The New American Politics

Reflections On Political Change And The Clinton Administration

Bryan D Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367318758
• eBook ISBN: 9780429975837
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Was 1992 a realigning election? Did the midterm elections of 1994 realign the realignment? Will 1996 carry the United States forward on yet another changed trajectory? In this volume of original essays, leading political scientists examine key components of the American agenda and assess the current administration's position in light of historical precedents and future trends. Each conclusion is unique, born of a combination of the empirical record and its interpretation, but essays by Bryan Jones and Larry Dodd help to put the wide-ranging views represented here in long-term perspective.

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Continuity and Change in American Politics

BRYAN D. JONES

This book is about the nature of change in the American political system. President Bill Clinton has often stated his belief that his election was about change, or rather the public's desire for change. But many journalists and academic commentators stress stability: The American system, they say, is particularly designed to thwart major and meaningful change. Moreover, the nature of political, social, and economic change itself has been the source of academic controversy. Emblazoned across the title page of Principles of Economics, by the great late-nineteenth century economist Alfred Marshall, is the Latin phrase Natura non facit saltum: Nature does not make leaps. Encapsulating die belief that nature is well-behaved, this aphorism can be traced at least to the biologist Carolus Linnaeus in 1750; but Marshall may have been the first social scientist to popularize it.

In political science, Natura non facit saltum comes in various guises. Indeed, many analysts of American government seem compelled to claim that government not only doesn't make leaps, it doesn't make moves. In 1989 Time carried a cover story entitled "Is the Government Dead?" It seems that so many politicians were beholden to interest groups, so much money was pouring into image-making in elections, and the institutions of government were enmeshed in so much divided control and deadlock that bold leadership at the national level was impossible. From James Madison's schemes to try to make government less oppressive by making it less active, to James McGregor Burns's classic Deadlock of Democracy in the early 1960s, to Time's dead-government claim and Brookings scholars John Chubb and Paul Peterson's book Can the Government Govern? (1989), to the present-day claim that government cannot act because the deficit has gotten too big, it has been fashionable to point to the inherent: inaction and conservatism of national government in the United States. The most recent entries in the "government can't govern" refrain point to interest groups as the problem—journalist Jonathan Rauch calls it "demosclerosis" (Rauch, 1994).

The pessimism regarding the capacity of U.S. government to make major changes carries over into the more abstract analyses of political scientists. The belief in the impossibility of large change can be seen in group theory, where actions always beget reactions and existing interest groups, when threatened, will mobilize to block major disruptions; and in the incremental decisionmaking models, where public decisionmakers are supposed to take only minimal steps so as not to ruin what works pretty well. Empiricists also get into the act, claiming that everything in politics is incremental anyway. James Stimson claims that "if we observe almost any phenomenon at regular intervals over time, we will see change produced by the cumulation of small and irregular increments. If we do this for a while ... the idea of change occurring as discontinuous jumps becomes increasingly an idea of oddball irregularities" (1991: 6).

For a long time, I have been unhappy with the idea that the American system—owing to deliberate institutional design or to a conservative political culture, or because norms of openness are exploited by an interest group system with an upper-class bias—cannot manage meaningful change. In this book I have asked several political scientists—some very distinguished, some younger and bringing fresh approaches to the analysis of politics—to comment on the nature of political change, upon examining it through the lenses of the early Clinton years. All were requested to think about the nature of political change: Is government deadlocked and unable to act boldly? Is political change in the United States invariably incremental? Is divided government inevitably gridlocked?

Assessing Political Change

The chapters that follow are diverse, covering topics ranging from elections and the role of minorities to foreign policy, interest groups, and the Supreme Court. The authors sometimes emphasize continuity, and sometimes change, but I will focus on change here. At the risk of oversimplification, I suggest that three broad themes relating to political change may be found in the chapters of this book. First, major episodic political change is not only possible in the United States, it happens with considerable frequency. Sometimes such change is a result of the deliberate actions of major political actors or of major unforeseen events, as Lawrence Baum (in Chapter 9) notes can happen when new appointments join the Supreme Court. At other times major change results from seemingly minor alterations of political structures or cultural norms or from the cumulation of forces over an extended period of time. For example, Barbara Norrander points out (in Chapter 5) that the seemingly large jump in the success of women in capturing high elective and appointive office is best viewed as a cumulation of past changes. And Morris Fiorina suggests (in Chapter 8) that seemingly minor changes in the organization of legislatures can shift the party balance, thereby altering policy outputs.

