A talk with Thomas Carothers, an expert on foreign policy and democracy building. I ask him about the root psychological and social causes of extreme polarization, democracy breakdown, and authoritarianism. Carothers is an expert on international democracy support, democratization, and U.S. foreign policy. He serves as senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He’s author or editor of ten critically acclaimed books and many articles, including, most recently, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization.
A transcript is below.
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Topics discussed:
- What is the state of democracy around the world and how has that changed in the past few years?
- What are the root psychological causes behind some countries becoming very divided and desiring authoritarian leaders/responses?
- Are there inherent processes that tend to lead economically successful countries to go down the path of polarization and democracy erosion?
TRANSCRIPT
[Note: transcripts will contain some errors.]
Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast. Today I’ll be talking to Thomas Carothers about his area of expertise: political polarization and democracy. We’ll talk about the extremely polarized U.S. situation and what the psychological and social factors are behind that, and we talk about polarization in other places in the world. This interview was done on November 12th 2020.
A little bit about Thomas: he’s senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world.
He’s the author or editor of ten books and many articles, including a recent book of his that I read called Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization; that book examines cases of political polarization from across the globe, including the United States.
Ok here’s the interview with Thomas Carothers.
Zach: Thanks for coming on, Mr. Crothers.
Thomas: Good to be with you.
Zach: Yes. Let’s start with a basic question. You can see many experts say things like democracy is in decline around the world, or democracy is eroding. What specifically do they mean when they say things like that?
Thomas: I think they mean a couple of different things.
They mean, first of all, that citizens in a lot of democracies are really fed up with the politicians and the political parties that they have. There’s a lot of alienation out there. And therefore, a lot of voting for people who are kind of outside the system. Often we call them populous. Many of them do have a populist orientation, but sometimes it’s just outside the [00:02:00] box candidates.
So in the first case, citizen alienation. Second, we also see a number of leaders. Really breaking the rules, manipulating elections, cracking down in soft and sometimes not so soft ways against independent voices, um, overriding checks and balances. So we see a lot of kind of growing authoritarianism out there.
So citizen alienation, growing authoritarianism. And then third, I guess a lot of the kind of really big authoritarian regimes above all, Russia and China are doing better than people expected. And China is not liberalizing, even though it’s growing a lot, Russia is back on its feet as an authoritarian power.
So the combination of these kinds of things are what’s leading to a general sense of, hey, democracy very well in.
Zach: So I was watching a video from 2015. It was a discussion panel that you were in, and there were some people that criticized the idea that democracy was [00:03:00] actually in decline. Are there valid counterpoints that the problem may be a bit exaggerated or overstated and and has that view changed in the last five years?
Thomas: Five years ago, some people were holding out and saying it’s really more of a plateau that’s occurring in the world, a slowing of democracy’s growth. But the last five years have been pretty punishing and most people now, you know, use the term democratic recession and don’t get much pushback. Now those who have.
Tried to argue for a slightly rosier picture. Do point to some things that are worth keeping in mind. Um, first of all, they note that even in places that are under a lot of stress, which unfortunately includes the United States, um, democracy has not collapsed. And so in Europe and North America and the sort of wealthy established democracies, they’ve been under pressures but have apart.
A lot of the countries where democracy is really struggling think about Brazil or think about India, [00:04:00] are countries where we didn’t think that democracy was necessarily gonna do that well, or we thought it was a, you know, sort of always in question because of the conditions in the country that the poverty or the lack of tradition of democracy or this or that.
So people would say, yeah, sure, democracy is under stress in a lot of places, but that isn’t that surprising. And then third, that was causing some people to. Here’s a puzzle. Civic activism, independent voices, and actors going out and pushing for things in the public interest. Civic activism is actually burgeoning in a lot of countries.
We see it in all the protests that are occurring in the world. Maybe we can come back to this later, and so even as. Leaders are often failing their people and citizens are frustrated. Citizen activism is in some ways flourishing in a number of places. So it isn’t like just a one-sided dark picture. As always.
It’s complex and there are positive notes. But overall democratic recession [00:05:00] unfortunately does describe the world these days.
Zach: So if you had to give your. Professional opinion on what is behind a lot of these dynamics. Is it something that’s happening due to technological changes? Is it something that’s a fundamental kind of backlash that tends to happen towards modern liberal societies?
What, what would you summarize as the, uh, dynamics?
Thomas: Yeah, it’s really hard to point to any single cause or one or two causes, but let me touch on a couple of things. First, in the wealthiest established democracies in the last 20 years has seen a lot of economic stagnation for the middle class. We know this in the United States, wages just haven’t been going up A lot of dislocation, lot of insecurity, and.
Trying to maintain democracy when you have a population that’s not doing that well economically, even if you have growth, but you’re having rising inequality and like I say, a lot of stagnation in middle class, that causes a lot of [00:06:00] angst among citizens. A lot of searching for alternatives, unfortunately, undemocratic alternatives.
