Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 571

Saudis Fighting Russia for Europe’s Oil Market

Saudi Arabia is becoming a nightmare for Russia. First, the Saudis elected to abdicate their role as global oil swing producers, choosing not to cut production (and convincing the rest of OPEC to follow their lead) in the face of plunging crude prices. That decision consigned oil producers around the world to a period of prolonged bargain pricing, which has sent budget deficits spiraling in petrostates like Saudi Arabia and—you guessed it—Russia. And it doesn’t stop there. Reuters reports on Riyadh’s latest economic strike against Russia:

Russia has for years been muscling in on Asian markets where Saudi Arabia was once the unchallenged dominant supplier. But now Riyadh is retaliating in Moscow’s backyard of Europe with aggressive price discounting.

Trading sources told Reuters that majors such as Exxon, Shell, Total and Eni have been all buying more Saudi oil for their refineries in Western Europe and the Mediterranean in the past few months at the expense of Russian oil.

Riyadh’s strategy has been predicated on a belief that market share is more important than a robust oil price, and that’s perhaps being vindicated in Europe, where Saudi supplies are starting to edge out Russian crude. Putin has to be feeling the pressure as Western sanctions prevent him from investing in the kinds of new projects necessary to keep Russian oil production up in the medium-term future, even while low prices deplete a Russian national budget that has become very dependent on revenues generated by hydrocarbon sales. And now, between Saudi discounting and the continent’s recent push to diversify away from Gazprom supplies after the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is losing its grip on its most important customer base: the European market.

This continental clash is only going to intensify when Iranian oil exports start to come back online, pending the lifting of Western sanctions. In the meantime, Russian and Saudi energy officials have scheduled a meeting next month to discuss the current market climate. Rest assured they’ll have plenty to talk about.

What Is Australia’s China Policy?

Australia is sending its own mixed signals about the South China Sea, according to Bloomberg:

Australia wouldn’t take part in any U.S. naval patrols aimed at testing China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and isn’t taking sides in disputes over one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, Trade Minister Andrew Robb said.

Robb’s remarks came after foreign Minister Julie Bishop met U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry this week and said Australia is “on the same page” with the U.S. on the sea, a $5 trillion-a-year shipping route that the American navy has patrolled largely unchallenged since World War II.

Beijing, which issued several stern statements in response to Bishop’s meeting with Kerry and Carter yesterday, is surely pleased by Robb’s remarks. Australia’s new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has historically been friendlier to China than his predecessor was, and many observers expected he would back away from some of Australia’s more anti-China positions. Is such a shift finally happening?

It’s hard to tell. Australia looks set to ratify its trade deal with China, but the deal was negotiated by Turnbull’s predecessor, so this development isn’t anything new. Although it initially looked like a large submarine contract with Japan might fall through, the pressure was mostly coming from domestic unions seeking favorable terms, not from Sinophiles. Now the deal looks like it will probably happen anyway. We’ll need to see more clarification from Canberra to know whether Robb’s comments were in fact the prelude to a change in policy.

Russia’s Military Prowess Surprises Western Analysts

Russian air and missile strikes in Syria over the past two weeks have surprised military analysts, who did not appreciate Russia’s sophisticated capabilities, according to the New York Times:

Taken together, the operations reflect what officials and analysts described as a little-noticed — and still incomplete — modernization that has been underway in Russia for several years, despite strains on the country’s budget. And that, as with Russia’s intervention in neighboring Ukraine, has raised alarms in the West.

In a report this month for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel argued that Mr. Putin had overseen the most rapid transformation of the country’s armed forces since the 1930s. “Russia is now a military power that could overwhelm any of its neighbors, if they were isolated from Western support,” wrote Mr. Gressel, a former officer of the Austrian military.

The capabilities on display in Syria are surely sending shudders up Eastern European spines, but Washington should worry too. Although the United States remains a far more powerful military power than Russia, the speed with which Russia has managed to significantly upgrade its military equipment indicates the perils of resting on one’s laurels in an age full of rapidly-developing high technology. Armchair analysts who pooh-poohed the Pentagon budget cuts created by sequestration ought to revisit their arguments.

A greater worry: if Russia is startling us with its military might, how much might we be underestimating China?

Germany’s Green Energy Surcharges Spiral Upwards

German households and businesses will be paying more for their electricity next year as providers are set to hike the green surcharge levied on customers’ power bills. As part of the country’s Energiewende, Germany has rapidly increased its wind and solar energy industries by guaranteeing producers long-term, above-market rates. But those feed-in tariffs, as they’re called, have come at great expense, and the costs ultimately trickle down to consumers in the form of a green surcharge, which next year will rise by 6.354 euro cents per kilowatt.