Second, the nature and direction of that change is, to a considerable extent, unpredictable. When change occurs, it is not always what many of us would define as "progress." In Chapter 4 Rodney Hero notes a "populist backlash" toward minorities among whites. This illustrates a general point about American politics. Leaders may be able to highlight an issue, but they are often unable to control the subsequent course of events. For example, President Clinton was able to raise the issue of health care to the agenda, but he was much less able to control the course of policy "solutions" to the issue he raised. And William Thompson shows in Chapter 11 that the success of President Bush in the Gulf War probably would not have translated into electoral success even without the recession that was just abating as the 1992 election took place. In general, foreign policy successes are very difficult to translate into electoral popularity, although such failures must certainly be avoided. Recall that the invasion of Haiti by U.S. forces in 1994 yielded little in the way of improvement in President Clinton's popularity, which was very low as the nation moved toward midterm elections. Finally, many journalists and political analysts predicted substantial political change as the 1994 elections approached, but even the most optimistic Republican politicians failed to anticipate the sea change that occurred.

Third, the longer the time frame within which one assesses political change, the more likely it is that abrupt and discontinuous changes in politics will be noted. At first blush, this generalization may seem obvious: Longer periods of time allow for greater changes. Yet longer time frames may also make immediate shifts less impressive by putting them in context. In this case, major changes might not be detected when they happen, especially when they give rise to vast unintended consequences as government struggles to cope with the changes. As William Mayer notes in Chapter 2, one cannot really judge the impact of an election until one observes the policy activities that follow the election. That can take years. Similarly, as Frank Baumgartner and Jeffrey Talbert show in Chapter 6, one cannot really appreciate the role of interest groups in the policy process without putting the entire interest group system in historical context.

The authors of these chapters generally agree that both political changes and important changes in public policy can and do occur in modern-day America. But assessing the extent of change represented by Clinton's election and his first two years as president is a different matter. Several of the authors stress incrementalism and continuity; others point to factors that suggest broad shifts in the political system. Overall, however, the book focuses on three fundamental aspects of political change: politics, governmental institutions, and public policy. Part I considers the politics of continuity and change: elections, parties, and groups. In Chapter 2, the first of five chapters in this part, William Mayer offers a careful analysis of electoral coalitions in modern times. His key point is that a major electoral realignment did occur in the 1964-1972 period, and that the 1968 election was probably a critical one. Thus, claims Mayer, the American system in modern times, characterized as it has been by weak parties and numerous independents, is nevertheless capable of dramatic changes in electoral direction. With respect to the 1992 election, however, Mayer is "extraordinarily skeptical" about assertions that major new policy directions were set, even though a remarkable 19 percent of the electorate voted for independent candidate Ross Perot. And, indeed, 1994 has turned out to be the watershed. In Chapter 3, Shanto Iyengar and Sharmaine Vidanage, in their analysis of campaigning and the media, note that die 1992 campaign was different in many ways. For instance, it involved a great effort by the media to be more responsible than in the past, and it was characterized by extensive attempts on the part of candidates to avoid being completely reliant on the media in getting their messages out. Hence they heavily used electronic town halls, talk shows, and local news stories rather than national outlets. By this means, candidates avoided the responsibility that the national media had hoped to impose, reinstituting symbolic appeal and "sound-bites."

In Chapter 4, Rodney Hero observes both continuity and change. Examining the role of minorities in the 1992 election and the early Clinton years, he sees the Democratic Party moving to diversify symbolically (given two Latino and two black Cabinet members), yet split over the "populist" hostility toward minorities that seems to characterize a substantial part of the Democratic electoral coalition. This split seems to have been activated in the 1994 elections, especially in the South, as whites moved decisively toward the Republicans. Conversely, in Chapter 5 Barbara Norrander sees in 1992 the result of a sea change in women's accomplishments, especially in the area of high elective and appointive office. In particular, she points to Hillary Rodham Clinton as a very different kind of First Lady, one who remains a policy leader in spite of questions concerning her activities as a lawyer in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor there. The downside of her approach was evident in the criticism she received for the failed health care initiative that she led. Then, in Chapter 6, Frank Baumgartner and Jeffery Talbert note the vast changes that have characterized the interest group system over the past thirty years. They conclude that the changes in this system offer the president and Congress a great opportunity to shift the direction of policy. More generally, they argue that interest groups do not just act to block popular demands for change but also are a major catalyst for policy shifts themselves.