So one problem is just what’s really a historic shift. Economic success from the West to Asia. The west is still very wealthy and still successful in some ways, but the last 20 years have seen huge economic growth in Asia and not in the West. So that’s one big thing. Second big thing is you described sort of cultural issues, is.
There was a lot of change over the last 20 or 30 years in what many people would call a progressive direction. Uh, more rights for BTQ, more rights for women, more immigrations or opening up societies to foreign influences and so forth, and. Let’s say five years ago or so, there really arose of fairly strong pushback against that, the kind of sociocultural wave of conservatism.
We see it in Poland with the, the right wing party there. That’s, um, driving Illiberalism in Poland. We see it in the United States. In the last five years, the culture wars [00:07:00] really amping up over a lot of issues related to how far is progress. And we see it in a number of European countries as well, like Hungary and uh, elsewhere.
And so this cultural pushback against a progressive agenda combined with the economic angst and frustrations of a lot of people in the working of middle class has pushed back hard, has led to citizens choosing leaders who push back hard against traditional liberal democratic norms.
Zach: So it seems like we often assume that people, most people want democracy, but it seems like you could make the argument that many people simply don’t want, actually want democracies that many people find it threatening, psychologically threatening to have to consider and respect other people’s points of view.
Do you think that’s an accurate observation to make that, that many people actually don’t want democracy?
Thomas: Well, I think it’s hard to generalize in that way. You know, what do people want? They want [00:08:00] security. They, they want a, you know, a decent life. They want a secure life, a decent life, and then they want freedom.
They don’t want somebody coming and whacking ’em over the head for saying what they think, and they want a political system that delivers those things. Now, they’re willing to sacrifice, uh, various things if they’re not getting everything they want. Unfortunately as political struggles have, have, have ratcheted up in recent years in a number of places between contending forces, some people feel like, you know what?
If we need to sort of squelch the views of these other people, or, you know, press against traditional democratic norms like this, free press is really. Irritating. Uh, I don’t respect the views that it has. And so if I see a leader trashing the free press, yeah, I’m for that. And so when people are angry and disappointed in their political system, they begin then to grasp at illiberal ideas driven by leaders who wanna use those ideas to [00:09:00] consolidate their power.
So I tend not to say, you know, does this citizen want democracy or.
Whether or not the political system is giving it to them. And if it’s not, what are they willing to do? Who are they willing to vote for? Or what other things are they willing to do to try to change their life? And so I think what we’ve really been seeing is a lot of churning, sort of sociopolitical churning in societies of people who are restless, dissatisfied.
Looking for something different and sometimes going down the road of being intolerant and um, being willing to step on the freedoms of others for the sake of trying to get what they want.
Zach: Yeah. Have you read Fama’s book Identity, his recent book?
Thomas: Yes, I have.
Zach: I thought he made some really good. Points in there about the group I identity, uh, dynamics that lead to people basically pushing back against having to consider other people’s points of view in the sense [00:10:00] that it’s psychologically threatening to have to consider all of these different mm-hmm.
Narratives and people long for a return to a perceived simpler, you know, better time, even if it’s. Kind of an illusion, uh, that he made some really good points in there about tying together. Mm-hmm. A lot of these different movements, especially a lot of the more right wing movements and the drive towards authoritarianism and.
Some of your, um, work, I think ties into those kind of ideas.
Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think, yeah, no, it’s a very good book and I recommend it to people. The rise of identity politics, I mean, I think it’s important to keep your eye on grievance. People clinging harder to exclusive identities. Identities that really are intolerant towards others when they’re fueled by a sense of grievance and they’re fueled by a sense of, I’m not getting my share, or these other people are cutting in front of me in the line and my people.
People who look like this or talk like this or believe this particular religion or whatever it happens to be, are getting pushed aside by others. [00:11:00] And therefore, I don’t wanna be tolerant towards others. I want what’s mine. And so intolerance isn’t just a free floating idea, it’s an idea that comes out of grievance and unhappiness in a sense that, uh, it’s a zero sum game society.
And so as societies are struggling to give people what they want in their lives, this zero sum mindset has definitely been increasing.
Zach: So I used to have a. View, and maybe you can tell me if this was a very naive view. I used to think that a, a civil war type scenario or, or major unrest in a country would only come about if a large percentage of people in the country were doing badly economically or.
A large percentage of people weren’t, weren’t able to eat regularly. But is that a naive view? Because Reading Fama’s book kind of opened me up to the idea that it was more about how people were doing relatively and perceived grievances and not so much about economics.
Thomas: Yeah, I’m afraid he is. Right. Um, you know, in the American Civil War, although it [00:12:00] had economic roots in the sense of the contending systems in the south and the north of agriculture and rising industry and so forth.
It was more of a social war than an economic war. You know, it was sort of two different visions of America, two different visions of how people should be allowed to organize their own communities and states and so forth. And a lot of civil wars are group identity wars, you know, um, there’s often a grievance which might be fueled by economic conditions, disadvantaged.
You know, the Tootsies and Hutu in Rwanda wasn’t really an economic war. It was various reasons. The identity between those two groups was aggravated and mobilized by politicians who were using it to sort of leverage themselves into power or to wield power over others. And so I think this, there’s a little bit of an American tendency sometimes to economic drives, you know, [00:13:00] behavior in many ways.
