Government + Politics
Tired of campaign slogans, attack ads and spin? Then take a few minutes to dig beneath the issues. In this issue of Search + Discover, University of Minnesota faculty tackle:
Plus, you can explore relevant articles and related links.
Will bipartisan politics be the downfall of American society?
“Not the downfall,” says Lisa Disch, professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. “But democracy certainly suffers at the hands of a two-party system. The United States has one of the lowest voter participation rates of any Western democracy. Why? Because as George Wallace once famously remarked, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.”
According to Disch, the high level of voter apathy in the U.S. reflects a general feeling that whichever party wins the election will fail to represent the people with regard to their most pressing needs. Most voters have strong opinions about the issues that are most important to them — and taken together, those opinions don’t necessarily fit into neat party buckets.
“The tendency of the system is to drive to the middle,” she says. “The problem is, the middle isn’t where you find what most people want and believe in, but where you find the most voters.”
In other words, the moderation of U.S. politics is more about minimizing offense rather than maximizing appeal. The two major parties protect themselves against third party challenges by dubbing the upstart as out of step with the so-called majority, then use wedge issues to define themselves and divide election-day spoils.
Ironically, Disch explains, it may be the major parties—and not the “upstart fringe”—that are dividing America today rather than uniting it. “In recent years, to capture the tiny winning margin, they have been exploiting cosmetic differences at the expense of addressing people’s felt needs.”
Even so, a viable third party challenge to Democrats and Republicans over the long term is unlikely, primarily because the high cost and high-tech nature of modern campaigning favors candidates who are entrenched, well-funded and easy to market.
This is too bad, Disch says, because “today more than ever we need the innovation that real grassroots third-party movements like the Free Soilers and the People’s Party once brought to American politics.” So the search continues.
Third-party candidates who become serious contenders at the national level tend to have high name recognition, deep pockets or both. And when candidates can switch to a third-party affiliation post-primary in order to stay on the ballot, the legitimacy of the party can be called into question.
Disch admits that a two-party system provides certain advantages--namely stability and predictability. Multi-party systems can yield a fragmented government in which a ruling coalition is formed after the votes are tallied. As a result, voters can never be sure what they’re going to get, and coalitions can shift or dissolve as the political landscape changes.
“But electoral systems cannot be evaluated in the abstract,” she says. “Israel, for example, has a coalition government that is unstable (in part because the nation’s situation is unstable). In the U.S., the two-party system promotes stability, which has led to stagnation. People feel the government is unresponsive and unwilling to change.
“You can walk into nearly any grocery store in the U.S. and find 10 different choices of orange juice and 50 varieties of toothpaste. It’s funny that our elected leadership has been reduced to an either-or choice.”
Lisa Disch is a professor of political theory in the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include history of political thought, contemporary continental theory, democratic theory, and feminist theory. She is the author of The Tyranny of the Two-Party System and Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy.
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Is it good for our government to encourage other cultures to be more like us?
“While the ultimate goal of cultural commonality might be desirable in the narrow sense of national security, the pathway from here to there is fraught with peril,” says Colin Kahl, assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.
“In general, and over the long-term, it is probably in the U.S. national interest to have other cultures ‘look like ours’ in the sense of embracing the ideals—if not always the reality—of representative government, civil liberties, gender and racial equality, etc.,” he says. “Research in international relations and comparative politics suggests that nation-states that adopt and consolidate these principles as part of their political institutions have more peaceful relations and are less prone to civil and ethnic strife and other forms of violent extremism.”
On the other hand, it is possible to push too hard too fast. Change can be frightening, and rapid liberalization often makes problems worse before they get better.
“Rapid change unsettles existing patterns of life, often spurring economic and political losers to resist—sometimes violently,” Kahl says. “In other instances, it may encourage people to embrace narrow and conflict-prone nationalist, ethnic and religious ideologies as safe harbor against these dislocations.
“How change is promoted also matters. Gradual, organic change appears less conflict prone. In contrast, forceful change from the outside may produce violent dynamics that an intervening power is not capable or prepared to manage,” he says. “The problems unleashed by the U.S. effort to ‘liberate’ Iraq should serve as a cautionary tale for those who would eagerly engage in a foreign policy of forcefully transforming other peoples.”
Colin Kahl is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department at the U of M, teaching courses on international relations, international security, American foreign policy, civil and ethnic conflict, and terrorism. His current research focuses on U.S. military compliance with the Law of War.
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Can we provide health care for everyone?
“The short answer is, ‘Yes, we can,’” says Jennifer Feenstra Schultz, assistant professor of economics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. “The harder question is how.”
While most people agree that everyone should have access to health care, the biggest barrier to universal health-care access is cost. Schultz cites two popular proposals for health care reform.
“The first is to expand the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan,” explains Schultz. “The federal government organizes this system for its employees and elected officials, and private insurers compete to provide plans that could be offered to the public. Insurers must agree to cover anyone who enrolls and to charge the same premium.”
Under this system, employers could continue to offer health insurance, low-income individuals would be provided a subsidy, and the enforcement role of government would be expanded, since insurance would be guaranteed regardless of whether payment was made by every individual.
“The second proposal is a single-payer system financed by a new income tax. Private insurance as we know it would be eliminated,” says Schultz.
Under this system, the government would control what services are covered, how physicians are paid and all other duties of insurers.
“To many, a single-payer system is attractive because competition does not necessarily lead to better health care,” Schultz says. “In competitive insurance markets, insurers try to select healthy enrollees or may limit coverage.”
Most economists believe reform must happen outside the labor market, she says, because mandated employer coverage is inefficient. In addition, health savings accounts aren’t effective for providing universal coverage because they primarily benefit the young and wealthy.
Change won’t happen overnight. To appease both parties, a system must incorporate ideas of progressive financing and minimal government intervention. States like Massachusetts and Minnesota will likely lead the way before national reform occurs. So the search continues.
Jennifer Feenstra Schultz is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and director of the Health Care Management Program in the Labovitz School of Business and Economics Labovitz School of Business and Economics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Her fields of research include health economics, pharmacoeconomics and health policy.
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Last modified on June 13, 2008