Germany already pays some of the highest electricity costs in Europe, making this rate hike especially painful. This increase will be felt most keenly by the poor, whose energy bills make up a larger percentage of their overall budget. Businesses will also be eying this news askance. Cheap power is a basic economic interest across most industries, and rising rates could have some German companies asking whether they might be better served relocating outside the country. It’s difficult to stay competitive in a global market when those rates keep rising.Moreover, while the Energiewende has boosted Germany’s green “cred” by stimulating renewables, it has also dramatically increased coal consumption as a result of the country’s decision to shift away from nuclear power production. As John Gapper points out in an FT column, this rise in coal consumption means that the country’s emissions are actually climbing. “The perversity of the Energiewende,” he writes, “is that Germany is on a path to achieving the hard task while flunking what should be the simple one — reducing its coal production.”Germany is fully exploring one of those mythical policy sour spots that, against all odds, seems to make less sense with every new angle from which it’s viewed. From a cost perspective, this has been disastrous, and efforts to curtail those green power bill surcharges are clearly failing. But it’s also failing on its eco-merits, too, as, again, it’s had to burn record amounts of an especially dirty variety of coal to replace zero-emissions nuclear plants.Greens tend to see economic growth and green achievements as mutually exclusive, that progress on one front must necessarily come at the expense of the other. That’s a self-defeating argument, and the most compelling environmental policies seek to capitalize on the confluence of environmental and economic interests. But the flip side of that, apparently, is that there are policy configurations that are neither growth-friendly nor environmentally desirable. In that sense, Germany’s Energiewende has taught the world a valuable lesson, though no doubt it’s not the sort of example it hoped it would set.

China Stares Down U.S. in South China Sea

The White House has been sending mixed signals about its plans to send ships through China’s 12-mile exclusion zone in the South China Sea—and a recent WSJ piece sheds some light on why. Plans for so-called freedom of navigation operations (Fonops) have existed for months, but it appears officials were thrown off by an unexpected pledge President Xi Jinping gave during last month’s state visit—stated at a joint press conference, but not directly to President Obama—not to militarize the reclaimed reefs:

Mr. Xi issued no such pledge about not intending to militarize the islands in his private discussions with Mr. Obama, according to people briefed on the talks, and U.S. officials had no time immediately after the news conference to clarify with their Chinese counterparts what was meant by “militarize.”

U.S. officials, who have been seeking clarification from their Beijing counterparts since, don’t think Mr. Xi misspoke. But the unexpected remarks on one of the most sensitive issues in China-U.S. relations suggested how Mr. Xi’s top-down leadership style can cause confusion.

Yet after Xi returned to Beijing, building continued on some of the artificial islands, and American officials now say that the U.S. would indeed go forward with its plans.

In the meantime, the Chinese think they can stare down the U.S. in their own backyard should tensions continue to rise, according to an excellent read in Newsweek on the tensions in the South China Sea. “The U.S. wants to dominate the world, China only wants to keep America from dominating its neighborhood”, a prominent U.S.-educated Chinese political scientist and venture capitalist said in remarks suggesting that this imbalance gives China an advantage. Furthermore, Beijing believes that the United States’ commitment to the region is too expensive and that President Obama does not have the stomach for another global crisis.Xi seems to be playing a clever game with the United States. The Washington Post reported last week that China has been arresting a few hackers at the behest of U.S. officials, presumably in an attempt to convince the White House that Beijing wants to be a constructive partner. But after being thrown off guard by Xi’s overtures when he visited the U.S. last month, the White House may have sobered up. We certainly hope so. As Bill Bishop tells Newsweek, China takes its territorial claims very seriously: “It’s not just the government making it up. The South China Sea is an intractable issue. It’s not just the party line.”UPDATE: As we were publishing the above, the Financial Times reports that Chinese officials heightened their rhetoric today:

In the latest escalation of rhetoric from Beijing, a senior Chinese naval officer on Thursday warned the US that China’s military would “give a head-on blow” to foreign forces “violating” China’s sovereignty.

It is hard to know exactly what China might do if the U.S. sends ships within the 12-mile zone. One possibility: Beijing could claim that the U.S. is forcing it to militarize what China maintains are peaceful outposts. Of course, the artificial islands look a lot like military installations already.

Iranians Prepare Major Combat Offensives in Syria

Looks like Washington has been caught flat-footed in Syria again. The Times of London reports:

Thousands of Iranian troops have been flown into an airbase in Latakia for deployment to the front lines in Idlib, where heavy fighting with rebels is under way. Others are being moved towards Aleppo, where they will join a ground offensive involving regime forces and Hezbollah fighters in the coming days, according to Iranian sources.

Reports of Iranian troops on the ground in Syria have been mounting in recent weeks, with Iran confirming the death of several Iranian officers killed in combat outside Aleppo last week. Though an unnamed Obama Administration official has said that figures for the number of Iranian troops deployed overstate the reality by an order of magnitude, that misses the point.

