Stealth Democracy

[jeffd]

Stealth Democracy (http://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Democracy-Americans-Beliefs-Government/dp/0521009863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265742892&sr=8-1) is the central concept of a book I'm reading. It's by a couple of political scientists, and offers up a somewhat counter-intuitive picture of what Americans want out of their political system. It's also quite a timely read, IMO - given how every day we're bombarded with stories about polling, etc.

Preface: I've only read the introductory chapter. I'll (hopefully) update this thread as I read more.

Their general thesis is simple: Americans hate the political process. They don't want to see it happen. They do not want transparency (except when they do), they do not really want accountability (except when they do). They just want it to work.

The introductory chapter expands upon this thesis, and brings up a few points (that will be explored in more detail later). I'm going to use the term "people" here in the same sense that the book does - obviously it doesn't mean everyone, just a very large portion of the general population.

- People have a very low level of policy awareness. Likewise, they have very vague policy preferences.
- On the other hand, people have fairly strong process preferences. They don't care about policy, but they care about how the policy gets enacted.
- People tend to discount the existence of ideological disagreement. They assume that most of us agree on almost everything. Interestingly you can see that in action here (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2081229&postcount=1971), in an exchange I had with Andy. Interestingly, individuals tend to assume that what policy preferences they do have are the ones that we'd all have in common. Naturally this is absolutely untrue.
- Because of the previous points, people assume that when politicians disagree it's out of narrow self interest. e.g. politicans aren't disagreeing in good faith based on ideology or policy preferences, they're disagreeing because they want to benefit personally or something. There is a fundamental disconnect between the reality political disagreements and how people perceive them.
- Contrary to what's portrayed by political elites, people don't want to be more involved in politics. They'd actually like to be less involved.
- Our media and opinion elites are totally fucking clueless about this reality.

Hilariously, if you're reading this post you're almost certainly exempt from the above statements to some degree. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I'd say that posting about politics on the internet probably puts you in at least the 95th percentile in terms of political awareness and involvement.

The third point I mention there is particularly relevant today. Taking the example of healthcare reform - public polling today on healthcare reform indicates it's quite upopular. Polling from, say, June of last year had it as quite popular. Today's bill substantially represents the bill that was under consideration last June, with some changes around the margins (the most significant being the removal of the public option). The substance hasn't changed much, but the opinion swing has been huge. Why? The authors of Stealth Democracy would explain (and I'd agree) it's because people hate the process.

As a corollary to this - if you poll the individual pieces of the healthcare reform bill today, they're almost universally quite popular. This goes to the first point I make above - that people in this country basically have no meaningful policy awareness.

Anyway, the conclusion is that, counterintuitively, Americans want a less transparent political system. They don't want to see the nasty disagreements and compromises that necessarily happen to resolve different ideological and policy preferences into a piece of legislation. Whether a lesser level of transparency is desirable is, of course, a separate matter (and one the book purports to address in its later chapters).

Like I said I'll post more as I read the book!

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Sounds very interesting, and meshes anecdotally with my experience with politics and people's awareness of it.

[Houngan]

Stealth Democracy (http://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Democracy-Americans-Beliefs-Government/dp/0521009863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265742892&sr=8-1)

Their general thesis is simple: Americans hate the political process. They don't want to see it happen. They do not want transparency (except when they do), they do not really want accountability (except when they do). They just want it to work.



I'll clarify that by flipping it around:


They just want it to work.
They do not want transparency (except when it doesn't), they do not really want accountability (except when it doesn't).

Seems more reasonable that way. In fact it's a flat out tautology since a working government already has accountability and transparency. Like children playing, we don't want to have to pay attention because if we do, something has gone wrong.

H.

[jeffd]

Houngan: Yeah, that works. The real trick is figuring out what "works" means. For most people, the government does not, by definition, work because it's based on disagreement and people are very uncomfortable with disagreement.

[Houngan]

Houngan: Yeah, that works. The real trick is figuring out what "works" means. For most people, the government does not, by definition, work because it's based on disagreement and people are very uncomfortable with disagreement.

Good point. Perhaps more details about how the day-to-day stuff runs, combined with less volatility in funding and leadership? I dunno.

