In the wake of the latest United States government shutdown, the punditry is letting loose with all manner of pet theories regarding why our politics seem so dysfunctional these days. Some blame the rise of the Internet and/or ideological media for inducing “epistemological closure,” (i.e. being able to only get news that reinforces your existing biases). Predictably, conservatives blame socialistic Obama policies for undermining the longstanding fabric of our country and liberals blame obstructionist white Tea Partiers for refusing to let go of the control they think they’ve always had.
One interesting theory comes from George Friedman, who blames the decline of corrupt party bosses for the rise in ideological candidates. My own pet theory is that the United States is simply becoming – if I may uncleverly adapt an overused meme – Too Big To Govern.
Friedman thinks Presidents from the Wilson to Kennedy era were more “impressive” than the Carter to Obama era. I think his piece has a bit of “narrative fallacy” (see Taleb’s Black Swan and then Silver’s The Signal And The Noise), which means looking for tidy, simple explanations of complex events, though he may well be explaining an important and overlooked factor.
I wonder, though, if the common thread between all the Presidents listed is that they all pretty much oversaw a century of growth in both government power and, within that, a growth in consolidated power under the executive branch. I wonder how that effects the ideological interests of different yet increasingly larger groups who increasingly have more at stake (or at least think they have more at stake) in what the government does.
People will invariably bring up European countries which often have the appearance of similar levels of “big government,” but they are generally done at smaller scales with populations more equivalent in size to US states – and often more homogenous too. The United States may be unique in trying to increasingly manage the interests of 300 million people through one centralized and increasingly powerful yet also democratic government. Is it any wonder things are starting to get a bit touchy?
Of course, I could simply be wrong. Can you point to any examples of a larger population managed democratically (technically democratic republic yeah yeah blah blah), and by so active a government? The Soviet Union was certainly a “Bigger” government, but it had no democracy. And modern China doesn’t have one yet. The European Union has about 500 million people, but its political influence is neither as broad or deep as the US government’s upon its own citizens. What if we’re in uncharted territory here? What if democracy simply can’t handle this much activity at this large a scale?
Even if only one-third of America is truly against Obamacare, that’s still about one hundred million people having severe disagreements with another one or two hundred million people. Presumably one-third of our leaders have always had the political ability to, say, shut down the government like this… why is it only becoming so apparent now?
As populations grow and as government does more, what if we now have unprecedented levels of disagreement about what the government does? As Friedman notes, we’re nowhere near Civil-War-level acrimony, so maybe things aren’t so unprecedented after all, but one can’t help but wonder if we’re at least taking tiny steps in that direction. (I’m at least updating my Bayesian priors on expecting somebody to attempt secession from, say, 1% to 2%.)
Overall, this is a pessimistic view that I don’t want to hold, and I welcome any rebuttals. I still believe democracy is “the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried,” and I want to believe it’s quite a bit better than the others, too.
It’s easy to say that we could make it work if it just wasn’t for those other guys (i.e. Tea Party obstructionists), but of course you can always make democracy work if you eliminate the people who don’t think like you. The United States has more or less successfully handled diverse viewpoints for a couple hundred years, and the question is whether or not it can continue to do so. Maybe reforms like Congressional term limits, campaign finance limits, or proportional representation can smooth things along for a couple hundred more million citizens. Maybe it can only keep working at this level if the government doesn’t try to do so much. Maybe the current levels of dysfunction and polarization aren’t really so historically unprecedented. Maybe it will keep working anyway. But maybe we’re simply becoming Too Big To Govern.
It’s not secession I worry about (at least right now). It’s the possibility of a serious or successful assassination attempt.
That’s actually a good point. Even from a purely historically statistical standpoint, assassination attempts have been (unless I’m forgetting something) much more common than secession attempts.
India has had a functioning democracy with more than 300 million citizens since the 1950s, and until the 90s operated under the heavy regulatory burden of the Permit Raj. It has also had its share of separatist movements. I’m not sure exactly what it means for a government to “work” (lots of people decry gridlock in Washington, but I’m happy with a government that fails to make my life worse), but if I was trying to answer whether America was Too Big to Govern, I’d see what I could learn from India.
This argument is a pet-peeve of mine. If you want to adjust Social Security or Medicare so that the nation isn’t swallowed by its unfunded liabilities, the political system has to be able to act. If you want to reform laws so that the US doesn’t imprison more humans than nations 4x the size (e.g., China, India), than the political system needs to be able to act. If you want to be able to reform a patent law or copyright system that are heavily tilted towards incumbents, you need a political system that can act. There are a million more examples where those came from.
I understand that most new ideas are bad ones and that we should be glad that every whim of the electorate isn’t satisfied by populist grand-standing. But, even from someone of a skeptical perspective (dare I say post-libertarian, it’s important for human institutions to be able to correct their mistakes.
Expected Optimism – excellent blow to my hypothesis, I will try to brush up on Indian politics.
Failibilist – I like your sentiment, I guess it depends on whether you’re thinking optimistically (since there are definitely factors right now working that make things like patent reform, NSA reform, and prison reform seem more plausible than they did a few years ago) or realistically (since in general, the actual practice of “functioning” government seems to create more mistakes much faster than it fixes the old ones). I tend to find myself oscillating between both camps…
It’s not secession I worry about (at least right now). It’s the possibility of a serious or successful assassination attempt.
That’s actually a good point. Even from a purely historically statistical standpoint, assassination attempts have been (unless I’m forgetting something) much more common than secession attempts.
India has had a functioning democracy with more than 300 million citizens since the 1950s, and until the 90s operated under the heavy regulatory burden of the Permit Raj. It has also had its share of separatist movements. I’m not sure exactly what it means for a government to “work” (lots of people decry gridlock in Washington, but I’m happy with a government that fails to make my life worse), but if I was trying to answer whether America was Too Big to Govern, I’d see what I could learn from India.
Expected Optimism – excellent blow to my hypothesis, I will try to brush up on Indian politics.
Failibilist – I like your sentiment, I guess it depends on whether you’re thinking optimistically (since there are definitely factors right now working that make things like patent reform, NSA reform, and prison reform seem more plausible than they did a few years ago) or realistically (since in general, the actual practice of “functioning” government seems to create more mistakes much faster than it fixes the old ones). I tend to find myself oscillating between both camps…
This argument is a pet-peeve of mine. If you want to adjust Social Security or Medicare so that the nation isn’t swallowed by its unfunded liabilities, the political system has to be able to act. If you want to reform laws so that the US doesn’t imprison more humans than nations 4x the size (e.g., China, India), than the political system needs to be able to act. If you want to be able to reform a patent law or copyright system that are heavily tilted towards incumbents, you need a political system that can act. There are a million more examples where those came from.
I understand that most new ideas are bad ones and that we should be glad that every whim of the electorate isn’t satisfied by populist grand-standing. But, even from someone of a skeptical perspective (dare I say post-libertarian, it’s important for human institutions to be able to correct their mistakes.