Trevor Burrus: Welcome to Free Thoughts.
I’m Trevor Burrus.
Joining me today is Hans Noel, the associate
professor at Georgetown University.
He is the author of "Political Ideologies
and Political Parties in America" from Cambridge
University Press.
He has also authored many articles, one of
which is the subject of today's episode, "10
Things Political Scientists Know That You
Don't", and Hans actually informed me that
he is turning that into a book, which [00:00:30]
makes me very excited because I have recommended
this article many times to many people because
I think it is very important that people realize
this, so welcome to Free Thoughts, Hans.
Hans Noel: Thanks, thanks for having me.
Trevor Burrus: What prompted you to write
the "10 Things" article?
Hans Noel: I was approached by the editor
of the journal that it's in, North Forum,
they were doing a special issue on things
that political scientists could learn from
practitioners and so forth, which is a great
issue.
I go, "That's really great," and they said,
"Oh, do you want to contribute something to
that?"
It's [00:01:00] really good, but I'm a political
scientist, so I don't know what we can learn
from them.
I know things that maybe others don't always
know that we could teach the other way, and
so that led to that conversation.
I said, "Let's put this piece together," and
it has been very well received.
I know a lot of people use it and assign it
in classes.
It's getting a little bit older now, which
is why I'd like to update it with the book,
but I just sort of felt like there's a lot
that political scientists can and should learn
from people who are actually doing politics,
[00:01:30] but there is a lot of commentary
about people doing politics from people who
are doing politics that is a little bit ignorant
of the things that social scientists have,
at this point, figured out.
Trevor Burrus: In the interview article you
write, "People would probably be better off
if they knew more than they do about a lot
of things.
Politics might, however, be the last thing
on that list."
That seems a strange thing to say.
What do you mean by that?
Hans Noel: For me, and for you, and presumably
for a lot of the listeners now, politics is
really important because we're really interested
in it.
[00:02:00] We have other things that are interesting
in our lives, so I'm spending the year now
in Florence, Italy, as we mentioned a minute
ago, and there's all these great arts, and
architecture, and history here, none of which
really has anything to do with politics.
You can, and should, be able to live a very
full life without being that involved in politics.
As I go on to say in the piece, as much as
we'd like to think you'll be able to live
a lively and happy life [00:02:30] without
involvement in politics, we think that people
have a responsibility to know about politics
or at least to know about it if they are going
to participate in politics.
We may as well figure out what it is that
the experts on politics has, to this point,
managed to learn.
Trevor Burrus: That might be the case that
people are disappointed in that, though.
Some of the things that the experts know might
disappoint some people.
Hans Noel: I think that's definitely true,
and unlike in most other disciplines, we think
if this isn't how it works, maybe we should
be able to [00:03:00] change it.
That's probably legit in some cases, but it
would be useful to have a better understanding
of what we think we already know before we
start going around saying, "Oh, I don't like
how our system works, and we ought to be different
and it ought to be changed, it’s not common
sense, those eggheads in Washington don't
know what they're doing."
Maybe they don't, but if we knew better what
they think that they do know, we'd be better
off.
Trevor Burrus: Let's start at the beginning
of the list.
The number one thing is, " [00:03:30] It's
the fundamental, Stupid."
What is that "thing" that you know?
Hans Noel: That's a riff on a line from the
Clinton campaign in '92 ... the Bill Clinton
campaign, which their mantra for their campaign
was "It's the Economy, Stupid," meaning let's
keep our focus on the economy because the
economy is the thing that we think people
are going to vote on, and that's going to
cause them to vote for Clinton, which in fact
is what happened.
That phenomena, that strategy that Clinton
[00:04:00] had in that campaign generalizes.
We think in general that the thing that drives
most election results is how happy our people
... in particular, how happy are they with
the big things that the government is responsible
for, like the state of the economy.
When the economy is doing well, incumbents
tend to get re-elected.
When the economy is doing poorly, incumbents
tend to get booted out.
Of course, when the economy is doing so-so,
then you tend to get really close elections,
which is what we've had in the last couple
of presidential elections in the United States.
In that sense, you don't need to know anything
else [00:04:30] about Clinton versus Trump,
or whatever else was going on in 2016.
The state of the economy was that you'd expect
when the incumbent party, the Democrats, who
have been in power for two terms, to have
a hard time winning.
In fact, Clinton outperformed that expectation
by a couple of points, but you sort of expect
that that would be a year when the Republicans
would probably win.
That tends to be what happens.
So, we really want to over-interpret every
election and to all the different nuances
of [00:05:00] what happened, and there's nothing
wrong with that because the other subject
also probably matters, but a baseline is when
things are going well people return the incumbent
to office, and when they're not going to so
well they like to throw them out and replace
them with someone else.
Trevor Burrus: Does that mean that campaigning
doesn't matter, or at least doesn't matter
as much as people might think it does?
Hans Noel: Probably not.
I mean, campaigning definitely matters in
some ways, and there's two broad things that
campaigns are doing.
One is they're mobilizing voters and they're
getting them to the polls and so forth, and
what we basically [00:05:30] have seen is
that in most good elections both parties do
a pretty good job of that.
It's a little like saying, "Does advertising
not matter because the market share between
Coke and Pepsi hasn't changed very much."
Well, but if one of them stopped advertising,
things might be different.
There's a little bit of that that's going
on.
The other thing that campaigns do is they
can focus and shape the conversation around
the state of the economy.
Bill Clinton said, "It's the Economy, [00:06:00]
Stupid.
Let's talk about the economy, let's talk about
the fundamentals and push it in that direction."
He could have done something different, and
then that might have had some other effects
into the direction.
Things matter on the margins, and if elections
are going to be very close, then all kinds
of other things that are in the campaign probably
matter.
In 2016, the election came down to fewer than
100,000 votes in three or four states.
Those people are going to be affected by the
campaign.
The magnitude of the campaign effects might
be small, [00:06:30] but if the race is close,
then it can still matter.
So, we really want to think campaigns don't
matter at all, but they matter in the context
of a sort of baseline that is set by its fundamentals:
how popular is the president, how is the economy
doing, and so forth.
Trevor Burrus: It seems that if they both
stop ... if they agree to stop campaigning,
which of course is this huge pie in sky, all
these political ads.
I mean political scientists say this is almost
wasted money.