H.

[jeffd]

Houngan: something I forgot to mention is that, according to the book, people are fundamentally uncomfortable with the concept of disagreement.

For example:
- people have loose policy preferences. They really don't have an opinion one way or another with regards to, say, three strikes laws.
- people have somewhat stronger policy goals. For example, they do want lower crime.
- people assume that everyone shares the same policy goals...
- ... which makes them uncomfortable with disagreement. How can we possibly disagree on the desirability of lowered crime?
- People have very strong process preferences (How things should work).

As a result, legitimate policy debate about three-strikes laws (which people don't understand in the first place) is interpreted as disagreement about the policy goal (lower crime). This causes people to conclude that the disagreement is based on the involved parties (legislators, say) looking out for their own narrow interests (financial, electoral, etc). In other words, they filter this disagreement through a process preference that's informed by their assumption that everyone has the same policy goals and deviation is a sign of the process going bad. Of course that's totally fucking crazy but hey, nobody said people are particularly rational politically.

[Houngan]

Houngan: something I forgot to mention is that, according to the book, people are fundamentally uncomfortable with the concept of disagreement.

For example:
- people have loose policy preferences. They really don't have an opinion one way or another with regards to, say, three strikes laws.
- people have somewhat stronger policy goals. For example, they do want lower crime.
- people assume that everyone shares the same policy goals...
- ... which makes them uncomfortable with disagreement. How can we possibly disagree on the desirability of lowered crime?
- People have very strong process preferences (How things should work).

As a result, legitimate policy debate about three-strikes laws (which people don't understand in the first place) is interpreted as disagreement about the policy goal (lower crime). This causes people to conclude that the disagreement is based on the involved parties (legislators, say) looking out for their own narrow interests (financial, electoral, etc). In other words, they filter this disagreement through a process preference that's informed by their assumption that everyone has the same policy goals and deviation is a sign of the process going bad. Of course that's totally fucking crazy but hey, nobody said people are particularly rational politically.

Ah, thanks, that clears it up and I agree completely that people are WOEFULLY apt to jump across the logical divide to debate=complete disagreement.

H.

[jeffd]

OK - the first chapter is mainly dedicated to showing that policy preferences are inadequate for explaining voter behavior. In broad strokes, the major points made are:

- There's not much evidence that specific policies motivate voter decisions. e.g. voters don't vote for a candidate because that candidate's policies best match the voter's policy preferences. There are lots of reasons for this; such a model of voter behavior requires voters to both have specific policy preferences and to be aware of the specific policy agenda of the candidates.
- There's not much evidence that policy outcomes influence voter behavior either. A commonly held belief is that macroeconomic conditions influence voter behavior; while this seems to be somewhat true; the level of influence is rather weak.
- Voters claim that "there is no difference" between the two major parties. Nonetheless, when asked in surveys to identify the position of the two parties on a variety of issues, voters correctly place Democrats on the liberal side of the spectrum, and Republicans on the right, with space between the two. In other words, from a policy perspective - the parties are (correctly) percieved as being different.
- Voters also claim that the government is out of touch with the public. Despite this, people perceive a great deal of overlap between their own policy preferences and the policies over the government.

Given these observations, it's impossible to construct a model whereby policy preferences are central to people's political behavior. They must care about something more - in the next chapter, the authors argue that something is process.

[jeffd]

Ah, thanks, that clears it up and I agree completely that people are WOEFULLY apt to jump across the logical divide to debate=complete disagreement.

H.

Yeah. I'd caution that probably most of this doesn't apply to folks posting to P&R; by definition we're all very far outside the mainstream as far as political awareness / behavior goes.

[Houngan]

Yeah. I'd caution that probably most of this doesn't apply to folks posting to P&R; by definition we're all very far outside the mainstream as far as political awareness / behavior goes.

Perhaps, but I'll ask you to watch the next "Ahmedhinejad denies the holocaust" thread. He's long been the victim of exactly this rhetorical crime. Now, I'm not saying he isn't an intolerant fuckhead who very well might be evil, but whenever somebody reports "Ahmadinejad denies holocaust!" I read the transcript and he is saying something very, very different.

