Most of us have grown up in the system described above, hear regular refer- ences to it in the media, and value many of its positive features. But because we see it as “normal,” we tend to underestimate how different from other countries this system is. Some of its most distinctive features include the role of political parties, the low rate of voter participation, our tendency toward divided government, the pattern of critical elections and the cycles of Amer- ican social reform, and finally, the phenomenon of “American exceptional- ism,” a term that political scientists have coined to explain these distinctions.
A review of these features offers a guide to understanding, and changing, the politics of social welfare.
U.S. Political Parties
Republican, Democrat, Independent, or a member of one of the smaller third parties (Greens, Libertarian, Right-to-Life)? As children, we quickly discover our parents’ party affiliation, an affiliation that often influences our own po- litical choices. At the same time, we rarely learn one key piece of information:
our two-party system is actually quite unusual. By comparison with other countries, for example, just a very small number of Americans have any real connection to the parties between elections, most do not pay dues to any party, and few are card-carrying members. With the chairperson and staff of the party’s national and state committees handling the vast majority of on- going political work, our parties are weak and insubstantial, a loose collection of state and local interests. As a result, our election campaigns tend to be candidate- rather than party-centered.
Why do we have such a system? Mostly, it’s due to our electoral rules. The U.S. political system operates on a winner-take-all model, with single-member districts and restrictions on minor parties—for example, a large number of signatures is required to get a party on the ballot, and few states allow cross- endorsements (voting for a major party candidate on a minor party’s line).
Nor do we have proportional representation giving legislative power to every party above a threshold, say 5 or 10 percent of the votes cast. In this system, where simple majorities have an exaggerated effect (51 percent in every con- gressional district gives the victorious party 100—not 51—percent of Con- gress), parties appeal to the center, and voters for any minor party risk squan- dering their vote and electing the politician whose opinions most diverge from their own.42
Just look, for example, at the electoral dilemma facing those who believe in much greater social welfare spending, with sharply increased benefits and comprehensive national programs for day care, health care, and full employ- ment—that is, something approaching what many European countries have.
This model assumes “centralized and bureaucratized states with parliamentary parties dedicated to pursuing policy programs in the name of entire classes or other broad, nation-spanning collectivities.”43 We do not have these insti- tutions. Instead, a relatively weak labor movement and electoral rules leave voters with little choice. They confront a system in which politicians make symbolic appeals or offer highly individualized benefits, but no major party advocates a redistributional welfare state or one that seriously pursues full employment. Although the two parties do occasionally expand social spend- ing by building electoral coalitions around patronage and appeals to specific ethnic and racial groups, voters committed to more generous social policies either resign themselves to a “lesser evil” or “waste” their ballots on a minor party.44
The functioning of our political parties traces its roots to deep within the U.S. system. As social policy analysts Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward put it,
The animus of the Founders toward parties of course reflected their fear of a populace that could be mobilized by parties. There was reason to be fearful. The protection once provided to the propertied by the armies of the British Crown was gone at a time when radical democratic cur- rents stirred by the revolutionary war were strong, among a still-armed population. If it was unwise to simply ignore democratic aspirations, they could nevertheless be blunted and diffused by a system of ‘checks and balances’ which effectively divided authority for key policies be- tween the Congress, the presidency, and the courts, and also made these decision-making centers at least partially independent of each other.
These arrangements officially restricted party influence over government, pro- moted shifting and flexible alliances, and made it harder to turn election victories into policy. They not only fractured the authority of the central government, but created serious obstacles to coherent party organization.45
Nineteenth-century American politics added its own twist to this legacy.
During this period, the U.S. government was primarily a state of “courts and parties,” meaning that, unlike today, it was a government without much of a bureaucratic structure. This structure did not begin to come into existence until the late nineteenth century and in fact did not reach its maturity until the New Deal.46 The states, however, had granted voting rights to virtually all white men by the 1830s. But because mass voting preceded the establish- ment of a competent bureaucracy, there was little to be obtained from the state. Instead, if you wanted something from your government, you got it as patronage from your political party. From ward clerk to county commissioner, your party then relied on this patronage to nurture its organizational needs.