Part II of this book focuses on continuity and change in governing institutions. In Chapter 7, David Mayhew provides an update of Divided We Govern (1991), his important study of the role of divided government in the policy process. Again he stresses that divided government does not "gridlock" the policy process, because activist moods are able to wash out party gridlock. Even in the absence of an activist mood, such as existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, major legislation can be accomplished, because so many influential actors recognize that it must be accomplished. Such recognition can be more important that the partisan coalitions that are assembled for policy action. For example, the coalitional structure of deficit reduction changed between the 1990 budget agreement involving the Democratic-led Congress and President Bush (a bipartisan coalition) and the 1993 Clinton-engineered deficit-reduction budget bill (a Democratic-only coalition). Here, the issue was constant even though its coalitional basis shifted. Mayhew also notes that health care is just the kind of issue that is poised for great legislative change, with most major actors agreeing that something needs to be done; but he warns that such great initiatives could go the way of President Carter's energy plan. The energetic Republican Congress convening in 1995, opposing a Democratic president vitally concerned with accomplishments, could set the stage for a Mayhew-type divided government activism.

Morris Fiorina, in Chapter 8, notes that subtle changes in institutions can produce dramatic change later on. His analysis of divided government in the states points to increased professionalism in state legislatures as a major reason for which fewer Republicans serve there. Republicans did much better in state legislative races in 1994, gaining over 450 seats nationally, according to some early estimates, and they gained eight governorships. This gain has not changed the picture of divided government in the states. In particular, almost all of the most populous states now have some form of divided government. Moreover, term limits and other citizen initiatives could have the effect of "deprofessionalizing" state legislatures, aiding Republican candidates in the long run. Divided government at the subnational level clearly has important policy consequences, because so much of domestic policy is set and implemented by the states. Republicans in Congress want to shift more policy responsibility to the states, so the big-state divided government issue will play a large part in national politics in the years to come.

In Chapter 9, Lawrence Baum's analysis of change in the Supreme Court points to selection as the major factor in departures from incrementalism in judicial policy, such that selection decisions introduce "an unusually large element of chance in the pace of policy change." Baum argues that chance operates in two ways: in terms of the number of justices a president gets to appoint and the direction the new justices take. Clinton had recently announced his second appointment to the Court, centrist jurist Stephen Breyer, to fill the vacancy left by the retiring Justice Blackmun. Given the earlier appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clinton's list suggests a "center left" strategy in appointments; but as Blackmun's retirement demonstrated, presidents are not infrequently surprised by the direction taken by their newly independent appointees. Baum also concludes that, although the Court is often in the grip of incrementalism, it is actually more likely to strike out in new policy directions than is Congress. Next, Bert Rockman examines the federal executive branch in Chapter 10. Even though the executive bureaucracy is designed to provide "ballast" to shifts in party control of government, he argues, "presidents with a mind to do so and available opportunities can impose change on the executive."

The chapters that constitute Part III examine change in the policy process. In Chapter 11, William Thompson focuses on the effects that policy has on politics—in this case, the effects of foreign policy on the 1992 electoral outcome. According to Thompson, the majority view that economic conditions were the factor in explaining George Bush's defeat may have validity, but the rush to that judgment leaves much unexplained. In particular, why did economics so overwhelm the foreign policy accomplishments of President Bush? By way of an answer, Thompson points out that "rally 'round the flag" effects, which boosted Bush's popularity, are historically short-lived; that American voters have traditionally punished parties that engage in wars, even winning ones; and that the end of the Cold War did not bring the electoral "peace dividend" that can benefit presidents. Rather than aiding Bush, the end of the Cold War probably helped Clinton, whom the American public viewed negatively on this issue. With the demise of Cold War tensions, the nation could focus almost exclusively on domestic issues, on which Clinton had a decided edge with the American public.

In Chapter 12, Billy Hall and I pose the question as to why presidents choose to pursue the policies that they do. In the first year of the Clinton administration, three major domestic initiatives emerged: deficit reduction, health care, and the "investment and jobs" program. Of these, neither health care nor the deficit was of particular importance to the mass public, although jobs were. Yet Clinton chose to pursue the first two initiatives, pushing half-heartedly on the jobs program and dropping it after it was defeated in Congress. We conclude that much policy change comes from the choices made by the president, who tries to activate latent preferences in the public for the policies that he has chosen to pursue.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Continuity and Change in American Politics
• PART ONE THE POLITICS OF POLICY CHANGE
• PART TWO POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICAL CHANGE
• PART THREE THE POLICY PROCESS
• References
• About the Book and Editor
• About the Contributors
• Index