I think we should appreciate how powerful the, you know, the identity drivers of conflict are.
Zach: Is it fair to say that things will usually be kicked off to a. To a much worse level by economic things. For example, in the us you know, it’s, it seems like a lot, a lot of the worst case scenarios have been made more likely by COVID and the financial impacts from that.
Is it, is it fair to say that it, it can play a big role or It usually plays a big role in, in nations going downhill.
Thomas: Well, if the pie is shrinking, more likely you’re gonna fight over that pie. It’s just less of it to go around. And so people are gonna go after it. But when we look at the clashes, you know this, in the United States this year, say in Portland, between people protesting for racial justice and people, uh, striking back against those protestors because.
You could say that’s economically rooted in some ways, and that the search for racial justice is also [00:14:00] a search for economic justice. But it’s not just that. It’s a search for dignity, it’s a search for equal treatment in all kinds of ways, not just economic. And the pushback against it isn’t per se, economic either.
It’s an identity clash and it’s a viewing of how society should be organized.
COVID has put a lot of societies under stress in different ways, but I don’t think we should believe that it’s really, there’s an economic driver always of conflict. I think there are just many other causes.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I guess if I had to make the connection there, it’s, it’s hard for me to imagine the George Floyd protests and unrest getting to that level without the destabilizing both, uh, psychologically and financially effects of COVID.
Thomas: Yeah. You know, there were. Big protest over racial justice in our past. Um, you know, several years ago with the cases that that emerged of, uh, police violence against [00:15:00] African Americans, and that wasn’t at a time of, per se, of, you know, great economic hardship for the country. So, you know, the racial justice issue in this country flares up at times.
Zach: Yeah, it just seems a bit. A bit bigger, like, I mean, I live in Portland and it’s hard for me to imagine these things happening, what’s been happening in Portland. It’s hard for me to imagine it, it happening a year ago. But obviously that’s, you know, these are opinion questions. Let’s talk a little bit about your democracy’s divided book.
I know you wrote the, the US chapter in that, how difficult is it to attempt to summarize such complicated situations? I know you’ve spent a long time researching that area, but it must be a continually moving target. Was it difficult to try to summarize the polarization issues and the issues in the us?
Thomas: Well, look, trying to tell the story of polarization of the United States of the last 50 or 60 years in 10, you know, 15 or 20 pages. Of course it’s a challenge, but uh, on the other hand, trying to boil it down to the essence is useful because you can also get [00:16:00] lost in the details. I was just reading Rick.
Pearlstein, he has this tremendous four volume series on the, sort of the history of modern American conservatism. It’s a, it’s a tremendous accomplishment, but you’re into 700 to a thousand pages per volume, and there are times where you feel like you’re, you’re drowning, you know, in details. So what I was trying to do there in that chapter was just say, you know, what is the essential divide in.
What has been driving it and what are some of the consequences of it? And you know, I think that is a possible task. Doesn’t mean everyone’s gonna agree with you. Polarization is a polarizing topic, right? And when you try to give an account to polarization, you can be sure that some people can say, that’s not how I see it.
Uh, so I was aware of that and I was trying to be, you know, as balanced as I could or trying to see it through. Not a partisan lens, but inevitably. People in a divid divided society are gonna have very divided opinions about why it’s divided.
Zach: This might be a good segue. Uh, you know, we hear a lot in the mainstream about Trump and [00:17:00] the GOP, uh, divisiveness in terms of their points of view and, and actions driving the divide.
And Trump is clearly a divisive and abnormal figure in ways that the US has never seen before in a president. But many conservatives have the point of view that Obama was very divisive. They pointed things like his use of executive orders or the fact that Obama. Talked about racial justice issues and in their opinion, that fan the flames of the racial divide.
And I confess, I don’t see anything that divisive or polarizing about Obama. I’ve tried to see those points of view and I’ve been pretty perplexed by that point of view because Obama just seemed to me like a pretty traditional president doing. Normal things, but I wonder if you see valid points in that.
Are, are there things about Obama that can be more objectively seen as divisive or abnormal in your point of view?
Thomas: Well, look, you know, when, uh, Barack Obama assumed the presidency, uh, I. He before he had, you know, lifted his little finger to do anything, he’d come [00:18:00] under systematic attack for not being a real American.
Maybe he’s really a Muslim. He wasn’t really born in the United States. He shouldn’t be president. The birther movement wasn’t a response to him being divisive. It was an attack on his legitimacy by a political party that was having trouble accepting the president. You know, from the first day of his presidency on there was, you know, a fairly full scale assault on his credibility and legitimacy.
Uh, fueled by a, you know, hyper-partisan media on the conservative side that went after him by people who sort of pursued the birther narrative like Donald Trump, and, and by the Senate, which as Mitch McConnell, the. Weakening and hopefully in their view, stopping his presidency at the end of four years.
