Big Sort: Idea Segregation

(Link to Part 9)

In chapters 10 and 11 of The Big Sort, Bill Bishop delves into the political consequences of sorting. Forty years ago, various community-oriented organizations and groups included people from a broad range of backgrounds and views, such as the Elks, Masons, Eastern Star, and veterans' groups. Mainline denominations could be added to this list too. These entities declined with the collapse of faith in social institutions that began in the late 1960s. New groups with specific agendas started to take their place in the 1970s.

The real growth in organizations seemed to come from the conservative world in the 1970s because, as Bishop notes, conservatives had become all but excluded from "mainstream" political organizations and think tanks. Groups like the Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and the American Legislative Exchange Council all emerged to give voice to conservative ideas. In the meantime, the left was creating Common Cause, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The advantage the conservatives developed was that many voters perceived that establishment ideas had failed to address pressing problems, and the intensity of dissatisfaction with these "liberal" ideas was strong.

Since at least the 1970s, there has been a strong tendency by both extremes to attribute the ascendancy of their adversary's views to political gurus and think tanks that masterfully manipulate and deceive the public. In the 1990s, the Clintons could talk about the "vast right-wing conspiracy," while conservatives saw James Carville, and other Democratic operatives, skillfully deceiving the public. Fast forward a few years, and it is the puppet master George Soros creating a "vast left-wing" conspiracy while Svenagli-like Karl Rove mesmerizes people into divisive camps.

Fifty years ago, people shared relatively similar ideological filters and then quibbled about specific policies offered by candidates. Over time, ideological differences have grown in depth and intensity, sorting us into echo chambers. Bishop writes:

People certainly change parties when their beliefs conflict with party platforms or leaders. But Layman and Carsey have found the opposite happening as well. People are changing their minds to align with their parties' positions. "Even on issues as divisive and emotion-laden as abortion and racial equality," they wrote, "there is evidence of individuals bringing their attitudes into line with their party ties." People don't methodically take an inventory of their political beliefs and then cast about for the political party that best matches their ideology. … Party membership is not simply an affiliation. It's a screen that filters and shapes the way people perceive the world. Again, politics is working both top-down, as people pick up and follow signals from party activists, and bottom-up, as people pick majorities in legislative districts push elected official to the extremes. (231)

Further, he writes:

Today the division in the country isn't about part allegiance. It's about how we choose to live. And as the parties have come to represent lifestyle – and as lifestyle has defined communities – everything seems divisible, Republican or Democratic. (232)

Bishop demonstrates how this sorting process has worked to bump moderate politicians from Congress in this graph (page 247):

There are a variety of interesting details in these two chapters concerning how sorting has affected politics. I won't recount them all here. One of note was Bishop's observation about the Democrats' perception that, in 2004 and 2006, Republicans were winning over voters on values issues. A closer analysis does not confirm this. What appears to have happened is that Republicans better segmented their constituencies and fired up the intensity of support. I suspect Obama learned this lesson and that, along with the timely collapse of the financial markets, this propelled him to victory.

Something I've noted concerning the sorting effect is how people receive this book's storyline. You need to know that Bishop considers himself an Austin, TX, liberal. When the book first came out last spring, liberals I encountered tended to praise it and used it as evidence of the need for a new bipartisan era being touted by Obama. Conservatives tended to see the present political order as the natural way of the world and preferred to hold to the idea of a "vast left-wing conspiracy" as the source of discord. Now that Obama is president, everything has switched. For liberals who know of the sorting idea they've come to reject the thesis. To them, Obama's election signals a return to the natural order of things with a few right-wing nut cases running around. While some conservatives I know have awakened to a parallel world of liberals and see Bishop's analysis as insightful. Even the "The Big Sort" is affected by the big sort.

[Continued] [Index]

Comments

[Travis Greene]

"People certainly change parties when their beliefs conflict with party platforms or leaders. But Layman and Carsey have found the opposite happening as well. People are changing their minds to align with their parties’ positions."

I think this is spot-on. If the whole political landscape is divided up into teams, and you have to pick a team, there's enormous pressure to conform to the team you pick. This is true for both parties/ideologies.

And in true Orwellian fashion, language stops existing for those who don't fit into the 2 categories. What are you if you're not conservative or liberal? Moderate? Centrist? Do those terms have any meaning at all, except in reference to the binary?

[Michael W. Kruse]

"What are you if you're not conservative or liberal? Moderate? Centrist? Do those terms have any meaning at all, except in reference to the binary?"

Exactly!

On many issues (not all) there is a polarity at work, not an either/or dynamic. Breathing is a polarity of inhaling and exhaling. If someone is suffering respiratory problems, then we might differ in our assessment of how this polarity is out of balance, but we would be nuts to conclude its all about either inhaling or exhaling. Yet this is precisely how our binary politics frames everything. Justice is frequently an exercise in balancing multiple competing legitimate concerns.

Both conservative and liberal narratives are definitive either/or narratives. I think the challenge is how do we form a narrative that makes room for the real world existence of polarities and multivariate justice.

[Rick McGinniss]

Interesting post by FoxBusiness guru Cody Willard that's along the same lines (or on the front lines) of this issue:

http://cody.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/04/17/dont-let-them-pigeonhole-meor-you/

I like his term "post-partisan."

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks for the link Rick.