Kathleen Bawn, Marty Cohen, David Karol, Seth Masket, Hans Noel and John Zaller’s paper, A Theory of Political Parties has been getting a lot of attention, and for good reason. It proposes a new theory of political parties which puts interest groups at the forefront. Roughly speaking, Bawn et al. argue that parties are best thought of as a means through which interest groups (by which they mean any group with a specific and intense set of goals differing from the majority) try to form coalitions among themselves so as to get politicians elected who will advance their collective policy aims. Parties are able to respond to their interest groups’ demands, even when they deviate from voters’ preferences, because voters have a ‘blind spot’ – as long as parties don’t appear to move too far towards the extremes, voters won’t pay sufficient attention to what they are doing to punish them. Thus, parties are likely to move as far as they believe they can in the relevant direction towards the edge of the blind spot while staying within it. That way they can keep their interest groups happy, while not getting punished by the voters.
Even if party politicians are (as Bawn et al. argue they are) uncertain of exactly where the edges of the blind spot lie, one can make some predictions about their behavior. First, “Politicians will systematically give more weight to the risks of extremism, i.e., the risks of straying outside the blind spot, thereby guaranteeing electoral defeat.” Second, party politicians will ‘obfuscate’ (by hiding the details of deal making) and ‘bamboozle’ (by sequencing votes in ways that allow them to appear to support measures they oppose and vice-versa) so as to expand the effective limits of the electorate’s blind spot. Third, parties will occasionally test the limits of voter tolerance by proposing ‘extreme’ candidates to see whether they can win despite the party’s expectation (which would suggest that the blind spot is bigger than they previously believed). Fourth, when this doesn’t work, they will be likely to choose a more moderate candidate the next time around to increase their chances of winning.
This perhaps provides a rationale for understanding why the Republican party chose John McCain as its nominee in the presidential race – he was the most ‘moderate’ seeming credible candidate. McCain did of course have to moderate his moderation during the primaries and the general election for fear that he would alienate the conservative base. The interesting question is whether Bawn et al. has any predictive value for who the Republicans will nominate in 2012, and for how that person will present himself or herself.
If their argument works in this instance, the Republicans will nominate someone who at least is able successfully to present themselves as moderate and falling within the blind spot. If not, they will nominate someone who is more obviously ‘extreme’ on the belief that the Republican problem this time out was presenting a mixed message rather than articulating core Republican and conservative principles. It’s of course completely unclear at this point which they will choose, but much of the initial rhetoric suggests that they may go for the latter rather than the former; the leaders of some prominent Republican factions are arguing that McCain lost because he wasn’t Republican enough. If they do go in this direction, this won’t invalidate Bawn et al.’s argument (which is about broad tendencies rather than ineluctable principles) but it will suggest that the Republicans aren’t being ‘rational’ (in the sense that the Republican coalition will not rationally seek to maximize its chances of winning in the kind of environment that the article describes).
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i’m surprised they don’t cite thomas ferguson’s _golden rule_. the bits about interest groups, obfuscating, and bamboozling sound a lot like the arguments he makes for his “investment theory” of parties.
This is a nice application of our argument to 2008. Two thoughts:
First, we argue that the party’s tendency to moderate will increase with “time in the wilderness,” (all else equal, and 2008 was not a typical year). Conservatives are juat starting their period without control, following a period with a lot of control, dating in part back to 1994. There are a lot of other things to blame 2008 on besides being too extreme, and right now, the need to get back into power may feel less pressing than it might in 2016 (or even by 2012).
Second, the moderate/extreme tradeoff will be contested within the party, in part because different actors have different risk attitudes or different perceptions of where the blind spot ends. Conservatives have an incentive to argue that pleasing them is strategically correct, even if it isn’t. And they are right that a more pure conservative would mobilize the base, but at the expense of moderates, which is exactly the tradeoff we are hearing argued.
My problem with a lot of the invisible party conversations (as separate from the literature) is that I think their case is often easily overstated (note the use of the passive voice).
I think that Hans’ second point hits the nail on the head. A fundamental problem with theorizing about parties “doing” something is that parties are collective organizations, particularly in the US. As Hans notes, right now different factions within the party are fighting to gain the upper hand in the future (some strategically, some for purposive/expressive reasons). It’s all well and good to say what the theory predicts a party will do, but a party is a collection of people operating in a fluid political environment. Take, for example, 2008. A funny thing happened on the way to Minnesota: the “party favorite” said “Macaca.”
I think that the interesting question is not whether or not Bawn et. al. can predict 2012, but whether their theory can help us understand the dynamics in 2012. Predictions are a tricky business, particularly so for nominations in the world of Macaca and Rielle Hunter. However, I think you can take the insights of the theory and apply it.
Henry,
I’m sure there’s a lot of other stuff in the Bawn et al. paper.
I’m a little puzzled by your statement: “This perhaps provides a rationale for understanding why the Republican party chose John McCain as its nominee in the presidential race – he was the most ‘moderate’ seeming credible candidate.”
This bit is hardly a new theory! Rosenstone in his 1983 book talked about the idea that more moderate candidates will do better at the polls.
Again, I’m not knocking the paper you’re citing; I just don’t think any new theory is required to explain why the Republicans chose a politically moderate nominee. The old theories did just fine explaining that.
Hans – perhaps I skimmed the paper too quickly, but I am not clear whether you are arguing that the strategic dynamics you discuss are an emergent consequence of intraparty coalitional struggles or entirely intentional. The language often suggests the latter, but the logic seems stronger for the former.
Dan,
That’s a good question, and central to the problem of studying parties. EVERYTHING that a party does is at least partly the consequence of intraparty dynamics. At the same time, we argue that the heterogeneous party members recognize that they need to coordinate to succeed, and try to do so. They can succeed or fail.
As to the specific prediction of increasing moderation with increasing time in the wilderness, I think the logic works if there is a lot of intraparty competition or if there were a single dictatorial party leader. Even with a unitary actor, it makes sense to “test the waters” incrementally over time.
(And I agree with Andrew that our contribution is not supposed to be “why moderate,” but rather, “why still so extreme.”)
Discussions of party action remind me of the G.Allison’s old typology of viewing orgnizational output as the result of (1) rational actors, (2) procedures, and (3) institutional politics. Seems all three are in play here. How often are candidates who are not supported by the “party” (leadership) able to upset things? To what degree are candidacies the result of campaign finance and election (esp. primary election) rules?
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