So the idea that sort of somehow he governed in such a way to [00:19:00] produce a polarizing sort of context or a a response is, I don’t think borne out by the facts and the idea that something he did on racial justice somehow fanned those flames. Come on. We’ve been having a fight over justice in this country.
President Obama approached those issues very gingerly and very hesitantly to the point that many in the progressive community I think felt he was underplaying them and should have done more. And so I think it would be hard to say the fact, of course he should speak about racial justice. So did Lyndon Baines Johnson.
So did President Kennedy. So did a lot of presidents president need to.
Their planned actions. And so arguing that somehow the fact that he talked about racial justice was stirred people up, just isn’t born out by the facts.
Zach: It’s been perplexing to me because I’ve gone out of my [00:20:00] way to try to understand those points of view, and when people bring that up as a major criticism of Obama, they pointed things and I’m like, that’s a.
Completely normal thing for him to have said, or you know, he, and he only really talked about it like a couple times. It wasn’t like he was constantly talking about it. Yeah. So it’s a, when people point to that as like the major aspect or something, it’s hard to understand.
Thomas: Yeah. Let’s talk about the executive orders.
So another big charge as well. He governed in a, you know, kind of authoritarian fashion by issuing executive order. First of all, every president uses executive orders. What they’re there for, where presidents issue executive orders on issues that are appropriate to that power. And since he faced a Republican controlled Congress for parts of his presidency that was determined to stop him in his tracks and made no bones about that fact.
Using executive order was a fairly natural response to that. Uh, if he’d gotten some cooperation, a willingness to meet him halfway on some major initiatives like healthcare reform, then he wouldn’t have had to resort to executive measures. And so when you have [00:21:00] political gridlock, partisan gridlock like we do in our legislative system, executive orders.
Used President Trump has been using executive orders a lot too, and so it’s a, the use of executive orders is a consequence of polarization, not a cause of it. Mm.
Zach: So reading the Democracy’s divided book, I was struck by how much religion seems to play a role in a lot of divides, which may be, is a. Common sense observation, but do you think it’s accurate to say that religion plays a big role in these divides, or, or do you think it’s possible or likely that, that even in a completely secular world, we’d still have various fights about traditions and, and in group versus outgroup fights.
Thomas: Well, when we, the team of researchers, uh, and I, we looked at polarization in a number of different democracies around the world. Kenya, Brazil, Columbia, uh, India, Indonesia, United States, Poland, et cetera. We did find that, um, there are a variety of bases on which people. Divide when they, they [00:22:00] divide harshly in a kind of binary way.
One of them is ethnicity, like in Kenya with two different tribes that can’t get along very well. Sometimes it’s ideology like in Venezuela where you have a left of center or a leftist view embodied in Ugo Chavez, and, uh, an opposing view to that. And it becomes a divide in the country. But sometimes it’s.
Or ideology, it’s religion and it’s usually not two different religions, but rather a rather fundamentalist view of the role of religion in society versus a more secular view. So in Turkey, for example, which is unfortunately a very divided country now, um, the ruling party is of the more Islamist kind of perspective in terms of how society should be run.
Sort of secular part of Turkey or side of Turkey, if you will, that disagrees with that. Or in India there’s a Hindu nationalist sort of movement and [00:23:00] embodied in the ruling party. And there are people who have a more secular view of India and so. Religion is another identity form of identity affiliation that can be very divisive.
And it’s not any particular religion. It’s, you know, uh, Hindu nationalism in India. In Poland, it’s, uh, conservative Catholicism versus a more secular view. In Israel, it’s more Orthodox Judaism versus a more secular view. In Turkey, it’s Islam. Something about a particular religion is that religion is another form of identity affiliation that has become very divisive in a number of countries.
Would a religion free world, I’m not sure if that’s really imaginable, be less divided? No. I think humans would find plenty of other things to divide along. So I think the question is in a way. Why have all these different divisions been escalating in in recent years? Why is it that societies are, so many democracies [00:24:00] are in fundamental identity struggles?
Why is it that that’s emerged and that’s a puzzle?
Zach: It seems like a lot of the divisions and countries that I’ve read about. Related to Islam in one way or another, whether it’s Islamic groups seeking power, or other groups being scared of Islam and reacting in authoritarian ways to suppress it. Some obvious examples are Turkey and India, but even in cases like the US there are a lot of Muslim related fears and anxieties amongst conservatives.
I’ve talked to some conservatives who named their fears of Islam taking over the US as the main reason they support Trump. Am I perceiving. That correctly, that Islam and reactions to Islam, you know, over even overreactions to Islam, are those having major impacts on polarization in various ways?
Thomas: Well, as I mentioned, societies with very different religions are experiencing religion as a polarizing force in sociopolitical, sociocultural life.
But. [00:25:00] It is occurring in a number of Muslim majority societies. I mean, I think it’s, it’s inarguable in the last 50 years or so, there’s still a major working out in many Muslim majority countries of the role that, uh, Islam should play in both everyday life but in political life, and that that’s an evolving issue, change in places.
