What Is the Driver of Political Polarization?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So I've kept to 15 minutes for questions. No, sorry, 11 minutes. But we can get in as many as we can now.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Thanks. Yes. Okay, I'll let you choose, okay?

>> Morton: Good, professor, for that very interesting lecture. My name is Morton. I come from the University of Copenhagen.

And I wonder if you could go a bit into this polarization that you discussed, and specifically the structure and drivers of it here in the US. Specifically, what is this is happening by pushing two parties away from each other. Further, if it's driven by the more salient, extreme voices at the fringes of the parties that get more attention either because of the more media driven landscape or the decreasing in influence of bipartisan members.

And lastly, if the polarization is equally due to both parties moving apart or if it's mostly due to one of them moving away from the center.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Okay, and I wanna just make sure you're talking about the elite level polarization here, like in DC, okay? Yeah, so taking your last question first.

So some of you may have seen so political science has these nominate scores, scores where there are measures of how often people vote in a certain direction. They're purely based on roll call voting. I'm a quant person. I'm putting my cards on the table, but you have to be really careful.

Sometimes quantitative measures take on a life of their own, and you forget what they're really about and measuring. And nominates one of those issues. So it is true that by the nominate scores, the Republicans have moved more than the Democrats. If you interpret the scores as a lot of them being a voting cohesion score, then you would say, well, Republicans are voting more cohesively than Democrats.

If you interpret it as, this means that they're more extreme and you do get political. Actually, something in one of the readings, there are political scientists who say, see, it's all the Republicans. But there's been pushback by a lot of academics on that issue saying, like, look, I mean, again, not disputing that the Republicans vote more together than the Democrats have.

So, and that's increased over time, but that's different the matching of policies to preferences. And on that, the two parties look very similar. And as I mentioned, in some ways, the lacks peace with Zelitzer and Phillips actually pushes back and says, actually, in some ways, the Republicans are more responsive, not in the ways that a lot of Democrats want, or more liberal people would like.

But actually, I wouldn't say theirs end of the story. So I want to be careful. But I think that this, like, it's one party. I certainly don't agree with. And I think most people would suggest that both parties, the elites, have moved from. If you're saying relative to voters.

So then you had, can you just remind me of your, the second part was what's driving it? Yeah, so this gets back to that earlier slide. This is like the million-dollar question. A lot of research. It's been the main area of research in political science, though often devoid from public opinion.

This is more of a sociological phenomenon of the field, that there are people who study what's happening in Washington, a lot of people who study opinion, and not only a smaller group who studies them jointly. And so that's also where you can get these weird tangents where people aren't talking to each other.

For the groups that do work on it, there's been more success in ruling out explanations than in ruling them in. I am partial to the campaign finance explanation I mentioned. We have the study of donors. That's one reason we're doing it. The campaign finance environment has, in this sense, what's changed is with the Internet, the focus on both leveraging lots of small donations from members and even within DC for those who have worked there you know there's all these call centers.

The parties are putting enormous pressures on members to spend just lots of their time raising funds in and of itself. That's not good because the members aren't spending a lot of time compromising and talking to each other about policy, all right? I am partial to it. It is hard to differentiate the chicken and the egg here, all right?

Because the donors are more polarized than the public. But it could be that that's because the DC elites are more polarized. So moderates don't wanna give. So I wanna be, as an academic, respectful, but I'm partial to thinking this could be part of it. There are people, and then I'll move on to the next question, who just think that the competitiveness itself of Congress has contributed.

I think it's an interesting explanation. I think it would only work in my mind if it combines with this fundraising because it would think, wouldn't you be, if you were competitive, move into the pivotal voter if you see, all right? But I guess if you're competitive, and you think I need to raise a lot of money, then you have to go to where the donors are.

So that may be, there may be some interaction with the two that's contributing.

>> Audience 2: Hello. Thank you for the talk. So you use public opinion data, and I've actually been interested in this. So a lot of polls talk about issues in a singular light. So when you bundle issues and policies, can you just explain how we disentangle the effects itself?.

