A new theory about political polarization • Hacker News Board

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#121

Post by notafraudster » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #102

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

> For example, if I told you that one party in the US generally favors higher taxes and higher services, and one party generally favors lower taxes and lower services, could you match the party labels to the descriptions, imperfect as they are? I think there's the obvious answer that most people would give, but I don't think there's great evidence that the policies implemented by the parties strongly matches the conv…

I agree. There is a wide literature in poli sci about principal-agent / contract theory -- what incentive parties and legislators have to actually implement the policies they stand for and how does the incomplete contract of voting actually achieve this (or not). But this is a slightly unrelated question to whether or not people are better at understanding what the parties claim to stand for.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#122

Post by fzeroracer » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #109

fzeroracer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why it matters if prominent people believe in what is ostensibly a conspiracy theory. Alex Jones was prominent, but that doesn't mean chemicals in the water are turning frogs gay for example. In fact you should be placing more scrutiny on prominent people (politicians especially) for pushing such a thing, because usually they have an agenda they're trying to push. The fact that you chose to accuse someon…

"The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as parroting CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or you're just an asshole." I was using her reasoning to make a ludicrous argument similar to the one she made to show her the flaw in the argument and her method of reasoning. I don't actually believe that and made it clear to her when I explained the association fallacy. The on…

I mean, you countered her reasoning by committing multiple fallacies of your own. You strawmanned her ('That people denying this are parroting CCP propaganda and the CCP does all this horrible stuff.') and did an appeal to authority ('I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo said this theory is credible'). You did so in a way that was enough to make her cry by your own admission.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#123

Post by 13415 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #51

raz32dust wrote: post #26

Disappointed to not see any mention of ranked choice voting. I think the winner takes all system leads to a two-party duopoly and makes it difficult for intermediate positions to win. P.S: Yes, I know Australia has ranked choice and they also have problems. Of course it's not a panacea, there are other problems like the role of money in politics. But it will be better than what we have today, and should reduce polari…

Ranked choice voting is always a semi-poisoned subject because of the IRV adherents' insistence on calling IRV "ranked choice voting". Ranked choice voting is preference capturing mechanism that yields very valuable data. IRV is one of many possible counting implementations.

Isn't the problem that although rank-based systems have many desirable properties, they are particularly prone to strategic voting and manipulation? I personally think they are good in cooperative settings where voters have no strong incentive to vote strategically, but are they really so desirable for adversarial situations like national elections?

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#124

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

woodandsteel wrote: post #106

clairity wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that's more of a problem of leadership, courage, and ultimately fairness. parties are not designed to fix that problem, and we've let the system devolve into this mess so that politicians can concentrate power in the smallest agreeable number of entities (two).

The problem is that when parties are highly polarized, politicians who want to be the sort of leaders you are talking about can't get into leadership positions and often are voted out at the primary election stage.

The problem is that both parties in the US are bought and paid for, and have no real interest in representing the interests of voters.

So-called progressive issues and so-called conservative issues are just attention-seeking window displays designed to farm voter interest.

Policy is controlled by the economic leverage of donors and lobbyists, not by voters, and is enacted to protect the economic interests of donors and lobbyists, not of voters.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#125

Post by afiori » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

ep103 wrote: post #76

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

Of the explanations you have given here, most of them appear to be good things. Voters learning more about and becoming more aware of the actions of their representative parties. Except the hastert rule. The hastert rule appears to be uniformly evil, and would appear to be an underlying reason for all of the other trends you've described in your post. Because it makes it impossible to govern, except in an extremely p…

> the hastert rule.

Rather I am surprised to discover that the speaker has so much power in suppressing proposed legislation. How are member of Congress called lawmakers if they are not allowed to propose laws?

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#126

Post by jacobr1 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

Super_Jambo wrote: post #101

notafraudster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that countries with more than two parties have more opportunities to create majority winning coalitions that cut across painful cleavages. In a three party system (for simplicity I'll do equal sized parties) there are four majority coalitions: all three parties, or each of the three two-party coalitions. This is very good for healing wounds and building bridges and very bad for stability (because there is a m…

What, why is the presidency two party in nature? Any transferable vote system would change this surely?

It would change the dynamic, but the issue is the fact that the presidency is "winner takes all." In a multiparty legislature, they parties compete at the polls, and THEN they form a coalition. The stakes for the presidency are such that it encourages coalition building BEFORE the polls, to produce a candidate with an expected majority.

You can see the dynamic during some of the less polarized political cycles of the past. The parties and candidate had to build coalitions of "interests" groups that weren't necessarily pre-committed to one party or another. I could imagine a transferable vote system looking getting us back to that "coalition" state where the parties platforms changed based on the dynamic coalitions.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#127

Post by notafraudster » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

undershirt wrote: post #92

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

thanks for that. what would you point us to if we were interested in learning political science? (e.g. books, courses, communities, podcasts, blogs, channels?)

