PS40 Final Lecture

Insurance company with an army - provides people with social insurance and a military

Raises and spends money to provide social insurance and protection

Funded by a progressive tax system

Social insurance pools risk of all taxpayers to provide protection from social ills

• Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

The government was not designed at the founding to fulfill this insurance company with an army function

First governing document, ratified in 1781 and operational in 1776

Mainly to fight the Revolutionary War

Highly decentralized government

• Confederation - states grant nat’l gov’t authority rather than the people directly

• Major laws needed 9/13 states and changing the Constitution required unanimous agreement

• All laws needed to be executed by the states

The transaction costs of legislating were extremely high

They couldn’t enforce gov’t directives, leading to collective action problems

• Couldn’t levy taxes and raise revenues → not enough to finance war

• Couldn’t regulate commerce between states → economic recession

• Couldn’t make states contribute to the militia to defend them from GB

These problems created a need for the Constitution

Prisoner’s dilemma is a way of conceptualizing collective action problems

Both actors have a dominant strategy to diverge from cooperation and do what is in their own best interest

Example: colonial defense; taxation

The best way to solve the prisoner’s dilemma is to provide outside incentives or punishments

Free trade is the most economically efficient overall

But each state can impose trade laws to give an advantage to its citizens

If this happens, a trade war will start and everyone will be worse off

Compulsory contributions to gov’t services (taxes)

Compulsory contributions to clean air (environmental regulations)

Compulsory contributions to national defense (military draft)

Punishment for disruptions to domestic peace

NJ and VA plans reflected 3 important conformity costs that had to be overcome

• Big states worried small states would be too powerful

• Slave states concerned that free states would have too much power

• People who supported states’ rights concerned about too much conformity under federal law

• VA Plan - big states, powerful federal gov’t

  • Bicameral legislature by population

  • Legislature can make any law

  • Executive elected by the lower house

• NJ Plan - small states, weaker federal gov’t

  • Unicameral legislature by state

  • Legislature has limited powers

  • Plural executive

Solution to the contention

• Split control of leg. Branch b/w population and states

• House can originate revenue bills

• Legislation through majority vote in each chamber

• Independent executive with limited powers

Prescribes rules for collective action, helping representatives agree to things collectively that they would not individually

Gives the government enforcing power for its directives

Enumerates specific powers to the federal government and the states (federalism)

Consists of an amendment process that imposes high transaction costs but the costs aren’t so high it’s impossible

Bad - representatives in each branch are elected in different ways, meaning they disagree and serve different constituencies

• This disagreement can create gridlock since it makes transaction costs very high

Good - Federalist 51

• These different constituencies and lawmaking responsibilities prevent the concentration of authority in any one branch or group of people

• Government needs to control itself because people are naturally predisposed to corruption

House and Senate differ in terms of constituencies, qualifications for office, terms of office, and power

House - more “popular” with two-year terms; each state gets 1 rep regardless of size

Senate - more removed and insulated with longer terms and Senators chosen by state legislatures

Approval of both chambers needed to pass legislation; a supermajority for a veto

Necessary and proper clause and commerce clause allow the legislature to extend its power beyond what is enumerated in the Constitution

Still, limited by Bill of Rights and other specifications (ie. can’t pass bills of attainder or spend money without legislating)

Importantly, power of judicial review, an important check on legislative power, not specified in the Constitution

• Judiciary has a different constituency because they have lifetime appointments → theoretically very removed from the people

Congress is affected by status quo bias due to high transaction costs of legislating

A unitary executive that carries out the laws

• Veto pwr, fills offices

Has command authority as commander in chief

No agenda-setting power in Congress → different from today

Under original Constitution, states had a lot of latitude, but less so today

People disagree about what is best, but have a shared interest in cooperating

Solved with providing a cue to rally around a collective decision (ie. party leader)

All states receive the same amount of representation regardless of the size of their populations

US Senate close to most malapportioned chamber in the world

Means Senators representing a minority of the population can vote down laws

Also means electoral college is malapportioned

Different elected bodies share different responsibilities and powers with overlapping jurisdiction