A lot of people think they have huge effects,
and people spend [00:07:00] hundreds of millions
of dollars on ads, and it sometimes seems
like a destructive equilibrium, which is if
everyone stands up at the concert ... if one
person stands up at the concert, then everyone
has to stand up.
But, if everyone could just agree to sit down,
then we can be relaxing, and then if someone
brings a box and everyone else will bring
a box, eventually you can have the entire
crowd standing on 200 boxes because no one
can agree to just, "Okay, let's take away
all the boxes and just stand on the floor."
It seems kind of destructive sometimes.
Hans Noel: [00:07:30] Maybe it is, but one
thing that's important is ... empirically
we find this pattern that the economy has
this effect and the fundamentalists and generalists
of the things like foreign policy have this
affect.
We only observe it in a world in which there
are campaigns.
It might be that if there were no campaigns
at all, then things wouldn't work out this
way.
The other thing about campaigns is that we
talk a lot about how there's like all these
ads that it seems annoying and destructive.
Again, to people like us who pay a lot of
attention to politics and maybe don't need
advertisements [00:08:00] to know what's going
on with politics, it seems like it's a distraction.
One thing that we know is that the more ad
campaigns that exist, the more that whole
phenomena plays out, the more informed people
are about politics.
It might be that while the campaign is not
necessary to someone who wins, it does actually
inform people a bit about who is running and
what they stand for, what direction they are,
and that may not necessarily be a bad thing.
Given that the cost of campaigning isn't ... it
seems like a lot and we talk about [00:08:30]
a lot of money, but it's nothing like the
cost of campaigning for a consumer product
or something.
It may not be such a bad thing that people
have a high attention to campaign.
You might worry about the tone, or what if
it could be more positive and all of that,
but now it seems like we're on a level of
fine-tuning something, like, "Oh, if only
some people would just be nicer," while I'm
sure that would be nice, I'm not necessarily
... if I were work with you on reforming the
[00:09:00] political system, that's one thing
in a way, which put politics as different
than some other disciplines.
Like, in chemistry this is how it works, but
in political science and other social sciences,
learning about it we can actually change what
we do and we could actually see things in
different directions.
If I were working on doing that, I think getting
rid of campaigns wouldn't be high on my list
of reforms that I'd be interested in [00:09:23].
Trevor Burrus: Number two, "The will of the
people is incredibly hard to put your finger
on."
Hans Noel: The [00:09:30] issue that I'm getting
at here is that it's ... we like to think
about like, "I took a poll, and the poll says
this is what people believe and what they've
said."
Most people are not that interested in politics,
and therefore they don't actually have well-defined
opinions about things.
It maybe makes more sense to say people just
don't have an opinion on something, rather
than saying that 60% support something and
40% disapprove.
If you ask people, if you call them up and
say, "Hey, [00:10:00] what do you think about
the death penalty?
Or, do you approve of the job that the president
is doing as President?,” they're going to
give you an answer, but it's not a well thought
out answer.
It's not their fault, like I said before,
people have more important things to do with
their lives than to know about politics.
But, they will give us an answer and the reason
why that's important is because maybe a different
context where an election was say, to come
up, well then there would be a campaign and
there would be a conversation and that might
change people's minds about things.
So, we do a survey and we say, "Oh, you know,
60% of [00:10:30] people approve of the job
the president's doing," or, "Right now Donald
Trump's approval ratings are really low."
Okay, that something that tells us that he's
not going to win re-election.
Oh, but what's going to happen when the campaign
turns around and he starts trying to sell
some people on himself?
Then, they might change their minds.
It's not that you can't ask surveys, or can't
do these things, but you want to realize that
the public opinion of people are very responsive
to things.
Particularly responsive to partisan [00:11:00]
messages, so what Republics are telling people
Republican voters are going to believe, and
what Democrats are telling people, Democratic
voters are going to believe.
Given that that's the sort of dynamic, we
shouldn't sort of imagine that public opinion
is this independent force in the world that
I've tapped it by asking this question, and
now I know what the people want.
Well, they want what they've been told they're
supposed to want because they're only answering
the survey questions and the survey questions
are asked in an information environment [00:11:30]
that was shaped by partisan politicians who
are trying to shape that information.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah, this issue comes up ... I
do a lot of work on campaign and finance policy,
and it comes up a lot.
What I see is kind of an implicit premise
that is often unstated when people criticize
spending money in elections as they often
say, "Oh, the Koch brothers," or "George Soros
are distorting the will of the people," or,
"They are distorting American democracy,"
and it seems like the implicit premise there
is that there is some sort [00:12:00] of real
political opinion will of the people almost
Rousseauian and when someone comes in and
spends money to speak to the electorate, sometimes
that's distorting, but I don't even know what
that would mean.
Hans Noel: I think that's right.
It's sort of nonsensical to talk about there
being this pure thing that could be distorted.
You could still say, "I'm concerned that too
much money from these people is going to create
an information environment that's going to
steer things this direction, or that direction,"
and what we'd like to do is have a [00:12:30]
conversation that includes ... let everyone
have a voice, or whatever, you can worry about
that.
That's very different than saying, "We just
can't people spending money.
We just need to get at their pure thing."
There is no purer thing, so then we've got
to be thinking about are we getting a diversity
of voices that are affecting the information
environment?
Are the facts that are in the information
environment true?
Those kinds of things.
It's a very different question when, "Well,
I just need to know what people really think."
Trevor Burrus: [00:13:00] Number three ... that
leads into number three, which is, "The will
of the people, not only is it hard to put
your finger on, it may not even exist."
Hans Noel: Yeah, this is an interesting finding
that's been known on political science for
a long time, and economics for a long time,
that as we tend to think about we'll just
aggregate our people's preferences, do we
want to change our immigration policy to where
we make it more difficult for immigrants to
enter the country, and let's see what everyone
thinks.
Let's lay aside the question that they maybe
haven't even thought [00:13:30] about the
issue already.
Let's figure out what they mostly think, let's
inform them, whatever ... and then they want
this policy.
Oh, so now we know what they think.
The thing is, if the dimensions of policy
that exist are in any way more complicated
than just there's one question; yes or no,
which of course they are, on all issues, then
it's quite possible that a majority might
prefer some Policy A to Policy B, but B is
preferred to Policy [00:14:00] C, and the
C is preferred to Policy A.
