The fragmentation effect

Several Democratic Senators are getting cold feet about card check, Kim Strassel writes:

Responsibility has a way of focusing the mind. …

Take Mark Pryor, Democratic senator from Arkansas. In 2007, Mr. Pryor voted to move card check, … kn[owing] the GOP would block the bill, which gets rid of secret ballots in union elections. … [H]is support helped guarantee labor wouldn't field a challenger to him in the primary. … [But more recently, h]e’s indicated he wouldn't co-sponsor the legislation again. …

Paradoxically, it’s [Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s bigger majority that is now hurting him. In 2007, he got every Democrat … [in the Senate to support cloture, b]ut it was an easy vote. .... Now that Mr. Reid has 58 seats, red-state Democrats in particular are worried they might actually have to pass this turkey, infuriating voters and businesses back home.

Ann Althouse approves, observing that the sudden realness of majority might act as a brake on the Senate. Some of her commenters have been less than kind to this idea, branding it “idiotic” and “rube goldbergian, banking on a double-secret reverse psychology switcheroo, a plan-so-crazy-it-might-work.” Nevertheless, what she's getting at – and Strassel is even clearer on the point – is an entirely non-idiotic proposition (indeed, a public choice-friendly proposition) albeit one that I think is somewhat overstated.

Althouse and Strassel rely on a theory that when Congressional Democrats don't have the votes to pass a given measure, it is easy for red state democrats and “blue dogs” (usually but not always the coterminous) to “go along to get along.” If a bill won’t ultimately pass, supporting cloture or even voting for the underlying bill is a cheap choice - a choice without consequences is barely a choice at all, as I’ve emphasized in the context of opinion polls. When the votes are present, by contrast, the choice has consequences, and red state Democrats may balk, unwilling to make the same choice when it may have repercussions for them.

Put another way, Althouse says that legislators will not vote consistently over time. Their votes are premised on a cost-benefit analysis of their own needs, and that evaluation shifts in response to what circumstances are on the balance.

She's right. To explore that further, I want to go back to a comment I wrote about a similar issue here here. Jazz Shaw suggested, in a similar context, that the blue dogs will pose an obstacle to Democrats passing liberal legislation in the form they prefer; the Democratic caucus can’t be treated as monolithic, he argued, because some of its members are much less liberal than others, and will balk at measures that are too far to the left. But Shaw assumes an idealized model where legislators follow their ideological proclivities, an assumption that misconceives the incentives and pressures operating on the blue dogs, and the tools available to their managers. When the votes of the blue dogs (or any subset of them) are not needed, we can assume they they will be free to vote as they please, and to that extent, Shaw's analysis holds. When their votes are needed, however, immense pressure will be brought to bear on them, and it is entirely foreseeable that they will buckle when one considers their incentives.

To see why, consider a junior manager faced with a choice between course A and course B; choosing the former will anger the corporation's managers, and choosing the latter risks angering the stockholders. A reasonable person1 will choose the former. The other managers are a direct, present, and actual threat to the person's fortunes, and although the latter can pose a comparable threat, they are divided and inattentive, and so less likely to become involved. Managers are concentrated and strong while investors are dispersed and weak.2

The situation of a blue dog or red state Democrat is much the same. She, too, has managers and stockholders of a sort. The people with the most direct say over her day-to-day comforts and broader ambitions (i.e. her chances of advancement) are her colleagues, particularly her party’s Congressional leadership. Like managers, this group is concentrated and strong. Her constituents back home, by contrast, are more like investors: dispersed, weak, and not closely-attentive (rationally ignorant, even). In ordinary situations – such as Pryor’s, noted by Strassel – these pressures tilt the scales decisively, inclining the blue dog towards compliance with the leadership. This inclination is exacerbated by the practical realities of politics: the advantages of incumbency further limit the pull of voters vs. that of the leadership, while the need to raise campaign funds, and the threat thereto of running afoul of liberal pressure groups, increases the pull of compliance vs. the threat of the voters. The upshot is a cost-benefit analysis that limits the threat to the majority’s agenda from the blue dogs, assuming that the leadership is smart in picking its battles and deciding where to apply pressure.

By these lights, Althouse’s point seems reasonable, albeit hopeful. Her theory comes to this: so long as a liberal (or otherwise obnoxious) bill will not pass, cost-benefit analysis will push red state Democrats to appease their leaders and liberal pressure groups by voting for the bill. Although they may receive criticism back home, it will be muted and largely ineffective; the electorate is divided and rationally ignorant, so it can be relied on to remain somnolent when their representative votes for something that does not actually pass.

If a bill passes, however, the scale is weighted differently. When something has actually happened, the benefits of considering the representative’s actions increase, and the costs will likely fall, too: political opponents of the blue dog (and national GOP operatives) will have strong incentives to lay information about the bill before the blue dog’s constituents, and the bill becomes a focal point. Voter ignorance becomes less rational. All of this increases the tug of the electorate on the blue dog, because she of course realizes that while their leaders can make their life in Congress less comfortable and successful, the electorate can end it entirely. In consequence, when a bill that will be very unpopular back home may pass as a result of their vote, the cost-benefit analysis changes, and if the shift is sufficient, so, too, will the legislator’s vote.3

Shaw is also right, to this extent: the Democratic caucus can’t be treated as monolithic. As Strassel observed, the paradox is that the closer the caucus gets to a majority, the more likely marginal members of the caucus are to vote against it on specific bills, even if that member has previously “supported” the bill. I think that Althouse overstates just how much of a limit on the majority’s agenda this effect will pose, as my reply to Shaw suggests, but she is right to identify the effect.

Post facto:
AMA v. Obamacare (6/11/09)

1. 1. Which is to say, a rational actor. We can assume that society is comprised of people “striving to satisfy their respective wants,” acting rationally to maximize their satisfactions, see Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process 4 (Eskridge & Frickey, eds. 1994); Mercuro & Medema, Economics and the Law 57 (1998), and “when people or institutions begin to behave in a manner that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it’s because we don’t understand what their motives really are.” Altruism is not an exception: it is explainable in economic terms simply as the derivation of utility from enhancing the utility of another. See Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law 188-9 (2d ed. 1977).
2. 2. See generally Berle & Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932); see Capital Markets in the Age of the Euro 230-2 (Ferrarini, Hopt, and Wymeersch, eds. 2002).
3. 3. Note that for this analysis it is neither necessary nor sufficient that the electorate’s mind actually shift; the member’s behavior will be governed by their perception of their interests.