This development had significant implications. Because manhood suffrage and competing patronage parties existed at the very start of capitalist indus- trialization, workers learned to separate their politics into two parts. In one part, at their place of employment, they fought for better wages and working conditions; in another, at home, they functioned politically as citizens in ethnically defined communities. The workplace and the community: without a working-class politics that merged these two parts, American trade unions did not establish a stable relationship to working-class parties, as was done in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.47
Today, political scientists divide on the issue of whether political parties are experiencing a period of decline or a period of resurgence. The argument that we have entered a period of decline usually cites the role of direct pri- maries, which, once they were established in the early 1970s, deprived party leaders of patronage and power. But there are surely other factors. Civil ser- vice reform means that the president controls fewer than four thousand ap- pointments. Moreover, since the communication revolution enabled candi- dates to raise money without relying on parties, election campaigns can be
conducted with fewer campaign workers. The result is that despite increases in fund-raising and campaign assistance, there has been a decline in party identification, confidence, popular regard, and willingness to vote a party ticket.48
But the picture is not completely bleak, and there is some evidence of party resurgence. As the civil rights movement pushed the suburbs to become Republican, the Democrats became a smaller, urban party: just 27 percent of all Americans now live in central cities with a population in excess of fifty thousand people.49 This neat demographic division—Republican suburbs, Democratic cities—increased the homogeneity of the political parties and raised the confidence of office seekers that they could cede authority to party leaders without hurting their own electoral prospects. And if the party leaders can speak for everyone, perhaps the parties will return as brand names, a new, if not entirely successful method of political marketing.50
Today, the modern Democratic and Republican Parties agree on many fundamentals, including the role of the private sector, not too much govern- ment, and the war on terrorism. Although they do fight vigorously about some social and environmental issues, it would be wrong to mistake the ide- ological distance between them. Certainly, on economic matters over the past twenty-five years, the differences between the parties have diminished. Both generally accept the dominance of a market economy and the inevitability of globalization. They believe in fiscal austerity and restraints on social wel- fare. To be sure, the scandals about accounting and corporate fraud may yet break this apparent unanimity. But as Paul Begala, one of President Clinton’s political aides, said while representing “the left” on the news programCross- fire,“You know, Bill Clinton saved the Democratic Party, with Al Gore, by pulling us back to the center, by disagreeing with the liberals on welfare reform and on crime and on trade. . . . If George Bush or someone would do that for the Republican Party, we would actually have a more viable and vibrant two-party system.”51This statement reflects the conventional political wisdom of recent years. It reminds us that although the conflict between the parties sometimes gets intense, their positions within a broader spectrum are really quite close, so much so that we can reasonably say that the debates are all taking place in the same political family.
Voting
Poor voter turnout reflects a political disengagement that constitutes a second distinctive feature of the U.S. political system. Just 51 percent of the elec- torate voted in the 2000 presidential elections, up from 49 percent in 1996, when, for the first time since 1924, fewer than half the eligible voters par- ticipated in a presidential election. By international standards, this figure is quite low. Among other developed nations, voter participation in the most recent parliamentary elections runs from 60 percent in Japan and 61 percent in Canada, to 81 percent in Italy and 82 percent in Germany. In the United States, it has been a long, gradual decline since 72 percent of all eligible
Voter turnout by country, all elections since 1945. On a list of 172 countries, the United States lags behind in average voter participation for all elections (both parliamentary and presidential) since 1945.
voters participated in the 1960 presidential campaign that elected John F.
Kennedy.52
Why have Americans come to hate politics? Journalist E. J. Dionne at- tributes Americans’ disinterest in politics to a series of false ideological choices. Americans, he says, want equality for womenanda traditional family, less government interference in profoundly personal issues like abortionand, at same time, fewer women having abortions. Dionne claims that there is room for compromise in the middle—a provocative, not a soft compromise, one that can reengage us as citizens and help to hold the society together.53 Is Dionne on to something? Admittedly, it is often true that neither the policy nor the candidates offer Americans very many attractive choices. But there are still serious questions about this analysis. Like Begala, Dionne imag- ines a “magical midpoint” on the political spectrum that would make every- one happy. Have American politicians just been insufficiently resourceful in reaching this midpoint? Or is the very notion of this kind of middle already reflected in the convergence of our two major parties and one cause of what alienates people from politics? After all, in a 1998 Gallup poll, Americans agreed by a 70–25 margin that the government “is run by a few big interests.”
