What is Old is New Again

Recently, the New York Times published an editorial by Thomas Edsall titled “A National and Global Maelstrom is Pulling Us Under”. In the column, Edsall corresponded with a number of prominent scholars about America’s current political predicament. Many of the scholars decried the ‘decline in common American identity’ brought about by economic and social change over the past few decades.

What struck me about this editorial was not necessarily the conclusion reached by the scholars but this quote from Pippa Norris: ‘(democratic) backsliding is strengthened as the political system struggles to provide outlets for alternative contenders reflecting the new issue agenda on the liberal-left and conservative right.’ With this statement, Norris is essentially laying America’s political problems on its institutions, which are not flexible enough to incorporate newly emerging social and political forces. Because of its two-party system and system of checks and balances, America is stuck with an institutional framework fails to accurately reflect and give voice to our ‘increasingly diverse plural society and culture.’

Now, being a comparativist who studied regimes and institutions, Norris’ argument echoed one from the distant past and one that I came across quite a while ago. In 1968, Samuel Huntington formulated a similar argument, but one that applied to developing nations. In his classic of Modernization Theory found in Political Order in Changing Societies, Huntington’s argument ran something like this: political instability throughout the world was a product of economic and social change brought on by the transition from traditional to modern society. New demands and movements emerged in the process of modernization that traditional institutional forms could no longer contain or incorporate, leading to frustration and instability.

To me, it’s interesting that scholars have reverted, perhaps inadvertently, to the modernization framework used to explain political instability in the developing world. How could a thoroughly modern society’s institutions fail to incorporate an increasingly diverse plural society and culture? Would a more parliamentary form of government have been able to moderate some of the loose forces in America? I am skeptical of the claims that American institutions are not flexible enough to incorporate newly emerging political forces. This is because our system has done a great job of incorporating a newly emerging political force. The conservative movement that spread throughout this country since the end of World War II, and that is causing much of this scholarly consternation, has been incorporated into the political system. I would argue that it has not only been incorporated, but it has also taken over parts of the system. I am not sure proportional representation would have moderated the conservative movement because it would not have given the movement the total victory it so desires to halt America’s ‘terminal decadence’.