is bad, but that a certain amount of it enables better governance.
The capacity of politicians to broker deals has been further compromised by restrictions on pork trading. As distasteful as it is for politicians to doll out public work for private gain, Rauch proposes that it serves an important purpose. It gives politicians a reason to cooperate with each other, both between parties and within them.
Restrictions on campaign financing also has a strange affect on governance. The goal of campaign financing regulations are usually to reduce corruption and the influence of special interest groups. Unfortunately, Rauch proposes, such regulation primarily served to weaken the control of political parties over candidates. The pre-election selection of political candidates (e.g. primaries) draw a much more ideological crowd than general elections. A moderating factor on candidates has historically been the control political parties had over campaign financing, but the general trend in campaign finance regulation has eroded this influence. This serves to make politicians primarily beholden to private support and ideological donations (Rauch points to the Tea-Party as a prime example of this phenomena).
Altogether, the picture that Rauch paints is a system where the incentives for moderation and cooperation have deteriorated. Politics have become more polarized because politicians are rewarded for ideology over action.
Can this state of affairs be undone? Rauch is actually quite optimistic on this front, suggesting that, if given the space, politicians and political actors are naturally inclined towards building the systems described in the governance section of this article. The issue is whether the public can overcome its "reflexive, unreasoning hostility to politicians and the process of politics."
Reflection
I found Rauch's account while doing research on government transparency. I have, based on prior thinking and research, found myself less and less enamored with what I believe to be the prevailing narrative on the need for greater transparency. At the same time, there is something I find deeply disquieting about both Rauch's reflections and my own. There is a starkly undemocratic tone to this piece so far, though one that is fittingly pragmatic rather than ideological. It is not the public's intelligence or rationality that is on trial, but the structure of incentives.
Ultimately I disagree with Rauch's assessment that the public's hostility to politicians and politics is 'reflexive and unreasoning.' The development's that Rauch decries seem like principles of democracy taken to their natural conclusion, augmented in never-before-seen ways by developments in communication technology. As such, I am perhaps even more pessimistic than he on the possibility of undoing the policy changes he has described.
Comments