Whatever the final figure ends up being, the Obama Administration’s apparent determination to downplay the significance of Iran’s contribution to the fight could be a grave miscalculation. When you have so many forces on so many scattered battlefronts, even a few hundred well-equipped, professionally trained, fresh troops can make a significant difference if you use them well. Thousands of such troops, if the numbers indeed reach that high, could help tip the regional balance, making President Obama’s public predictions of failure seem… premature at best.

Our Peculiar Reform Challenge

This issue of The American Interest includes a series of articles proposing concrete policy reforms designed to improve the performance of the American political system. They come out of a project at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law that has taken a hard look at American political institutions compared to those of other advanced democracies.

The project began with the observation that the United States had become much less of a shining example of advanced democracy for many people around the world than it was at the end of the Cold War. To some extent, all advanced democracies have suffered from eroding legitimacy and performance in recent years. That said, there has been wide variation at the national level among established democracies in coping with the need for adjustment and reform. Several countries, including Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have all engaged in successful policy reform efforts of various stripes over the past two and a half decades, liberalizing labor markets, reducing deficits, and changing institutional rules in the face of substantial political pushback. Others, like Italy, Greece, France, and Japan have found it much more difficult to make hard choices. It is difficult to make the argument that democracy is in trouble everywhere; much easier to make the case that institutions matter when it comes to flexibility and reform prospects. Within this spectrum, America’s system seems to be at the more troubled end.

Many Americans regard U.S. democracy as exceptional. Most of the rest of the world regards it as peculiar. Americans tend to blame politicians, activists, and interest groups for their political problems, not their Constitution. Foreign observers wonder how America functions as well as it does with an antiquated foundational design that has never really succeeded outside U.S. territory. Convincing Americans that their Constitutional structure needs updating, let alone successfully navigating the amendment process, seems to get harder even as the public’s discontent with American politics rises. By contrast, we do not take for granted the notion that American institutions represent some kind of democratic “best practice.” Americans would do well to learn from other countries, and face up to the need for adaptation. On the other hand, we need to be realistic about the kinds of changes that are politically possible under current circumstances.  

The U.S. Constitution was deliberately designed to be hard to change. The combination of supermajority requirements for both Congressional and state approval creates a very high hurdle for Constitutional amendments. America’s pride in its own institutional peculiarity also makes it culturally resistant to major change, effectively ruling out efforts to adopt parliamentary government, compulsory voting, or even electing a President by popular vote. In addition, the country’s impressive record of political stability, economic prominence, and military dominance undermines any sense of urgency about altering its basic political design. Why disrupt a political system, however quirky it seems, when the nation has prospered for so long?

This creates a binding political constraint on reform proposals. It means that those who want to solve contemporary problems like excessive partisan polarization and policy stalemate must restrict themselves to proposals that fit comfortably within America’s unique system. Those who hope to reform the system must settle for workarounds and adaptations that mitigate problems without altering fundamental features like the separation of powers, strong First Amendment rights, or state administrative control over the time, place, and manner of elections. This latter condition is responsible for the deterioration of the electoral integrity of American democracy, a subject Steve Stedman takes up in his essay below.  

U.S. political reform is necessarily path dependent. The Electoral College is a good example. An 18th-century method for filtering popular sentiment and, in the U.S. Federal context, to ensure regional balance among sovereign states, the Electoral College sometimes leads to the biggest vote getter for President losing the election, at a time when the political significance of the states is no longer close to what it used to be. But changing the system would require a constitutional amendment or agreement to highly improbable workarounds. This is one example of many in which options for change are constrained by institutional choices made at earlier points in the nation’s history and held in place by institutional and cultural inertia. The big question is whether feasible solutions, as opposed to a large structural overhaul, will be sufficient to meet America’s most pressing contemporary political problems.

While Americans are not yet ready to throw out all or even parts of their outmoded Constitution, they are nonetheless displeased with the current state of U.S. politics according to many indicators. Congressional approval, for instance, has been consistently below 20 percent for several years, and only about a third of the American public voices confidence in government. To some extent this is contextual. Like citizens in many other OECD democracies, Americans tend to view their governments less favorably when economic and social conditions dip. But even as the economy has recovered in recent years, there is a lingering feeling that U.S. politics is broken.

People give many specific reasons for this (for example, the demise of the mainstream media, economic inequality, a broken campaign finance system, and more), but one trend is regarded as most problematic: the rising level of political polarization in the United States over the past twenty years. In her contribution to this series, Didi Kuo reviews the ongoing debate among political scientists as to whether the citizens themselves or politicians and activists are responsible for this. Almost all observers agree, however, that polarization creates special problems for U.S. politics due to the country’s peculiar institutional design.

