A reader writes,
What Yglesias doesn’t discuss is WHY this might be the case. Sorting is part of it, but one interesting and often overlooked dimension is the end of earmarks. It used to be you could buy votes for middle-of-the-road legislation by getting pols to cash in whatever principles they had for funding for a bridge or a hospital or day care center with earmarked $$$. You can’t do it anymore. So now pols are more responsive to movement political forces and donors. I’m not sure which system is better or worse, but it certainly has been a part of the recent dynamic.
Actually, I think Yglesias is speaking to this. I think he would say (or at least could say) is that the price of buying a vote with earmarks has gone up. Moreover, the reason that it has gone up is that there are now well-sorted, politically-engaged, ideologically-driven groups out there. That is, the inability of centrist leaders to use earmarks to obtain legislation is not some causal force that appeared out of nowhere. It is the result of the forces that have created ideological polarization.
A commenter writes,
What would such an example [of insiders not winning] … It can’t just be a lot of incumbents losing power; I anticipate you would simply characterize that as one group of insiders being replaced with another.
Right, it’s not about who wins elections. It’s about the farm lobby controlling farm subsidies (including food stamps), the teachers’ unions controlling education policy, the real estate lobby controlling housing policy, Wall Street controlling financial regulation (as actually implemented), health care providers controlling health care policy, and so on. Those are the real insiders. You know that insiders have been defeated when consumers win and rent-seekers lose.
Anyway, my original point is that while more partisanship might be changing the dynamics between centrist and non-centrist legislation, it is not changing the dynamics between insiders and outsiders. And, while I have not read This Town, to which Yglesias referred in his original post, the commentaries on it suggest that it speaks to the issue of insiders and outsiders.
By the way, this week’s econtalk also is on the topic of polarization. The guest, Morris Fiorina, seems to me to offer support for Yglesias.
Maybe what y’all are lookin’ at are governments (at all levels) with too many functions.
Wouldn’t the sequester be a clear example of insiders losing? And losing for the exact reason Yglesias is talking about? It’s pretty much a policy of pure cuts, so it’s hard to see what rent seekers it helps and easy to see which ones it hurts. Consumers are better off because a. less spending means less borrowing means our taxes are lower over the long run, and b. most of the cuts seem to be falling on programs that didn’t provide much utility in the first place (Yglesias agrees with this; he put out a post earlier this week largely endorsing the effects of the sequester). Best of all, ideologically driven partisan gridlock caused it to happen over insider protests and insider expectations that some sort of compromise would be reached. Seems like a win for Yglesias’s world view!
Now, one example does not a trend make. But Yglesias did argue that this transition is far from complete, so maybe (if he’s right) we’ll see more of this stuff happening in the future. Here’s praying they can’t work out a farm bill by September 30.