This can get a little technical, and I don't
want to get too deep into it here, but the
idea behind this was at the era it was an
economist working at Rand in the 50's, it's
kind of interesting in the question of, so,
we keep talking about our international competition,
and the Cold War, and we keep thinking that's
just to understand if we're rational and they're
rational, and everybody else understanding
what happens when you kind of get things up,
so you're going to get off on this question
of like, "Can we aggregate [00:14:30] up people's
preferences into something that's sort of
coherent and rational?"
What they said, "Well, we don't want it to
be a democracy, so what should a democracy
have?"
And, a democracy, so like, one person doesn't
decide everything, that would be a dictatorship,
and if everybody wants something, well they
should get it.
He's laid out a handful of things that he
thought you might expect a democracy to have,
and in the end is, you can't do that.
Trevor Burrus: Right.
Hans Noel: Something that we think is important
for democracy is at least clausibly going
to fall apart.
The thing that's most likely to fail is we
think that a democracy should work [00:15:00]
no matter what people want.
We should have any possible set of preferences,
and we just set them in to go that those preferences
are all kind of mushy and they could go in
all different directions.
Any possible set of preferences should be
acceptable, we have to be able to aggregate
them up.
The truth is, any aggregating system that
we have, whether it be majority rule, or some
other super majority ... anything we do might
possibility give us some sort of perverse
outcome where the whole country [00:15:30]
votes for Donald Trump, but in fact, somebody
else the whole country would prefer, but the
system didn't allow them to make that choice
and we never observed that.
That's possible.
It's a mathematical fact.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Trevor Burrus: We saw that in 1912, right?
We saw that in 1912, kind of, with Woodrow
Wilson.
Hans Noel: Yeah, I think that 1912 is probably
the most clear example.
The Republican party in 1912 was represented
by Taft, who was probably the least progressive
[00:16:00] of the major counting candidates
progressive, being of particular dimensions.
It's not quite the same as progressively meeting
today, but at any rate, Taft.
Then he was challenged by Theodore Roosevelt,
who had been a Republican president in the
past, and he wants to run again, and he's
probably the most progressive again, in the
historical context.
So, it splits the Republican party and then
they face off against Woodrow Wilson and the
Democrats, and Wilson wins, but it is quite
possible that had Taft or Roosevelt [00:16:30]
by themselves been the candidate, that either
one of them would have beat Wilson.
If you look at the votes across the country,
in most states the Roosevelt vote and the
Taft vote add up together to about what Taft
had gotten previously, so we match.
That's like the Republicans literally are
splitting their vote, and there were more
Taft and Roosevelt votes together than there
were for Wilson.
So, maybe we got the wrong president.
One thing to say is, "Oh, well we got the
wrong president because the Republic [00:17:00]
party was split, and we shouldn't have let
them be split."
But, that's not completely the answer because
well, how do they not split?
Should they have nominated Taft?
Should they have nominated Roosevelt?
Which one was better?
Well, they faced off within the party and
we got one answer, but it's hard to know.
I think the end result is, whatever you do
in a collective action, you can't be too confident
that it really is what the people wanted.
It just depends on the system that you use.
It depends on the rule that we had in the
application, and there's not [00:17:30] anything
wrong or right about those rules, but different
rules give you different outcomes.
If that's the case, if different rules give
you different outcomes, then it's very hard
to be very confident about any particular
outcome because a different set of rules that
are just as reasonable would have given you
a different one.
Trevor Burrus: Which leads nicely to number
four, "There is no such thing as a mandate."
I'm sure probably Woodrow Wilson might have
said something like ... giving his inaugural
speech in 1912, they don't have a mandate
from the people, but that seems [00:18:00]
probably a stretch.
Hans Noel: Yeah, at least what we think of
as a mandate is ... the people have said that
I should be the president, or people have
said this policy platform is the one that
we should implement, if given all of the squishiness
about what people want, and the problems with
aggregation, it's hard to believe that is
ever the case.
Instead, what happens with mandates is it
becomes a rhetorical argument that politicians
use to convince you that you should go along
with this.
I think maybe we shouldn't trust it very much,
but more, again, political scientists have
studied [00:18:30] this directly and said,
"What happens when people say that they have
a mandate?"
We found that they try to create this narrative.
There's a nice book by Julia Azari that argues
that presidents use the mandate argument,
in some cases, exactly when they need it the
most because their political support is the
weakest, and instead they don't have an overwhelming
majority, they have majority everywhere else.
So, they have to use that rhetorical argument
to justify what they're trying to do.
If [00:19:00] they weren't using the word
"mandate language," that might be because
they didn't need to because their party has
control of everything so they can just implement
policy.
Trevor Burrus: Like Roosevelt would in the
30's, or Reagan in '84.
Not having to say you have a mandate because
you won by such a huge amount that it wasn't
really necessary to build it up.
Hans Noel: That's right, yeah.
And, you don't have to make an argument to
the other party in congress that you should
be listening to because the other party in
congress is a minority already, and your party
is there doing what you want.
The key there [00:19:30] is that the notion
of a mandate, we should think of it as a rhetorical
strategy and not as some kind of true, "Well
he won, so whatever he wants to do we gotta
do."
That's a rhetorical strategy.
What we do with that as a citizen, then they're
like, "Well if you like what the President
wants to do, you probably want to say, 'All
right, he should do it.'
That's how our system works, and if you don't
like it, then you're going to be 'Ah, there's
no mandate.'"
It doesn't really tell us what much to do,
but we should be thinking about it as a rhetorical
strategy rather than some sort of right of
the leadership [00:20:00] because they were
represented by a majority through some particular
system.
Trevor Burrus: Number five ... is it "Duverger
[phonetic doo vurg er] or [phonetic doo verg
er]?"
Hans Noel: It's going to be [phonetic doo
ver jay].
It's French.
Trevor Burrus: Duverger, okay well that was
number three.
"Duverger, it's the law."
Hans Noel: The Duverger's Law is the one of
the few things that I think political scientists
would be willing to call "a law."
It’s probably not fair to do that.
We don't have laws in the same way that we
have Newton's Laws of Physics, or anything
like that.
[00:20:30] We don't have those kinds of laws
in social sciences.
Duverger's Law has been called the ["addonist"
inaudible 00:20:35].
In fact, it doesn't really hold up perfectly
empirically, but it's still an important one.
The idea behind this is, "Why is it that we
only have two parties in the United States?"
