People frequently claim that their political opponents have hidden agendas. When liberals push for expansionary fiscal policy during recessions, conservatives often suspect that liberals’ real goal is the promotion of Big Government. When conservatives push for deregulation, liberals often suspect that conservatives’ real goal is to enrich the rich. When liberals denounce deportations, conservatives fear that liberals’ real goal is to hand citizenship to likely Democratic voters. When conservatives argue for war against a Muslim country, liberals fear that conservatives’ real goal is simply to kill Muslims.
The normal reactions to such accusations is to accuse your opponents of paranoia. But as you’d expect, these accusations rarely change your critics’ minds. Indeed, they cement your critics’ sense that you’re up to no good – leading to further polarization and recrimination.
What’s the alternative? Democracies often resort to political bargaining: If you give us what we want despite our nasty intentions, we’ll do the same for you. This helps pass legislation, but it rests on the shaky foundation of mutual suspicion.
Is there any feasible way to build long-run trust? I say there is. Instead of aggressively bargaining for what you want, listen to your opponents’ fears. Then do things that you probably wouldn’t do if their fears were well-based. Go out of your way to reassure your opponents. Some examples:
- If conservatives fear that expansionary fiscal policy is a Trojan horse for Big Government, liberals could offer to make all the expansion come from tax cuts rather than spending increases.
- If liberals fear that deregulation is a ploy to help the rich, conservatives could focus on pro-poor deregulation, such as relaxing of zoning and land use rules for low-income housing.
- If conservatives fear that opposition to deportations is a liberal plot to elect a new people, liberals could support legislation that legalizes work and residence without granting citizenship.
- If liberals fear that conservatives are waging Islamophobic war, conservatives could admit a million Muslim refugees right before fighting begins.
How is this different from bargaining? Simple. All of the preceding offers are an effort to signal that your opponents have misconstrued your intentions. Key implication: The less you actually need your opponents’ political support, the stronger a signal these actions send! If your party has a narrow majority in favor of attacking a Muslim country, even a staunch Islamophobe might be willing to take a few refugees to solidify their coalition. But if the hawks have a supermajority and admit a bunch of Muslim refugees anyway, they can credibly tell their critics, “You misjudge us. You have long misjudged us. Think better of us.”
But why on Earth would a political faction make concessions to their opponents when they have the raw power to do as they please? Most obviously, because they and their opponents share the same country. They’re stuck with each other. If they can convince their opponents that they’re good people – or at least non-Satanic people – it will be easier for both sides to live side-by-side and constructively work together.
If all this is true, why do major political factions send so few signals of reassurance? I see a mixture of dysfunctions:
- Short-termism. The benefits of wielding power while you have it come swiftly. The benefits of convincing your opponents that your motives are decent are spread out over decades.
- Pathological distrust. If both sides think that the other side will hate them no matter what they do, there’s no point trying to win the other side over.
- Politics is not about policy. Both sides would rather demonize their opponents than move policy in their preferred directions.
- Both sides are basically right about the other sides’ real intentions. Democrats really are just government-lovers. Republicans really are just Islamophobes. Etc.
Anything I’m missing? What’s a judicious breakdown here?
READER COMMENTS
drobviousso
Jun 27 2018 at 1:00pm
5. While people *tend* to move toward bargains and agreement, they don’t always. There are many situations in which some kind of Cosean bargain would move both parties into a better position, but because of a lack of vision about what is possible, they don’t know to move toward it. Fishing shares could have been instituted a hundred years ago, but they weren’t popular… until they were.
6. Non-pathological distrust due to a recognition that some people on each political tribe act like point 3. Even if Honest-Dealing-Red-Team member and Honest-Dealing-Blue-Team member really think politics are about policy and they think they can come to agreement on something, they still need to deal with Screeching-Red-Tribal-Warriors and Screeching-Blue-Tribal-Warriors. Given that the Honest-Dealers need the votes of the Screechers, this limits what they can do. The trend of technology and society in the last ~15 years has empowered the Screechers disproportionately.