States have their own constitutional authority and are semi-sovereign; all powers not delegated to the federal gov’t are delegated to the states

• Fed gov’t: nat’l defense, universal pension/elderly healthcare, sends $ to states, unbalanced budget ok

• State gov’t: administer welfare programs, work w/local gov’t to run K-12 schools and higher edu, prison system, run elections, constrained by balanced budget

• Both: tax, borrow money, charter banks, regulate property

Each state typically has a mini-federal gov’t that can charter local gov’ts

Increasingly think of local elections in terms of national issues, even though jurisdictions are separate → nationalization of politics

• Decreased accountability - feeling that one has to stay with elected officials of one’s party, even if that party isn’t addressing the problems

• Cause: Fed gov’t gets more media attention that local gov’t

• Cause: Local and federal politics more aligned with the decline of the Southern Democrats

Grant - the federal gov’t gives money to the states, usually for a particular use

• Medicaid, SNAP

Mandate - the federal gov’t tells a state to do something but doesn’t give them any money to do it

• Americans with Disabilities Act, federal education standards

Pooled risk - states share the risks of having people who need welfare; all states have to provide welfare evenly

Laboratories of democracy - states can test out policy that federal gov’t can’t

Room for local preferences - states can tailor policy to what their populations want

Supreme Court can strike down local preferences

Hampered accountability - voters can’t easily discern whether federal or state actors are responsible for policy failures, so elections aren’t as effective at holding them accountable

Cutthroat competition/race to the bottom - states will try to outdo other states to attract business or resources at the expense of their populations

Protections for civil liberties at odds with democracy

Supreme Court decides on the meaning of the amendments

Broadly: freedom of expression, criminal protections

First amendment - Congress can’t make laws that endorse or prohibit religion, limit freedom of speech, limit freedom of the press, limit freedom of assembly

• No speech to organize criminal activity

• No speech/press to baselessly undermine someone’s reputation - slander and libel

Second amendment - guns

Third amendment - qaurtering of soldiers

Fourth amendment - security against unreasonable searches and seizures (without probable cause)

Fifth amendment - Due process; no witness against self; no taking of private property w/o compensation

Sixth amendment - right to a speedy public trial

Seventh amendment - Jury trial

Eight amendment - cruel and unusual punishment/excessive bail

Ninth amendment - rights can be added thru amendment and judicial interpretation

• Ie. Right to privacy

Tenth amendment - remaining powers to the states

Basis for modern civil rights

SC held states had to enforce certain amendments through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th amendment

Most amendments are incorporated

Powers conferred to citizens by the state → civil rights; pro-majoritarian

Constraints on the state vis-à-vis citizens → civil liberties; anti-majoritarian

Yes; necessary and proper clause, commerce clause

No; Constitution already prevents certain civil rights violations like bills of attainder and suspending habeas corpus

Unlike in most countries, US legislators represent districts, with different districts for each chamber

In Senate, no gerrymandering, but House can have gerrymandering in reapportionment process

• Spread voters for their party across districts to win more seats - cracking

• Concentrate voters in existing districts so incumbents win - packing

Doesn’t affect partisan polarization since gerrymanderers use a mixture of packing and cracking

Limited to equal population districts (Baker v Carr) and cannot be done by race

Even if not gerrymandering, probably will have a few extreme majority D districts and a lot of slight majority R districts since D tend to live in cities and R tend to be more rural

Assumption: people prefer candidate whose position is closest to their policy preference → spatial voting

Strategic moderation: candidates moderate their positions to be in close proximity to as many voters as possible

Median voter theorem states that because of these tendencies, majority rule system will select the outcome most preferred by the median voter

Evidence that candidates further from their electorates typically lose

At the same time, candidates will never completely converge on the median voter

Incumbents do possess resources like media, a brand name, and experience which might give them an advantage

But challengers have the advantage of a clean record and outsider status

Incumbents might win simply because they’re good at catering to their constituencies (Mayhew)