The answer that Duverger would propose is,
"In the United States we have first past the
post-election rules, and so when you have,
that is to say in order to win a seat in congress,
you just get the most votes in the congressional
district, and then you'd get it."
[00:21:00] Places that have that kind of system
tend toward fewer parties, and maybe especially
even to two parties.
The reason is that say you're running for
office ... well, let's talk about the presidency,
which is a similar thing.
Say you're running for office for the presidency,
and you've got Clinton running, you've got
Trump running, and you're like, "I don't like
them, I want a third party choice."
But, now you go to vote and you're going to
go vote between Clinton or Trump, but no,
you don't like either of them, you'd rather
a third party choice.
As much as you might like Jill Stein or Gary
Johnson, you gotta be pretty confident they're
not going to win [00:21:30] because you can
see the polling and you can see that it's
unlikely that they're going to win.
Meanwhile, you probably have an opinion between
Trump and Clinton, so why vote for the third
party candidate when you have an opinion over
the two people who are most likely to win
and you could affect the outcome in that direction.
Duverger doesn't tell you what to do, it isn't
saying that's right or wrong, it's saying
that both people are going to think that way.
If they're going to think that way and on
both politicians, therefore are going to think
that way, so then really steeled politicians
are not going to run as third party candidates.
[00:22:00] This is the smart thing that both
Trump and Sanders did, for instance.
Both of them were outsiders and neither of
them said, "I'm going to run as a third party
independent candidate," because that wasn't
going to work.
They said, "I'm going to run and capture one
of the party nominations because that's what's
going to be a ticket to winning."
If that's what's going to happen, you're going
to reduce yourself down to two parties.
People who complain in the United States who
say, "I wish I had a third party choice,"
I think there's a legitimate sense that maybe
that would be a good thing.
I won't take a side one way or the other on
that.
But, people who complain about that tend to
think, " [00:22:30] We just need to let these
third parties flourish, and we should stop
saying nasty things about Jill Stein," or
whatever, if they're running, "We should be
nice about the third party," in that they'll
win votes.
The system is not geared toward having that.
If you want to have a viable third and fourth
party, as we do have in many countries around
the world, you need a different system.
Probably a system that is proportional in
some way, a proportional representation system
where instead the way that you would get [00:23:00]
seats in the legislature is by what proportion
of the vote you get.
If you get 20% of the vote, you get 20% of
the seats.
Then, you don't lose anything and there's
no harm in voting for a minor party, because
you can still help them get a little bit.
It also matters that some countries have a
parliamentary system rather than a presidential
system.
Presidential system is sort of like a single-member
district on steroids, like the presidency
is a single seat and you have to win it, whereas
in a parliamentary system like in Great Britain
or in Canada, where they [00:23:30] do have
slightly more viable minor parties that still
tends towards two large parties, but you tend
to have more viable third parties.
Thereto, though, you can send them to parliament
and they can make a coalition government and
something in parliament, whereas in our system
a third party would just be an appendage that
would have to rely with one of the new parties,
and they would not be able to succeed at trying
to influence the executive, or it's a problematic
system where you're choosing your executive,
you're choosing your Prime Minister from the
legislature, [00:24:00] and the legislature
is selecting them.
Having a voice in the legislature is enough.
Those dynamics, again, the rules that we have
affect the outcome there, and if you really
want a third party then we ought to be changing
institutions.
Until you do, the metaphor I like is ... it's
a little bit like saying, "I really wish we
had better public transit in my city, so let
me go down to this corner where the train
ought to be there, and wait for the train
to come."
Until you build the transit, there's no point
in going and waiting for the train.
[00:24:30] You want to change the institution
first and then you can vote for your third
party.
Trevor Burrus: Occasionally third parties
in America, as you said, it's not a perfect
model and a perfect law, but occasionally
third parties like Ross Perot in '92, who
a lot of people decided that they weren't
throwing their vote away with him getting
20% of the vote, and then 1860 is another
example of third parties.
It happens.
Is there any sort of theory about why at these
times [00:25:00] third parties might be more
successful, because a lot of people thought
it might have been this year, or this last
election, with distaste for Republicans and
Democrats, and it ended up not being a very
big third party year.
Hans Noel: Yeah, I think when you have a clear
division within an existing coalition, that's
going to happen.
Again, in 1912 we talked about earlier, the
Republicans basically nominated two people
and so some Republicans thought this was the
right person, and some thought that was the
right person.
Much depends in this Duverger logic.
Much depends [00:25:30] on who we collectively
think are the top two candidates.
Trump and Clinton are the representatives
of the two major parties, so they're the two
that everyone should vote for.
But, if everyone believed that the race was
really a Johnson versus Stein race, then everyone
should switch and vote the other way.
There are going to be times when the political
alignments and shifts and so forth are such
that the parties are torn apart a little bit,
and there are some uncertainties about the
direction, and then that's [00:26:00] going
to lead us to these kind of unusual places.
1860 is a perfect example of that where you've
got slavery as a key issue in politics that
both parties have been trying to avoid, and
then the Republican party now has an element
that is going to talk about it so you have
divides within the North and the South, and
meanwhile you already have the existing divisions
over the tariff and other things that were
divided in the parties.
That kind of creates these pockets and it's
not clear at who your partner is supposed
to be, [00:26:30] so then the voting plays
out.
If you kept voting, if they voted and you
saw the outcome and then you got to vote the
next day and you kept doing that, which is
a little bit like what Poland does, you might
eventually get to a place where, "Oh, now
we've all figured it out, and we're going
to vote this way."
It may take a while to get to that new equilibrium
with its clear two parties.
There is always a pressure towards two parties
in the system, but there is also a pressure
towards tearing this apart, because we all
want what we think is right.
[00:27:00] My policy preferences, they do
not match up with any party.
I disagree with this party on this thing,
and I disagree with that party on that thing.
That's what politics is about.
It's about coordinating with people, but we
don't like that.
We want to be able to say, "I want my own
choice."
The metaphor that I like here is about going
to buy ice cream.
You know, you go for ice cream in the United
States and you've got your 31 flavors and
there's a million flavors, different things,
and sometimes people say things like, "If
I have 31 choices of ice cream, why can't
I have [00:27:30] at least three choices for
politics?"
I can see why people might think that.
The difference is, if we go to the ice cream
place and I want chocolate and you want vanilla,
and someone else wants rocky road, well, that's
what we'll get.
