Lobbying and Polarization

Lobbying:

We talked about lobbying a couple classes ago and I recently came across this article which summarizes a study by Utah State University Professor Benjamin Blau on lobbying by banks during the financial crisis. The basis of Blau's article was that politically connected banks got more from the bailout than banks that spent less on lobbying and campaign contributions. This fact is pretty intuitive, but it is still interesting to see how it has played out recently through the data.

Polarization:

We talked about polarization quite a bit on Wednesday. I commented in class that I thought the problem was bigger than just polarization in politicians/parties. I think it is that people in our country are more polarized, more disunited than ever before. Like Professor Pitney said in class (and I am paraphrasing here), "there are two radically different America's now." One possibility for the cause of such polarization in the public I was thinking about in class and decided to do some more research on is the role mass media plays. The way we get our information now by countless internet sources and television channels is much different that the more limited set of options our parents and grandparents had. Before everyone generally watched the same few, more centrist, news channels. Tulane Professor James Carville also seems to think this is a problem. In his article for The Hill titled, "Disturbing polarization in media worsens political partisanship", Carville points to media as a significant factor.

I think a lot of people will look back at this point in American political history and wonder how things got so damn screwed up. It wasn’t always a given that there would be mindless gridlock on Capitol Hill, unchecked extremism and a general lack of leadership. 

Sure, one could point to the corrupting influence of lobbyists and interest groups on Congress. Or to gerrymandering. Or to Citizens United, which allows money to literally control politics and has made political parties less relevant, and allowed the proliferation of the ultra conservative Tea Party. There are plenty of others. 

But perhaps as much as anything is the disturbing fragmentation of the media. Today, conservatives can get all their information from conservative outlets, and liberals can get all their information from liberal outfits. And you can spend your whole life never being challenged, never having to hear or think about or confront viewpoints that are different from your own.

Carville sounds nice here, and his point seems logical. However, this interesting academic article by Princeton Professor Markus Prior comes to a different conclusion. Through his study Prior finds that those who use partisan media are already partisan. Or in other words, there is no evidence that media caused polarization.

In the 1970s, about a quarter of Americans identified strongly with a political party. Media in the broadcast era were probably too centrist for these people’s tastes. Technological change has made it economically viable to cater to smaller audience segments.6 Nobody should be surprised that some strong partisans turned to more ideologically congruous media formats when they became available. But that audience migration alone does not constitute evidence that partisan media polarize Americans. The difference between the media-catching-up-with-partisan-fringes view and the media-pushing-Americans-to-partisan-extremes account is large and of critical importance for the trajectory of American politics in a high-choice media environment. Research to date does not offer compelling evidence that partisan media have made Americans more partisan.Most voters are centrist. Most voters avoid partisan media altogether or mix and match across ideological lines. And those who follow partisan media closely and select mostly one side are already partisan.