America’s separation of powers arrangement and strong federalism provide many opportunities for obstruction—what political scientists refer to as veto points. Hence, effective governance either requires a degree of public policy consensus typically achieved only during a war or major crisis, or a willingness among various political players to compromise, negotiate, and bargain over differences. When there is high political polarization, neither condition obtains: Citizen preferences are highly divided and people dig in their heels rather than make concessions in the interests of agreement. In effect, the country’s political system and its sociology are incompatible.

Polarization is a stressful condition for any democracy. But a parliamentary democracy that fuses executive and legislative power, or a federal system with a dominant center, can operate more effectively under polarized conditions than one that disperses power so widely that it offers numerous opportunities to block government decisions and actions. In the latter case, policymaking can be stalemated much more easily—what one of us has labeled “vetocracy”, or rule by veto.1 As the Fukuyama article on budgeting indicates, Congress’ repeated failure to pass timely budgets is perhaps the chief indicator of the system’s dysfunction. And even when policies make it through the lawmaking stage (like the Affordable Care Act), it is hard to achieve decision-making closure because an issue can be repeatedly contested in the courts or through public input into agency regulations—a state of affairs that, in this case, has been abetted by the protracted delays and confusion in writing the many regulations that the law directs but does not clearly stipulate.

The dispersion of American political power also diffuses responsibility. When highly polarized political parties control different branches or levels of government, citizens have a harder time figuring out who to blame or reward for the outcomes they experience. The blurriness of political accountability in turn encourages bolder obstruction. Representatives are more likely to play legislative chicken if they can walk away from the crash unscathed, or, even worse, if they can personally gain from the disaster. Irresponsible political behavior now has its own rewards in the U.S. system, such as eliciting more donations from an agitated activist base or receiving the kind of media exposure that can lead to a lucrative career upon leaving office.  

America’s key reform challenge is how to deal with this polarization problem. Changing the system to eradicate the abundance of veto points requires the kind of constitutional action that is essentially off the table at this point in history. Other serious reforms that target deeper causes such as economic inequality or civic education require a lengthy time horizon and a broad consensus that is hard to achieve in modern-day America. Politically realistic reform focuses on institutional fixes that either aim to mute partisan voices or adapt institutions to handle polarized political strategies.

Is the U.S. electoral system a cause of increasing polarization, or are electoral controversies mostly an aftereffect? The electoral system consists of rules that govern candidate and voter eligibility, the method and number of elections, candidate labels, campaign conduct, and the way that winners are determined.  

Ironically, the American electoral system was largely designed to mute sharp electoral cleavages and promote coalition-building within “big tent” political parties. American political parties therefore have historically been less disciplined and more decentralized than their European counterparts. Maurice Duverger famously characterized them as anomalous vestiges of an earlier period when mass parties were just emerging in response to the task of mobilizing newly enfranchised electorates. But that observation was not quite right. American parties are more aptly compared to regulated utilities: a government recognized duopoly that provides loose coordination between the electorate, elected officials, and party organizations.

One of America’s unique contributions to political science is that it gives the lie to the proposition that polarized parties have to be centralized and disciplined. We have created polarization from organizational chaos. As William Graham Sumner observed back in the 1870s, and as the Cain essay elaborates below, the huge number of entry points into the political system creates a great deal of “noise”, which tends to benefit the groups best organized to focus their efforts. This is why the presumption that the solution to problems in a democracy is more democracy—often in the form of more transparency—is often mistaken. 

For example, party activists tend to have a disproportionate voice in party caucuses and primaries because they bother to show up when more indifferent and moderate voters do not. And the current legal framework for campaign finance has encouraged a rapid proliferation of outside independent spending, enabling individuals and interested groups to invest money in political candidates and causes without caps (and often without identification). Many of these outside spenders are highly ideological, and many others gain enormously from the logic of collective action. By supporting and extending the campaigns of losing candidates beyond what a capped-money system would allow, the former group pulls the frontrunners out to the more extreme positions necessary to win and maintain the votes of an activist-dominated primary electorate. In his contribution, Larry Diamond suggests reforms to the electoral system that would mitigate polarization and make more likely the rise of more centrist coalitions.

On the other hand, the very meaning of “free speech” has changed with technology. As Nate Persily points out, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that caused such upset revolved not around television advertising but around a video posted on the internet. The latter is subject to different and subtler forms of manipulation than television, and will pose different kinds of regulatory problems.  

The five essays below do not pretend to address all the structural issues confronting the U.S. political system. But some of those unaddressed in detail are important enough to deserve mention here—and that is the burden of the remainder of this introduction.

Congress is the most unpopular branch of American government. It is a prime target for public blame about political dysfunction. But is that fair? Certainly, Members of Congress can be their own worse enemy, especially since the Members who attract the most attention usually say or do the most outrageous things. Because the public’s appetite for politics is limited, political coverage drifts toward entertaining and dramatic personalities. We see this in the pre-primary success of Donald Trump.