Each of us gets what we want, and we get to
take it home.
Politics isn't like that because we only get
to have one president, and we all have to
share.
So, it'd be a little bit like at the end of
the day after everyone's gone to buy ice cream,
we tally it up and we found out which ice
cream sold the most, and then we all have
to eat the same ice cream.
It'd be a terrible business [00:28:00] model,
right?
That's why we don't do that for businesses,
but politics is literally ... in some ways
politics is that set of things that we don't
get to be that way about.
We all have to have one immigration policy.
We all have to have one tax policy.
Even to the extent that we would say, "Well,
different states can do different things."
Right?
That solves that problem.
We all have to either live in a world where
every state can set its taxes, or they can't.
And then each state gets to do what it does.
So, [00:28:30] you have to agree on and you'll
have to coordinate in some way.
That changes your logic completely.
Now it's not which ice cream flavor is the
one that I want the most, it's of the ice
cream flavors that lots of people want, which
one do I want the most?
That changes your thinking about it, and therefore
drives you to different logic when you're
voting and building parties and everything.
Trevor Burrus: You put it very clearly in
the essay, "Perhaps the most important to
draw from Duverger's Law is that voting is
not about expressing your opinion, [00:29:00]
it is about coordinating with other voters,
and your institutions determine how you must
coordinate."
That says it all right there.
Hans Noel: Exactly.
Trevor Burrus: That gets us into parties,
which is number six, where you attack the
fantasy of it seems every election, especially
presidential elections that someone is going
to come into Washington and just sit down
and put aside partisanship, and just make
good decisions for the country.
Candidates like to say [00:29:30] they'll
do this, they like to be outsider candidates
that say that they will do this.
Why don't they do that?
Hans Noel: We saw that just this week.
There's this conversation about whether or
not Donald Trump is an independent or not.
It eventually came around to, "Oh, I see this
potential for a third party in Donald Trump,"
and journalists love this, they really do.
But, it's a little bit of a strange idea that
what matters ... just do good policy.
The reason is, we [00:30:00] disagree on stuff,
we really do.
Those disagreements would be easier to set
aside ... if we are talking about ice cream,
something where we all can just go our own
way, but on a set of things that involve politics,
we don't agree about those things.
Even on the question of let's let people decide.
So, should we have a minimum wage?
Or, should we let businesses go their own
way? ... and sort of buy their own ice cream
in terms [00:30:30] of that.
That's a policy decision about they want to
live in a world with minimum wage or not,
or if you want to let people define what they
think marriage is on their own?
Or, are we going to impose that as a system?
Different people have different census about
this is something we have to impose to have
a social sective order, and these are things
that we don't.
I don't think that anybody thinks there should
be literally nothing that we have.
Okay, we all at the very least follow the
traffic laws, and drive on the right side
and not be able to rob, and steal, [00:31:00]
and harm one another.
So, what are the things that we have to ... and
we disagree.
If we're going to disagree, we may as well
disagree in a way that's sort of about systematic,
the thing that parties do is that they encourage
people to set aside internal disagreements.
Again, the ice cream metaphor is a question
of ... there's your fruit-based ice creams,
and then there's your chocolate-directioned
ice creams, and maybe you don't like either
of those, and you're really frustrated.
At the very [00:31:30] least, you could say,
"I'm going to go in this direction, and maybe
I really would rather have Oreo something,
and instead I'm going to end up with a double
chocolate fudge, but at least they're both
in the chocolate direction, and I can sort
out that compromise there."
What parties do is they force groups to form
compromises in smaller levels, and then they
go together and say, "Set aside some of our
disagreements for the goal of trying to capture
government and implement the things that [00:32:00]
we do agree on."
That's how the system is going to work.
Both as a normative thing, it's okay fine,
so let's accept parties and expect them to
do that.
Even independent of that, that's what people
are going to do.
So, you need to get rid of parties and get
rid of this stuff, people are going to coordinate
like that.
The nice thing about parties is it makes it
very transparent, and you know which coalition
you're buying yourself into and which one
you're supporting and which one you're opposing.
Trevor Burrus: You have a quote from Schattschneider
from the 40's, "Democracy is unthinkable."
[00:32:30] Say, in terms of parties, which
we always also hear when you study the founding
era that everyone was sort of lamenting the
fact that the parties arose, but it seems
that they're necessary.
Hans Noel: The interesting thing, in modern
democracy anyway, and you can have a small
scale town hall-type democracy of 20 people
maybe, but any kind of modern democracy requires
that.
The interesting thing about the founders is
yes, the modern founders said they were, didn't
like the parties, Washington in his farewell
address is concerned about factions, Madison’s
[00:33:00] worried about factions, and the
Federalist papers Jefferson said if he could
only go to Heaven with a party, he'd rather
not do it.
And yet, within a few elections, they were
building parties.
Trevor Burrus: Oh yeah, they were at each
other's throats.
Yes.
Hans Noel: They were going out and organizing,
they were saying, "We need to win this election,
so who do I need to win, who are my allies,
who are not?"
Even if you didn't want to have parties, people
are going to do it.
So, we might as well, from a perspective of
trying to organize and understand our [00:33:30]
politics, we have to accept that we have them
and then maybe try to steer them in useful
directions, because people out of one side
of their mouth say, "Parties are terrible,"
and then the other side of their mouth, actually
start to organize them.
I'd much rather it be transparent that that's
what they're doing.
Trevor Burrus: I imagine that Jefferson and
Hamilton, as leaders of their respective parties,
probably would have said something like, "Well
the only reason I am doing this is because
Hamilton is organizing his party," or vice
versa, which ultimately we shouldn't [00:34:00]
be doing this, but when you have people on
the other side who are organizing, you have
to do it.
Maybe we can get past it someday, and not
thinking that, "Nope, we're never going to
get past that."
Hans Noel: It kind of touches back to this
idea of if only ...
Trevor Burrus: If only they would stop, that's
the thing-
Hans Noel: If only they would stop-
Trevor Burrus: Yes.
Hans Noel: The other side is doing it, I'm
only doing it because they're doing it.
I think a lot of the founders had this idea
that we talked about a little bit earlier,
about there really is some public will, [00:34:30]
and I am on the side of what's in the interest,
and then their interest in special interests-
Trevor Burrus: They're a faction.
There are special interests.
Hans Noel: They're a faction, they’re special
interests, but I am not.
I think that's where a lot of it grows.
