
Choosing between democracy and party, Americans will chose party over democracy - mrfusion
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/democracy-in-america-partisanship-polarization-and-the-robustness-of-support-for-democracy-in-the-united-states/C7C72745B1AD1FF9E363BBFBA9E18867#
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dang
Editorializing titles like this is against the site guidelines. We take
submission privileges away from accounts that do it repeatedly, so please
don't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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rayiner
[https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge...](https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20200423073226266-0814:S0003055420000052:S0003055420000052_tab1.gif?pub-
status=live)

So they have a list of “undemocratic” behaviors, such as biased redistricting.
But it doesn’t include using courts to secure laws that one side would be
unable to get through the ordinary legislative process. That’s one of the most
profoundly undemocratic things about the US. (Not bad, which is debatable, but
by definition undemocratic.) So many major policies, from abortion to the role
of religion in the public sphere are decided in America by unelected judges,
whereas Europe for the most part manages to pass legislation on the same
issues through democratic consensus. But social scientists steeped in American
liberal ideology don’t even perceive this as anti-Democratic (again, different
from good or bad).

This popped into my head reading the first paragraph, so I scrolled down to
see what they thought were “undemocratic” things. Sure enough.

~~~
clairity
first, the US is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. we don't
vote on every little legal precedent. second, judges and the judicial system
are a check on executive and legislative power, not a _lawmaking_ body.

please keep partisanship out of such analyses. if your ideas are good, they
can stand on their own merits without trying to rally the party faithful
(ironic, given the thread title).

~~~
renewiltord
Is there any direct democracy in the world? Maybe Swiss cantons? The default
is a constitutional representative democracy. It's sort of a non-clarification
because that's exactly what everyone is talking about when they say democracy.

He's absolutely correct that American courts are, in actuality, through the
precedent system and novel interpretation of law around cases, a defacto
legislative body. They're sort of like a House of Lords. Examples are Schenk v
US and Roe v Wade.

Overall, I think this has been effective in practice in the US, but it isn't
quite in the spirit of the judiciary as you describe it.

~~~
clairity
direct democracies weren't practical at the scale of a nation until relatively
recently, but yes, many smaller governmental bodies can and have been direct.

but no, the judiciary is not a legislative body (nor is the executive). it
curbs legislative power through interpretation (as does the executive), as is
their charge, and therefore has influence and power at the margins, not in the
wholesale creation of laws. it's more influential in the negative--striking
down unconstitutional laws wholesale. that's not the same as a legislative
body.

besides, representative democracy centers around the legislature, not the
judiciary. talking about an undemocratic judiciary was just a contrivance for
partisanship.

~~~
renewiltord
The judiciary is not a legislative body. I don't think anyone is claiming it
is. But it acts, in practice, often as a legislative body. Certainly any
application of judicial activism is indistinguishable from legislation due to
the use of judicial precedence, i.e. it is parallel law-making.

For what it's worth, the nature of the judiciary appointed by representatives
chosen by voters is just slow representative democracy. It is no surprise
that, given the ability to make a law-like, appointed in a manner that is
representative-like, they act lawmaker-like.

They are, in their activism, isomorphic to lawmakers. That's what judicial
activism is. In a POSIWID sense, the judiciary are lawmakers, no matter what
you call them, like North Korea is a dictatorship despite being called a
Democratic People's Republic.

~~~
clairity
no, you're trying to stretch concepts past the breaking point to fit a desired
narrative.

the judiciary isn't a parallel lawmaking body. the legislation has corrective
oversight of judiciary interpretation (outside of consitutional issues). that
the legislature only exercises their oversight selectively inconsistent to
your wishes is not a judicial issue.

also, "judicial activism" is a loaded term. the judiciary is doing exactly and
only what it's tasked to do--interpret law against the backdrop of the
constitition; it's not a bug if you disagree with its decisions.

~~~
renewiltord
I don't. I _love_ it's decisions, I'm glad they made them, and I said as much,
but that doesn't change that they're making law.

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Jedd
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two
great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in
opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as
the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

    
    
       -- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
    

Here in Australia there's a weird combination of moves towards this hugely
damaging two-party approach to politics (moves orchestrated I suspect by pop
media), and a very real trend away from that. At the last federal election,
f.e., we had >25% of people _not_ voting for either of the two major parties -
that ratio has been growing steadily, and is hugely reassuring.

What's not reassuring is that most people still think in terms of A or B,
exhibiting a poverty of expectations, or perhaps just seeking a simple answer
to the complexity of administration.

~~~
rossdavidh
It should be said that John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, the
Patriot Act of their day except far worse, which were used to imprison a
majority of the opposition newspaper editors using those acts' definition of
sedition. Not who I would quote as a defender of democracy.