Candidates might choose to retire because they know they’re going to lose

A member of Congress introduces it

It is assigned to a committee

• Specialize in a certain legislative area and responsible for conducting research, holding hearings on the bill, and making changes to a bill

• Can bypass this step with a discharge petition

• Most bills die in committee

Chamber consideration

• House Rules Committee sets rules for debate and amendment voted on by a majority

• Senate operates on unanimous consent to rules for debate and amendment

  • To end the filibuster, the Senate requires 60 votes, so effectively 60 Senators have to agree to legislation in order for it to pass

Other chamber consideration

• Can completely change the bill from the other chamber

• Formal way to get chambers to agree is conference committee; otherwise, informal ping pong

President

• Can sign, veto, or ignore the bill

Party leaders - if they aren’t pushing something, it usually doesn’t receive action

Committee chairs

Majority of the House

41 Senators (to block a filibuster)

The president can veto a bill

Overall, easier to kill than pass a bill

A legislator’s vote is a choice between the status quo and a proposal

The trick is moving the status quo in your direction so you can eventually get what you want

Both chambers are subject to a pull in the direction of the median voter of the population because leaders and committee chairs are appointed by majority rule

Desire to be involved in bill writing is a big motivator in Congress because then Congresspeople can claim credit for their constituents

Median voter in Congress is typically the deciding vote; currently Joe Manchin

Party leaders elected by members of the party at the beginning of each session

• Assign bills to committees and set schedules for debate

• Most important - Senate majority leader and speaker of the house

• Therefore, they are gatekeepers in their own right

Despite expansion of Congressional staff with expansion of the federal gov’t, Congress has become increasingly frugal

Their party might not fully control gov’t

They have limited resources (time, information)

Many veto players

They feel that their legislator is “one of them” and acts in their best interest

The legislator brings home particularistic benefits (pork)

Each party nominates candidates through an “invisible primary” in which the public figures out who is prominent enough to be nominated

Caucus or primary - state determines which

• Primaries usually closed to voters registered with a certain party

• Early states often provide signals of who is doing well and it’s pretty clear who the nominee is once you get to later states

• Early endorsements, media attention, and spending or receiving money all indicate viability in primaries, although voters are typically indecisive

Whichever candidate wins the majority of the 538 electors wins the presidency

Most states allocate electors in a winner takes all system

• Consequence: minority party voters have less influence

• Consequence: discrepancy between the popular vote and the electoral college outcome

Head of state/commander in chief

• War powers: can initiate conflict as commander in chief even though only Congress can declare war

• Conduct foreign policy with advice and consent of Senate

Public face of the party

• Get most of the media coverage for the party, allowing them to use the bully pulpit - appeal directly to the public on issues in Congress to put pressure on legislators

• Can give a lot of minor addresses to interact with the public, giving them advantage over legislators

Psuedo-legislator

• State of the union address

• Large gap between actual presidential power and the policy demands placed on the president, since media largely focuses on the president

• Access to cabinet as well as unelected bureaucrats

Executive orders carry the weight of law even though not enacted by Congress

• Limited by the laws that have been passed and the Constitution

• Can be overturned by Congress

• Use increased over time to address gap between presidential authority and presidential expectations

Executive privilege - president can deny Congress info because it must be kept confidential

Power to pardon

Issue signing statements with legislation specifying how they will carry out a law; they can be very different from what Congress intended

Ability to veto

• Used as a bargaining chip to get legislation to pass - threaten to veto if legislators don’t make certain changes

• More common in divided gov’t

Can propose legislation

• Usually gets consideration but limited by gatekeepers of the legislative process

Created by Congress to achieve policy goals, with most reporting to president

Agents of Congress

Implement laws and policy goals

Settle disputes

Create public goods

Make and enforce rules

Consists of 15 executive departments, but the cabinet secretaries aren’t necessarily the heads of these departments

Supposed to enforce the laws, elaborate on the law based on what they think it means, and carry out the rulings of the courts

Many agencies required to have public hearings explaining when they make a new regulation, allowing Congressional oversight

• But some like the Federal Reserve completely isolated from public policy for conflict of interest reasons