When we talk about public opinion in relation to responsiveness or congruence, how you try to isolate those effects for certain issues? And to ensure that when there's policies that bundle these issues, the responsiveness is getting through and whether it's being mixed in with other policy issues that are being addressed?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, so that's a great question. I'll try to answer it as briefly as possible. So, I mean, the short answer is a variety of different ways. So one tactic at the most micro level that a number of scholars, but including me, have taken is over time, with the advent of Internet polling.

And you can run more, a lot. It's much cheaper to run surveys. You actually ask people their views on a set of roll call votes so that you're actually trying to really match in the roll call vote and their views. Now, of course, to do that, that's a pretty limited set of issues that you can actually think people have an opinion on about a roll call vote.

So it's not the end of the story. And there's the second step would be opinions on a policy, say gun control, and you give them five options or something. Where do you align on this? And you match that either to policy actions, whether they be roll-call votes or presidential actions.

That has, again, pros and cons. The advantage is people probably know how they feel more than on a specific roll call vote, sometimes broadly about an issue like gun control. But then you are trying to match policies to it. And you don't just, this isn't one where you just put some algorithm in.

It takes a lot of time, and you have to be willing to justify your decisions. But then there are people who go in this very macro direction. And that relates to this macro policy research I discussed, where they say, let's just look at all these issues that involve intervention in the economy, see where people are in terms of their liberal and conservatism, and then see how policies are coming out.

So, I mean, there's more than those three ways. But this is saying, as a field, we try to cover a wide range and I think it's why when we present that research, you're always prepared that there are strengths of each approach, but limitations as well.

>> Audience 3: Hey, thanks so much for the lecture.

It was great. I was wondering if responsiveness is symmetric with regards to ideology, in the sense that if there's a shift in policy preferences that demands more presence of the government and more intervention. Does the response is as large as a response to a shift to the last intervention?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So the evidence is, yes, is the short answer. Now, depending on the policy area, there could be a bigger Orlando or lesser status quo bias, arguably, all right? But yes, if it's to take an action, whether it be an interventionist or a non-interventionist direction, there isn't a discernible difference.

>> Audience  4: Yeah, thank you so much for your time. I'm curious, there's a lot of rhetoric in politics about how lobbyists pretty much run everything in DC. So I'm curious, just in terms of your research and the data. When lobbyists are pursuing a specific political agenda that runs counter to broad public opinion, do you see them usually successful in that area, or how does it that interact with more, the broader public sentiment?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: No, I'm thrilled you asked the question. I've taught on money and politics, and when I have, I've sometimes brought in a lobbyist to talk with class so that they could just give and obviously, they're not gonna say yes. We're always, but what lobbyists will tell you is they spend a lot of their time listening and trying to find out what's on the agenda, all right?

So a big part of a lobbyist's job is bringing information back to their clients. This is gonna maybe happen in this agency or in this committee right now. All right, when you think of lobbyists going to lots of lunches or something like that, that's a lot of what they're trying to do.

That's really valuable. Most of my time is on my academic work, but I was involved back in New Jersey on some charter school issues. And when we hired a lobbing firm, I'd say it was so great because I taught about it for all this time, and now I'm involved in this issue, and that was exactly what they were so valuable for.

Did you know that this is what these officials really care about, all right? Right now, and if you present it this way, it's gonna have a bigger impact. I don't wanna say that there aren't issues. They aren't issues on which individual companies or labor unions or liberal interest groups don't get in there and have an outsized influence on.

It was partly why I mentioned it's a separate topic, I think, to think about what's going on in policy implementation in the bureaucracy side. And that has big implications if you think there's a lot of inequality there about whether you think the bureaucracy should be really big and doing a lot.

If you think that ultimately, a lot of the policies are helping the powerful. But I would just add that even there, I think that the view of lobbyists as lobbyist comes in and gets what they want is just completely, that is a Hollywood version that is not a DC transport.

But it doesn't mean that if you're a company, you wouldn't wanna hire a great lobbyist or in labor or any interest group and be on top of exactly what's going on both in the bureaucracy and in legislative committees. Okay, thanks.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Thank you. Thanks.