As an institution, Congress is closely associated with polarization, primarily because it is an agent of stalemate and obstruction when control of the government is split between the parties. By contrast, the opposition party in the British parliamentary system can rail heatedly against the government in Question Time, but the fusion of executive and legislative power inhibits cross-branch obstruction. Polarization in a parliamentary government might increase the chances of policy reversal at some later point in time with a change in party control, but the odds of obstruction and stalemate do not change.

The opposite is true in the U.S. presidential system. In a separation of powers arrangement polarization reinforces the difference between legislating under united versus divided government. When the same party controls both houses of Congress, polarization increases legislative productivity by creating more internal discipline through party-line voting. In a situation of divided government, however, polarization is more likely going to grind lawmaking to a halt.

The Obama Administration, for instance, passed a good deal of important legislation in its first two years when the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress but achieved very little after 2010, leading the President to rely on executive actions that did not require Congressional approval. In this respect, the Obama Administration is walking down the route of many Latin American presidential systems, which have delegated huge powers to the presidency in the face of legislative stalemate. Switching to a parliamentary form of government might enable the U.S. political system to cope better with a polarized political sociology, but that option is not even remotely feasible politically.

Some possible Congressional reforms are blocked not by the Constitution but instead by a widely accepted political logic. The most notable example is the Senate filibuster. With the right sociology, a supermajority cloture vote might induce compromise, particularly if, as is the usual case, the majority party needs a few minority party votes to stop a filibuster. When polarization increases, however, the ideological gap between the parties widens, and coalition partners from the other side are harder to find. In addition, if individual Senators fear no electoral consequences for supporting the obstructive filibuster, then any incentive to compromise disappears entirely. 

This could be fixed by amending or eliminating the filibuster rule, but only if there is enough will in the Senate to do so. To date, the Senate has not been able to muster the votes to do this, although they have recently limited the filibuster’s scope to some degree. With party control shifting back and forth, many Senators prefer to hedge their bets by retaining the filibuster. Since they cannot be sure about whether they will be in or out of power, they seem to value the ability to obstruct what they oppose when they are out of power more than their ability to enact legislation when they are in the majority. Their risk-averse viewpoint may also derive in part from watching the House of Representatives, where being out of power is perceived as a plight so miserable that it prompts many veterans to retire when they see no prospect of returning to the majority.

One of the most contested aspects of Congressional reform is the possible tension between polarization and the aforementioned interest-group goals. Many interest groups are looking for legislation, regulation, or tax breaks that materially benefit their organization, profession, or business. They give money to obtain access and favors, not in pursuit of a broad ideological agenda. Some former Members of Congress plausibly argue that earmarks used to be an important tool for encouraging compromise. Most reform groups dismiss this suggestion out of hand.

Earmarks aside, material interests can play a role in tempering partisanship. The showdown over increasing the debt limit lasted as long as it did partly because the stock market did not show concern as quickly as one might have expected. Because political brinksmanship was viewed as nothing more than political theater aimed at the party base, few on Wall Street and elsewhere really expected the obstruction to last. But ignoring risky behavior only encourages and enables it. Alas, politics in a stable democracy sometimes suffers from moral hazard problems. Since the dollar is viewed as a safe investment and Congress had never before taken the United States over the brink of financial ruin, it was easy to dismiss the showdown as anything other than a dramatic prelude to an inevitable resolution. This encouraged some Republicans to believe that they could push the confrontation further. After all, the markets were not in a panic. In the end, of course, the markets were right. But it reinforced the image of Congress as the national hotspot for polarization.

In the American design, parts of the government require a delicate mixture of impartial expertise and political responsiveness. Executive Branch agencies are one example. In some idealized conceptions of bureaucracy, agency officials are exclusively neutral experts whose job is to implement the law as impartially as possible. Civil servant qualifications would be judged on the merits, and bureaucrats are subject to strict conflict-of-interest rules.  

In reality, bureaucrats are often responsive to their political masters. As compared to many other democracies, the U.S. system has a relatively large number of political appointees in administrative departments: 4,000–5,000 senior jobs turn over with every change in administration, compared to a couple dozen in most parliamentary democracies. The number expanded considerably after World War II. Some of these people are highly qualified, but some (especially Schedule C appointments) acquire these jobs for patronage reasons—for example, as a reward to workers from the President’s campaign. 

The best argument for placing political appointees in agencies is that they ensure greater bureaucratic responsiveness to the President. Some scholars dispute this logic, however. At a minimum, political appointees create the appearance of responsiveness, which often is all that matters in politics. Bureaucratic accountability is further blurred by the growing importance of the President’s Executive Office staff. Under the Obama Administration, they at least rival and sometime exceed the influence of Department Secretaries. Many of them are also highly political. 