Like sort of just re-appreciate that that's
not really how things work.
Then, the naïveté of trying to get rid of
parties becomes seen as exactly that naïveté.
Trevor Burrus: I studied the Founding Era
a lot, because I do constitutional law here
as one of the things, and you look at opinions
[00:35:00] about public opinion, which to
me are some of the most fascinating opinions
around.
Not so much your own opinion, but a person's
opinion about how other people form their
opinions.
Those are usually incredibly biased and partisan
to ... they're just being manipulated by their
party, whereas my party is not manipulating
anyone.
They are being manipulated by their donors,
well, we're not being manipulated at all.
Of course, you see that throughout all of
American history.
Hans Noel: Yes.
Trevor Burrus: That's a good way to [00:35:30]
go into number seven, which is, "How most
independents are closet partisans."
We talk about independents all the time as
this great, rare thing out there with people
who just dispassionately look at the issues
and have a voting record that goes back and
forth between parties, but that's kind of
a myth, isn't it?
Hans Noel: Yeah, I'm sure that there are some
people who are like that, who really is paying
a lot of attention and thinking through all
of the issues, and building on several of
the points that we've [00:36:00] mentioned
already; if people don't have the will to
find opinions, and if they also don't pay
attention a little bit, and they need the
ques to help figure out what they're thinking,
and if politics is organized by elite sense
of parties, then when you go to vote, it's
probably not the case that you're carefully
evaluating the two choices.
You kind of are leaning in one direction,
or another.
One of the things that we've found is while
it is in the case that more and more people
today claim to be independent than used to
be.
Though if you ask, if you are you a Democrat
or Republican, or [00:36:30] you're independent,
it's, "Oh, I'm an independent."
But, the increase in people who are independent
is mostly amongst people who still, when they
go to vote, vote consistently for their party
and not for the other.
It's not something that’s very sensible
to say, well this huge group of voters out
there that are up for grabs, because most
of them actually aren't.
One of the interesting things about this,
I don't want to diminish the importance of
independence, because there is a change there,
and it must mean something.
There's a really great book by Samara Klar
and Yanna Krupnikov, it's just [00:37:00]
out a couple of years ago, on the subject
of independent voters.
What one of the things that they find is that
people are more likely to say that they are
independent when you remind them that politics
can be contentious and some people in politics
are nasty, and hostile, and jerks.
Part of it is, people are just like, "People
are mean and they argue with each other, and
I just want a sensible common sense compromise,
that's what I would like to have," and so
then that's what they say [00:37:30] that's
what they want, and they say that they're
independent.
Of course, what most of us, when we want a
sensible compromise, what we really want is
we want the other side, that's crazy, to compromise.
There's some research on this too, there's
a nice piece by Laurel Harbridge and Neil
Malhotra, I think, that shines where they
asked people, "What do you want in terms of
a compromise?" and, what they mostly boiled
it down to is they'd like the other side to
stop being so intransigent and to [00:38:00]
come over to where they are for us.
Trevor Burrus: Yes.
Hans Noel: So, that's common sense.
People would think that way, and if so, it's
sort of not surprising.
But, as a consequence, it's not reasonable
to say, "Most people are independent," most
people have chosen sides, and what they believe
is going to be shaped by what side they're
on, so really what we have is this contest
between the two sides and therefore it very
much matters what the leaders of those two
sides decide what the battle lines are going
to be about.
Trevor Burrus: That's the common sense phrase,
which aggravates [00:38:30] me to no end,
sort of always betrays that.
We see common sense solutions to "x", which
of course is considered crazy by the other
side.
Hans Noel: Right.
Trevor Burrus: The other interesting thing
about independents is the idea of someone
who is super interested in politics, but does
not have partisan allegiances.
It's kind of ... someone who is really independent
probably doesn't care about politics at all,
correct?
Hans Noel: Yeah, you think that.
Again, [00:39:00] there are surely some people
like that.
Anybody who is like that, or really cares
about politics but they're kind of "above
the fray," they might be the person who's
listening to this podcast.
For the most part, no, people like that tend
to take sides.
Even if you don't think that you're taking
sides, odds are you probably are still tend
to find one side to be more persuasive than
the other, and therefore you're going to lean
in that direction.
Even if you think you're arriving at an independent
decision every time.
Trevor Burrus: Number eight is a provocative
[00:39:30] sentence, especially for this town
and Washington D.C. where I am, that "Special
interests are a political fiction."
Hans Noel: Yeah, I think it's built on the
topics that we've just been discussing over
the last couple of items here, in that we
like to think there's some right thing that's
common sense, or is the general in everyone's
interest, and then there's these special interests
that are there trying to undermine things.
The problem is like, "What's a special interest?"
A special interest is any interest that is
mainly shared by a particular group and not
everyone.
We have [00:40:00] diverse society, and there's
almost nothing that we all want exactly the
same.
Even the things that we broadly all want,
we're still going to have one of them accomplished
in slightly different ways.
So what is the special interest?
The special interests are business leaders,
that's a special interest, and labor groups,
they're a special interest.
They disagree on things, so they both have
their interests.
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice activists are going
to be that, just about anything that you can
imagine is going to be a particular group,
and that's everybody.
A reasonable approximation of what a special
interest is, [00:40:30] is it's the interest
of anybody whose not me because what they
want is not what's in the common good.
Of course, whatever I want is in the common
good.
Again, we're echoing this notion about common
sense principles and compromise.
This is what the founders understood as a
problem.
The founders said, "We've got all these different
groups, these different factions, we can't
expect them all to agree, we can't expect
people not to have their difference, so we'll
just try to have a system that prevents them
from organizing."
[00:41:00] Political parties do more organizing
than Madison imagined would happen in when
he was riding his federal stint, but that
landscape of people who want different things
is sort of how political scientists approach
things.
We come to this and say, "There's a lot of
different interests, and how are we going
to aggregate them, the other parties, what's
their ideology, what sort of structure is
this?"
But we approach this question initially as
there's lots of diversity in what people want,
and we don't tend to imagine that there exists
some kind of general interest [00:41:30] that
if only we could just set aside our biases,
we could arrive at a good policy.
We recognize that just about every policy
affect help some people, and maybe doesn't
help some other people, and that's what political
conflict is about.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah, you're right that the
most important distinction is not between
special and general interests, but between
organized interests and unorganized interests.
