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A new theory about political polarization

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Re: A new theory about political polarization

#141

Post by jackcosgrove »

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…

It is just mindboggling to me that significant parts of the electorate were and are unable to assign policy positions to the correct party. I hope at least those voters' representatives accurately reflected their wishes irrespective of party labels.

On the one hand, I am lucky enough to have received a great education so these things are clear to me, and not everyone is that lucky. On the other hand, world events are sometimes hinging on voters who don't know what they're voting for.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#142

Post by nickff »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #141
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…

It is just mindboggling to me that significant parts of the electorate were and are unable to assign policy positions to the correct party. I hope at least those voters' representatives accurately reflected their wishes irrespective of party labels. On the one hand, I am lucky enough to have received a great education so these things are clear to me, and not everyone is that lucky. On the other hand, world events are…

There has been a recent increase in the amount of literature on voter ignorance; I recommend reading at least one book on the subject, as its level is quite shocking.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#143

Post by wahern »

Faark wrote: post #74
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…

All of this seems to have an unstated prerequisite: The US two party system where voting for a third party actively damages your own interest. It's not perfectly solved in other countries, but having more "evils" to choose from is a good start. Obviously politicians have have little incentive to change the process they already had to master to gain power though in the first place.

The U.S. recently briefly had a three party system with the emergence of the Tea Party. All it did was radicalize the GOP. Just ask John Boehner.

Arguably this radicalization was only possibly because of the Hastert Rule. Under the Hastert Rule the smart strategy was to only caucus with the GOP, and obstruct the GOP when they didn't get what they wanted. That provided the Tea Party with maximum effectiveness. Without the Hastert Rule and some other technical developments, the Tea Party could have and would have occasionally shifted their support.

Another way to look at it is that without the Hastert Rule and similar mechanisms that bolster the power of parties, a two party system is largely a two party system in name only. What matters isn't the number of nominal parties, but the effective autonomy of individual representatives. You don't need 3 or 5 or 12 parties, which in almost every country invariably come to represent niche interests (similar to all the caucuses in Congress) but otherwise usually align with one of the main parties. You can have the same outcomes so long as politicians and informal caucuses can more easily defect. Not only will they defect, but it softens the official stance of the remaining parties.

We don't need to copy the structure of multi-party European systems. Rather, if we want the same outcomes[1], we should understand the dynamics and replicate or the types of dynamics that matter. Without the latter, simply copying the structure is unlikely to be effective. With the latter, copying is unnecessary.

[1] That assumes the outcomes are different and desirable. But the notion that multi-party systems tend to more centrist and inclusive politics seems stale to me. The rise of populism and even nationalism has hardly been confined to traditionally two-party systems, like in the Anglosphere. Heck, when it come to issues of abortion and immigration the U.S. has always been and remains more liberal than almost every European country.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#144

Post by Tiltowait-- »

unethical_ban wrote: post #140
Tiltowait-- wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He likes Trump because Trump is a 1980s Democrat. The Left treats people like him as The Other and is very loud and rude about it. See: http://archive.is/QRJ6m

You really dodge the main point of my post. Trump does not support any "left-wing" legislation, or any traditional 80s/90s neoliberal foreign policy. For someone to support Trump in 2020, and to support the concepts of universal healthcare and substantial police reform (and acknowledging systemic corruption in police), is completely mind boggling. I disagree with your worldview that the "left" dislikes Trump for some…

[flagged]

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#145

Post by tunesmith »

13415 wrote: post #123
tunesmith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I suppose you could extend that all the way back past the practice of voting... ultimately democratic voting isn't as good as some kind of scalable deliberative consensus mechanism that educates people, but we don't have one of those. But anyway, there's also a lot of misinformation out there about voting methods. For instance, most sources say that all Condorcet methods are flawed, but that's because they conflate Condorcet counting with the various tie-breaking methods when there are cycles. The latter can be flawed, but the former is not. If there's a Condorcet winner, it doesn't run afoul of Arrow's theorem or anything. The main "flaw" with a Condorcet winner is that you can have a Condorcet winner without that candidate having "majority approval", depending on how you measure "approval".