Occupied a much bigger role in sociopolitical life than it used to in some places less. And so it’s, in a way, it’s a topic that’s really alive in Muslim majority countries in a way that in many Christian countries, for example, that got fought over a lot historically, but in some ways is less of an issue.
But. Still quite present in places like Poland or Hungary, where the leadership is very divisive leadership and makes appeals to conservative Catholicism or a conservative approach to religion, and it’s very divisive. In the [00:26:00] United States, we see it over abortion, which is related to debates over religious values and other elements of.
Religion that, that play out in American life. So I certainly nothing particular to Islam, but it is true that that Islam is at a state of its own historical evolution, like I say, where it’s a very live topic in many Muslim majority countries of what role Islam should play in daily life. Now you mentioned radicalism, terrorism, the fact that there have been.
Occurrence of, you know, sort of radical Islamist thinking and then action on violent action using Islam or radical Islam as a kind of basis for that action, of course has turned up the temperature for many people of their views about Islam. And so a number of people, uh, particularly outside Muslim majority countries who are not very familiar with with Islam, see these currents.
And of course, they’re hit by terrorism in different ways in their societies and they generalize. From that to this sort of general fear of Islam as a religion and the fear of [00:27:00] Muslims in their own society. I don’t think it’s warranted, but it’s something that’s clearly happened as a result of these, these, you know, actions that have occurred.
Zach: So one thing that’s been very perplexing to me about a lot of these polarization issues is how evenly split populations often are. So the US is a good example with how close the 2016 election was and now 2020, how close that was. And then for example, in Turkey, Erdogan got like 52% of the vote when he was first voted in, I think.
So it just seems very weird and kind of mysterious to me that populations can be so evenly split when you consider how varied and chaotic the issues seem to be and how. It’s strange some of the leaders like Trump seem to be and how quickly things can change in terms of public opinion. Do you agree that that’s kind of weird how close, for example, the US election is, or am I missing something obvious That helps explain why such things are consistently close.
Thomas: [00:28:00] Well, I think it’s a little bit your sampling approach, Zach, is you’re, there are a lot of places where it’s not so close. Mm-hmm. So like India, Hindu nationalism versus the more secular view hasn’t been a 50 50 split in recent years. Hindu nationalists have had a preponderance of support and a power. Or for example, in, um, I would say.
It’s not quite so evenly split. The government, which has been very polarizing there, gained kind of majority control through doing quite well in some elections. And so it hasn’t really been 50 50. And so you’re kind of choosing cases that happen to come out that way. But I don’t think that’s a condition or look at Germany, for example, which is experiencing much greater divisions over the kind of radical right de right.
It’s 90 10 or 85, 15. Turning to the us uh, we’ve just been through a number of pretty close [00:29:00] elections in the last 20 years. Not all of them, but some of them have been really close there. I think it’s partly the fact that, uh, you know, we have a very binary system. There’s no other choice except the two parties.
And the two parties fight head to. And there has been a kind of a tendency to energize the base, particularly on the right, but energize the base and then fight towards the center. And so in a sense, there’s almost a natural convergence over this. Group of people in the sort of 10 to 15% in the middle who are less committed, partisan to one side or the other.
And when you push towards a central like that, you kind of somehow end up with these very close elections as a result. So, but it’s not necessarily a natural condition of polarized countries. I think it’s just one that we’re living through. And so I wouldn’t over generalize from our experience.
Zach: Yeah. I guess the weird thing about the US situation seems to me that with all the [00:30:00] crazy things that have happened in the last four years, that we would still be so evenly split, but I guess it points to the idea that once you establish those divisions, that it’s very hard to shift people away, you know?
So basically it’s almost like, it almost doesn’t matter in a lot of ways, like the events or the, uh. The, the strange behavior of Trump or something. And we, we’ve just remained split in those ways. And I guess that’s the surprising thing to me. ’cause I would’ve expected more, you know, even like state by state variety and, and more, uh mm-hmm.
Compared to past elections. But I guess it points to like the so solidity of these groupings once we get into them.
Thomas: Yeah, but we have many states, you know, half the states in the United States are not evenly split of California going, you know, 66% one way. And you have Utah going 66% or so in the other way.
And so
Zach: the states, even with the states that are different, they’re, they were mostly still aligning with past divisions, I guess, was mm-hmm. My point. Yeah, [00:31:00] roughly. That’s true. Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah. No, no, I, that’s.
Zach: A lot of the, uh, national divisions seem to be related to the structure of the governments, and you write about this for the US and how the US has a certain government structure and election structure that lends itself to being gridlocked and unable to function in a very polarized environment.
Can you talk a little bit about what those government structures are that lend themselves to being gridlock in that way? Mm-hmm.
Thomas: Well, first and foremost, we have a two party system. Because of the way our electoral system is, it’s very hard for small parties to thrive, and as a result, you gotta either choose this or that, and countries that have multi-party systems proportional representation, and so they end up with 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 parties.
Don’t tend to have these A versus B kind of, uh, divisions in the political life quite as starkly as the United States does. Um, so one thing is that, you know, our two party system, you know, is a thought [00:32:00] experiment. Imagine we had proportional representation in the United States. Um, it’s not hard to imagine that we’d have four parties, we’d have a left progressive party and a moderate.