7. It doesn’t work. “If liberals fear that deregulation is a ploy to help the rich, conservatives could focus on pro-poor deregulation, such as relaxing of zoning and land use rules for low-income housing.” You mean like African Hair Braiders? Don Willet isn’t exactly beloved by the left. You mean like immigrants facing vague demands to appear and then getting deported for failing to follow the vague demands perfectly? Gorsuch isn’t exactly beloved by the left.
As another example, the RKBA was greatly expanded when the pro RKBA side got a much harder nose. Their previous tactic was exactly this kind of compromise – keep hunting and non-scary stuff legal and we’ll compromise. That led to endless calls to chisel a bit of the RKBA off, over and over again. Since adopting a red-line policy that nothing will be accepted, the RKBA has been greatly expanded.
As another example, gay rights were advanced in basically the same way. There was no serious acceptance of civil unions but not marriage. I think the gay rights advocates got less offensive and in your face (ie it became the cause of Uncle Steve and his boyfriend who wanted a normal life, not the cause of strange people out to shock the squares with their public nudity and sexual deviance), but they still fought hard for the whole ball of wax.
David J
Jun 27 2018 at 1:25pm
I would add that the two party dominance of the political system does nothing to help this. Even with the checks and balances, the incentive to compromise and work together is lessened when a single party almost always has a clear majority in the legislative branches of government on the national and state levels. There’s very little reason to compromise when one knows that the voters’ ideological “switching costs” are quite high (i.e., a person who traditionally supports Democrats and their stances on all or most issues flipping to vote Republican or vice versa).
Musca
Jun 27 2018 at 3:18pm
This also may not give enough credit to ideologies as being more integrated than single-policy disagreements would suggest. For example, the suggested response:
… disregards the ideological point that activists on the “liberal” (progressive) side often doubt the effectiveness or morality of tax cuts and, indeed tend to support policies that “soak the rich” as much as helping the disadvantaged. Tax cuts in no way can count as soaking. In other words, this suggested solution forces them to violate one part of their worldview in order to achieve support for another.
Economists like trade-offs. Ideologues… not so much.
Thomas Sewell
Jun 27 2018 at 8:25pm
Interestingly enough, Rush Limbaugh has a repeated long-standing proposal along the lines of #3. “I would be willing right here to support an effort to grant permanent citizenship for whatever number if you make part of the deal they can’t vote for 15-25 years.”
So far, no one on the left seems to have taken him up on the offer, which sadly reinforces listed dysfunction #4, likely part of the point of the proposal.
Part of the problem may be that different people within the coalition for a position likely have a different mix of reasons, making it tougher to unite on a different positional subset of goals to show good faith as they don’t want to alienate part of their coalition.
Robert EV
Jun 28 2018 at 12:11am
It boggles my mind that anyone thinks it’s just that an adult would work and contribute to the common weal but have no opportunity to have a say in the government under which they work.
But then again many, if not most, people have zero problem having no say in the governance of their workplace.
I don’t get it, and I have no clue why anyone would think I would find such a bargain fine. Can someone explain?
john hare
Jun 28 2018 at 5:48am
I find it hard to understand why you think the random employee or immigrant should be able to walk in the door and immediately have a full voice in operations. There’s no way I’m going to run a company where an entry level employee has an equal vote with top management. I also don’t see how anyone could believe that someone should step off the plane and immediately have a full voice in running the country.
The dues have to be paid first in any sport, job, or national management.
Hazel Meade
Jun 28 2018 at 10:21am
We do already have a five year wait for naturalization. And that’s after whatever wait you have to get a green card, which varies from about 2-15 years.
I came to the US on an F-1 student visa in 1992 and finally became a citizen in 2014. Twenty-two years.
