American Unexceptionalism
We're not alone in dysfunctional politics.
While American politics have certainly grown more polarized and less prone to compromise—essential to make a system of divided government work—during the Trump era, it’s occaisonally worth reminding ourselves that were part of a larger trend among Western democracies.
The Economist (“Is British politics broken? Its centre is cracking“):
When Sir Keir Starmer was elected just over a year ago, Labour ministers warned that their government was Britain’s last chance to see off populism. The political centre has sprung a leak even sooner than they feared. Just one in five voters now supports the government; Sir Keir’s personal ratings as prime minister are dire. On September 5th Angela Rayner, his deputy, resigned over unpaid taxes, prompting a wide cabinet reshuffle.
The extremes, meanwhile, are all fired up. Whereas the Conservative Party is moribund, Nigel Farage, the leader of the hard-right Reform UK, told his party conference that he would be prime minister as soon as 2027. Although Reform has just four MPs, he is not delusional: were an election held tomorrow, Reform would have a coin-toss chance of a majority. Other insurgents sense their moment, too. Zack Polanski, a self-styled “eco-populist”, is the new leader of the once-fusty Green Party, with a pitch to be the Farage of the left. Jeremy Corbyn, whose self-belief is undented by four and a half calamitous years as the Labour Party’s leader, is running a new hard-left outfit.
Britain is not the only democracy where the centre is crumbling. On September 8th France’s centrist government fell over spending cuts, caught in a pincer of the hard left and right. In Germany the established centre parties have steadily lost votes, as the political system has fragmented. The middle is hollowing out in America, too, as voters are polarised between MAGA and a mob of fight-the-oligarchy lefties. The difference is that Sir Keir still has a commanding majority in the House of Commons. He must use it.
Some believe the problem he faces is that British politics is plunged into incoherence. Voters, sick of low growth and failing public services, have become grouchy and fickle, ready to follow any party that lets them vent their frustration. The other theory is that Britons, fed up with immigration, are suddenly lurching towards nativism. Accordingly, Labour’s stock is falling and Reform’s is rising because voters are shifting en masse from the centre-left to the radical right. Neither theory is correct.
In fact, the Brexit referendum of 2016 accelerated a trend in which age and education, rather than class, are the best predictors of voting behaviour. Work by the British Election Study, a research project, shows how this is splitting left-leaning young graduates from right-leaning pensioners.
A decade into this phenomenon, I still don’t completely understand it.
Clearly, just about everywhere, people have become disaffected from the liberal consensus that prevailed in the postwar period. Whether we call it globalism, neoliberalism, or something else, the working classes in particular have come to see that free trade and generous migration policies have benefitted the elites while diminishing their earning power and political influence. Relatedly, we’ve seen the rise of nativism—a sense that traditional values have been overrun.
In the United States, at least, there was a sense, shared by both ideological elites and the working class, that neither of the two major parties represented their interest. It seems that this is now happening in the UK, where a government formed by a party other than the Conservatives or Labour could happen for the first time in a century.
Like the US—and unlike the rest of Western Europe—the UK has a first-past-the-post electoral system. But the House of Commons is half again as large as the House of Representatives despite the UK having a fifth the US population, allowing smaller parties to actually gain a foothold.
At the same time, voters see political parties as clustered in two ideologically distinct blocs, on the left and the right.
Most of the volatility comes from Britons switching among parties within “their” bloc, not from one bloc to the other. Labour is losing voters to parties to its left; the Tories to Reform. In the general election of 2024, the two old parties won a combined vote share of 57%. That was the lowest since 1910, but it was a triumph compared with today’s polls, which give them a total of just 39%.
An injection of fresh competition into Britain’s stale two-party system should be healthy. Voters have been badly served; no wonder they are shopping around for something better. In practice, however, it could make Britain much harder to govern. When electoral fragmentation meets Britain’s ancient first-past-the-post voting system, it produces unpredictable results. Small shifts in votes can produce huge differences in each party’s tally of parliamentary seats. First past the post inflates the importance of tactical voting, further distorting the relationship between how people vote and the governments they get. When support for a party subsides after an election, many more MPs fear that their seat is in danger. This dampens the willingness to take risks. Hence, Labour is like a beached whale: it has a vast parliamentary majority, yet as its support has ebbed it has become paralysed.
ln the US, of course, these fights have to take place within the two major parties. Here, the MAGA wing has come to completely dominate a Republican Party that was nominated Mitt Romney as recently as 2012. The Democrats are more divided, housing everyone from hard-core Progressives to NeverTrump erstwhile Republicans.