It is unlikely that compromises coming from this midpoint would truly satisfy them.54
This debate about electoral participation in the United States actually has a very long history. Although just 11 percent of all eligible voters, or one of every forty Americans, voted in the first presidential election, all states except Virginia and North Carolina had dropped property and religious requirements by 1829. Yet, though the United States was the first among the major de- mocracies to democratize the electorate, the exclusion of blacks in the South meant that it was also the last. As the first to enfranchise all white males
and the last to enfranchise everybody, the U.S. federal system from 1860 to 1960 had a mass two-party democracy in the East, North, and West, and Democratic racial oligarchy in the South.55
Nevertheless, some political scientists seek to reassure us about our dis- engagement. They maintain that just as a high turnout could indicate tension or conflict, low turnout can mean apathy or contentment. In its most elitist form, this argument even contains the suggestion that the “quality” of the electorate deteriorates as it expands. Too much participation by poor people is bad for this particular conception of democracy.
The decline in voter participation is also open to another interpretation.
In this interpretation, public officials may talk about the importance of ex- panding the electorate, but no one makes any significant effort because it is not in their interest to do so. Until the 1960s, both the Democratic and Republican Party “machines” had a stake in mobilizing their members—the Democrats in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest, and the Republicans in the wealthier and more affluent suburbs. But now different sectors of the American upper-middle classes dominate the parties. The Republican base comes from business and professionals in the private sector, the Democrats from the upper-middle classes in sectors that are public and not-for-profit.
Because each group has access to a variety of other political resources, such as money, the news media, universities, and interest groups, neither has much interest in a wider mobilization. From their perspective, poor people simply represent too great a risk: they might help a party win an election, but then they would make demands. Unwilling to meet these demands, both parties usually prefer a smaller and more affluent electorate.56They have gotten their wish, too. In the 2000 presidential election, about 75 percent of those earning more than $75,000 voted, compared to just 38 percent of those earning less than $10,000.57
Still, in recent years, two attempts have been made to reform the electoral system. The first was the so-called Motor Voter bill (1993), designed to boost participation by enabling people to register when they get a driver’s license.
Although the bill did make it easier to vote, one study found that 35 percent of nonvoters, but just 16 percent of voters, had moved in the prior two years.58 Apparently, scarce locations and a long lead time continue to create obstacles.
Even more critically, although registration makes it possible to vote, poor people are more likely to believe that campaigns do not focus on their issues.
On election day, this belief tends to keep them at home.
The 2002 campaign finance law was the second attempt to reform the electoral system. Since the 1970s Watergate scandal, campaign finance law had always distinguished between “hard” and “soft” money. Hard money went directly to candidates; contributors sent soft money to the national and local parties. As a result, in 2000 alone, the national parties received $498 million in unregulated contributions. The new law prohibits these soft money con- tributions to the national parties. In exchange, however, it not only doubles from $1,000 to $2,000 the contribution that donors can make to individual candidates, but also allows contributors to donate $10,000 to each of the fifty
state party committees. Although campaign finance reformers accepted this bill because they needed a win after ten years of congressional defeats, suc- cessful experiments with public financing in Maine and Arizona have already cast doubt on their basic premise that privately financed campaign systems can actually regulate the flow of big money. In the absence of such financing, the 2002 bill did little to remove the financial cloud that hangs over U.S.
politics.59 Divided Government
A third distinctive characteristic of U.S. politics is the frequency with which we elect divided governments, with a president from one party and either or both houses of Congress from the other. Much of this chapter has emphasized the factors that lead to this arrangement, including federalism, the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, and the absence of disciplined national parties.60 Yet we still have not resolved the question of whether divided government plays a positive or a negative role.