There is always a gap between what Congress (principal) wants and what the bureaucracy (agent) does → agency loss

• The principal was unclear

• Agents have their own interests

• Example: ATF gun tracking program just ended up putting more guns on the streets for ppl to commit gun crimes

Fire alarm monitoring

• Whistleblower job protection laws

• Inspector general investigations

• Government Accountability Office

• Public hearings to allow for complaints

Subject to interest group monitoring

People increasingly get news online or on TV rather than in newspapers

Owners want to make money, which doesn’t necessarily yield journalism that is the best for democracy

Journalists are motivated by norms of integrity and professionalism → in conflict with politicians who want to be portrayed in the best light

Owners who want to cut costs are constantly in a battle with politicians who want to reach the public

Viewers probably motivated by entertainment

Biased towards drama or “big” story; avoid things like tax policy

Free, open, and unregulated media fosters free exchange of ideas, variety of opinions, and serves as a skeptical watchdog for gov’t

Provides people with information needed to hold politicians accountable

Helps members of gov’t learn about what other members are doing

Campaign coverage provides info about candidates

• Typically covers who is ahead/behind rather than policy perspectives

Day to day politics

Uncovering malfeasance

Politicians can engage in various strategies not to be muckraked, including:

• Providing exclusive scoops to journalists

• Issuing press releases and having press conferences

Soft news increasingly popular as TV market grew - story-oriented, “human interest,” sensationalized; present news as entertainment

• Decrease the cost of political information for the average citizen who might not otherwise watch the news

• People are smart enough to ignore irrelevant information in soft news

• Viewers of soft news tend to be more informed, since hard news doesn’t really focus on policy much

Misreporting is not the norm for major news outlets

But lack of objectivity may manifest itself when outlets are deciding what stories to cover

What the audience wants may shape the news media we actually get

States implement social change-related policies first and then the Supreme Court rules on them

Most cases heard in state trial courts, with federal and appellate courts receiving fewer

• Arbitrate violations of civil codes or criminal codes through trial or settlement

• Criminal law - plaintiff is the state or federal (if across state lines) gov’t

• Civil law - deals with rights and obligations of citizens to each other

Can be escalated to state appellate courts or courts of appeals

Can then be escalated to state supreme court

Appellate courts and state supreme courts can escalate cases to the Supreme Court

Supreme Court offers both judicial review and statutory interpretation, often a larger function

Judicial review is not in the Constitution, but with increased use following Marbury v Madison (1803) and became a fundamental purpose of the court

But Supreme Court nominated by the president/confirmed by the Senate, so may have similar views to these two bodies

Three theories of Constitutional interpretation, used to determine Constitutionality of laws in addition to existing precedent

• Plain meaning of the text theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law in terms of what the Constitution literally says

• Original intent theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law by inferring the original intent of those who wrote and ratified the constitution

  • Argument for is that it prevents the SC from legislating from the bench too much

• Living Constitution theory - determine the Constitutionality of a law in the context of American history as a whole, based on American experience at founding through today

Influences all other courts through selective review and setting precedent

• Stare decisis - obeying previous decisions of the court about what the law means

• Justices work together to grant writs of certiorari to lower courts

  • Typically granted when there is legal uncertainty on an issue or when the lower court is wrong

Opinions often have different divisions with varying patterns of dissent because:

• Legal realism - justices care about policy, so they care about the outcomes of cases; judicial decisions are not apolitical

  • Appeal to Constitution, jurisprudence, and precent because they want to convince US policymakers that they’re right under the law

Still, justices tend to fall into voting blocs with consistent coalitions

The median voter theorem also applies to the Supreme Court - probably Kavanaugh

Increase in polarized and decrease in unanimous decisions

Rationality = using instrumental (considering outcome) and optimal (considering your best preference) basis for making choices

Individual opinions are unstable, inaccurate, and contradictory

Non-attitudes: Zaller and Converse

• Peoples’ views are just a sample of the considerations they have encountered recently, and therefore surveys are inaccurate

• People experience demand effects on surveys/are motivated to provide the answer that the survey deliverer will like

