Having lived in the one-party state of California for a few years, I can attest to the pathology it produces: outrageous policies with no attempt at justification, colossal yet selective generosity with public funds with no attempt at fiduciary controls or even accountability, etc. From which I take a view of good "local" politics such as: it's competition and the threat of political expulsion that keeps parties, if not honest, at least "fit" and alert - a sort of political Darwinism.
But how about national politics? Clearly, an appealing aspect of the Trump presidency is a visible drive to "get big things done, proprieties be damned" (whether they're the right things depends on your politics, and whether it "got big things done", too, will await the verdict of history).
But if we accept the above, how would we rationalize that what's preferable at the state level (competition) is not the same at the Federal level?
I'm not sure how to square it, to be honest. This post is definitely one where the question in the title remains a question for me, it's not an excuse to say a hot take or something. If you have thoughts, I welcome them.
The rough pattern that competitive state governments seem to be better functioning feels right to me, though I'm also not sure how we'd measure that kind of gut feeling.
It's also possible that Skowronek is wrong about the preconditions for structural reform. Or that he's right that Republican consolidation was a contributing factor in the 1900s, but either it isn't today or it wasn't the primary factor back then.
Thinking out loud: some aspects of our politics have shifted that mute the sharpening effects of competition. We have two relatively decentralized parties that run direct primaries without strong elite actors to pick candidates. They're basically two sums of 100 million vectors of partisan primary voters (mediated by interest groups and political consultants) that we then choose between, rather than two centralized parties that compete.
The result: it's not like the era of hyper competitive presidential elections has led to Democrats and Republicans nominating their strongest ever candidates, at least since 2016. Clinton, Biden, Trump, Harris, none of these are rockstars from a purely electoral standpoint. Trump obviously has his incredible populist charisma, which I'm not denying, but he's largely an electoral under performer who's benefited from (1) dropping unpopular Republican positions on abortion and Social Security/Medicaid cuts and (2) Democrats nominating even worse candidates.
To stop rambling and try to land a point, after reading a book about the formation of interest group politics (The People's Lobby by Elisabeth Clemens, which I am writing about and processing now), I think that the intensity of partisan identification is itself something that stands in the way of reform. Part of the reason that reforms could go through in the early 1900s is that partisan identification had weakened and begun to be supplanted by interest group identification (e.g., "I'm an NRA voter," "I'm a climate change voter"). More on that topic from me in a few weeks, most likely.
Your point about nationwide injunctions has merit, but doing away with them has a cost. Right now the federal district courts are under tremendous strain because of the flood of habeas petitions challenging ICE detentions. The same issues are being litigated over and over again. In the case of one issue I know about almost all the courts reach the same conclusion.
There are pros and cons and those are good examples. My read is that in the short term this may lead to more harm and that much of the judicial branch overreach is driven by well-meaning legal advocates and judges trying to stem short term harm (and succeeding). At the same time, doing this via frequent and sweeping universal injunctions has reduced pressure on Congress to actually resolve big issues in American life.
Good point, or at least good question!
Having lived in the one-party state of California for a few years, I can attest to the pathology it produces: outrageous policies with no attempt at justification, colossal yet selective generosity with public funds with no attempt at fiduciary controls or even accountability, etc. From which I take a view of good "local" politics such as: it's competition and the threat of political expulsion that keeps parties, if not honest, at least "fit" and alert - a sort of political Darwinism.
But how about national politics? Clearly, an appealing aspect of the Trump presidency is a visible drive to "get big things done, proprieties be damned" (whether they're the right things depends on your politics, and whether it "got big things done", too, will await the verdict of history).
But if we accept the above, how would we rationalize that what's preferable at the state level (competition) is not the same at the Federal level?
I'm not sure how to square it, to be honest. This post is definitely one where the question in the title remains a question for me, it's not an excuse to say a hot take or something. If you have thoughts, I welcome them.
The rough pattern that competitive state governments seem to be better functioning feels right to me, though I'm also not sure how we'd measure that kind of gut feeling.
It's also possible that Skowronek is wrong about the preconditions for structural reform. Or that he's right that Republican consolidation was a contributing factor in the 1900s, but either it isn't today or it wasn't the primary factor back then.
Thinking out loud: some aspects of our politics have shifted that mute the sharpening effects of competition. We have two relatively decentralized parties that run direct primaries without strong elite actors to pick candidates. They're basically two sums of 100 million vectors of partisan primary voters (mediated by interest groups and political consultants) that we then choose between, rather than two centralized parties that compete.
The result: it's not like the era of hyper competitive presidential elections has led to Democrats and Republicans nominating their strongest ever candidates, at least since 2016. Clinton, Biden, Trump, Harris, none of these are rockstars from a purely electoral standpoint. Trump obviously has his incredible populist charisma, which I'm not denying, but he's largely an electoral under performer who's benefited from (1) dropping unpopular Republican positions on abortion and Social Security/Medicaid cuts and (2) Democrats nominating even worse candidates.
To stop rambling and try to land a point, after reading a book about the formation of interest group politics (The People's Lobby by Elisabeth Clemens, which I am writing about and processing now), I think that the intensity of partisan identification is itself something that stands in the way of reform. Part of the reason that reforms could go through in the early 1900s is that partisan identification had weakened and begun to be supplanted by interest group identification (e.g., "I'm an NRA voter," "I'm a climate change voter"). More on that topic from me in a few weeks, most likely.
Your point about nationwide injunctions has merit, but doing away with them has a cost. Right now the federal district courts are under tremendous strain because of the flood of habeas petitions challenging ICE detentions. The same issues are being litigated over and over again. In the case of one issue I know about almost all the courts reach the same conclusion.
There are pros and cons and those are good examples. My read is that in the short term this may lead to more harm and that much of the judicial branch overreach is driven by well-meaning legal advocates and judges trying to stem short term harm (and succeeding). At the same time, doing this via frequent and sweeping universal injunctions has reduced pressure on Congress to actually resolve big issues in American life.