Essentially, the argument in favor of divided government is that it is carry- ing out the wishes of the Constitution’s drafters. Concerned about tyranny and the abuse of power, they designed a structure of many parts, one that made it difficult to achieve an absolute majority. If the electorate splits its vote, electing a president and a Congress from opposing parties, it does so to frustrate the government and prevent it from acting too rashly. By impeding the formation of an absolute majority, this structure slows down the pace of social change, just as the founders intended.
Critics, however, say that divided governments occur much too frequently, and that as a consequence, the Constitution, a document written for an eighteenth-century society, fosters a political paralysis that serves us poorly in the twenty-first century. To be sure, it is important to guard against the abuse of absolute power. In the contemporary United States, however, the consequences of these protections are ever more disabling. Not only do we have checks and balances and separation of powers, but we also suffer from a decentralized and fragmented bureaucracy. From employment programs to health care, from housing to income security, this bureaucracy has difficulty managing many of the programs of the modern welfare state. For these critics, then, our ancient fear of the government’s doing too much has so hamstrung the government that it cannot effectively get much done.61 Perhaps that is why, when too much tension accumulates from this paralysis, another dis- tinctive U.S. political phenomenon—critical elections—have consistently broken the logjam.
Critical Elections and the Cycles of American Politics
By definition, a critical election usually involves a significant shift or realign- ment of interests. There are three criteria for a critical election: (1) by re- aligning the majority and minority groupings within the parties, the election
produces a new majority; (2) that realignment is sharp and lasts for a long time; (3) the political majority is decisive enough to create a new ruling coalition.62
Just four elections in U.S. history have met these standards. The first was in 1860, when the North elected Lincoln, the first successful Republican candidate, and brought about the Civil War. The second occurred in 1896, when Eastern Republican business interests beat back populist attacks on monopolies and the railroads, leading to a dominance that lasted for more than three decades. Franklin Roosevelt’s victory in 1932 was the third, be- cause it brought poor and working people into the Democratic Party and cemented a New Deal coalition that persisted until 1968. That is when the last, though probably somewhat more ambiguous realignment occurred. Rich- ard Nixon, running against the civil rights reforms of the Great Society, tied blue-collar workers to the Republican Party. Although the opposing party remained in control of one house of Congress, no Democratic presidential candidate would gain a majority of white men’s votes, and for the rest of the century, just two Democratic presidents, Carter and Clinton, would be elected. The high point of this realignment was the election of Ronald Rea- gan in 1980, which ushered in more than two decades of conservative politics.
Brown University political scientist James Morone has developed a theory about the cycle of social reform that complements this history of critical elections. His theory posits the existence of a “democratic wish,” the mythic belief that Americans do not really need a government to govern themselves.
In this myth, all government, even the governing of a complex technological society, should actually resemble a small New England town meeting. Because we believe in this vision, we have never adequately equipped the federal government with the authority to do its job. Hampered by states’ rights, separation of powers, and the principle of checks and balances, our “big gov- ernment” is not only smaller than most other similar nations, it is also much more fragmented and ineffective.63
Morone describes the accumulated tensions that constitute the reform cy- cle as played out in four stages. Political stalemate characterizes the first stage.
Although ideology, institutions, and interests all block change in this stage, the pressure for reform gradually mounts. This pressure has many possible sources. It could come from a changing economy, demographic shifts as the population moves westward, or the rise of a new elite. In addition, as we shall see in chapter 6 on social movements, the poor and disenfranchised often demand inclusion and reform. The stalemate is broken when propo- nents of change invoke the democratic wish. Our problems, they say, would disappear if only we would listen to “the people.”
The second stage occurs when this invocation provokes a wide response.
Americans then follow the populist call, attack the status quo, and demand empowerment, as labor did in the 1930s and African Americans did in the 1960s. When they finally succeed in the third stage, they raise the profile of previously oppressed groups and establish new institutions to address their problems. Amid the decentralization of our political structure, however, these