My understanding of the political science research on this topic was that political polarization post-Internet was mostly a USA-specific thing, and you did not see as strong a polarization elsewhere when you take a systematic look.
(It wouldn’t be surprising if people base their impressions “politics is so polarized these days” solely on the one example of the USA and are badly wrong about their generalization, because due to media and the Internet especially, everyone pays a ton of attention to American politics, whether or not they want to, and typically ignore other countries. For example, Japanese politics—out of the ~200 countries worldwide, Japan is one of the most important countries, a member of G8, fourth-largest economy etc—but can you name the current PM—not the ex-PM who was assassinated 2 weeks ago, assuming you remember that at all, but the current PM? I doubt it. I thought I did but then I checked and I was remembering the previous one, Suga. Now, can you tell me if Japanese politics is more or less ‘polarized’ in 2022 than it was in 2012? Personally, I don’t have a clue.)
So, since it’s US-specific and changes over time, most of these hypotheses aren’t even wrong because they are explaining observations which don’t exist. In countries with extensive public funding for campaigns, how can changes in ‘donating’ happen, much less drive the polarization which also didn’t happen? (Not that money matters remotely as much as people think in the first place, and is mostly a reverse causality deal: victors raise money, money doesn’t raise victors. Ask Bloomberg how easy it is to buy a vote.) And they also don’t explain why it would increase when they are levels: politicians have always been irrational, why would they be moreso now? That’s what would then need to be explained, otherwise it’s just passing the buck.
I take some of those points. I don’t know the state or trend of polarization in other countries (only countries with two main parties would be of interest for this model, multi-party elections yield a different system). Though I maintain that one country is still an observation to be explained, requiring a hypothesis. I could also believe that donations or activism don’t drive election performance.
But fundamentally, I think you’re addressing an issue with my suboptimal framing of the puzzle, rather than the puzzle itself. I’m not really interested in the time trend (increase?) of the polarization of politicians. From the perspective of MVT, it’s surprising that there are any differences between the two main candidates’ positions, irrespective of the amount of polarization in the electorate. Certainly it’s surprising that when elections are close, politicians don’t move further towards the center in order to win—something must be restraining them. What is it?
I agree individual politicians could be irrational (in the sense of not optimizing for getting elected, though the precise mechanism still interests me). For example, maybe they do not change their true ideological positions to appeal to voters even when getting elected is at stake (is this likely?). But you’d still need to explain why other politicians, whose views are genuinely more moderate, don’t emerge and win the elections. In the same way that individual producers and customers could be biased/selfish, but the market could still end up efficient & useful, the political system could have generated the most electable politician, who is a moderate. Why doesn’t it? I can’t think of any hypothesis not listed or raised so far.
My understanding of the political science research on this topic was that political polarization post-Internet was mostly a USA-specific thing, and you did not see as strong a polarization elsewhere when you take a systematic look.
(It wouldn’t be surprising if people base their impressions “politics is so polarized these days” solely on the one example of the USA and are badly wrong about their generalization, because due to media and the Internet especially, everyone pays a ton of attention to American politics, whether or not they want to, and typically ignore other countries. For example, Japanese politics—out of the ~200 countries worldwide, Japan is one of the most important countries, a member of G8, fourth-largest economy etc—but can you name the current PM—not the ex-PM who was assassinated 2 weeks ago, assuming you remember that at all, but the current PM? I doubt it. I thought I did but then I checked and I was remembering the previous one, Suga. Now, can you tell me if Japanese politics is more or less ‘polarized’ in 2022 than it was in 2012? Personally, I don’t have a clue.)
So, since it’s US-specific and changes over time, most of these hypotheses aren’t even wrong because they are explaining observations which don’t exist. In countries with extensive public funding for campaigns, how can changes in ‘donating’ happen, much less drive the polarization which also didn’t happen? (Not that money matters remotely as much as people think in the first place, and is mostly a reverse causality deal: victors raise money, money doesn’t raise victors. Ask Bloomberg how easy it is to buy a vote.) And they also don’t explain why it would increase when they are levels: politicians have always been irrational, why would they be moreso now? That’s what would then need to be explained, otherwise it’s just passing the buck.
I take some of those points. I don’t know the state or trend of polarization in other countries (only countries with two main parties would be of interest for this model, multi-party elections yield a different system). Though I maintain that one country is still an observation to be explained, requiring a hypothesis. I could also believe that donations or activism don’t drive election performance.
But fundamentally, I think you’re addressing an issue with my suboptimal framing of the puzzle, rather than the puzzle itself. I’m not really interested in the time trend (increase?) of the polarization of politicians. From the perspective of MVT, it’s surprising that there are any differences between the two main candidates’ positions, irrespective of the amount of polarization in the electorate. Certainly it’s surprising that when elections are close, politicians don’t move further towards the center in order to win—something must be restraining them. What is it?
I agree individual politicians could be irrational (in the sense of not optimizing for getting elected, though the precise mechanism still interests me). For example, maybe they do not change their true ideological positions to appeal to voters even when getting elected is at stake (is this likely?). But you’d still need to explain why other politicians, whose views are genuinely more moderate, don’t emerge and win the elections. In the same way that individual producers and customers could be biased/selfish, but the market could still end up efficient & useful, the political system could have generated the most electable politician, who is a moderate. Why doesn’t it? I can’t think of any hypothesis not listed or raised so far.