But aggregate opinion is rationalizeable and relatively stable

• Condorcet jury theorem - if the chance that an individual has rational opinions is greater than 50%, then the chance that the whole population arrives at a rational viewpoint increases with more people

• Presidential approval rates; same sex marriage; abortion

Ideology - system of beliefs centered around issues in politics

• Liberal - gov’t should play role in redressing injustices and inequalities while addressing social problems

• Conservative - gov’t should play a minimal role in society and not force people to participate in social advancement; uphold tradition; law enforcement

Converse: belief systems and constraint

• Political elites tend to have views that are systematic, but this relationship is weaker for the general public (less constrained)

• The general public is not thinking about issues as systematically as elected officials

Being non-ideological is not the same as being non-rational

Can people hear and accept conflicting information (motivated reasoning)?

• People have a tendency to find arguments in favor of the conclusions they want to believe stronger

  • Reason to believe people don’t reason correctly

• Don’t want to believe facts that conflict with arguments they believe → example: partisan divergence in how serious coronavirus was

How do we know what the public thinks?

• Public opinion polling: take a small sample of the public and ask what they think

  • Random sampling almost guarantees an accurate result with a high enough sample size

  • Caveat - there is almost always a nonresponse bias in polls, so there usually isn’t complete accuracy

    • Mitigated by measuring bias and accounting for it

• Measurement error - the problem is who gets asked

• Response error - the problem is how the question is asked

• Latent opinion - people care about things meaningfully but don’t always have a particular idea or policy they prefer

The delegation of authority to agents raises the possibility of agency loss, and elections partially solve this problem

The states run elections and parties determine the methods/timing of primaries

Both the state and federal gov’ts control campaign finance

Voting is optional in the US, so the electorate that is voting is different every election

In each election, usually a nominating phase (partisan) and a general election

• Nomination phase typically consists of within-party plurality vote for the nominee

The candidate who wins any pairwise competition (Condorcet winner) might not win and in fact can easily lose

• Candidates winning doesn’t necessarily indicate a lot of popular support

Duverger’s law: plurality or majoritarian elections tend to cultivate two-party systems

• Parties that come in third often don’t have a shot at winning or any meaningful payoff

• Although third parties can influence existing coalitions: Free Soil

Strategic moderation is a product of the two-party system

• Candidates moderate their positions in order to win a majority of the vote (median voter theorem)

Use cues and heuristics as cognitive shortcuts to avoid the transaction costs of becoming informed

Retrospective voting - assess past performance of incumbents or majority party

• But difficult to assign credit for lg bodies like the House

• Example: economic voting (voting for a candidate that presided over a good economy)

• Also may take the form of assessing their personal experience and media coverage during the incumbent’s tenure

Partisan voting - vote based on party affiliation

• Most important shortcut voters use to make predictions

• Using party heuristics is the hardest for people in the middle and they have the least incentive to be informed, but they have to make the most important decision - swing voter’s curse

Use economy, public opinion, length of party control, and historical patterns to predict elections

Peoples’ decisions converge with the prediction closer to the election as they decide who to vote for

Lobbying - aimed to directly influence decisions made by public officials

Interest group - an organization with common interests that engages in politics of behalf of its members

Offer elected officials information about their constituencies

Engage in social lobbying

Grassroots lobbying conducted by constituents

Issue advocacy to influence public opinion of constituents

Litigation in the courts

Campaign finance to decrease funding burden

• FECA limits individual donations to campaigns, but not how much a campaign can spend

• 2020 election was the most expensive ever

Lobbyists gain revenue/success from connections to politicians still in office

Lobbyists who spend more money in politics tend to have lower taxes (correlation not causation)

Social lobbying is generally more influential than lobbying in an official setting (Grose et. al randomized experiment)

There are complaints about how much lobbying influences politics

• Lobbyists can make representative accountable to them instead of their constituents

• Direct attention away from national interest and those of ordinary citizens

Lobbying might be good for democracy

• Interest groups on both sides of the issue cancel each other out → pluralism

• Interest groups have incentives to develop best and strongest arguments

But interest group membership has an upper clas bias → exacerbated with increase in income inequality