Uh, center left party, you’d have a pro-business center, right, uh, pro trade, pro-immigration party, and then you’d have a further to the right, more nationalist kind of Trump-like party, and people would have a greater sense of choice and there’d be some fluidity. Then in terms of what coalitions. Govern, should it be the two centrist parties?
Should it be the two right parties, the two left parties, et cetera. So one is our party system or our electoral system that produces our party system. The second is the way our Congress works, which is a system that was set up, particularly the Senate, um, to operate on, uh, the basis of a lot of informal rules of cooperation.
And a lot of, uh, sort of super majoritarian features that were designed to make it a consensual body, which [00:33:00] when the polarization sets into the political system, produces gridlock because you can’t get the kind of majorities you need to, to pass legislation. And so. It’s a body that works well when the parties are getting along well and are able to reach consensus fairly easily.
But it’s a system that breaks down in terms of legislative productivity. Once you have a polarized kind of system, there are other features. The willingness to fiddle with elector, the fact that we set, uh, electoral districts through. State legislatures rather than independent commissions or some kind of form of neutrality and setting, you know, districting, um, has led to a lot of gerrymandering That just feeds polarization because then if you have districts which are stacked one way or the other way, you tend to have then candidates and then representatives who lean far one direction or far in the other direction.
And, uh, in countries, districting wouldn’t be up for politic grabs in the. Uh, another feature. And then [00:34:00] finally our political financing. The fact that we have such sort of open door to, uh, political financing, you know, of, uh, Bloomberg wants to give a hundred million dollars to try to influence the outcome in Florida, he’s perfectly able to do that.
It’s a lot of money, as did a lot of other super wealthy people in the country in the election. Generally the case that you know, the super wealthy who give large amounts of money for political action committees and other forms of trying to influence elections. Those who give a lot of money are often those who are most partisan and money floods of money tend to drive a system towards greater and greater.
Sort of extreme partisanship. You know, there’s, it’s rare that you have a centrist who’s really determined to commit their fortune for a centrist goal. People are usually determined to commit their fortune for a goal to the left or to the to the right. And so our liberality with respect to political financing, I guess to use this sort of polite term for it, [00:35:00] also increases the polarization in the system.
’cause it allows very polarizing actors to have a very big role.
Zach: And uh, is election, I think you mentioned the election cycles being off kilter as being a factor there too.
Thomas: Well, I don’t think that’s so much a factor. I mean, we do have the oddity of the fact that the Senate is not all chosen at once. It’s on a rolling basis, but I don’t think that per se contributes to polarization.
And then the fact. That the house is, comes up for elections so often, which is quite unusual in comparative terms to have only two year terms for house members. Uh, it does put them on a permanent electoral footing because they finish one election and they’ve gotta start thinking the next day about the next election.
Mm-hmm. So we do have a, a lot of elections in that sense, but I don’t think, uh, that would make a big difference if it were lined up differently.
Zach: Yeah. I guess it was pointing to increasing gridlock, not necessarily increasing, uh. Polarization
Thomas: effect. I mean, another factor that’s unusual in the US system is that does contribute to polarization is, is primaries for [00:36:00] choosing candidates.
Um, it seems like kind of an obvious thing where we’ve all gotten used to it, but it’s actually relatively unusual to choose candidates through primaries in this way. And the primaries have really been driving partisanship in the parties when people sit, talk about somebody getting primaried. Now it means kind of a polarizing thunderbolt, uh, against that person for having strayed towards the center, particularly in the Republican party.
If a Republican makes any move towards the center, the further right forces say we’re gonna primary this person and knock them down in a primary election. And these primary elections produce candidates who are to the sides rather than towards the center. And I think that’s, um, troubling
Zach: in the US case.
Or maybe in other cases, is gridlock always a bad thing because it, it seems to be possible to imagine a world in which one side did actually have the ability to make big changes quickly. And you can imagine that theoretically leading to even greater backlash from the other side. So I’m [00:37:00] wondering if there can be positive aspects of not being able to regulate that quickly.
Thomas: Well, you know, I remember I was in, uh, great Britain. In, uh, 19, late 1978, early 1979, when Margaret Thatcher was elected, I remember she got elected, you know, on a whatever day of the week. It was a Sunday, and Friday that week, her new parliament passed a new tax code. And I remember as an American thinking, what.
A new tax code in five days. You know, a, we never get a new tax code in this country. We never come to any kind of tax reform, you know, which is usually very partial, takes a long time. And I thought, is that, is that okay to just put a new tax code in and then within three months she’d, you know, privatize this banking that, um, did this to the railways and so forth?
And I must say that. You know, there’s something to be said for when somebody wins an election, allowing them to carry out their agenda and see how you like it, and then make a choice [00:38:00] in the next election based on they had a full run of the, of the game and they made these changes and it seems to have had these effects.