Robert EV
Jun 28 2018 at 10:55pm
As Hazel mentioned we already have a delay, let’s have the same delay for everyone. Equality under the law is not such a big thing to ask for.
And there are plenty of ways to partition corporate governance without immediate equal votes, any of which would be superior in terms of representation than the status quo.
Evan Smiley
Jun 28 2018 at 7:56am
@Robert EV
I have no doubt that, given a choice between the following 2 options:
A.) Be allowed to immigrate to the US, but not be allowed to vote (or get welfare or whatever)
B.) Remain in a 3rd world country
that plenty would gladly choose option A.
Robert EV
Jun 28 2018 at 10:58pm
I agree Evan, it doesn’t boggle my mind that immigrants would choose option A, but that current citizens think it’s good for America to mandate an option A (especially for a subset of all immigrants, haven’t we learned the second-class citizen lesson yet?).
Evan Smiley
Jun 29 2018 at 7:42am
@Robert
Are you saying that it would be worse for them to be admitted but not allowed to vote than it would be for them to continue being prohibited?
Robert EV
Jun 29 2018 at 10:20am
Worse for them as individuals? No.
Worse for our republic? Quite possibly.
The Dorr Rebellion was bloodless, but it could have been far different, as shown by Harper’s Ferry and various actual slave revolts.
Evan Smiley
Jun 29 2018 at 12:32pm
@Robert
I don’t view those situations as analogous to this proposal, since in those cases the rebels were born into a political system that denied them the vote, whereas everyone who was banned from voting by this proposal would have voluntarily agreed to the arrangement. One would think this distinction would make a massive difference WRT their propensity to rebel.
Your fears would perhaps be valid if eliminating birthright citizenship were being proposed, but that’s not my understanding of Caplan’s proposal. (Although personally I would probably be willing to sacrifice even birthright citizenship if doing so allowed for significantly-increased immigration.)
Robert EV
Jun 29 2018 at 11:35pm
Hi Evan,
I thought of this likely critique while at work today. People change. And there are those who only grudgingly agree when on the horns of a dilemma. And who the heck knows what an immigrant’s US-born children might think about what was demanded of their parents?
The Dorr rebellion was a small number of people, and these days you don’t need many to rebel to have it be catastrophically bad.
That said, my ultimate argument against this kind of proposition isn’t about what the immigrants will do or think, but about what kind of ideas unequal treatment under the law of some populations of permanent residents and wannabes gives the more self-entitled and powerful of our birthright and naturalized citizens.
I’ve worked as a permatemp for almost 7 years (and was fired for making waves). It’s made me a ‘militant’ republican. Non-‘citizenship’, with no real shot at becoming a ‘citizen’, sucks.
P.S. I’d rather eliminate blood-right citizenship, which we technically do if the children of the citizens don’t spend a certain amount of time in the US. However anyone who wants to be here because of what we are should have a real shot at it, barring abuse of the system.
shecky
Jun 28 2018 at 9:19am
And, of course, illegal immigrants don’t actually vote.
David Henderson
Jun 28 2018 at 11:05am
I think I can explain. I became a permanent resident in 1977 and didn’t become a U.S. citizen until 1986. So for those 9 years, I worked and “contributed” and didn’t get to vote. Had you told me back in 1977 that I could avoid the lawyer’s fee and the deportation notice I got that year in return for never being able to vote in U.S. elections, I would have said, “Where do I sign?”
My point is that voting is just not that important to me, especially when I can contribute money to campaigns and write op/eds to persuade others to vote the way I want.
Hazel Meade
Jun 28 2018 at 11:14am
It’s true that many people would be willing to accept that bargain. That’s different than saying it would be morally just. They are only taking that deal because it’s the best deal they can get given the injustices of the political system they are faced with. The ideal state is still always going to be one-person-one-vote. In a just world, they wouldn’t need to get special permission from the government to work in the US in the first place. All of these artificial legal barriers violate the individuals fundamental economic right to exchange money for labor. If forced to choose between the right to do work in exchange for money and the right to vote, I’ll always choose the former, but I shouldn’t have to make that choice.