~~~
thanhhaimai
I'd consider the merits of the idea separately from who said it. An idea
should be judged by its merits alone.

~~~
JulianMorrison
It should be judged by its merits and looked at askance according to its
author, because that often helps you spot sneaky-sneaky demerits being slipped
in by the back door.

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vinceguidry
Populism has always, from day one, all the way back in Ancient Greece, been a
threat to democracy. People don’t really want lofty philosophical ideas. They
want the rules most favorable to them. Been true for thousands of years and
it’s not going to stop anytime soon.

The surprising thing isn’t that rule of law is being threatened. It’s always
being threatened. The surprising thing is that it ever evolved at all. And
despite the constant threats, it still manages to evolve, one tyrant at a
time.

CGPGrey has a great pair of videos on pirate social dynamics that everyone
should watch. Economic factors, not shared idealism, created the flat
hierarchy.

Nobody will choose idealism that’s not beneficial to them.

~~~
justinmeiners
> Populism has always, from day one, all the way back in Ancient Greece, been
> a threat to democracy.

In Plato's republic democracy is a result of populism and is seen as one of
the lowest forms of government.

~~~
nabla9
Direct democracy can be pretty damn horrible and unprincipled.

Any modern system has check and balances and the process itself is important.
Forcing negotiation, coalitions and making it difficult to change constitution
etc. Plato had no idea how democracy can develop.

~~~
cjameskeller
Aristotle describes this as "Polity":

See [this]([https://fs.blog/2017/02/aristotles-
politics/](https://fs.blog/2017/02/aristotles-politics/)) article, and the
[Politics, book 4, section
XI]([http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.4.four.html#553](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.4.four.html#553))

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JoshTriplett
I wonder to what extent there is also a prisoner's dilemma problem here,
insofar as defecting makes more sense if you have strong prior knowledge or
belief that your opponent will defect. (
[https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/) provides a great
interactive and intuitive understanding of the prisoner's dilemma.)

For example, using one of the hypotheticals from the paper, I could imagine
multiple reasons for a partisan to "support a redistricting plan that gives
them more seats despite a decline in polling":

1) Choosing to intentionally commit anti-democratic behavior, such as to "win
at all costs". Someone couldn't justify this (to themselves or others)
directly through democratic values, though they could attempt to argue that
winning averts some worse outcome.

2) Perceiving unfairness in existing polling (e.g. disenfranchisement,
gerrymandering, etc), and choosing an action they perceive as "balancing"
similar anti-democratic behavior by the other side, with the justification
that the outcome may be closer to democratic. Someone _could_ justify this (to
themselves or others) directly through democratic values alone, particularly
if they argued that they would prefer the outcome in which neither side
commits such anti-democratic behavior.

Possibility (2) allows people to self-justify defection from democratic
principles more easily, and feel more morally correct in doing so. It's
difficult to get back from that situation to one in which everyone follows
democratic norms and principles, if cooperating (following those norms and
principles) is or is perceived as a losing strategy.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
You have to also take into account Long Term and Short Term thinking.

Not only are we playing a Prisoners’ Dilemma but most of the population is
thinking about a value function that pays off in the Short Term (it’s
definitely true about events outside the population’s expected lifespan, but
also is true within a single lifespan).

In the Long Term all of our needs are relatively aligned.

There are pivotal points in history like the signing of the Magna Carta at
knife point, rather than yet another relatively-shallow regime change, that
are thinking about the value function in the Long Term.

There will one day be an iteration on democracy that solves the Byzantine
Generals Problem. Where the “failures of communication” are caused by Short
Term thinking.

------
voidhorse
Sure, I'm fairly confident that "Democracy" for many Americans means "my
political beliefs" and does not designate an ideal political structure in
which the system of government is determined by the populous.

In the American context it's become one of those meaningless, overloaded sham
words, wrought with personal interpretation and emotion. For the American,
anyone who is defending his own political prescriptions is a defender of
sacred democracy.

I mean, jeez, we do such a poor job at political education in this country
that I'm sure a large swath of the population couldn't even articulate ideal
principles of a well-structured democracy.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
It's why we're perpetually bewildered when one of the Bush family goes into a
foreign country to "liberate" it and find that democracy is not the same thing
as fealty to America.