We shall see what happens elsewhere.
Sure … but then they go out and vote for someone whose top priority is to shovel more tax breaks and subsidies to the richest among us. Before I feel sorry for the “working classes”, a group I have at least one foot in, someone needs to explain to me, like I was a 4-year-old, how this makes any kind of sense.
The reason the Republicans can do what they are doing is for one reason and one reason only. There is a critical mass of Republican voters who are all in on Trump. Not the Republicans, not conservatives, not any principle of good government, and certainly not anyone else. Not Vance, not any of the rogues gallery of wholly incompetent cabinet members, and certainly not because of policy chiones because they scarcely understand what little passes for policy in the Trump administration. It may not be a cult proper, but it’s surely a cult of perdonality. And they give Trump a full, uncritical pass for no reason other than vibes and racism.
Meanwhile, young people are looking at a future that is more than just bleak; it’s soul-crushing. I get the impulse; I voted for John Anderson. But those were definitely different times. But the problem is that young people vote as if they have their whole lives ahead of them … and they do. My wife are I are at the end of our working careers. Yes, we want stability and order, but at the very least, we should have competence. So there is your divide. It’s between tearing it all down or fixing it (crudely speaking). But there are also a lot of people who have been told that they will get everything they want if they just support Trump. That is a hard hump to get over electorally, as the actions of the giants of the Republican caucus demonstrate every day by slavish devotion to the Trump Crime spree.
Belgium went without a government for almost two years or 652 days.
Italy has had dozens of governments since WWII ended. According to Wikipedia, there have been 69.
Our government is broke but not that broke.
@Bill Jempty: I saw commentary at the time that Belgium was able to go so long without a government because the bureaucracy was still in place and the EU and NATO basically covered foreign policy and economic policy for them. And while Italy had a series of short lived governments, they were basically a game of musical chairs with a smallish cast of the same players moving in and out.
Their governments verged on non-functional. Ours is still mostly functional but now destructive. Hopefully the incompetence at the top will save us.
@Rick DeMent:
That is what makes me so frustrated with MAGA. They have legitimate complaints. It is getting harder to maintain a middle class life. Neither party is perfect, but they’re voting for the party that has created their economic problems.
For a political entrepreneur with no principles, blood and soil populism is the easiest thing to sell, here and elsewhere.
@Rick DeMent:
We don’t need to go all the way back to 4th grade. I’m sure I can find a way to help you understand.
Did you notice a tone of condescension there? Did you enjoy it? More below.
1) Here’s a short list of things I should do in my own enlightened self-interest:
– Stop drinking, Michael.
– Stop getting high.
– Knock off the cigars.
– Exercise.
– Eat more vegetables. (Or at least some).
– Keep your weight under control without spending $1000 a month for Mounjaro to stab into your ass.
– For Christ’s sake, stop spending so much money.
– Mr. Reynolds, respectfully, you’re 71, how about you don’t drive 20 mph over the speed limit?
Am I going to do any of those things which are indisputably in my own enlightened self interest? Well, I’ve just cut and am about to light up a $25 Ashton shade-grown. So. . . no.
2) Read the following bits of dialog and see which one appeals to you.
– Hey, loser, thanks to my superior education, I have devised a program for you that might help you live your sad life as a working stiff.
– Hey, fuck that arrogant asshole.
a) I don’t do what I should do, and I have a very, very easy life. I’m healthy, intelligent, accomplished and wealthy. And yet that is a big fat stogie sticking out of my mouth. And later today I’ll buy $90 single malt and $60 Bourbon. I’m good on weed.
b) I have a very, very easy life. I’m healthy, intelligent, accomplished and wealthy. Not vulnerable, not scared, really quite secure and happy and no reason to get my back up. And yet if you talk down to me I will tell you to go fuck yourself.
@Bill Jempty:
Italian “revolving door” governance is a bit misleading.
If you look at the members of many of those governments, they were frequently the same people.
And unlike the US, Italy, like most European states, has a permanent professional civil service entirely capable of continuing running a country without politicians sticking their oar in.
Whereas the US at federal level, absent both an executive administration, and a functioning legislature, would likely be paralyzed.
The elected politicians are needed to carry through legislation, and make changes in policy.
But not for the basic functions of government to continue.
Unlike the US, in most OECD parliamentary/bureaucratic systems, there actually IS a functional “Deep State”.
