Levers of power

In a developed state with a representative government it is essential that citizens understand both what decisions are being made and how those decisions are being made. While things like opinion polls and stump speeches are discussed ad-nauseum in popular news, models of decision making and the actual levers of power in Washington get very little in the way of air time. This page, and the whole levers of power section will be dedicated to exploring the forces that really get things done in the halls of power. These days the average citizen has very little power to actually shape policy in Washington and we will see both why that is, and what can be done to change that. This section of Mediocracy.net is I believe the most essential section for helping people reassert themselves as citizens and as political beings.  These pages will not be dedicated to supporting any particular party because both parties have been instrumental in marginalizing the average voter.

It’s important to note that these theories have their uses, and they have their problems.  This page was designed a long time ago, and requires some serious followup in the face of the most recent election, with special mention to the continual right shift that both parties have been undergoing in regards to their major policy platforms beginning in the 70s.

Median Voter Theorem (MVT)

The first of the two formal academic theories we’ll look at is Median Voter theorem. Median Voter theorem states that the policies, or politicians that succeed are going to most closely resemble the attitudes and the desires of the median voter. If one were to create a line from most liberal to most conservative, the most successful would live somewhere in the middle. This conclusion seems pretty obvious.

The first implication of MVT to spot is that the middle (and therefore successful position) moves depending on the constituency one is trying to address. Primaries are often restricted by party, this is why political candidates appear more radicalized during primaries.

Once candidates move out of primaries politicians tend to make their policies appear more centrist. Because they are now addressing a fundamentally different group of voters their public positions change in response.

This shift in political sweet-spots is a pretty solid explanation for the Tea Party. During Republican primaries when the sweet spot is fairly conservative Tea Party candidates do well, sometimes even well enough to knock off Republican incumbents. When these Tea Party candidates reach general elections they have much more trouble than their comparatively centrist Republican counterparts do because they are further away from that median voter.

This swing in position based on constituency happens again once these politicians enter office.  While most voters pay attention to simple feel based notions of how the economy is doing, or big social issues like abortion, most people pay very little attention to many of the nitty-gritty points of legislation and or the running of a government.  For example, news outlets and educational systems don’t cover things like the role of the Glass Steagall Act in preventing banking crises so nobody made a fuss when it got repealed.  So lets look at what MVT and the notion of changing constituencies has to say about the untimely demise of the Glass Steagall Act.

Once the election cycle is over most people tune out of real policy debates.  This tuning out is especially true when it comes to things as seemingly esoteric as financial legislation.  As less and less normal folks pay attention to important legislation in the financial sector, the percentage of people paying attention to that sort of legislation becomes increasingly represented by power player in financial markets like the managers and high level employees at Goldman Sachs, Citi, and more.  Not only do those people represent a larger percent of the people paying attention to this sort of thing, but they represent a huge percentage of the money.  This means that the curve for political decision making looks nothing like it did in the general election.  Rather than the debate in congress over Glass Steagall looking like this.

The debate over the preservation of Glass Steagall looked a bit more like this

As you can see (hopefully, having trouble with the resolution on that one, Ill get back to it sometime) the changing nature of the constituency, and the pressure exerted by nearly 60 million dollars in lobbying spent by commercial banks between 1998 and 1999 had some effect on the legislative process.  Of course Glass Steagall was removed and then the banking crisis of 2007-theforseeablefuture happened.

The next level of MVT to look into is one of the assumptions it makes about politicians. MVT assumes that politicians will move to that center point whenever it is convenient, this implies that effective legislation and principled political stances are less important to politicians than political success. It’s a bit cynical of a position to take, but I think a Daily Show interview (skip to 2:00 if you want the most relevant part of the video) with a Harry Reid staffer shows how strong a component of MVT this assumption is. Regardless of your position on gun control, the question of what is most important to a politician should ring true. This is of course not a complete discussion of MVT but I think it’s a good place to start.

The Iron Triangle

   The next of two important theories to consider when discussing the voting patterns of politicians is called the Iron Triangle. The iron triangle seeks to explain voting patterns based on a connection between politicians, interest groups, and bureaucracies. 

   I made one major edit to the standard Iron Triangle when constructing this discussion. Usually people use legislators or congress rather than politicians. While one could argue that the separation of powers means that wrapping the executive/bureaucracies up with legislators is technically incorrect, I think putting politicians at the top makes the image more accessible to people who don’t spend all day worrying about slightly esoteric (though still correct) discussions of separation of powers; now back to the good stuff.  Before we look any deeper at the iron triangle I think it is important to note that voters and the public will have no place in this model.

  At one point of the triangle we have interest groups. They give politicians campaign funds, powerful connections, and juicy lobbying jobs once their time in office is over. In return interest groups get favorable legislation and policies, plus limited oversight. A great example of this is the bank bailout. Big banks contributed more than three million dollars in campaign funds to Obama in 2008 and significant sums of money to congressional races as well. Obama then hands out the most generous bailout possible to the banks and the DOJ doesn’t prosecute a single high level banker for accounting control fraud. Meanwhile, congress dukes it out about the stimulus package because construction workers and the unemployed aren’t great sources of campaign revenue, but the bank bailouts slide through fairly easily.  Those huge bailouts faced little opposition from, “fiscal conservatives” because as the apocryphal banker saying goes, “vote for whomever you want, we bought both.”  Next point in the triangle are politicians, they give bureaucracies funding and political support and in return bureaucracies give politicians policy options and actually do the things politicians ask them to. Remember, congress legally holds the power of the purse, so if the DEA, EPA, FDA, and so on want to do something, they need to go through congress to get the money. Equally so, bureaucracies are for the most part an arm of the executive branch, so if a bureaucracy or the executive branch doesn’t like its legislature, they can just decide to “carry out actions to the best of their abilities” the same way a pissy teenager cleans their room, i.e. don’t do jack.  The final point of the Iron Triangle is Bureaucracies. They give Special Interests low regulation and special favors, and in turn Special Interests incentiveise Politicians to give funding and political support to specific bureaucracies.

How it all shakes out

So what do these two theories mean for the average citizen, and possibly the more interested consumer of all things political?  The first lesson to be learned from these theories is that much of bad political decision making happens when government resources get bought out by limited private interests.  Rather than asking is government the bad guy or are corporations the bad guy it is more beneficial to look at what behavior is incentivised by each of those entity’s access to the other.  One of the key problems that faced the Soviets was that the massive apparatus of state was mostly dedicated to funding the caviar and hooker desires of the ruling classes.  See, don’t even need corporations for that one!  Modern Lobbying and campaign funding laws encourage corporate entities to buy votes, and those same laws require politicians to put a for sale sign on their ideologies.  How important is money in politics? So important that eight out of ten races in the senate are won by the person with the most money, nine out of ten races swing that way in the house.

I see these two theories as the basics for discussing the reasons why politicians do the things they do in America. There are certainly ideological components to the introduction and implementation of policy, and as I go I will write more about how ideology, money, and systemic features of politics interact.

Note on commenting, If you want a source for a piece of information don’t be afraid to ask. I may not get to your request immediately, but if/when I do I will make a thorough investigation into the material. If I’m wrong Ill make sure to amend the article and I’ll give users credit for their comments.