Brian Schaffner's Party Polarization

Bipartisanship in Congress has not changed much since the 1970s. The dichotomy between before War Powers resolution and after makes theorizing about the relationship as a dividing line between Foreign policy surround a dangerous international environment into one that is a function of a resurgent Congress. The more we get through the 21st Century the more it seems as Congress having more and more of an influence and acting not in concert with the President while hearing loudly what the People of the U.S. know and hear about through the media. It is likely that without any incentives for stopping politics as usual, they both will most likely continue to shape policy according to their own political needs. Further evolution has occurred due to

I believe that political polarization is very damaging to our society. As stated in the text book, polarization can lead to no middle ground for Americans. Having people who support a certain political party so strongly can prevent there to ever be a compromise. Tom Davis and Martin Frost, both former US Congressmen have even suggested a law requiring states to appoint representatives that are non-partisan in the hopes of diluting the polarization in Congress in 2008. They believe that too much polarization in Congress is because of the popularity of primary election for the government.

What I learned from my research was that as actual politicians move more to the left or the right, Americans are forced to choose a side; which in turn makes them appear more polarized. Culture War applied Abrams and Fiorina’s suggestion of looking at party registration and found that the difference between democrat and republican registrations were hardly worth noting. If anything, they found that in both red and blue states, self-identified independents were the largest group. Bishop seems to completely disregard the idea of independents because he hardly mentions them, if at

During the establishment of the United States, the problems the founding fathers faced helped to form a constitution that is still followed to this day. Conditions of the country in the late 1700s and today are similar- debt, foreign threats, and unhappy people. But if the government today were to face a problem big enough to wreck the country, the United States would not be able to survive. It would not be possible to re-establish the government due to a divide among the people, the lack of dominant leaders, and the condition that the government is in.

Party polarization is the division between the two major parties on most policy issues, with members of each party is unified around their party’s position with little crossover. The competing explanations for polarization are how congressional representatives are elected, lawmakers selecting a candidate for office and as congressional districts and states have become more homogeneous. Every 10 years, congressional district geographic boundaries are redrawn so that each district has roughly the same population. These districts are increasingly drawn to be safe for one political party or another so that the district has a clear majority of either republicans or Democrats. This process is known as gerrymandering.

These districts usually result in partisanship representatives usually determined by the demographic characteristics of the district under consideration (Hirano et al, 2010). Hence, such representatives will largely hold on to their constituents viewpoints and this limits the possibility of bipartisanship efforts that can be used to break congressional gridlocks. The rise of anti-government sentiments has built distrust among the people who look for solutions from other areas. As such, legislations such as the Affordable Care Act among others become a tough sell on the ground and this takes the form of partisanship stand in the Congress and Senate (Teter, 2013). The ensuing gridlock becomes difficult to break resulting in

In the article Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris Fiorina addresses the issue of the illusion of political polarization. Political polarization is the separation of political beliefs into two separate extremes. The main illustration Fiorina uses is the use the electoral map. The electoral map is used to gauge which party won an election or polling.

The popularity of the members of Congress and Congress overall has been declining as the years pass and time changes. The dissatisfaction and disapproval of the public is so high because according to David Mayhew who wrote Congress the Electoral Connection members of Congress are single-minded people who are only focused on reelection, involve in “smart” behavior such as position taking, credit-claiming and advertisement. Also, according to Mayhew parties are weak, however, that is all not true people tend to vote more so for their party than the person in general. Arnold the writer of Logic of Congressional Outcome, states that Congress has many things to take into account such as citizen preference, robe-challenger, has to take into account

works as well as for individuals who understand the process and sought insider information. Rivlin (2022) utilized storytelling of her experiences in Washington D.C. to display how even though there were times that partisanship would prevail, the efforts of lawmakers and other government officials to pass laws to benefit the American public succeeded. Through those experiences, she describes ways to address the rise of division in the US and even ways for normal Americans to get involved which greatly benefits people who want to change things. However, the lack of text dedicated to addressing Republicans’ slide toward authoritarianism will hinder any progress to increase bipartisanship. The Washington Center Academic Seminar highlighted the points focusing on bipartisanship addressing issues rather than focusing on partisan conflict.

American Constitution Introduction History shows that pluralism is linked to democracy which is a system characterized by checks and balances of autonomy or power. Such autonomy is the one in play in forging an agreement of the general interest that dictates administrative strategy or policy framework. On the other hand elitism notion regarding the administration states that a chosen few of the most affluent and influential people or groups direct and influence public policy that works in their favor and satisfies their own interests. Various scholarly standpoints reveal that a more contemporary notion of American administration and partisan matters incorporate the two worldviews of partisan behavior.

This extends from the idea of the place of democracy in the political system,

Finally, it will be argued that the modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the United States Congress since 1856. The Democratic Party generally positions itself as centre-left in American politics and supports a modern American liberal platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as centre-right and supports a modern American conservative platform. (Nichols, 1967)

In the United States, people always talk about freedom and equality. Especially they want elections could be more democratic. In American Democracy in Peril, Hudson’s main argument regarding chapter five “Election Without the People’s Voice,” is if elections want to be democratic, they must meet three essential criteria, which are to provide equal representation of all citizens, to be mechanisms for deliberation about public policy issues, and to control what government does. Unfortunately, those points that Hudson mentions are what American elections do not have. American elections do not provide equal representation to everyone in the country.

This realignment plays a huge role in the changes of the system of parties and elections. For starters, take a look at the disintegration of the New Deal Coalition. The New Deal Coalition was basically a large alignment of groups that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates. A huge voting block for the democrats were Catholics. The Catholics during the New Deal era were in mainly full support of it.

In the future political polarization may