Senator, heal thyself

My last post was suggested by a column about Senator Ben Sasse's new book  “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal.”  The argument of the book is apparently (I haven't read it) that America is suffering from a loss of community, and that people try to fill their need for connection by joining political "tribes."  To quote the publisher's description "contrary to conventional wisdom, our crisis isn't really about politics. It's that we're so lonely we can't see straight—and it bubbles out as anger.  Local communities are collapsing. . . . As traditional tribes of place evaporate, we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team."  In my last post, I pointed out that there is no evidence that loneliness is increasing.   In this post I will consider the other part of the argument:  that the lack of community increases political "tribalism."  This is not a new claim:  "mass society theory," which was popular in the 1950s, said essentially the same thing.

For the strength of community, I use the index of "social capital" compiled under the leadership of Sasse's colleague Mike Lee.  It is measured at the state level--Lee's home state of Utah is highest, Sasse's state of Nebraska is eighth.  I defined people who "rally against common enemies," as those who rank the Democratic or Republican party at 0-4 in the 2016 American National Election Studies "feeling thermometer."  The hypothesis is that people in places with less "social capital" will be more likely to think that one (or both) of the parties is completely bad.  This produces four groups:  neither party is completely bad, just the Republicans are, just the Democrats are, and both are.  This can be modeled with three logistic regressions:  both vs. none, Democrats vs. none, and Republicans vs. none.  I control for the overall political tendency of the state by the share of the vote won by Mitt Romney in 2012.  The results:


                                   Romney                Social Capital
Both                                -1.51                 -.232
                                       (1.18)                 (.142)

Democratic                      2.99                 -.158
                                       (0.55)                (.058)

Republican                     -1.59                  -0.73
                                       (0.52)                 (.058)

The estimated effect of social capital is statistically significant only for ratings of the Democratic party, but it's negative for all ratings, and I'm pretty sure that the differences among them would not be statistically significant.  That is, it seems that people in states with less "social capital" are more likely to really detest political opponents.  I haven't tried to control for anything else, but the results are intriguing. 

However, even if the relationship is real, it's unlikely that it explains the rise of political "tribalism."  Very low ratings of the parties stayed about the same or rose slowly between the 1970s and about 2000, and then rose sharply in the 21st century.  There's not much evidence on changes in loneliness, but there is some data on satisfaction with your local community, and it hasn't shown any trend since the 1990s (and is higher than in the 1970s). 

So maybe the conventional wisdom is right, and political polarization is about politics.  People dislike political conflict, and seem to especially dislike conflict that goes on without a clear resolution.  There has been a lot of that in recent years.  Why?  Ben Sasse helps to provide the answer, not in his book, but in his statement when announcing his candidacy for Senate in 2014.  A few selections: 

"This glorious idea of freedom and of the creative self-sufficiency of local communities and extended families is under attack – both by intentional opponents and from our lazy national neglect in recent decades.

Our current President was re-elected in a campaign that had as its centerpiece a vision of cradle-to-grave dependency. He has been selling a fundamentally different vision of America's history, and a redefined relationship between government and the people. As Obama’s vision of government wraps its tentacles around more and more aspects of American life, initiative is discouraged, achievement is disparaged, and we grow closer to a permanent dependency class.

Nowhere has this been stated this more clearly than in President Obama’s 'You didn’t build that' speech. This speech angered us, but even more, it should sadden us. . . . And the greatest single insinuation of government into every aspect of our life is his signature initiative, Obamacare. If it lives, America as we know it will die. If the idea of America is to live, it must be stopped."

and

"The Obamacare worldview holds that Government can successfully take over the largest sector of the economy and orchestrating it better with its allegedly 'all-knowing' central planners.

This worldview says that false promises can somehow become true if only we had even more government; or that they aren’t simply lies because they are founded on good intentions."

So why has political polarization increased?  A major reason is that the Republican party has come to be dominated by dogmatists who imagine that ordinary policy disagreements are issues of high principle on which no compromise is possible.  That was what Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein argued in 2012, and the history since that time has supported their case.