The November election has split the Senate, which the Democrats won by a very small majority, from the House, which the Republicans won, also by a very small majority (according to AP’s call of yesterday). The result of divided government will be gridlock, that is, as the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained, “power contradicting power.” There is a seven-minute YouTube video where he adds that Americans should “learn to love the gridlock,” because it prevents an excess of legislation. It is a feature, not a bug, of the American system of government.
That divided government protects individuals is an old (classical) liberal idea. It was echoed in Montesquieu’s 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws:
To prevent this abuse, it is necessary [that], from the very [arrangement] of things, power should be a check to power.
[French original] Pour qu’on ne puisse abuser du pouvoir, il faut que, par la disposition des choses, le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir.
More to the point, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51:
This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power; where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other. …
In republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit.
What does this have to do with economics? Although economists have always been interested in the function and workings of politics, as suggested by the old term “political economy,” the contemporary school of Public Choice has provided enhanced analysis of how democratic government works in practice and how it can or cannot efficiently promote the interests of the several individuals in society (assuming that government is necessary). Two especially important books in that regard are Geoffrey Brennan and
James Buchanan, The Reason of Rules (Cambridge University Press, 1985; Liberty Fund, 2000); and the older classic of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (University of Michigan Press, 1962; Liberty Fund, 1999). A central idea is that rational individuals will want to constrain government power with constitutional rules. Gridlock hopefully happens when a government wants to impose bans or obligations that don’t meet the consent of most citizens.
It is true that gridlock may prevent the adoption of potentially good legislation or the repeal of bad legislation, but this is still better than tyranny. As Montesquieu said,
Since a despotic government is productive of the most dreadful calamities to human nature, the very evil that restrains it is beneficial to the subject.
[French original] Comme le despotisme cause à la nature humaine des maux effroyables, le mal même qui le limite est un bien.
READER COMMENTS
Philo
Nov 17 2022 at 1:32pm
I wish there were even more gridlock; as it is, the Democrats and the Republicans need only compromise in order to pass whatever legislation they please. On the other hand, even if the Democrats controlled everything, the different factions within the party would have to agree on new legislation: compromise would still be required. One can always hope the government will be too slow and clumsy to do much harm.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 17 2022 at 2:55pm
Philo: You are right that even a little political competition will slow down government. It important, however, to note (as is implicit in your comment, I think) that political competition is not enough to produce public policies that are respectful of all individuals.
The scope (and process) of political competition must also be limited by rules lest, for example, everybody competes to exploit a (potentially different) minority, which was Brennan’s, Buchanan’s, and Tullock’s concern. Alternatively, one could fear, à la de Jasay, that unconstrained political competition would lead to competing away any benefit of being the “tenant of the state” and to the governmental drudge ultimately having no choice but to abolish political competition. That’s what populist try to do.
nobody.really
Nov 17 2022 at 1:43pm
Good points.
These arguments also illustrate one of the harms of gerrymandering: It’s a strategy to defeat the (appropriate) gridlock that we might otherwise expect if the legislature proportionately reflected the public’s conflicting views.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 17 2022 at 3:19pm
Nobody: I am, like you, revulsed by the fact that the party in power, the “tenant of the state” as de Jasay would say, can choose its voters, instead of the other way around. The idea that gerrymandering can work against gridlock (if true) would add a powerful argument against it.
vince
Nov 17 2022 at 2:45pm
We have two political parties. Each one attempts to seize control of all three branches of government. Why isn’t this a criminal conspiracy against the Constitution’s checks and balances?
We should have more than two choices. The duopoly won’t allow it.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 17 2022 at 3:12pm
Vince: I am not sure that the problem is the number of choices, even assuming that a bundle of complex and often contradictory policies with unknown future consequences can be the object of a rational choice. Whether the state offers only the alternative beer or wine, or add Coke as the third alternative, the basic problem of collective choices remain.
vince
Nov 17 2022 at 6:38pm
But your example is evidence of my point. Not everyone wants alcohol, but those poisons are the only choices now. (Actually, Coke, with all of its sugar, is also a poison.)
Jim Glass
Nov 17 2022 at 6:12pm
We should have more than two choices. The duopoly won’t allow it.
Beware what you wish for. With multi-party legislatures small minorities that hold the balance of power can extort huge payoffs from the major parties, and tiny swings in votes can produce huge swings in power.
Examples abound. Most recently … Israel:
Which was set up by…
A free market in political parties!
And reform made things worse. Reform ain’t easy! Difficult problems are … difficult. When one thinks one has an obvious simple answer to them that nobody else has tried, it’s a pretty safe bet that one doesn’t. Political systems universally suck because people are people. It’s easy for those under every political system in the world to damn their own, and fall for the “that other grass has just gotta be greener” fallacy.
The USA’s two-party first-past-the-post system with a two-house legislature is the longest lasting most stable regime in the world (given all the changes in the British constitution since 1789). It drives the parties as close to the reasonable center as possible because that’s where the marginal votes are. Anyone who thinks our politics are so bad and divisive that this can’t be so should look at what multi-party, far more voter representative parliaments have produced in that period: Mussolini, Hitler, Chavez, other fascists and communists, 21 governments in 35 years in Italy, utter corruption and bankruptcy in Greece…
To paraphrase Churchill, when all systems suck the best is the least bad. USA! USA!
Jim Glass
Nov 18 2022 at 9:06pm
We should have more than two choices. The duopoly won’t allow it.
Also, we do have more than two choices, e.g. there are six parties on the California ballot. Anybody can organize a new political party. Start your own!
The problem is getting support for it from the citizenry. The situation is analogous to creating your own private currency. It’s perfectly legal, been done many time, the Fed even has a publication about doing it. But with the dollar able to buy anything in the world, who’s going to invest in using Barney’s Bucks? What can you buy with them?
The two parties dominate due to the rational free behavior of voters and interest groups. Say you have an interest or a cause to promote: civil rights, rent control, tax cuts, your homeowner’s association, a subsidy for the national curling team, whatever …
What organization do you want help from, to which you will contribute your money and votes in return? Which group do you want as an ally to bring you victory in the political wars? The Peace and Freedom Party? The Libertarians?
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 20 2022 at 8:49pm
Jim: I agree that democratic gadgetry (like some version of proportional representation) won’t solve the basic problem of democracy. I suggest, though, that another focus is important. The basic problem is that no democratic choice imposed to everybody can satisfy those who would have chosen something else; and a democratic government must be strictly limited to minimize this problem. See my EconLog post “Only One Way to be ‘President of All Syldavians’.” A related problem is that, as Gordon Tullock put it, “any outcome can be obtained by at least one voting method.”
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