Intermittent Majorities: A Dynamic Theory of Democratic Inertia

• In Event: Political Parties and American Democracy Mini-Conference III: Constitutions, Counter-Majoritarianism, and American Democracy

Abstract

We develop a dynamic model in which political polarization is a function of democratic inertia. Our approach conceptualizes democratic inertia in terms of parameters that can reflect the separation of powers, (i.e. presidentialism, multicameral legislatures, and/or super- majority rules within legislatures, such as the Senate filibuster). The baseline model shows that the prospects for compromise decrease as the probability of future inertia grows: That is, the harder it is for parties generally to gain unilateral power, the more tempting it is to exploit such rare opportunities to “lock in” extreme policies. We further show that asymmetries matter: intuitively, institutional structures that affect parties differentially (e.g. one party may require less electoral support to change policy, due to democratic advantages via the US senate, via the electoral college,, or via gerrymandering, etc.), make it more likely that advantaged parties will deviate from compromise. Notably, however, party asymmetries are not the essential driver of discord in our framework . We then endogenize democratic inertia in a dynamic model of elections, and prove that the core mechanism is robust. By isolating a specific mechanism –democratic inertia via checks and balances – we also provide a novel lens for analyzing institutional reform proposals currently debated by policy-makers and scholars.

Authors

• John Duggan, University of Rochester

• Gretchen Helmke, University of Rochester