Hazel Meade
Jun 28 2018 at 11:18am
Also, I should note that the law has changed since 1977. You probably know this, but today even if you are otherwise eligible to get a green card (for instance via marriage), any period in which you lived in the US illegally will disqualify you from applying unless you return to your home country for up to 10 years. this is why there are millions of people who are married to American citizens and have US citizen children who cannot legalize their status. So if you had gotten that deportation notice today, your future would probably look very different.
Robert EV
Jun 28 2018 at 11:03pm
Thanks Hazel.
@David
And my father-in-law never naturalized over the nearly 60 years he lived here (he was an asylee, and probably had an emotional connection to his homeland that most other immigrants might not have. He was also fairly slow to change). This was his choice, and that’s all I want for others – the genuine choice, not Hobson’s choice.
shecky
Jun 28 2018 at 8:21am
Forget, for a moment, granting citizenship. Why not advocate simply legalizing residency? There are an awful lot of illegal immigrants who never cared for citizenship, except for the stability of not being randomly deported. Americans seem to view citizenship as some magical brass ring immigrants want above all things. But not even native born citizens very often care about the privileges and duties of citizenship. Which really aren’t all that appealing to most people.
Another suggestion: conservatives love promoting the idea that immigrants automatically become Democrats. Which raises the question, what have Republicans done to woo immigrants? The answer: they don’t. As we have seen, if anything, a significant portion of actual voting conservatives are broadly hostile to immigration of any kind. As a result, immigrants often see little reason to even consider supporting Republican proposals. Limbaugh knows this.
Frankly, I suspect Limbaugh is not making a proposal in good faith.
Thomas Sewell
Jun 29 2018 at 12:29am
I’m personally 90% of the way to an open borders advocate (just adding some process and caveats) and I’m also Republican, but I’m not who you have to convince.
If you think Limbaugh and the other Reps who believe the Dems won’t take them up on a delayed-voting immigration proposal because they’re just looking for new Dem voters, than the solution is simple, convince at least one Dem Congressman to call their bluff and agree to the proposal in the spirit of bipartisanship, then see how they react.
I think most potential immigrants value physically being in the U.S. legally much more than they value voting for the first couple of decades (see comments by others above), so why not see if half the Dems in Congress can unite with half the Reps in Congress to pass some legislation. At least then we can take them seriously when they say they’re in favor for non-partisan reasons and hey, maybe it’ll work and some more people can move to the U.S. legally.
shecky
Jun 28 2018 at 9:16am
Another thought: considering the length of time it takes to navigate the naturalization process currently, the 15-25 year delay may already be implemented far more often than one may think. There is a perception that illegal immigrants are cheating by somehow”cutting in line”, when for practical purposes, there is no line to cut at all for most prospective immigrants. The choice is migrate illegally, or not at all.
Bob
Jun 29 2018 at 3:46pm
Thomas,
I’m on the left and would agree to that. I’ve only listened to Rush a few times and it’s always been ironically. My guess is that very few people on the left have heard him make this proposal. I know i haven’t. 25 years seems punitive, but 15 seems reasonable. The current path to citizenship takes about six years I think? Adding an additional 7 years before voting rights are granted would be worth it to reach on consensus on this issue.
Weir
Jun 27 2018 at 7:26pm
A politician should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. If he chews gum like a champion, chewing really brilliantly, but always with his feet stuck hard to the floor, then that’s a signal. People come to think the gum is his priority.
He insists that walking is important to him too. He cares about walking. In fact, he loves walking. He has a great deal of faith in walking. Nobody believes more in walking than this guy. He says walking is a hardy weed, and walking can look after itself. He’s actually a big booster of walking.