Hans Noel: Exactly, yes.
When you think about some broad groups that
are maybe thinking policy doesn't help, and
it's [00:42:00] not helpful for those groups,
so, I think this is a classic example of this
is the unemployed.
There is a large group of people who perhaps
face difficult just because they are losing
their jobs, but that group changes from year
to year.
Some people, first are unemployed now, and
they're not later, and so policies that might
help the unemployed and help reduce the unemployment
level, or whatever else, are hard to do because
that group isn't going to organize it in the
same way that say, a religious group is going
to organize whether this group always identifies
that [00:42:30] way, and they're going to
move, or a racial ethnic group is going to
say, "We have particular interests, and we
know who we are."
So, organization is important.
Again, cutting back to political parties,
there is a certain way, which this whole essay
could have been about the importance of political
parties in one way or another, because one
of the things the parties is they help to
mobilize and organize otherwise potentially
unorganized groups, and pay attention to policies
that might sort of bring a bunch of small
diffuse groups ... bring them together, [00:43:00]
and form a majority coalition.
Without somebody doing that, the interests
of certain groups are going to be under-represented.
Trevor Burrus: Number nine, I think grows
from this too, "The grass does not grow by
itself," which is the question of what is
a real grassroots movement versus what is
an AstroTurf, and I think this question is
very tied to things we've discussed where
a lot of people ... they think the other side
is somehow faking their political coalition,
or it's somehow created by dastardly and special
interests who are manipulating [00:43:30]
public opinions.
All these things we've already discussed,
whereas my grassroots movement is real and
natural.
Why is it that this whole attitude is mistaken?
Hans Noel: I think that's exactly what I meant.
I wrote this essay right as the Tea Party
was becoming a major movement, and so a lot
of people were saying that “The Tea Party
isn't really this movement, it's just the
Koch brothers, or the so and so is fueling
this,” and no one really has these grievances.
The thing is, you could point to organizers,
you could point to groups who are doing things
to [00:44:00] mobilize the Tea Party Activists,
you could point to Fox News running news stories
that were clearly having the effect of mobilizing
people and making them think of themselves
as part of a movement.
So then you're like, "Oh, that's what's happening."
But, that's always the case.
Every movement is like that.
The Civil Rights Movement had leaders who
were mobilizing and the like.
I think, again, it's sort of unfortunate that
we want to imagine that people just wake up
one morning and say, "I'm frustrated, and
I'm just going to walk down the street, and
if I'm [00:44:30] lucky, maybe when I get
to the town square, there will be other people
who are also frustrated, and we'll have a
protest."
All protest is going to get organized in some
way.
Now, you've got the flip side where you have
the town hall meetings where people are showing
up and it was before to people showing up
at the town hall meetings ... it was liberals
who were saying the only people who are coming
are being dragged there by some nefarious
funding organization.
Now, it's "No, no, Soros is paying these protestors
to go these [00:45:00] groups."
Nobody is pulling out a checkbook and paying
protestors to show up at these things, but
someone is mobilizing them.
They're saying, "Hey look, there's going to
be this town hall meeting, you've got to go
down there and talk, and we need you to come
and we need to have a larger voice."
So, again, that's the dynamic of grassroots
popular politics requires that kind of seating.
The difference is, if there was nothing [00:45:30]
to mobilize, or no public opinion to get down
there, then people wouldn't respond, you'd
say, "Oh, we have to go down there and protest
against this policy that's going to raise
marginal tax rates on the wealthiest people;
I'm the Koch brothers, and I don't want that
to happen."
No one is going to show up, unless there is
some interest.
That's not the message that they have, they
sell the message in some other direction and
if you don't like that message, then that's
a concern.
But your concern is not just with the Soros
or [00:46:00] the Koch brothers, it's also
with the other voters who brought that message
and then went and were mobilized by it.
Trevor Burrus: Number ten, is all these things
that political scientists know.
Number ten is, "We do not know what you think
you know," which is the things that a lot
of myths that people believe about politics.
Hans Noel: Yeah, and a big part of what was
behind my mind as I was writing this essay,
and then I'm thinking about in general on
this, is some of the things that we say, including
some of the things that we've said in the
last hour that we've been talking, [00:46:30]
people are like, "Oh well, that's obvious."
Of course, the mandate is just a rhetorical
thing, and that's obvious.
A part of that is, yeah, it's obvious now
that we laid it out and we had some people
went out and found examples and so forth,
but the exact opposite could have seemed obvious
to you, too.
That's part of what social science is about,
is taking some things, some of which seem
obvious, and sorting it out and figuring it
out.
Is this really what's going on, or is it not?
There's a lot of "seems obvious" things that
we don't think are true.
[00:47:00] One of the really common ones that
political scientists get upset a lot about
is this idea that gerrymandering is what's
responsible for polarization.
I think there probably is some kind of gerrymandering
... that the way in which districts are drawn
does have consequences, but among their consequences
is probably not that you have increased polarization.
It's not like you draw lots of safe Republican
districts, and lots of safe Democratic districts.
If you think about it a little bit, it actually
doesn't make sense that gerrymandering would
do this because if I was a partisan person,
[00:47:30] I wouldn't want to draw districts
that would be good for both parties, I want
to make them good for my party, and not good
for the other party.
Then of course the other party is going to
be pushed back the other direction, and you're
going to end up with changes.
We don't think that gerrymandering is why
polarization, and of course one way that we
know that is not true is that if were the
case, that changing and drawing districts
is what is causing things to become more polarized,
then you'd see polarization in the house that
we draw districts.
Well, we wouldn't see polarization in the
senate, because those districts are states
and have [00:48:00] been the same since the
beginning.
In fact, you do see polarization in the senate,
so that suggests that polarization is about
something more than just Gerrymandering districts.
People all around think the way to solve polarization
is to get rid of gerrymandering districts,
and like I say, there might be other consequences
of gerrymandering that we're concerned about,
but that is not probably one of them.
We have this, "What exactly is the story of
polarization?"
That, I don't know.
I have a bunch of theories about what might
be driving things, but we try to disabuse
people [00:48:30] of some things that we think
that they do now, but the real tricky thing,
and the real point of this last item in the
list is, there's a lot of stuff that we don't
know, and it might be that it really matters.
How much affects does the economy have versus
a campaign?
I don't know exactly what the numbers are,
but this is why we keep doing research and
we keep trying to find good answers.