Continual gridlock mostly produces citizen angst and, uh, alienation over time because. I, I’m not such a fan of gridlock ’cause that somehow this is a noble American attempt to make sure the government, you know, never really does anything. Our country needs reforms, whether they’re from the left or from the right.
Um, we desperately need to inject new ideas and new energy into our governance because a lot of things aren’t being governed very well in this country.
Zach: Yeah, that’s a good point about an increasing the anti-government, uh, sediment, which seems to be. Very common on, on, on both sides. You know, just feeling like the, these people aren’t doing anything.
Thomas: Yeah.
Zach: Do you think the founding fathers of the US would’ve had a hard time imagining such a divided population with such different realities that they inhabit? Or do you think those kind of dynamics were well understood at the time that they were trying to create a government? [00:39:00]
Thomas: Well, they wouldn’t have understood some of the current manifestations, but.
Founding fathers had a healthy appreciation of the dangers of, of human beings as political animals, uh, their tendency to form into tribal like groups, if you will, and conflict with each other. And so some of the founding fathers weren’t that keen on political parties, for example, which they felt would be dangerous.
They were already quite aware of the division over state rights versus stronger federal government, which remains you. Fundamental cleavages in our country. So I, I think they had a healthy appreciation of the power of divisiveness and the need to create institutions that could withstand a very divided political life.
Zach: Yeah. I already respect the, the work they did a lot. But if we, uh, survive relatively in the t the, the next few years, I’ll, I’ll have even more respect for, uh, just seems so it. Impossible to, to create a government system that would be able to withstand all the different ways that, uh, [00:40:00] the different things that, that humans can do and the, the ways we can get it at each other’s throats.
But, uh,
Thomas: yeah. Well there’s a couple of key, you know, we think of them as guardrails and guardrails are, you know, where politics is, you know, people getting into noisy, dangerous vehicles.
Are essential. One of them is, you know, a system for organizing elections and administering them that people can agree on and which people have confidence in, and which people say, okay, we may disagree fundamentally on this or that policy, but we’ve had an election and we respect the results. So one is an election administration system that works and the other.
Important, or in a way more important is, is the rule of law on which we, we agree that law is above politics, politicians respect, everybody has to do, and so when politics become so divisive. That those two guardrails get attacked and people start attacking the guardrails rather than [00:41:00] just fighting for policy.
When they fight against an election system, when they fight against the rule of law and try to override it and question the objectivity of judges and so forth, then you have a serious problem on your hands. And that’s why it feels like in the United States in the last couple of years, you know, starts.
Instinctively goes after the guardrails. He doesn’t just go after the opponents, he goes after the guardrails, and that’s what we’ve been living through. Mm-hmm.
Zach: Yeah. To make a poker analogy, it’d be like trying to play poker and instead of just trying to win hands like normal, you would be trying to question the entire rules of the game and saying the people enforcing the rules are, are unjust and you should win because the rules are unfair.
And yeah, it’s a whole questioning. The whole meta structure of, of things is a whole nother level of, uh, of, of damage. Yeah. How do you see the role of the internet and social media and, and maybe other modern technologies like many [00:42:00] television channels playing a role in, in polarization issues?
Thomas: Look, you know, a lot of people sort of say, God, this is all social media’s fault.
We didn’t have the social media. We wouldn’t be so fragmented, we wouldn’t be sort of given to extremes. And I think it’s certainly the case that social media has been an. Of a lot of changes in the last five to 10 years, and it, it does make it easier to move into those information bubbles. It does tend to propagate extreme views and so forth, but the polarization that we’re facing in the United States is not the result of social media.
It goes back to very deep roots in our country, uh, around a lot of fairly profound issues like, as I mentioned, the role of Goli and. Blaming technology for our sociopolitical ills is a kind of an escapist tendency that we should avoid. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think hard about whether technology, uh, social media, or other forms of, you know, digital communication need to be regulated in certain ways differently than we’re [00:43:00] currently doing.
But there’s not gonna be a technological solution to polarization. It’s, it’s a much deeper human condition. Hmm.
Zach: So one thing I’ve been thinking about in regards to these polarization issues is that maybe there’s some inherent process that happens with economically successful, so that they basically contain the seeds of their own demise in the sense that as people have more free time and more awareness of the events and people around them, that there’s more and more ways to look at the.
Injustice around us or the fact that people are unequal in various ways that leaders are flawed, that the illusions of patriotism and comradery start to break down. The more you examine the, the concepts of a nation. And I’m wondering if you, if you see this as being, these things, as being some sort of fundamental process, whether you look at Rome falling apart or whether you look at modern nations, is, is there some kind of inherent cycle at work here do or do you think I’m just.
Extrapolating [00:44:00] in, in weird ways.
Thomas: Well, yeah, a little weird. Uh, I, I can’t quite go with you on this because you’re sort of saying there’s a, it’s like there’s this beautiful flower and it’s beauty contains within it, sort of the end of it. So you can sort of see the flower’s gonna pass from this beautiful blossom to a, you know, a rotting, uh, deadhead.
