Josep M. Colomer: “The current political polarization of the United States originates in its institutional system.”

On January 6, 2021, images of the assault on the United States Capitol swept the world. How do you explain that occurrence?

It’s been repeated many times in the media that what we experienced was an unprecedented situation. However, throughout history, the U.S. has faced several episodes of institutional violence. If we look beyond the recent past, between 1830 and 1860 there was a great escalation of tension and violence, even among the congressmen themselves. With the abolition of slavery as a core issue, this dynamic led to a bloody civil war, with 750,000 people dead, a figure that represented 2.5% of the population of the United States at the time. Now, for almost three decades, we’ve been experiencing another continuous increase in tension in American domestic politics. This time it will not lead to a civil war, but it is paralyzing politics. There are problems in approving budgets; in the recent past there have been four impeachments, when there had only been one in the 19th century; it’s extremely difficult to move forward with legislature…

Can we understand Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the assault on the Capitol as a culmination of this escalation?

It is a consequence. We have to look for the beginning of the tensions in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Republicans won a majority in Congress after many years without it. From day one, they acted to create a climate of political hostility against President Clinton. They tried to overrule him, they dug up scandals… Today, this behavior still continues: Republicans adopt a position of boycott towards institutions they do not control.

And this causes the institutional system to falter.

It’s not that the Republicans are worse or more combative people: the problem lies in the country’s own institutional design, which creates incentives for this to happen. That’s my thesis.

So this is a problem with a long past. In fact, it originates in the constitution itself.

In the 18th century, when the United States approved its Magna Carta, they were undertaking an experiment: to establish a republic in a large country. This did not exist anywhere, and in a way, it could be said that the U.S. has had to pay for the novelty of this undertaking. They drew up a constitution very much intended to defend themselves against the British, French and Spanish armies, which still had colonies at their borders. Therefore, foreign policy was the core element. With the creation of the United States, the newly independent states that were part of it wanted to have a firmer government. Throughout the centuries, foreign policy has remained the axis of the American system. We saw this, for example, during the Second World War or the Cold War. Now, with Russia and China there is some nostalgia to relive times like the Cold War, though the present situation is not comparable. When there is a clear and threatening enemy, foreign policy takes over and the whole country pulls together to face the threat. On the other hand, when the enemy is more abstract, a lot of internal issues surface that have never been resolved.

Such as?

There are many of them. Obama’s health care program, which didn’t quite work; issues related to education; border control and the wave of immigrants who want to enter the country; the use of firearms; abortion; legislation on transgender people; the constant racial tensions… These are internal issues that have never been addressed. With the American institutional system, resolving these conflicts through two institutions ruled by two different parties blocking each other is very complicated. The parties being unable to solve problems has led to the appearance of social movements such as Me Too or Black Lives Matter, but also the Tea Party or the anti-vaccine movement.

Has political polarization translated into growing social polarization?

In some previous conflicts, such as the years of the Cold War, the government tried to create a certain climate of fear among the population. They were encouraged to build atomic shelters in their homes, there were drills in schools… Most people, however, moved away from the hysteria and led a normal life. In fact, in the 1950s, society progressed a lot, with the massification of automobiles, the entry of television and appliances into the household, Coca-Cola, Hollywood… Similarly, the current polarization is much stronger politically than socially. In fact, the polarization is inflammatory and a spectacle, but the vast majority of people are not polarized. Only 2% of voters go to Donald Trump’s rallies, for example. He demonizes immigrants, but there is no news of civil conflict with immigrants.

In your book, you often reminds us that America is huge.

One of the things I least expected to find in the country when I went to live there was the great territorial fragmentation. This is not the United States of America: it is the Disunited States of America. I can identify at least six different countries within its borders, such as the East Coast, the Midwest, Texas, California, the South… There are territories with great differences and certain sentiments towards others, but they have built the nation based on sharing a flag, a currency and a language.

Has the size of the country also conditioned the effectiveness of the institutional system?

When they made the Constitution, the delegates were very inspired by Montesquieu. In fact, the French thinker is the most cited author in the deliberations of the Americans. The author could not speak English, but he had visited England to analyze its political system and be able to describe it in a chapter of the book The Spirit of the Laws (1748). In the United States, they took this as a reference. The problem was that, in reality, the British system that the intellectual described had been out of date for over a century. The person who instructed him during the visit was a monarchist who had been expelled years ago from the House of Lords for conspiring to restore the absolute monarchy, had gone into exile in France and spoke French. He explained Britain’s medieval monarchy to Montesquieu, Montesquieu reproduced it in his book and in Philadelphia, the delegates took inspiration from it, replacing the king with an executive president with many powers. The result was the creation of a republic in a huge country. It was unprecedented. The model is still unique in the world, the Americans themselves did not even implement it in other countries, such as Germany or Japan, after the Second World War.

What measures do you think should be incorporated into the system to combat the malfunction you describe?

I dedicate the last chapter of the book to this. I make suggestions for institutional reforms, but I don’t propose a new constitution. I try to identify real examples that are already moving in the right direction, such as the reform of the electoral system that already works at the local and state levels in some states, with elections with a second round. Cooperation should increase between Congress and the president. Currently, there are already some department secretaries who periodically visit Congress to report back. Cooperation between Washington and the states still has much room for improvement. That role should be played by the Senate, but it’s too partisan. There is a way to go, and the Constitution would not need to be changed much to move towards a more parliamentary system. But confrontational partisanship makes institutional reforms very difficult.