Trevor Burrus: Maybe the most common belief,
I don't know if this is true, but belief about
congress in Washington D.C. is that everyone
is sort of purchased by their " [00:49:00]
special interests," and money just buys the
votes of your average congressman.
Even this widely-accepted truism, which I'm
sure most people think that political scientists
can easily prove, is not easily provable.
Hans Noel: Yeah, one obvious alternative explanation
is it's not so much that I want certain outcomes,
so I'm going to bribe you, well I'm going
to give money to the kind of candidate who
I think is going to do the things that I want.
So then, [00:49:30] the pharmaceutical industry
gives money to a candidate, and then that
candidate does good things for the pharmaceutical
industry, or maybe it's because what that
guy would have done, anyway.
There probably is some influence of money.
We think most of it is actually more about
access than bribing.
So, it's not like if I give this donation
from this interest group, or this pack, then
I'm going to do whatever that pack wants.
Honestly, you could just go somewhere else,
if that was the case, right?
You could say, "Okay, fine.
I know you're voting that for that thing,
it's going to be bad for my constituents,
[00:50:00] I can find resources someplace
else on that one thing."
What's more likely is the pharmaceutical industry,
or whatever the pack is, now they get some
access.
They get to come talk and influence things.
That might have some consequences, but it's
much more indirect.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah.
Hans Noel: It's more about signaling ... of
course, politicians are like, "I don't know
what the right policy is.
I've got a bunch of different things.
This group has a lot of money, and a lot of
organized, and they say this is a good idea,
well maybe I'll listen to that."
It may not even be a bad idea to have that
ability for different groups to organize [00:50:30]
and try to impress folks.
We talk about lobbying as if it's some kind
of nafarious vote-buying kind of thing, but
a logic on lobbying is just here's some people
who know a lot about something, they're going
to camp out in the lobby and try to tell us
stuff.
Yeah, that's at least not obviously a problem.
So, how big of it if one of the consequences
... I think money does have some pretty serious
affects on politics, but it's very tricky
to figure out exactly what it is.
Trevor Burrus: It would be a strange way to
try and change the world.
I often [00:51:00] make an analogy, let's
say there was a billionaire who was a flat-earther,
who was trying to change the world and make
sure that we could have better policies for
a flat earth, it would be a weird strategy
to find politicians who do not currently believe
in the flat earth position and give them enough
money until they believe it, as opposed to
finding people who believe in flat earth and
then giving them money to try and get them
elected.
Hans Noel: Yeah, that's a much more reasonable
strategy.
Part of it becomes you don't even need to
[00:51:30] do that because what political
parties are doing is they're recruiting people
who believe in a whole host of ideological
things, and if flat earth becomes part of
what it means to be one of the parties, then
you're going to bring along people who are
educated in that information environment and
so you end up with flat earth sort of bonus
from supporting that ideology.
If flat earth were to be that thing.
Yeah, I think that exactly makes more sense,
but we've both described a way now in which
money could influence outcomes, [00:52:00]
it's just more complicated and so it makes
sense for her to think about how does that
work.
Then, what kind of policies should we implement?
If it's the case that the way in which money
influences outcomes, isn't by buying people
of straight, but is by steering and shaping
things.
Then, one thing that I would imagine is the
more in which that money goes through central
organizations like political parties, where
they have to balance off lots and lots of
interests, that's better, whereas [00:52:30]
the money is going straight at people and
then they can mobilize a flat earth person
and just get flat earth people on the party's
platform.
We should have camping finance regulations
that don't undermine parties, but undermine
individual contributions for example.
That's one plausible thing, if that's the
case.
There's some research that suggests that that's
what you ought to do.
There's a book by Ray La Raja and Brian Schaffner
that makes that ... I don't know if that's
right, and I've talked to lots of really smart
people in campaign finance who don't think
that's true, I don't know, [00:53:00] and
that's exactly the point.
We're not quite sure about exactly how it
is that money influences outcomes.
Trevor Burrus: When we look at our politics,
and I'm not sure if it's opinions about politics,
or opinions about Washington, D.C. have ever
been lower than they are today, shared by
both sides, and we have Donald Trump, much
to everyone's surprise, and polarization and
all these things.
One lesson I think people can learn from your
excellent essay, and I'm excited about the
forthcoming book, is we might be expecting
too much from politics.
If [00:53:30] we don't accept it as sort of
a nitty-gritty, "This is how we hash out compromises
and make deals," then we might actually have
a difficulty using politics for what it is,
which is a way of trying to get people with
many different interests and attitudes to
live together cooperatively, rather than combatively.
Hans Noel: That's a fair reading.
We do have a large expectation.
We want things to work, and the same goes
beyond politics.
"Why is this traffic this [00:54:00] way,"
or "Why do these roads steer in this direction,"
and, "Why can't we have a better more effective
way of getting to the beach," and all these
other things we just think that somebody -they-
did it wrong.
The difference is in politics it's actually
a place where we are able to influence and
get involved in outcomes.
It's not just being angry at the system, we
could actually participate in it.
So, yeah, it would make a lot more sense to
appreciate that what we could expect out of
it won't [00:54:30] be a policy that makes
you happy, or that makes me happy, but it's
going to be something that's going to be from
an algorithm of the various forces that were
allowed in to the system.
Trevor Burrus: I think that's a good ending,
unless there's something that you think I
missed.
Hans Noel: One final thought I'd make for
people who are going to be steered towards
this article is that a lot of people read
it, I think it's a good piece, I'm glad to
have written it, I am writing a book link
version, and part of the reason I'm writing
a book link version [00:55:00] is because
there's been a lot of demand for it, but also
because some of the stuff that's in the piece
... social science has marched on, and we
have a better understanding of things, and
I would say things slightly differently here.
Which isn’t going to say I can give you
all the caveats here, but that's part of the
point about social science, it's that we keep
learning, we keep building on things.
Yet, there are some sort of enduring things,
you don't need to be up on the latest research
to know what's going on.
The important thing is that you have access
to a political science journal, and the important
thing is that you have access to your sophomore
[00:55:30] in political science lecture notes
in a lot of ways, because there are some enduring
things to be found there.
If you find out in the article that I wrote,
that's great, but you can also get that from
your own education.
Trevor Burrus: Thanks for listening.
This episode of Free Thoughts was produced
by Tess Terrible and Evan Banks.
To learn more, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.