And I don’t think that’s how societies evolved. When I look at. Some of the countries in the world that are most successful in terms of delivering human development, like Scandinavian countries, for example. I don’t see societies that are rotting. I see actually them doing great, um, in terms of delivering human development and relatively high levels of satisfaction with the government and so forth.
You know, sort of saying, wow, the United States seems to be going through some hard times, and maybe it’s because that’s sort of a natural evolution of our success. It’s more because of our failings. If we were governed better and we were delivering more for the, uh, middle class and for lower classes in this country, people wouldn’t be as unhappy, wouldn’t [00:45:00] be as divisive.
And if we had institutions that were better developed, I think that were stronger and more resilient, like our healthcare system and other things, people would be. Better off and would be happier. And so I think it’s more our failings that are do us rather than our successes. And so I, I wouldn’t go with you there.
You know, there’s, I look at Germany. I, I spend time there for my work and I work with a number of German institutions. It’s a very well governed society that is handling the stresses of a globalized world. And these days, a deglobalization world pretty well. And, you know, good governance is actually, uh, uh, a nice thing to live in for many Germans.
And so, so I, I’d be careful with the direction of your thoughts. I think the Roman Empire analogy is, is different because that’s about empire overstretch or overreach, which some empires tend to do, and then they overreach and try to maintain. Control over too many things that they’re not capable of.
That’s a different problem than whether or not kind of [00:46:00] mature governance systems are sustainable or not.
Zach: Yeah, I guess the, uh, and that’s good to hear ’cause it’s a positive view and some of the things I’ve been reading lately about the need for chaos worldviews, they basically have this. Perception that, uh, or this viewpoint that things need to be, society needs to be burned down and destroyed in order to get better.
And there was a surprisingly high number of people that had those kind of views, and it seemed like that was, those kinds of views were on the rise. And so I might be affected by reading some of those things. And we have so much focus these days on the bad things. Mm-hmm. So it’s possible to maybe, you know, see monsters under the bed in, in, in some sense for these things.
Yeah, I think we’re, we’re at a good stopping point. Oh, one random question I wanted to ask you while I had you here. I had read this book called Disinformation, and it was by a former Romanian spy chief who worked for the Russians and who had defected to the us. Do you happen to know that book?
Thomas: Disinformation. Yeah. It’s by a, a general
Zach: pa, Pippa or something? Ppa. Ppa. Ppa, yeah. Yeah. [00:47:00] I do not do Is that a respected book? Because he detailed a lot of, you know, plots, disinformation plots from the Russians throughout the last a hundred years, and I, I hadn’t been able to determine if that was a respected book or if
Thomas: Yeah, he’s a serious person.
But yeah, he was a defector, a high level defector from the CHASCo regime who wrote some sort of lurid accounts of things. He knew some of it’s probably exaggerated, but another book that’s better researched or, well, not, his book wasn’t researched, it was personal experience. So a book that is more of a analytic account is David Shimer, I think S-H-I-M-E-R.
Uh, account to both US and Russian electoral meddling in the 20th century where he has a lot of accounts of what Russia, the Soviet Union tried to do in the United States and other western countries in the 1930s, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties. It’s fascinating. I really enjoyed reading about.
The disinformation efforts they carried out. I would, it was based on interviews he did with a number of senior, former Soviet, um, intelligence [00:48:00] officials and others, as well as some of the US efforts in other countries. So I would recommend that book
Zach: if you had to give one or two tips for. What regular, everyday citizens could do to fight extreme or unreasonable polarization.
Do you have any tips like that?
Thomas: Well, I think all of us, you know, need to take a deep breath and say that our system is more important than any particular goal. We’ve gotta preserve our system. We have to respect the rule of law, and we need to respect sort of underlying principles of moderation and tolerance, uh, for each other.
And we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of misunderstanding those who are on the other side. You know, really good research like that done by the More in Common group shows that people on either side of the Partisan Divide in the United States systematically. Misunderstand the other side.
And so, you know, strong conservatives asked about progressives have views of them that are really just out of touch [00:49:00] with reality and vice versa. Uh, strong progressives have views of conservatives that are just out of touch with reality. And so this systematic misunderstanding needs to be overcome. And individuals need to sort of not fall into the trap of assuming the worst about the other side.
Doesn’t mean the, but at least try to be somewhat neutral and say, am I really.
So, you know, that’s another thing. And then finally, you know, beyond that is. You know, trying to create some bridges across this line. Trying to look in small ways to say, you know, are there ways I can reach across the line? In my case, for example, I try regularly during a week to check in on some websites that, uh, represent views I just don’t agree with.
But I like to try to understand what they’re thinking and why, and it doesn’t hurt, you know, to spend a half hour reading a website that you just think, oh, of yourself.
You know, choose one that’s [00:50:00] respectable and there are plenty on both sides. And read it and think a little bit and open your mind up and challenge yourself to try to understand what’s going on, uh, in people’s minds whom you, you don’t know well. Or you may think you know, but you don’t really know. Well,
Zach: thanks a lot for talking to me.
This has been Thomas Carruthers. Thanks a lot for coming on.
Thomas: It’s been a pleasure.
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