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resfirestar
From briefly looking through the results and the survey design, I have some
practical concerns with the design of the candidate choice survey part of the
study as they relate to the “party over democracy” conclusion, specifically,
the fact that there were no "pro-democratic" candidate positions, only
"undemocratic" and "generic". This lets the voter faced with a choice between
an undemocratic candidate and a candidate who has nothing to say on the
"democracy" issues project the undemocratic positions onto the "generic"
candidate. This seems especially problematic because anti-electoral fairness
positions and rule by executive order, widely used in America by both parties,
make up half of the undemocratic positions used. For many Americans these seem
to be intractable issues because (1) these abuses are already widespread, and
(2) almost no political candidates, aside from more fringe single-issue ones,
run on ending them or can be expected to do anything to oppose or end them if
perpetrated by their own party. So to me it seems perfectly reasonable to vote
for a candidate of who explicitly supports gerrymandering and rule by
executive order over a candidate less aligned with you on other policy issues
who has nothing to say about them. Chances are, the other guy supports those
things too. Am I missing some part of the study that accounts for this?

------
Cookingboy
Of course, very few people actually like democracy in practice, they just tend
to prefer whatever system/government that agrees with them.

Imagine you let people from one party (doesn't matter Democrat or Republicans)
to _anonymously_ vote on a constitutional amendment that outlaws the opposing
party members from participating in the next presidential election, my gut
feeling is that amendment would pass the vote overwhelmingly.

Either way, democracy is a nice ideology that won't scale in the 21st century
anyway, but that's a different discussion for another day...

------
stakkur
But it's well-established that this has _always_ been the case, from almost
the beginning. And it's also common in _any_ party-based system.

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neximo64
It's the game theory optimal choice. No surprise there.

------
shadykiller
Not much different from many countries e.g. India

~~~
nashashmi
Many Muslim countries are also skewed to elect conservative Muslim government.
It's not they hate democracy. They just don't trust normal people to make the
right decisions.

~~~
smnrchrds
I am not sure if I understand your comment. Are you saying conservative
Muslims are not normal people?

~~~
nemothekid
I think the favorable interpretation of his comment is that by normal he means
secular.

~~~
renewiltord
These are always funny statements because they sort of betray what the person
thinks are normal. There's a famous one with world renowned football coach Pep
Guardiola:

> _My kids go to school with Indian people, black people, normal people,
> people from everywhere_

[https://streamable.com/ga3fg](https://streamable.com/ga3fg)

It's pretty easy to forgive that but it's still funny.

------
cletus
This is actually what I think is most dangerous in US politics right now.
Nixon resigned to avoid an inevitable impeachment. Today? He's stay in office,
have impeachment defeated on a straight party-line vote and then declare
victory against "fake news".

The Senate obstruction of Obama was unprecedented. The subversion of the
Justice Department is unprecedented. The White House going _months_ without a
press briefing is unprecedented (in modern times). The erosion of public
institutions doesn't seem to matter. Nor does the public trust in those
institutions. Winning matters. Getting your agenda through no matter what
matters. And that's so dangerous.

This, by the way, is why mandatory voting (as we have in Australia) is so
important and so much better. In the US, the election process itself is
politicized. What you have is highly organized efforts aimed at voter
suppression because people are allowed not to vote so much so that the GOP had
to enter into a 35 year consent decree to prevent voter suppression [1].

What a lot of liberals don't understand (for the record, I include myself in
that camp) is how angry the idea of activist judges makes conservatives.

In US constitutional law you really have two major schools of thought: the
"living document" school and the "literalists". The second group think the
constitution says what it says. If you want to change that, there's a process
for that (ie a constitutional amendment). The "living document" school thinks
the constitution should be viewed through the lens of the times and it asks
questions like "what would the Founders have written or meant today?" Broadly
speaking, literalists are the conservatives and "living document" types are
liberals.

Judicial conservatives think there was no _constitutional_ basis for the
SCOTUS decision to legalize gay marriage. They feel like "dignity" was another
invented right, just like "privacy" was an invented right that legalized
abortion in Roe v. Wade. And whether or not you agree with those things in
principle, you shouldn't dismiss how strongly many voters feel that
legislatures not judges should enact those things.

I strongly believe the combination of the SCOTUS gay marriage decision and
having a black president while the candidate was HIlary Clinton was the
perfect storm that was the only thing that could get Trump elected.

But here's this relates to party over democracy: by any measure, Trump is a
reprehensible human being. The level of hypocrisy required for religious
conservatives to stand behind him is truly astounding. But they do it because
we're now in a situation where the ends justifies the means and one of those
key ends is packing the courts with young Conservative judges, something
that'll have a legacy for decades to come.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force)

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ryanmarsh
Did they ask about democracy vs. a constitutional republic?

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beervirus
If I wanted to read about politics, I’d go to the dumpster fire that is
reddit. I come here to read about interesting things.

