Partisan Polarization in United States
Introduction
This paper will support the ideology, that political partisan polarization in the United States, usually causes inefficiently and uncertainty in policy making. Not only because of the unusual significant levels of ideological polarization, among lawmakers or voters that produce very large variance in policy making. Reasonably, the problem of extreme gridlock in a unique form of two presidential party democracy in which the status quo changes frequently thus, requiring defections from the opposing members of legislation (Lawrence, 2010). This study paper will evaluate the argument that it is hard to achieve these defections, not because of the increased agenda regulation for party with the majority but because of the transformation of the American political background related to the suburbanization and deindustrialization. An understanding of the changes will be limited, and, therefore, it should be a hubris with dispense advice reforms.
Polarization produces a greater variation in policies. At times, it produces new good policy initiatives while, at other times, it rolls them back. Nevertheless, polarization authority in American policy and initiatives making systems, there is a very strong theoretical reasoning that believes that the main impact of partisan polarization is to create less public policy. Power separation and bicameralism systems demand an extraordinary a high amount of consensus to determine and pass new laws so that the ratifying coalitions will be required to be partisan. There are two broad perspectives which have been applied to explain designs in significant law in the post war period, they are, the partisan theory and pivot theory. Partisan theory plays a big role in both theories. Partisan theory argues that, new policies originate from inter partisan bargaining with its actors. It means that when different parties are regulated by different branches, for example, divided government, than the significant policy making is less likely to emerge such predictions will, however, depend on the level of the policy disagreements among the parties. The causal factors that increased polarization occur coincidentally with the increase in frequency of the divided government ideas on a double whammy which are against significant policymaking (Layman, 2006)
The origin of the problem
Most of the literature on U.S politics reveals that most voters seem to be centrists, instead of the growing polarity in congressional voting. In relation to the voters, in the advanced democracies, Republicans and Democrats are not different in their answers to the questions on policy making. They both have significantly written platforms. Political scientists perceive that Democrats and Republicans should be far apart than the counterparts of the most advanced democracies. What accounts for this polarization in perceptions of party platforms? Moreover, why are legislators so unwilling to vote across party lines? These questions must be answered together.
Possibilities are that the conservatives and the liberals have not solved into the ideologically immediate party (Fiorina, 2008). Instead, they have sorted themselves into geographical homogenous districts, such that only a few districts are left (Lawrence, 2010). It is a certainly imperfect proxy for average district ideology, it is thus, important to look at the evolution of the president's vote count to the level of the Congressional district. Statistics shows that there are many discrepancies on the district vote distribution during presidential elections.
Solutions
Many things have changed in American politics from 1960s to the present day. The party leaders have attained agenda control, majority and minority districts have resulted, more incredible challenges have become more general and plans and campaign funding have changed. As discussed in the above section, the period has gone through geographic and demographic changes.
There is only one run of history from which inferences are drawn, this leaves people in a weak position to make causal primacy to these factors and even recommend changes in institutions that are aimed at turning back the dates to the 1960s. Woodrow Wilson proposed a solution; he suggested that U.S should adopt parliamentary government. These suggestions had an argument of changing House and Senate terms to four years and coordinate them with presidential elections so as to reduce the chance of the divided state. Alternatively United States can retain the current presidential government system, but increase the numbers of Houses and Senates by may be double. Doing so could allow multi-party system and hence allow the president to collect party coalitions, as it happens in other state systems, in the World.
The truth is such radical constitutional transformation are unlikely to come into a realization, nevertheless, some of the effects are hard to predict. Beginning with small changes at State level could be a better way of experimenting it. It is unknown to many, how much the growth of Congressional partisan polarization has increased the agenda regulator by the various party leaders. The main reason for this is that cannot observe the votes (bipartisan) that never took place. Many laws have changed including the anonymous liberation of petition, this could help the group of centrist members of legislation to back the party headship and have negotiations with the president. It is still unclear how this could be of benefit, and, therefore, difficult to establish how reformers can influence the party heads to give up the powers they have (Layman, 2006).
Other small-scale reforms are worth. For instance, changes of primaries or redistricting centers are commendable for consideration and more research, but again there are motives for skepticism. If the most important districts are polarized internally, then the incumbents can rely on influencing their basics described in the above section
The primary negativities described in this paper is that many best candidates for bipartisan confront Congress. They usually make calculations that suit themselves or demobilize moderates; they also make attempts to maximize voters turn out in clusters to support and vote for them (Fiorina, 2008). Even if Republicans and Democrats in those districts are not popular, they find means of seeking strength through partisan Congress agenda. One might debate that this change is just unrealistic as the proportional representation or parliamentary democracy, but then, this would run into constitutional barriers. However, those obstacles could be eliminated at the state level. The States have the freedom of conducting their own elections. Ornstein suggests issues about coercion and the requirements can be alleviated by just experimenting using lottery-style payments during voting rather than the fines. Practically, compulsory voting requires a widespread of vote-by-mail preference (Lawrence, 2010).
Conclusion
In the short term, voting as compulsory options is likely to be supported in the purple or blue States during movements when the policy agenda is controlled by the Democrats. Nevertheless, all states have some heterogeneous districts; the only single opportunity to monitor changes in the behavior of the representatives in such districts is after compulsory voting has been introduced to provide the best excellent learning opportunities.
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References
Fiorina, M. P., & Abrams, S. J. (2008). Political polarization in the American public. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci., 11, 563-588.
Layman, G. C., Carsey, T. M., & Horowitz, J. M. (2006). Party polarization in American politics: Characteristics, causes, and consequences. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci., 9, 83-110.
Lawrence, E., Sides, J., & Farrell, H. (2010). Self-segregation or deliberation? Blog readership, participation, and polarization in American politics. Perspectives on Politics, 8(01), 141-157.
