Skip to content

Tag: American Political Development

Teaching Shefter (1986) in November 2023

I just finished teaching/discussing a classic article on NYC party politics in the 1920s-50s. It was an interesting coincidence that the Working Families Party had just done well the day before in some Northeastern cities. (The Libertarians also did well, but that is a potential connection for later.)

Shefter’s piece is not easy to read. It was one of the first to run in Studies in American Political Development. The theory casts “political incorporation” and “extrusion” as “two sides of the same coin” of the handling of “new social forces” in American politics. All these terms need interpreting.

The argument also rests on details about many forgotten local politicians. That is a lot to keep track of. It also mentions interest groups, both formal (like the Citizens Union) and informal (like the mafia).

I taught the piece with pictures of the underlying coalition structure, light discussion of the electoral institutions, and a bit on the then-emerging New Deal party system. (The other key part of the theory is a “crisis” or “realignment” in/of the party system.) Then we interpreted the key terms. Then I had students look up names from the article (La Guardia, Marcantonio, O’Dwyer, Powell, etc) and try to say how their portrayals supported the theory.

Here is the initial post-reform coalition structure. By reform I mean the institutional changes of 1936.

Here is the coalition structure as the institutions were about to change again.

There are clear differences, and these mapped nicely onto details in the article.

The images are illustrative, not authoritative. I made them several years ago. The newer representation of these data was done instead by scaling everything together (due to the attendant research purpose).

I did not bring up the WFP at all. One student did mention AOC, and we discussed how well the framework fits her trajectory, which historical figure seems most similar, etc.

I have been thinking a lot about how all of the above relates to nationalization, as well as another book I look forward to reading on that.

Some key points from “More Parties or No Parties”

Photo by Phil Howe. Book available for purchase and in Oxford Scholarship Online.

The space of politics is multidimensional. What we call “left” and “right” are negotiated positions.

Interest groups (broadly understood) do the negotiating. They are assumed to want control of government. They form coalitions to get it.

Every democracy has some coalition structure, even if it does not track party division.

‘Shifting coalitions’ lead to electoral reform: incumbent groups seeking insulation, out-of-power groups seeking realignment, or opposing groups seeking to discipline noncommittal players (a polarizing mode).

Electoral reform is change in any of five electoral-system components: assembly size, district magnitude, ballot type, allocation rules, and rules about nominations.

Two-party politics makes it tempting to cater to factions, not parties, when proposing and designing reforms. Witness the current emphasis on ballot type and nominations (ranked-choice, approval voting, nonpartisan primaries). Witness the unpopularity (outside political science) of allocation rules that presume party grouping (such as party-list proportional representation, including mixed-member).

In the past, reformers promoted single transferable vote (STV) and ranking generally in order to cater to factions, not parties.

In other countries, multiparty politics facilitates use of ranked-choice: giving voters understandable entities to rank, instructing voters on how to rank (vote management), regulating candidate entry (vote management), and generating political will to administer a complex system.

In the United States, ranked-choice reforms tended to last as long as the coalitions that imposed them.

Vote management was imperfect and slow to emerge. It usually involved a bipartisan coalition that sold itself in “good government” terms.

Due to vote management, STV produces winners who usually would be the same under open-list proportional representation (OLPR).

An exception is when the coalition structure shifts, such that some voters do not rank candidates in the way that party (or interest-group) leaders might want. Said voters are part of a coalition structure that is different from the prevailing one.

If the alternative coalition deprives “left” and “right” of control of government, they may join in blaming the electoral system. This can lead to a polarizing repeal episode.

Reasons for abandonment of majoritarian ranked-ballot rules are not yet well-understood. One theme in the literature is ranking truncation. Another is the production of surprise results. These may have reinforced each other: many voters not ranking very many choices, determined candidates capitalizing on this.

The repeal of early ranked-choice systems left in place features that had been needed to pass ranked-choice. These include nonpartisan ballots, numbered-post elections, and single-digit assemblies.

This post also appeared at on Medium.

De-polarization of the House of Representatives?

In updating some graphs today, I discovered something interesting (but not entirely unexpected). The House of Representatives appears to be de-polarizing.

Why? COVID-19 stimulus bills, “ends-against-the-middle” voting (one, two), something else?

Of course, it’s also possible that this is just a blip.

The graphs begin in 1856-7, which is the first session with both Republicans and Democrats in the House (data). Here is the usual plot, based on distances between the party medians:

And here is another with distances between the party means:

Thanks to Dr. Jennie Sweet-Cushman for the prod.

“And they ate”

I write to amplify Alderman Farrell. In a lame-duck session of the outgoing Board of Aldermen, “Happy” moved that the following poem appear in the minutes.

Read more…

The urban PR “spells” chart, updated

If you are reading this, you know that 24 U.S. cities tried the STV form of proportional representation. Here is an updated chart summarizing those episodes.

spells_25aug2015

The changes include:

1) Cropping to 1965, since events thereafter are basically chartjunk.

2) Adding a failed 1959 repeal attempt for Worcester, MA.

3) Changing the dates for Oak Ridge, TN, which evidence suggests to have emerged with STV a decade later than I thought. Note that the Oak Ridge council was “advisory,” whatever that means.

4) Adding Norris, TN, which I had not included because I could not find the dates of any STV elections. This Town Council was also “advisory.” Elections were held annually from 1937 through 1945. I cannot find evidence of an STV election post-1945. The federal government sold Norris to a developer in 1948, and Tennessee granted Norris its own charter in 1949.

5) Date-stamping, since this chart may evolve gain.

Please share any suggested, further changes. Wouldn’t it be nice if our state and local politics were better documented?