Many American political actors recognize that the political system isn’t working well, but nonetheless have very deep interests in keeping things as they are. Neither major party has an incentive to cut itself off from access to interest group money, and the interest groups fear a system where money can’t buy influence. As in the 1880s, a reform coalition has to emerge that unites groups without a stake in the current system. But achieving collective action among these out-groups is difficult; it requires skillful and patient leadership with a clear agenda, neither of which is automatically forthcoming. It may also require a major shock, or shocks, to the system. Such shocks were critical, after all, in crystallizing the Progressive movement—events like the Garfield assassination, the requirements of America’s rise as a global power, entry into the World War, and the crisis of the Great Depression.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
I did not care for this essay. He sounds to me like a Progressive, circa 1910. With sufficient moral authority, the government can be more effective and reflect the true Will of the People™.
My challenge for Fukuyama is to name a government with a large, diverse population that in his view works really well. The countries with populations larger than the U.S. are China and India, and I do not wish to trade governance with either country. In fact, of the top 10 most populous countries, the only one with a government that is not atrociously worse than ours is Japan. And they are the least diverse. Germany, with 1/4 of our population, is decently governed. So is the UK, with 1/5 of our population, and Canada, with 1/9 of our population.
When you think of a country with an effective central government, what comes to mind? I come up with Singapore, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and such, all with populations under 10 million. And Switzerland delegates a lot of political power to cantons and towns. What this says to me is that the most promising way to reform government in the U.S. is in the direction of Federalism, rather than betting on making the central government work better.
He sort of lost me at the Brown v. Board of Education bit. He seems to consider it a bug that issues of minority rights and discrimination were resolved legislatively in Europe, rather than judicially, as in the U.S. To me, it is not at all clear that putting issues like that to popular votes is a good idea. The US Supreme Court didn’t exactly cover itself in glory with its pre Brown v. BofE jurisprudence, I know, and it’s worth examining why they didn’t perform better, but Fukuyama must have a lot more faith in the wisdom of the common people than I do if he thinks civil rights issues are best handled by partisan politics.
That should say “feature,” not “bug” in that second sentence.
This is an unusually bad argument; it’s the “small schools” fallacy from Kahneman’s book. It’s no surprise that both extremes of quality in governance are found in smaller nations, but you’re a long way from showing a correlation between size and quality – and even further from a significant correlation, given that you necessary only have a few sample points on the largest nations.
Isn’t the following what Kling’s really saying? When we look at the relatively small number of large countries (particularly highly diverse ones) with a clear history of central governance, we tend to see lots of internal coordination problems. Furthermore it’s easier, relatively speaking to find small countries that do a better job of overcoming those problems.
Now, coordination problems within a group magnify with its size, complexity, and heterogeneity. This pattern is widely acknowledged, and certainly obtains over, if not all human enterprises, a pretty significant fraction of them. There isn’t any obvious reason to expect nation-states to be exempt from these forces, and, lo and behold; large countries sure seem to fit that pattern.
So why there’s no way to get to an RFT on the matter there is ample basis and precedent for Kling’s argument.
Fukuyama has always struck me as a man who simply writes to justify whatever political memes are popular at the time. In the 90s it was the “End of history,” nowadays it’s “the US needs less gridlock.”
Well, to be honest, despite how popular the “the US is broken” meme is, I’m not really convinced we are being run worse than most other OECD countries. For one thing, we’re still significantly richer than all but a few tiny ones (like Luxembourg or Norway which has oil). Our corruption index scores aren’t the top of the OECD, but they certainly aren’t the bottom either (we seem to be about the middle just eyeballing it from here: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results). We’re certainly recovering from the current crisis better than Europe is (Japan might be starting to pick up a bit, but interestingly at least in part due to their QE, a program popularized by the US). One area we might be distinctly worse at is tax law (on this means of measuring the US ranked 64th and behind most OECD countries including France http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxes/data-tables.jhtml), which is rather annoying and may be related to some of the thing Fukuyama talks about. However, the net result of US governance does not seem to be clearly worse than European, or really any developed countries governance, even ignoring the greater size and diversity of the US compared to any OECD country.
What this implies to me is that these preferences for a US or a European system are simply subjective, not some objective measure of value. That means that people should not generally support one of these systems becoming too similar to the other, as this denies people with different preferences an outlet to experience governance more conforming to them. Which is pretty much a type of federalist argument and thus leaves me pretty much in the same place as Arnold just from a slightly different angle.
Fukayma seems to make the common fallacy of comparing the US to individual small European nations. All comparisons of anything – quality of government, inequality, cost of health care, outcomes in health care, etc. need to compare the entire US to say all of Europe. Otherwise, we should compare say California to the UK or NY versus France. But building averages that span NY and Alabama and then comparing that to Denmark is just daft, and I’m frankly tired of seeing such comparisions.
Another failure common in many analysis is to think that replacing the current entrenched interests with different entrenched interests will yield a result that is actually better (or worse.)
All political scientists are in favor of parliamentarian forms of gov’t, on the basis of efficiency. So Fukuyama is just representing the consensus. Political scientists also tend to favor parties with strong party discipline. Try to argue with a poiltical scientist that gridlock is better than the alternative and you’ll get a blank stare.