My background is academic and so I worry that any recommendations I give will suffer from reflecting that. It's way easier for me to say "spend ten years of your life living and breathing this stuff, it'll clear up your thoughts nicely!" than it is to point to a YouTube channel. CGP Grey sometimes does very 101 level topics on electoral systems, but very little on what I'd call the political science of representation or US-specific institutions.

My advice, if you want to get a sense for the academic lay of the land is to try an Intro to US Politics course at any college that is well ranked, and to follow currently active professors from research universities on Twitter. Often by reading today's journal articles, you a) get a sense for new findings, and b) get a sense for whose shoulders they stand on, and where they come from. And academics do a shitty job of sharing these ideas with the public. I do read Andrew Gelman's blog, but he's a social science statistician and so mostly he's working on quant methods and not substantively interesting questions.

The main journals in US politics are: American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics.

I checked the syllabus of my first graduate level American Politics class from, err, a fair few years ago now. Here are some of the canonical books I'd recommend that speak to the kinds of questions I study:

- Anthony Downs: An Economic Theory of Democracy - John Zaller: Nature and Origins of Public Opinion - David Mayhew: Congress The Electoral Connection - Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal: Ideology and Congress - Keith Krehbiel: Information and Legislative Organization - Mathew McCubbins and Gary Cox: Setting the Agenda (or their other book, Legislative Leviathan, both great)

These speak to some of the biggest theoretical and measurement considerations in American Politics and Representation. All of them should be readable without prior college experience. I will note that I just offered you like 5,000 pages of book that will probably take a year to get through.

Hope some of this provides a useful jumping off point.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#128

Post by pbuzbee » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

Wait But Why has been releasing a long series of posts on the current polarized era. I've found them insightful: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#129

Post by jacobr1 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #119

Spooky23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It adds alot of complexity with the questionable benefit of driving more extremism.

The current system seems to be as extreme as it's possible to be without outright civil war. Generally the business of negotiating coalitions tends to temper extremism - see for example the new three-way Green and Centre-Right coalition in Ireland, which would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago. But considering the fact that political positions appear to correlate with brain structures, I honestly wonder i…

> But considering the fact that political positions appear to correlate with brain structures

The do now, but didn't historically. So (presuming the correlation is true) are any of the historical factors relevant to changing things today?

It seems like historically there were more dimensions to consider such as class, regional interests, religion and then within those combination of factors you could have a more-liberal or conservative view.

> There's nothing in evolutionary theory that says the impediments can't be social and behavioural instead of anatomical.

There is some data to support this. Charles Murray's Coming Apart cited a big trend of separation amongst the urban/liberal/educated and rural/conservative/religious. It really isn't enough to drive evolution, it certainly has an impact on culture and politics. There is no "reversion to the mean" if the distribution is binomial.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#130

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

Tiltowait-- wrote: post #77

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

The White House and the Pauline Kael Syndrome. Short version: In 1973, all six major US class segments were centrist. Over the next 35 years, five of the segments moved slightly to the right, but "Intellectual Upper Class" moved far out to the left. https://www.aei.org/publication/the-white-house-and-the-paul... https://web.archive.org/web/20160221064932/http://heterodoxa... The essay below makes an outstanding point…

Anecdote time!

My father thinks that Trump is the best president in 100 years. He thinks that helping the coal industry is great, being tough on immigration and China is too, and so on. He thinks the Left is out to get Trump because they rabidly hate any conservative.

When I talk to him about issues, though, things change. He thinks "no one should die from being poor" - in the context of healthcare. He thinks there should be price controls on drugs, better pricing transparency, and perhaps even price controls on doctor salaries.

I explained to him that "defund the police" can mean different things, but that the moderate, Dem Party version of it involves reallocating funds from police to social services, and reducing the kinds of calls cops get. He said "that's the first time I've heard anyone describe it that way". Despite that being pretty much one of two ways that the entire Left sees the idea, and despite the fact he watches "news" hours a day. (Fox).

When I told him that even the radical "defund" camp doesn't want a total lack of law enforcement, but a total teardown and rebuild of police culture and procedures, he understood! He didn't buy into it 100%, but acknowledged the issues with police corruption, and the idea that good cops who hold others accountable will get run out of the system.

What does this all mean?

He is a victim of far-right media manipulation, and hyperpartisanship. On many of the most pressing issues in this country, he is a Democrat by all accounts. But he sees the "radical left" as part of the big tent, and hears about those boogymen day in and day out, and takes a contrarian view on certain progressive ideas, and boom. Trumpian Republican.

My money on fixing this is to have voting reform that allows new political parties to vibrantly exist, so we can have new parties with a better mixing of ideas.

Coalitions should exist as groups of political parties, not as one big tent.