Specifically, whenever asked about the holocaust, he always deflects and says "I don't care about the holocaust, Iran had nothing to do with it. I'm asking why it somehow gave you the right to install Israel and oppress the Palestinians." The whole denial thing comes from him asking why the discussion of the holocaust in any critical light is verboten in the West. By proxy, he suggests that same power that we have instilled in the event to prevent its questioning is related to the power that allows us to continue to support the state of Israel. (Which, incidentally, he has never called for the destruction thereof, just the dissolution of the political/geopolitical state.)

ENORMOUS CAVEAT FOR THE FOLKS ABOUT WHOM WE ARE SPEAKING; I AM NOT DEFENDING THIS ASSHOLE, JUST TELLING YOU WHAT HONEST TRANSLATIONS OF HIS WORDS REALLY SAY. DEAL WITH IT, HE'S SMARTER THAN FOX NEWS.

h.

[jeffd]

Chapter two purports to demonstrate the existence of process awareness and sensitivity in the American people. It also makes the claim that process is fundamentally different than policy (e.g. you cannot view process preferences as just another type of policy preference).

The authors start by demonstrating that an awareness of process exists. To do this, they first show examples of focus group comments, talking about things like:
- Lobbyists having too much influence
- Elected officials are only in it for themselves
- Campaign finance
- Negative ads
- Broken promises

These process claims are often vague. e.g. people will make claims about "special interests" without really being clear about what special interests they're complaining about.

The authors then posit that it's capable of placing people in a "process space," similiar to a political space. To do so, they propose simple a two-dimensional space that defines government's responsiveness to popular opinion. They define the left side, at 1, as elected officials always doing what the people want - e.g. a delegate model. On the right side, they propose a model whereby elected officials always use their own judgement, regardless of popular opinion (a trustee model).

The authors then surveyed people to place them into this model. Interesting things happened:
- People pretty much fall into the midpoint of the model (4.01 median, which is dead center).
- People place *both* parties to the right of the median on this scale (Democrats at 4.94, Republicans at 4.85)
- People place the government way to the right on this scale; 55% of responders place the government at a 5 or a 6. Only 5% put it at a 1 or a 2.

In other words, people do not exhibit a preference for lots of direct influence over government. They do, however, consistently perceive *both* parties as being outside their preference for political process, and unlike in policy space (where the parties are to the left and right of the people), in process space *both* parties are to the right.

The authors then attempt to determine whether or not process space preferences at all correlate with policy space preferences (e.g. are liberals more likely to prefer direct democracy, or stronger institutions?). They determine that there is a very weak correlation; policy conservatives prefer the trustee model, policy liberals prefer the delegate model.

The contrast with policy space (in which the parties are perceived as being on either side of the people, and the key to electoral success is supposed to be moving to the center), in process space *both* parties exist on the right and *neither* party seems inclined to move. The authors propose a few reasons for this difference in behavior:
- The parties may not think that process preferences are relevant, or even be aware of their existence. This doesn't seem convincing.
- The parties are philosophically committed to the trustee model. This is not convincing; if there was electoral gains to be made by moving toward the delegate model one of the parties would have done it.
- The parties cannot move in process space because doing so is very difficult, for a variety of reasons (e.g. most of our process is actually determined by the Constitution). The authors use term limits as an example. The authors find this to be a more convincing reason.
- The parties believe that attempts to move in process space would not be seen as credible, so they just don't bother. The authors find this to be the most likely reason.

Finally, the authors conclude that the typical tools used to understand policy space do not apply to process space. Process preferences are fundamentally different.

So - in conclusion, Americans show a pretty much middle of the road attitude between populism (in which government is very responsive to the people's preferences) and strong, independent political institutions. That being said, they perceive both parties and especially the government as being far less responsive than they would like.

The third chapter proposes to use process space to help understand features of American politics. I'll post about it when I read it.

[Cubit]

Very interesting stuff, Jeff. Do the authors examine these attitudes through time any, or is it just present day?

[jeffd]

Their survey data is mostly from the late 90s and early 2ks. Nobody bothered surveying this stuff before then, apparently.