If looking at the governance of italy under Meloni, for instance, it’s almost imposible to understand unless it’s realised that she is trimming Fratelli preferences to the demands of actually governing, and the requirements of key Italian interest groups.
@Rick DeMent:
There is no one answer.
Person A places the highest premium on moral issues;
Person B places the highest premium on justice.
Person A votes Republican, because abortion is murder, so it is immoral;
Person B votes Democrat, because Democrats favor economic and social justice.
Whether it is termed “morality” or “justice”, they are both voting on a priori considerations. Both would likely give practical reasons for their moral stand as well.
Neither are irrational, if one views those reasons in isolation. Go down each voter’s list of reasons, and you will eventually find some tension. But that can be explained by rank-order of beliefs by importance.
Sometimes it’s as simple as voter has a good job at an oil company and sees Republicans as safer for continued employment.
Generic reasons:
Religion and politics are similar for the uninterested: you are what you always have been; born into it.
Simplicity: it’s much easier to conceptualize migration and free trade as reducing one’s share of the pie or causing job loss than it is to contemplate whether political and economic structures are the problem.
@Michael Reynolds: I guess you guess you missed my question. But really, my crime is talking down to someone? That is what is causing the Trump love fest? And the more I talk down to these people, the more they will dig in their heels and love Trump even more. Talking down to people, which is exactly what Republicans do every waking moment from the time they get up in the morning until they start dreaming about it at night, to any shade of liberal you can imagine, but mostly anyone who dares have an un-MAGA thought?
Oh, ok, gosh, sorry I made all those Trumpers lose their ever-loving fricking mind to the point where some of them are calling for an all-out shooting war. Think of it … me !!!! with my half a dozen followers on YouTube.
My bad
@Rick DeMent:
Oh FFS. Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say: it’s your fault.
I forgot Rule #1: we never make mistakes, we never do anything wrong, we are completely blameless and anyone who suggests otherwise is MAGA.
@Kurtz:
This is what @Rick DeMent: seems to think is talking down. It’s about finding a level at which you can communicate effectively. It is not impossible to justify most Democratic beliefs even to a hardcore conservative if you speak a language they understand. I bet I could sit down with ten MAGAS and convince 3 of them on trans rights and 6 on economic issues. I don’t speak ‘college’ except when I’m here. Out in the world I code switch and speak ex-waiter, ex-cleaner, ex-poor-and-scared. Coming up blue collar (at best) I’ve been code-switching my whole life. And writing for kids, well, I’ll make them reach for, say, chimera, but I won’t make them reach for antidisestablishmentarianism.
I also speak French with a near-perfect accent. I do not, however, pronounce croissant correctly when I go to Starbucks. Because if I did, the barista would spit in my coffee, and I would deserve it.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s the diffrence between talking with and preaching at.
The UK working class may incline a bit more to deference to “superiors” than do Americans; but they hate being treated as moral inferiors who must defer to the “righteous”.
“Secular Presbyterianism” is not a vote winner.
See Corbyn, J.
What tends to work better is to argue for rational economic advantage, good governance, and fairness.
I also can “code switch”: I default to “educated middle class” (UK sense of “middle class”), but having spent considerable periods working with, and therefore socialising with, less privileged persons, I entirely grasp the fact that most people really dislike being lectured at as if they were naughty schoolkids.
That is one of the reason the old Labour Party won the allegiance of much of the British people: they spoke to them as equals, not as preachers or school-masters or entitled overlords.
@Bill Jempty: Except in all this was the actual government (as in the bureaucracy and structures) continued to function. Not forming a “government” in those case meant not being able to create a majority cabinet or having to form new ones.
None of that is “broken” but rather part of how those systems function. I would take it over what we have any day of the week.
@Michael Reynolds:
But don’t forget your beloved Rule #2: Melodramatic, hyperbolic strawman arguments are fun!
Which is true, they are tbh
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh, there’s my problem, you thought I was speaking to “them, the people I’m talking down to”, when I was actually speaking to “us, the people on this blog that I thought wouldn’t shrivel up when confronted with words”.
Damn, you’re right, it is my fault 🙂
@JohnSF:
One of my very few bits of advice to kidlit writers is: whatever the age group, for god’s sake, don’t get caught talking down. They smell it like a shark smells blood. They’ll categorize you as a parent or a teacher and you’re done.
@DK:
Hah! I was gonna say something involving pots and kettles.