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A Bill's Toxic Relationship with Political Polarlization

In today’s world, it is not uncommon for someone to believe that nothing ever gets done in Congress. A main reason for this is because arguably, no substantial legislation has been passed since the Affordable Care Act in 2010. People argue about who is to blame for the lack of legislation being passed in today’s Congress. Democrats want to blame the Republicans and the Republicans want to blame the Democrats. However, Congress was not always like this. For example, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first became president, there was a large amount of legislation passed within his first one hundred days. The purpose of this blog post is to examine the relationship between the amount of legislation passed and the level of polarization in Congress. 
To begin, I believe it is important to establish what Political Polarization is. According to AJS, polarization is “the degree of ideological division between parties”. (AJS, 229) Essentially, this means that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are agreeing on topics and ideas less than previously. In the paper, “Parsing Party Polarization in Congress”, the authors argue that one of the main reasons for the increase of party polarization is because of the increase in power that party leaders have (Moskowitz, et al.).
Interestingly, as this graph shows (Moskowitz, et al.), there has been a rise in polarization within Congress over the last few decades. As previously stated, Congress was not always this polarized. According to AJS, “from about the mid-1930s to the late 1960s, we see that the distance between the parties is not nearly as wide [as today].” (AJS, 230) 
The next topic to look at is the lack of legislation passed by Congress. In AJS, the authors discuss the impact of insecure majorities in Congress. This is the idea that politicians today are more afraid of losing their seats than they were in years past. According to AJS, lawmakers today dig more deeply into their ideological trenches than they have at any point in modern history….failure to stand by ideological principles raises the prospect that lawmakers may face the wrath of their partisan base back home.” (AJS, 245) This is the point where the toxic relationship between Political Polarization and the lack of legislation being passed begins to show. As previously stated, lawmakers are more hesitant to pass any controversial legislation because of fear of party loyalty. Thus, lawmakers are staying more true to their party than ever before, resulting in less legislation being passed. The main reason why Political Polarization is resulting in less legislation being passed is because in order for these controversial legislation to be passed, the House and the Senate most likely has to be in the same party’s control. The other option is for legislation to become bipartisan. According to the Washington Post, the main problem with this is “whenever a bill touches on any of the differences in priorities or values that distinguish Democrats from Republicans, there will be little or no realistic chance of agreement.” (Washington Post)
In conclusion, Political Polarization is directly impacting the lack of legislation being passed by Congress. Unless parties become less polarized, legislation will continue to not be passed.
Adler, E Scott, et al. The United States Congress. W. W. Norton & Company , 2019.

Moskowitz, Daniel J, et al. Parsing Party Polarization in Congress. 9 July 2019, scholar.harvard.edu/files/rogowski/files/npat-paper-july2019.pdf.


Waldman, Paul. “Opinion | Don't Blame 'Washington' for Nothing Getting Done in Washington.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 May 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/27/dont-blame-washington-nothing-getting-done-washington/.

Comments

  1. Eddy BaisleyOctober 21, 2019 at 6:14 PM

    I appreciate your post on the polarization of parties in congress and how that is effecting policy making. I think you did a good job explaining why and how polarization has had an effect on policy making in recent history. I to wrote a similar post about how polarization plays a role in policy making. However, I took a more firm stance on the issue which targeted our 2 party system as the cause of such polarization. Furthermore, I agreed that polarization is terrible for policy making. We discussed in class about how members of Congress are now having to resort to unconventional ways of deal making because of how the polarization of the parties is basically creating an atmosphere where democrats and republicans are to scared of the political ramifications that come with working with one another. I would be curious to explore how a system with more than 2 major parties would work in the United States and if third parties would actually have a positive effect on the problem of polarization.

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  2. Kaylin BrooksOctober 22, 2019 at 3:45 PM

    Thanks for explaining the harms of polarization on lawmaking! I agree that extreme polarization is making it hard for legislators to pass laws and that they may be nervous about disagreeing with their party. However, this definitely does lead to the stereotype of the "do-nothing Congress." The other frustrating issue is when legislative decisions aren't decided on, but rather they just "kick the can down the road." This is definitely part of the issue with polarization and lack of lawmaking as well. Thanks again for sharing your opinion!

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