Endogenous Polarization? The Rise of Safe Seats & Party Indiscipline in Congress

• In Event: Issues in Redistricting Reform (Virtual)

Abstract

What explains this growing dysfunction of the U.S. Congress and the governance in the United States more generally? Many studies emphasize the role of between-party polarization, but we argue instead that the relatively weak party discipline due to increasing within-party disagreements contributes to poor legislative performance. In particular, we hypothesize and show the decrease in electoral competition between parties in House districts—when it coexists with the robust system of primary elections—leads to the greater divergence of legislators’ preferences not just between but also within parties, which endogenously weakens the disciplining capacity of party leaders to enact their agenda or programmatic policy.

First, we provide comprehensive historical evidence on the share of safe seats in U.S. House districts and its increase over time by using several alternative measures of electoral competitiveness. According to our analysis of the CLEA dataset supported by the expanded Cook Partisan Voting Index, we find that electoral competition between the Republican and Democratic parties has been, with a few fluctuations, almost steadily decreasing since the end of the 19th century. We then document how this trend coincides with the increase of government’s dysfunction as indicated by the rising legislative gridlock and the less frequent passage of the majority’s agenda, as well as the decrease of its long-term orientation as evidenced by the falling investments in infrastructure and children (as opposed to adults) regardless of the party in power.

Second, we explore the potential mechanisms behind the relationship between seat safety and weak party discipline by comparing the behavior and preferences of legislators and candidates of either party in more and less competitive congressional districts. In particular, we document how representatives from safer districts—and especially those from the GOP—have more ideologically extreme and divergent preferences (due to a combination of more extreme electorates, primary challengers, and donor influence), which all can make safe-seat legislators less willing to support their party agenda.

Overall, our paper draws attention to the causes and consequences of the declining discipline of American parties despite their supposed cohesiveness in the time of polarization. When legislative districts increasingly break away from each other ideologically and most of the electoral competition shifts from being between parties to being within parties, it becomes increasingly difficult for any party that manages to get a majority to govern and address the interests of all citizens. We hope that our paper can fruitfully illuminate this dynamic and facilitate the greater focus on examining intraparty disagreements and party discipline in American politics.

Authors

• Alexander Kustov, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

• Maikol Cerda, Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs

• Akhil Rajan, Yale University

• Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Yale University

• Ian Shapiro, Yale University