Buckley v Valeo (1976): expenditure limits by campaigns struck down but contribution limits for individuals and PACs upheld

• PAC: organization that raises or spends money in politics on behalf of a corporation

• Established that gov’t has a valid interest in preventing the appearance of corruption

• Limiting campaign expenditures limits candidates’ right to free speech

Corporations can’t contribute directly to political campaigns, neither can foreign nationals or gov’t contractors

Independent expenditures - express advocacy for or against a candidate independently

• As long as they are not coordinating with the campaign itself

Citizens United v FEC (2010)

• Only quid pro quo corruption is a concern in campaign finance laws

• Independent expenditures don’t give rise to corruption

SpeechNow.org v FEC (2010) - contributions to groups that make independent expenditures cannot be limited

Before citizens united, Super PACs were the only way that corporations could donate to campaigns without reporting expenditures → still had to stay within the contribution limits

Money in politics is not everything

• Trump raised less money than all of the other Republican candidates but still won the nomination

Candidates raise lots of money when they expect a competitive race, so the candidate that raises less money doesn’t always lose

Money does make it easier to get attention, giving self-financing candidates an advantage

• Candidates who don’t fit the usual barriers to entry can circumvent party barriers to entry

Political parties solve collective action problems by giving anyone a vehicle to become active in politics

Goals of parties to gain control of the gov’t but also implement their preferred policies may force concessions

Third party influence can bring new issues/platforms to the attention of major parties

Changing geographic alliances can change party coalitions

Political parties began as a way to manage voting in the first Congress

Modern Democratic and Republican parties have roots with Jefferson and Hamilton, respectively but they have changed a lot since their founding

First party system - federalist vs. democratic republicans

• Key features were tensions over power in the federal government and the creation of national political parties

Second party system - Democrats vs. Nat’l Republicans

• Key features were the development of patronage politics, the beginning of party conventions, and the beginning of national political campaigns

• Centralized campaign organization, bargained over platform and candidates

Third and fourth party systems - the rise and fall of political party machines

• Key developments were civil service, Australian ballot, and primary elections

Fifth party system - Democrats vs. Republicans

• New Deal policies like Social Security, public works, subsidies and housing support divided Democrats and Republicans along lines reminiscent of the present

• Democrats want to fix social problems and Republicans think that the gov’t is imposing burdens on its citizens

• Southern Democrats split off during the 1950s

Arguably we have a new sixth party system today

• Characterized by TV ads and the primary system of presidential nominations

• Key issues are taxes, racial equity, healthcare, civil rights

• Closely contested elections, more than any other party system

• Increase in the number of independents, but they lean towards one party or another

Ideological polarization - people are moving away from the middle in their political beliefs and extreme views are becoming more common

Partisan polarization - parties are becoming more homogeneous and there is a smaller diversity of views within each party

Affective polarization - people have increasingly negative feelings towards people who are different from them and increasingly positive views towards people similar to them

The diversity of views within each party has decreased, with Democrats becoming more liberal and Republicans becoming more conservative

• Republicans: low taxes, regulation and welfare; anti-abortion; religion in public life; gun ownership

• Democrats: high taxes, environmental protection, legal abortions, welfare, secular public life, gov’t should correct racial inequalities

• Primaries less diverse than they were in the 1970s

Nominate scores based on roll call votes used to determine polarization over time

• People are rarely in the “wrong party”

• When someone switches parties, they change their views to be consistent with the party

• Both partisan and ideological polarization

Most Americans are in the middle as they have been for a long time, so not as much ideological polarization

However, Americans generally tend to be better at sorting themselves into the parties consistent with their ideological predispositions

It’s clearer what the parties stand for than it has been in the past, so partisan sorting is easier for citizens

As independents switched into parties that matched their ideologies, primaries elected more homogenous candidates, leading to partisan polarization in Congress

Still, voters are less ideologically constrained than politicians and will tend to be more of a mixture of liberal and conservative

