☆ Election 2024 is over; now, how do we overcome political polarization? (part 2)
Many free market-minded Bay Areans see wins in Nov. '24's rejection of tax-increasing Prop 5, passing of Prop 36, and more—but one local issue we can't vote away: extreme ideological divides. For this Opp Now exclusive, political science professors (UC Berkeley, Stanford, and University of SF) share insightful book recommendations on why we're so polarized today, what this means for local politics—and, yes, how to get back on track.
Steven Vogel, UC Berkeley political science professor and political economy program director: I would recommend Daniel Chandler’s “Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?” It applies the political philosophy of John Rawls to current times, with guidelines for how to achieve fair equality of opportunity in the economy and politics. In the chapter on democracy, he provides specific recommendations for political reform, from electoral reform to “democracy vouchers” (allowances for citizens to contribute to the party or candidate of their choice), “media vouchers” (allowances to direct to eligible news outlets), and novel schemes for direct participation in politics.
Susan Hyde, UC Berkeley political science professor: To address polarization, it is important to understand it, so I recommended this book: “Partisan Nation.”
It is by two of the finest minds on this topic, and they engaged with many contributors to U.S. partisan polarization and the ways in which some of these forces have made polarization self-perpetuating. Rather than simply pointing the figure at polarization, it also emphasized the very real consequences of the authoritarian turn within one of our two political parties, and the ways in which U.S. institutions make the United States uniquely vulnerable to such a turn. The book is historical, clear-eyed, and in my view very important for everyone to read.
Morris P. Fiorina, Stanford University political science professor, Hoover Institution senior fellow: An excellent book regarding polarization in local politics is Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless' “News Hole.” In the book, the authors discuss the decline in the local news industry—the number of newspapers with Washington bureaus or even state capital bureaus has declined; many smaller cities have lost their newspapers; the number of reporters has declined; more and more newspapers get their stories off the AP Wire; national stories, not stories about conditions and events close to home or how those national developments affect local affairs. The results are declining knowledge about local affairs, declining participation in local affairs, and increased injection of national issues into local politics.
James Lance Taylor, University of San Francisco politics professor: The best books on political polarization in the United States, in my opinion, emerged in the Barack Obama Presidential era (2008-2016). Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort (2008), Morris P. Fiorina, et al., Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized American (2011) and Frederick Douzet, et al., The New Political Geography of California (2008).
News television personalities like the late Tim Russert of NBC made a sport then of presenting political differences as those existing between “red America” versus “blue America” with impassioned winners and losers, each election cycle. An unresolved question is whether, where, and how political polarization might best describe partisan political differences in the U.S.? And to what extent any polarization reflects deeper cultural war issues than winning and losing in quadrennial elections.
Racial polarization in the U.S. is the original form of polarization in the land in terms of indigenous Americans, enslaved Africans, Chinese exclusion, and race quotas on non-white immigrants such as the Japanese. Race remains singularly the most powerful explanatory variable in determining party identification in the U.S.
The issue of political polarization in the U.S. (and internationally) is the subject of many studies, blogs, podcasts, and academic studies. Matthew D. Luttig’s The Closed Partisan Mind: A New Psychology of American Polarization (2023) well captures the relationship between partisan polarization and the problem of “closed-mindedness in the electorate”. The role of political leadership is integral to polarization campaigns that divide on a partisan basis. The relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, the author insists, reflects modern day political realities including rivaling parties in a two-party system and a polarized technology and media environment. The red, white and blue, is today, blood red and deep blue. Leaders would benefit from a deepened understanding, from a political psychology standpoint, how entrenched and strongly held are the beliefs of the polarized U.S. electorate.
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