The effect of polarization on the bureaucracy is to tilt the balance further from neutral expertise toward political responsiveness. Like the activist base, political appointees are more likely than the average citizen to have a well-formed ideology. But a redeeming feature of many political appointees is that they are more apt than pure activists to care about the President’s political standing and the effect policies might have on the President’s re-election or Congressional races. While there is some centrifugal pull from political appointees, the more extreme pressure comes from the activist base, not from those worried about their government jobs.

In certain policy areas, however, agency-neutral expertise is challenged yet again at the final stages of implementation. Environmental and energy permits require opportunities for the public to observe and influence agency decisions. Commercial and nonprofit organizations tend to dominate these meetings. As their perspectives on the Endangered Species Act or climate change have polarized over the years, agency officials have to contend with and balance more divergent views. This is in essence a political task imposed on personnel who are primarily trained to apply laws, not to reconcile policy differences.

Polarization at this stage has the additional effect of preventing closure. In some idealized form of democracy, policy disputes are settled when laws are passed. But in reality, U.S. laws are always modified as they are implemented by agencies or reviewed by state and Federal courts. And as particular policy areas have become more polarized, issues that should have been resolved earlier are contested once again as agencies make specific decisions. Fights over a specific endangered species in a specific local setting, for example, are sometime really proxy battles for a larger war over the importance of species protection.  

Agencies themselves sometimes develop a strong identity with their mission.  This can contribute to polarization in a policy area. One example is the Justice Department’s Voting Rights division in the 1990s with respect to enforcing Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Right Acts. They aggressively applied the law to force local communities to use redistricting as a tool for increasing Latino and African-American representation. It was an effective approach, but it also increased racial and ethnic tensions between white and nonwhite communities in many areas.

The presumption of impartiality is even greater for the Federal courts. Whereas some state court judges are elected in one form or another, Federal judges are appointed for life. There is a stronger presumption for them of neutrality and expertise as opposed to political responsiveness. Even so, recent Supreme Court decisions on highly salient cases tend to split predictably along liberal-conservative ideological lines, with either Justice Kennedy or Chief Justice Roberts as the swing vote.  

The Supreme Court is still viewed as acting in a less partisan fashion than the other branches, but that does not mean that it has remained completely above the fray. Several important Supreme Court decisions have contributed to political polarization and the formation of enduring electoral cleavages. Roe v. Wade (1973), for instance, nationalized the abortion debate and set in motion an ongoing political battle by foes to over-turn or restrict the right to an abortion. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) had a similar effect on race relations.

The fact that the Court has not been dragged into the partisan morass more than it has is due to the actions of the swing justices. In two recent health care cases, King v. Burwell (2015) and NIFB v. Sibelius (2012), John Roberts has deliberately crafted a balanced decision with the apparent intention of preserving the Court’s integrity.

Voter qualification and redistricting disputes have also pulled the Court to a steep political edge. Without the now essentially defunct “political question” doctrine to protect it, the Court is regularly asked to referee electoral rule disputes. But to political eyes, a neutral referee becomes a hometown referee if decisions do not go their way. This is potentially a very important problem, given our inability to abolish the Electoral College or our decentralized election administration system. That is why Bush v. Gore was perhaps the closest the Court came to choosing partisan sides.

These types of demands on the Court also illustrate how hard it has become to achieve closure. The American political system essentially provides four bites of the apple: Lose the presidential election, and the fight can be continued in the Congress; if defeated there, it is time to lobby the agencies; and if all else fails, sue.

In the long run, Americans need to recognize that several aspects of their constitutional framework create problems that other democracies handle more easily.  The system of checks and balances that limits the danger of overly strong government also makes reform of the government more difficult. It may take time and a few more serious crises perhaps for the public to recognize this. Or it might never happen at all.

The second-best strategy is to look for solutions within the inherited constraints. The most pressing task is to ensure that the U.S. political system can pass the stress tests posed by rising polarization and racial tension. This means enhancing our political system’s incentives and capacity to bargain, build coalitions, and compromise. 

1Francis Fukuyama, “The Decay of American Political Institutions”, The American Interest (January/February 2014).

President Obama: We Stay in Afghanistan

It’s long been of President Obama’s goals to wind down America’s commitment in both of the active wars he inherited when he assumed the office in 2008. Now, facing pressure from the U.S. Army, the CIA, Congress, and even Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Obama will later today announce a reversal of his commitment to withdraw all but 1,000 soldiers by the time he leaves office. We’re staying. Indefinitely. The New York Times:

Now, instead of falling back to the embassy — a heavily fortified compound in the center of Kabul — the administration officials said on Wednesday that the military would be able to maintain its operations at Bagram Air Field to the north of Kabul, the main American hub in Afghanistan, and at bases outside Kandahar in the country’s south and Jalalabad in the east.