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#146

Post by scythe »

13415 wrote: post #123
tunesmith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>they are particularly prone to strategic voting and manipulation?

IRV and AV are particularly prone to strategic voting. Amusingly, the best catalog of IRV's failures is generally provided by AV proponents, and the best catalog of AV problems can be found on FairVote.org.

The ranked-choice systems which satisfy a criterion called ISDA -- independence of Smith-dominated alternatives, or more poignantly, independence of losers -- are harder to manipulate. These are all "Condorcet" methods, because ISDA is a generalization of Condorcet.

ISDA means roughly that if a candidate is not in contention to win (the "Smith set"), it doesn't matter where they appear on your ballot. I could rank Vermin Supreme and Ron Paul #1 and #2 and the algorithm basically cancels it out and starts me at #3. The reason that ISDA is so effective at preventing strategic voting is that in order to vote strategically, I have to misrank a candidate who might actually win; in other words, I must accept a realistic risk of encouraging an outcome I don't really want. That's a pretty good disincentive, in my opinion.

However, the worry about strategic voting seems to be at least a little overblown. Australia does deal with "how-to-vote" cards[1], but this is a way to prevent "allied" parties from accidentally competing with each other. In 2009, there was concern over a monotonicity violation in Australian elections where supporters of one of the parties were encouraged to misrank another party. However, the voters didn't go along with the plan, and instead voted honestly:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/howtovote-cards-...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-04/an-example-of-non-mon...

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#147

Post by Majromax »

afiori wrote: post #125
ep103 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are allowed to propose laws (and amendments to bills). However, the House and Senate leadership has control over the voting schedule.

There are still ways around it (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition), but they are not particularly fast and the legislative calendar is crowded. Worse yet, these measures also stick it to leadership – a plucky Representative has to not just want something, but want it badly enough to embarrass the rest of their party. That’s rare.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#148

Post by wahern »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #73
clairity wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole concept of party polarization is a non-sequitur to what's important, and that's how closely our representatives represent our collective interest balanced against the forward-thinking good of the nation. the labels are clearly holding us back, but we dearly want to fit in (be in the party) and be perceived as being in the right, no matter what's good, truthful, moral, generous, patriotic, etc. the wisdom of…

at what point does groupthink suddenly flash over into the wisdom of a crowd? is there some kind of dunbar's number at work here?

I think the wisdom of the crowds is predicated on the individual members expressed preferences reflecting their "real" and substantial interests.

But if you apply a selection criteria to members of the crowd or the types of crowd recognized as such, you're likely going to get answers biased toward the selection criteria.

Likewise, to the extent members' expressed preferences reflect abstract arguments (i.e. ideology) rather than their real interests, then other dynamics will control. So, for example, if you go around asking the population detailed questions about their stances on abortion--when it should allowed, when, etc--you're going to get a ton of different answers and any consensus, to the extent there is one, will be sophisticated and nuanced. Ask those same people if they're pro-life or pro-choice and the majority consensus will simply reflect the ebb and flow of the dominate idealogical narratives and be as real and substantive as tallying the number of people who prefer cake vs pie.

In that sense I think Wisdom of the Crowds always had a sort of tautological character to it. And it reflected an optimism about the information age--that it would cut through rather than perpetuate all the complicated and complicating intermediate social layers.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#149

Post by astine »

wahern wrote: post #143
Faark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this seems to have an unstated prerequisite: The US two party system where voting for a third party actively damages your own interest. It's not perfectly solved in other countries, but having more "evils" to choose from is a good start. Obviously politicians have have little incentive to change the process they already had to master to gain power though in the first place.

The U.S. recently briefly had a three party system with the emergence of the Tea Party. All it did was radicalize the GOP. Just ask John Boehner. Arguably this radicalization was only possibly because of the Hastert Rule. Under the Hastert Rule the smart strategy was to only caucus with the GOP, and obstruct the GOP when they didn't get what they wanted. That provided the Tea Party with maximum effectiveness. Without…

The Tea Party was not a separate political party. It was a faction in the Republican party that was focused and non-compromise with the Democratic party.It's hard to argue that this would be the same dynamic with a true third party.
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