Costly disruption of federal activities; ie. gov’t shutdown

Increased receptiveness to theories about the other party, increasing affective polarization

• Worse conduct by officeholders

Harder for Congressional chambers to pass legislation

• More power to the president/decrease in separation of powers

Civil rights: active protections by government

The balanced entry of slave and free states and the MO Compromise of 1820

• State-based representation in the Senate meant that the issue of slavery was off the policy table

The victory of the Free Soil party by claiming that slave labor was competing with unpaid white labor

• Showed an anti-slavery platform could be electorally successful

Dred Scott v Sanford - federal gov’t couldn’t regulate slavery in the territories

• Galvanized northern abolitionists and free soilers into the republican party

Election of 1860 - major Republican wins showed that slavery would no longer be tolerated and resulted in the civil war

The end of Reconstruction

• The protection of the 14th and 15th amendments were no longer federally enforced, resulting in apartheid and vigilante violence

Jim Crow laws and Plessy v Ferguson

• Segregation and disenfranchisement of Blacks under seperate but equal doctrine

• Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clause, understanding clause

Migration of Black Americans incentivized by poor conditions in the South

• Resulted in increased importance of Black Americans as a voting bloc and the civil rights issue became part of the democratic platform

Truman’s integration of the armed services and Fair Employment proposal

• Alienated Southern Democrats and they departed from the party

Successes in the courts in Brown v Board of Education

Civil disobediance and issue advocacy by the SCLC and others moved public opinion in favor of civil rights and emphasized police abuses

• Bloody Sunday

• Bus boycott

• Lunch counter sit-ins

Voting Rights Act of 1965 first meaningful enforcement of Black voting rights

Defending people from discrimination is not equality and we have a long way to go

Aggressive policing and criminal justice are top issues in current advocacy for Black civil rights

• Treyvon Martin and George Floyd

George Floyd protests were the largest mass protest movement in American history and notable for the proportion of non-Black participants and people across the political spectrum who participated or endorsed it

• Conservatives focused on issues with looting

Increased awareness of discrimination and support for quick fixes like banning police chokeholds

It’s hard to achieve change due to status quo bias even with morally outrageous policies

Creating new coalitions and vote incentives are key to achieving change

Necessary to adjust advocacy to demographic, economic, or technological wave

Still, change is achievable through:

• Constitutional amendments

• State and local attempts at similar policy

• Getting the bureaucracy on board

• Appealing to the courts

• Changing party coalitions

• Changing elite opinion or public opinion

When demand for action is great enough, the difficulties of status quo bias can be overcome

It involves redistribution efforts like Social Security, which consistently divide the parties and drive polarization

Different values  - left tends to value fairness and equality while right prioritizes stability and property rights

Liberals support addressing inequality because:

• Gov’t redistribution is good for economic growth

• The government can promote meritocracy

• So greater equality is better for almost everyone

Conservatives are against addressing inequality because:

• Redistribution hurts economic growth

• Low taxes and small gov’t can increase growth by letting the market work

• So markets are good for almost everyone

People understimate wealth inequality and would like it to be less

Conservatives argue that Americans are still among the richest people in the world, decreasing poverty is generally associated with richer countries, and income is equal enough

Most of the wealth growth over the past few decades has accrued to the top 1%

Multiple possible sources: international trade, technological changes, failure of gov’t policy

Income mobility is middling in the US

Richer people tend to be more Republican and less wealthy people tend to be more Democratic, but only up to incomes of about 50,000

US is less redistributive in spending but more redistributive in terms of tax policy

Public opinion just doesn’t want to see inequality addressed

• Tyranny of the majority of the poor expressed in Federalist 10 and current opinion polls indicate that the ideals of self-determination are deeply rooted in American history

Politicians cater to wealthy constituents - Hacker and Peirson

• Majority of people say the rich pay less tax than they should

• Low support for tax cuts if there are other options

• Politicians can manage to pass policies that are directly at odds with majority views

Status quo bias makes it too hard

• There’s not enough of a consensus among and between parties that addressing inequality is a serious concern