All three bases are crucial for counterterrorism operations and for flying drones that are used by the military and the C.I.A., which had also argued for keeping troops in Afghanistan to help protect its own assets.There was no set date for the military to decrease the number of troops in Afghanistan to 5,500, said the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Mr. Obama’s announcement. The pace of that troop reduction would be determined largely by commanders on the ground, and the timing would also most likely provide flexibility to whoever succeeds Mr. Obama.

The move is a response to the Taliban’s surge: The group’s reach in Afghanistan is at its broadest level since 2001, the UN reported earlier this week. And last month’s fall of Kunduz vividly demonstrated that a few hundred determined Taliban fighters were able to best thousands of Afghan police and military personnel in a coordinated attack. Though the city was retaken a week later, the tide only turned once Western soldiers joined the fight.

Though Obama Administration officials insist that a recalibration of Obama’s withdrawal plans was being debated for months, it’s clear that the Kunduz debacle tipped the scales definitively. Now if only such consideration had been given to the precipitous withdrawal from Iraq…

Lead On, Macduff

Shakespeare, or politics down under? When faced with a story of back-stabbings, betrayals, and backroom brawls, it’s sometimes hard to tell. After his own deputy, Julia Gillard, toppled Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2010, Tom Switzer wrote here at The American Interest that Australian politics had taken a page (or a few acts) from Macbeth. Where once a Prime Minister could keep his throne for as long as a decade or more, now party leaders sit uneasy. Most recently, Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott fell to his long-time rival within the party, Malcolm Turnbull.

This latest rebel has revived the Liberal Party’s popularity: The government leapt ahead of the opposition Australian Labor Party in the opinion polls after lagging behind for the previous 15 months. Moreover, Turnbull styles himself more like the virtuous Macduff than Macbeth, promising to restore stability to the system and put an end to the disruptive coups. Act I of his premiership has begun.Though only Prime Minister for two years, the charismatic but controversial Abbott had lost favor with an electorate that often found his position on social issues out of step. Combative to the core, he had failed to guide crucial legislation through a Senate controlled by the Labor Party and their allies, especially the Greens. Many factions of the Left developed a deep-seated hatred of Abbott, some going so far as to attack him for being Catholic. Abbott’s party concluded that it had no prospect of political recovery under his leadership—to the contrary, it faced the strong possibility of an electoral demolition. As Turnbull said in the lead-up to the party-room vote: “It is clear that people have made up their minds about Tony Abbott’s leadership.”Turnbull has taken pains to appear more moderate than Abbott, a better communicator than his belligerent predecessor. Though from a humble background, he is a self-made millionaire, having made a fortune as an investment banker and high-profile lawyer before entering Parliament. Throughout Abbott’s tenure as Prime Minister, polls often rated Communications Minister Turnbull more highly than his boss. While Abbott floundered after frequent gaffes, Turnbull looked like the smooth operator the Liberals needed.Abbott was never able to make the transition from party chieftain to national leader. That he was out-rated by Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, widely seen as colorless and overly close to militant unions, was a damning indictment. In his second chance as party leader and first as Prime Minister, can Turnbull do any better?Turnbull has led the Liberals before, when the party was in opposition during the tenure of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. (Tony Abbott later defeated Turnbull in a party-room challenge.) At the time, Turnbull had a reputation for autocracy and interventionism, and made several serious misjudgments during his reign. He had disastrously low poll ratings when Abbott overthrew him, leading many to judge him unable to recover.On top of his previous lackluster performance, Turnbull has often associated himself with causes not in keeping with mainstream opinion within his party. He came to prominence as the leader of the push to make Australia a constitutional republic, severing the last symbolic links with the British crown. Most of the Liberal Party supports the status quo, however. Voters defeated a referendum on the issue in a landslide in 1999, but Turnbull—and many in the Labor Party—have continued to support it. When asked about it after becoming Prime Minister, Turnbull responded that he still supported the change but now considered it a low-level issue.Turnbull also supports the legalization of same-sex marriage, which many in the Liberal Party oppose. Next year’s party plebiscite on the issue will probably coincide with the general election, and could well turn into a showdown. Some charge that Abbott accepted the idea of the plebiscite reluctantly in order to neutralize the issue; Turnbull, however, might use it to push openly for liberalization. Though a few years older than Abbott, he portrays himself as more attuned to social media, changing patterns of work, and evolving social mores. He sometimes points out that he made part of his fortune by investing in Net-based companies and, as Communications Minister, rolled out the National Broadband Network. Not a natural leader for a party more conservative than he is, Turnbull hopes to shore up his position with the approval of young voters.Meanwhile, the conservative wing of the Liberal Party has largely adopted a “wait and see” attitude regarding the new Prime Minister. Hundreds of conservative rank-and-file members have reportedly resigned from the party in protest, but that’s about the extent of the damage. While some conservative commentators have come out publicly against him, most have taken the view that Abbott’s time in office was an experiment that failed. The elevation of Turnbull has, at least, given the Liberals a good chance at retaining office. The question is whether the positive poll numbers merely reflect the “honeymoon” usually given to new leaders or represent a structural shift.Turnbull has promised grander changes than a reversal of fortune for his party—including an end to the mayhem. Many people in the broad electorate want to see stability return to the leadership selection process. Tired of the frequent coups, they miss the sleepiness of the process that kept Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard in office so long, from 1996 to 2007. In addition, Turnbull has called for a general lowering of the temperature in political life. Under Abbott—and also under Rudd and Gillard—the focus had increasingly shifted to personal attacks rather than policy debate. Turnbull noted that the mainstream media have often allowed themselves to be led by rumors and anonymous opinions on social media. The tendency to describe any government re-consideration of a position as a backdown or a betrayal makes policy development difficult. Many Australians would probably agree: the past few years have seen the emergence of a spectrum of groups whose sole purpose, apparently, is to attack anything the government does or even proposes.Abbott’s confrontational approach tended to exacerbate this pattern, and Turnbull appears determined to blunt the edge of attack politics. The danger of this approach is that painful reforms will not be implemented, and that debate will continue endlessly without resolution. This will be the key test of Turnbull’s political and negotiating skills.Another test will be whether he can bring a steady hand to Australia’s politics while the world grows less stable around it. Crucially, he has kept Abbott’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, in her portfolio. This means that, on critical issues such as Australia’s military contribution in the fight against the Islamic State, policy probably will not change. On the politically sensitive issue of control of Australia’s maritime borders, the Turnbull government will also follow Abbott’s lead, and continue turning back or interning illegal immigrants. Significantly, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who favors a hard line, kept his portfolio. However, Turnbull re-affirmed Abbott’s move to accept thousands of Syrian refugees in addition to the already high humanitarian intake. Most analysts also expect him to support Bishop in her attempt to repair relations with Indonesia, which deteriorated badly earlier this year after the execution of two Australian drug traffickers.China’s recent slowdown has sent worrying ripples through the Australian economy, which Turnbull used as a lever in his campaign for productivity reforms to overcome the country’s sluggish growth. The Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, has remained in his portfolio, and will continue to push for the implementation of a free trade agreement with China, which the Labor Party leader and some militant unions oppose. The agreement, if passed into legislation, will open the Chinese market for Australian services, including education, breaking the dependence on iron ore, coal, and other resources. Overall, Turnbull will probably follow the Abbott approach of improving trade links while remaining critical of China’s strategic ambitions. Australia’s naval build-up will continue under Turnbull and new Defense Minister Marisa Payne.The next election is officially set for September 2016, but could occur earlier, especially if next May’s budget earns a good reception. In Australian politics, much can change in the space of a year. The general feeling, however, is that Turnbull has made a good start.