People are not reassured by this. They see a trade-off between walking and chewing gum, and he insists, again, that he shares their commitment to walking, even though he doesn’t personally devote a lot of time to walking.
After he loses office, he now argues that walking is a waste of time. People should stop worrying about walking. People are wrong to care about walking when chewing gum is obviously what matters. People tell him they were right to question his commitment to walking. He swears at them.
Benjamin Cole
Jun 28 2018 at 6:48am
Bryan Caplan:
Signs of reassurance?
“Anything I’m missing? What’s a judicious breakdown here?”–Byran Caplan
Egads, are you not missing rank self-interest?
Do you really expect people who rhapsodize about free markets to embrace a near-total abolition of property-zoning? Decriminalize push-cart, truck- and motorcycle sidecar vending? De-license lawyers? Sunset the VA, and USDA?
Come, come.
Macroeconomics is politics in drag. The skill is in framing the argument—and making the media stay on topic.
How come there has never been a left-wing poverty study that concluded, “Then again, lots of poor people are poor as they are lazy or undisciplined.”
Now, I would like to see Bryan Caplan go on a year-long jihad against all property zoning. Make that your cause.
Bloomberg shows the way: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-27/zoning-has-had-a-good-100-years-and-that-s-plenty
Evan Smiley
Jun 28 2018 at 8:04am
I feel like the a big reason why these reassurances are not extended is because many of the “concerns” are not actually concerns, but rather ex post justifications for a policy that someone prefers anyway. Assuage one set of concerns and they will just come up with another.
Hazel Meade
Jun 28 2018 at 10:17am
If conservatives fear that opposition to deportations is a liberal plot to elect a new people, liberals could support legislation that legalizes work and residence without granting citizenship.
There is a fundamental problem with that proposal, which is that America and it’s founding ideology is rooted in one-person-one-vote democratic ideals. We rebelled against an aristocratic system in which classes were legally stratified. It would be turning our back on those ideals to create a class of legal residents who are legally disenfranchised. We have always followed the policy that anyone allowed to live here permanently should have a vote.
Moreover, the Republicans failure to win immigrant votes is a self-inflicted problem. After spending decades demonizing immigration, the fact that immigrants don’t vote Republican is not the fault of the immigrants. And the argument that people’s legal right to vote should depend on who they are likely to vote for is perturbing.
During the 19th century, the US gerrymandered statehood admissions in order to maintain a political balance between slave and free states. We now seem to be in a similar situation, where politicians argue to restrict the franchise in order to maintain a political balance between Republicans and Democrats. I think that is dangerous territory to be treading in, considering what followed historically. What do you think is likely to happen if we have large numbers of people living the US who can’t legally vote? The Republicans need to accept that voting rights are always going to be universal and get to work on rebuilding their credibility with Hispanic votes.
Evan Smiley
Jun 28 2018 at 10:49am
@Hazel Meade
I think this is allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. If your concern is stratification, it’s a much more urgent problem that ~95% of the world’s population is not even allowed to set foot in US-controlled territory.
Personally I view potential immigrants’ economic and cultural contributions as being far more important than their political input, so this is an easy sell for me. But even if you disagree, surely you can see a benefit in admitting non-voting residents if the alternative is that they don’t get admitted at all.
Hazel Meade
Jun 29 2018 at 10:42am
From a pragmatic standpoint, I would definitely be willing to accept a compromise in which current DACA recipients, and parents/wives of US citizens who currently can’t adjust status be given legal residency, in exchange for not being allowed to vote, but only if accompanied by immigration reform which created a legal path to citizenship for future immigrants in the same situation. We need an immigration reform that makes it possible for people to legally come to work, and then, if they marry a US citizen or have children, become US citizens legally (once their children turn 18). We also need a legal way in which people who came here as children can legally become citizens, without giving up their voting rights. otherwise, we will end up with a growing population of legal residents who are banned from becoming citizens, which is immoral and untenable in the long run.
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