Last month, some Republicans in the House of Representatives called for the ousting of some of their colleagues. What crime had these GOP legislators committed? They voted for an infrastructure bill that had been supported by Democrats. Never mind that the legislation would actually benefit these members’ constituents. Never mind that voting for infrastructure spending historically has been enacted through bipartisan votes. “Traitors,” they were labeled.

To many observers, this ugly incident was one more sign of the growing partisan polarization of the People’s House, which has been well documented by political scientists. Many suspect that there is an electoral connection to polarization.

To get a better read on this issue, I contacted Andrew B. Hall, a political scientist at Stanford University. He has published many articles on elections and representation and is the author of Who Wants to Run?: How the Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization. Our discussion is below.

Kosar: So are
voters the cause for polarization?

Hall: They may contribute, but they are not “the” cause. Voters are largely stuck
between choosing between a very left-wing Democrat and a very right-wing
Republican; even if they want to elect more-moderate candidates, they rarely
get the chance. When they do, they tend to support moderates enthusiastically.

It’s an interesting logical puzzle: People see that
Congress has polarized, and they assume that means voters have polarized. But
actually, an explanation more consistent with the data is that voters are
getting screwed over — forced again and again to choose between highly
undesirable candidates in both parties. So the key question is, who is running
for Congress?

Are parties to
blame for recruiting more extreme candidates?

Probably not. The really important thing to understand
about parties in the US is that they are incredibly weak. They cannot convince
most people to run for office because they have little to offer them. They
can’t stop people they don’t want to run from running. And their help in
campaigns, while valuable, is not as useful as you might think.

Are partisan
primaries the issue, since they have low turnout and are dominated by party
members and super partisan voters?

They’re probably not helping — and they might be part of
what discourages more-moderate candidates from running. But most House
primaries are low information affairs where candidate ideology is not a major
issue, and research suggests that the advantage of more-extreme candidates in
these primaries is not nearly as large as you might think. Most of these
primaries (remember, there are many hundreds each cycle) are not covered in the
news. You only hear about the salient cases where a really extreme person wins.

So what, according
to your research, is driving polarization in the House?

To explain polarization, we have to answer the question:
Where have all the moderate candidates gone?

My argument is that an important part of the issue is
that moderate people look at what a job in Congress entails these days, and
what campaigning for Congress requires these days, and say, “No thanks.”

A legislator used to have more chances to work their way
up through the committee system, write bills, and influence policy. They got
paid quite well, and were equipped with considerable staff to do this. Today,
legislation is largely driven by party leadership, the committee system has
been gutted, congressional staff has been slashed, and salaries have declined
steeply in real terms.

Meanwhile, running for Congress is horrible. Candidates
are expected to spend nearly all of their time cold-calling people to beg for
money, along with a bunch of other indignities baked into the process.

Who wants to go through that campaigning process to maybe
win this job? We’re lucky to have some remarkable and dedicated public servants
in Congress, but I would suggest that, by and large, we are not getting the
most reasonable people to run for office in the current system.

Can anything be
done to improve matters?

I would suggest four ideas. First, we could make
campaigning easier by reducing the demands of campaign finance.

Second, we could coordinate more resources and effort
towards recruiting more-moderate candidates and supporting them in primaries.

Third, we could increase staffing for members of Congress
and consider ways to increase the influence of individual members in the policy
process.

Fourth, we could try to pierce the misinformation bubble
in public discourse that claims Americans are blind, partisan extremists. The
reality is that many Americans are politically disengaged, find the political
process incredibly dissatisfying, and are alienated by how extreme both
parties’ candidates are. If this narrative broke through, more-moderate people
might realize they have a better chance of winning and a duty to run for office
to serve their fellow moderates.

Thank you, Andy.

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