Scientists Say Climate Summit Structure Is Deeply Flawed

We’re just weeks ahead of a climate summit in Paris that’s been billed as a “once in a century” opportunity, and the knives are already coming out. The UN’s climate chief has previously all but admitted that the negotiations won’t aim to produce an enforceable treaty, but rather one based on “enabling and facilitating” countries to act to reduce emissions. And while the national pledges for said reductions—called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)—are now rolling in, a group of scientists are warning that this piecemeal approach is unlikely to produce satisfying results. The BBC reports:

Prof David MacKay, from the University of Cambridge, who was former chief scientific advisor to Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), said: “The science of cooperation predicts that if all you are doing is naming individual contributions – offers that aren’t coupled to each other – then you’ll end up with a relatively poor outcome.

“We have the history of the Kyoto agreement as an example of this. Initially, the approach was to find a common commitment, but eventually it descended into a patchwork of individual commitments… and that led to very weak commitments and several countries leaving the process.” […]The researchers admit that with the Paris climate conference just weeks away and the fact that global carbon pricing is not already on the table, their idea is unlikely to have much influence.

By their own admission, the scientists’ call for a different approach is going to be too little, too late, but even had they voiced their objection months or years ago, it’s hard to imagine us ending up anywhere but where we are now: lacking momentum ahead of an overhyped summit whose objective was likely doomed from the start.

The gap between the developed and developing worlds remains as wide as ever, and the bridge meant to assuage concerns of the world’s poor at the economic constriction green goals might induce—a climate slush fund paid in to by the world’s richer nations—remains underfunded. Mistrust hangs over the summit, as does a good deal of defeatism as officials reiterate that, regardless of Paris’s outcome, the world is sure to shoot past the 2 degrees Celsius warming limit scientists have set as a cautionary benchmark.In that context, this latest warning that the aggregated national approach won’t produce a robust deal comes as no surprise.