Ideas & Debate

Do we really want our politicians to work together while we cling to partisan identities?

rallies

Wananchi at public rallies. Voters may speak in uplifting and mature language even as they act in altogether more primitive and counter-productive ways. PHOTOS | FILE

“Of all America’s institutions,” wrote associate Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Neil Malhotra and his two colleagues in a recent issue of the School’s online RE:THINK, “none is more despised than Congress.”

The legislative body came last in a recent Gallup poll measuring Americans’ confidence in their national institutions — well behind banks, big business, and the media.

A separate Gallup poll pinpointed the top reason for its abysmal approval rating as gridlock between the two parties.

Yet 90 per cent of incumbents keep getting re-elected, leading Malhotra and his colleagues to wonder if American voters really do want their legislators to compromise as much as they say they do.

Their research finds that actually Americans don’t favour bipartisan law-making nearly as much as they claim to.

While other research shows that Americans are turned off by the “dogmatic, divisive, and uncivil style of debate” in which members of Congress routinely engage, it’s ironic that observing such conflict tends to make individuals cling to their partisan identities.

“In their roles as spectators of policymaking, citizens may be inclined to root for their team,” Malhotra and his colleagues write. And like the most devoted sports fans, they not only derive a strong sense of themselves and their community from cheering on their own team, they also rejoice in seeing their rivals lose.

In American politics, I read, that kind of powerful party identification overrides any professed preference for the abstract concept of bipartisanship.

The researchers wondered how members of Congress could behave the way they do when confronted with so much media and public pressure.

But their research demonstrates that even though citizens dislike the institution of Congress and say they want bipartisanship, when it comes to the crunch they actually prefer partisan fighting.

These conflicting inputs present US legislators with a daunting challenge in crafting legislation that draws broad popular support, and the research raises intriguing questions about whether politicians there should really drop their partisan politics.

No matter what they say, people do not actually favour bipartisan policies over those that align with their personal political views – even though compromise is perceived as a virtuous quality.

In fact, when people become aware of the compromises made during the policy process they are even less supportive of bipartisanship because they see it as a loss for their party.

As regular readers of this column will appreciate, I am again making Kenyans feel a little less badly about how and why we vote and whom we elect – while hastening to add that it is of little consolation that elsewhere too, including in the most advanced democracies, voters may speak in uplifting and mature language even as they act in altogether more primitive and counter-productive ways.

Several other points must also be stated. Firstly, when political parties in countries like America campaign for support, their pitch is typically based on policies unique to that party – some more capitalist, some more socialist; some more internationalist, some more parochial.

Then, whatever the excitement generated by the daily soap opera of politics, whatever easy copy it delivers to a media hungry for conflict and confrontation, daily life and national development in the first world are much less affected by the permanent infotainment of politics.

Please accept that I only intend Kenyans to feel marginally consoled by the antics of politicians in developed countries.

Just because, for instance, this week’s Time features a long article on the American political landscape headed “The politics of nothing”, whose first sentence reads “With the midterm elections approaching, US politics is unusually dopey and depressing”, it offers scant justification for the unproductive squabbles we witness domestically.

Just because, according to the Time piece, US polls suggest that the public is disgusted with Obama, disgusted with the Republicans and “completely nauseated” by Congress, it doesn’t make me feel any more relaxed about how we view our own elected representatives.

No wonder that in his most recent Sunday Nation article fellow columnist Dominic Wamugunda described the caning of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga as “an expression of the anger, frustration and sheer disgust with which many sensible Kenyans hold our political class”.

But hey, Wamugunda and I are just members of the chattering classes, of the urban elite, tut-tutting to each other while the mass of voters – and newspaper readers – delight in cheering on the political players of their side as they jig and rant at rallies while offering free entertainment and sodas.

So, as I have written before, don’t hold your breath for anything changing soon on this front.

Before I close, some more points from the Time article. First, a noteworthy aspect of contemporary American politics is that despite their ideological differences, like here, the political parties are now merely fighting over “relative scraps”. And as far as the Republican opposition is concerned, it doesn’t have much of an agenda beyond “opposing whatever Obama is for”. Sounds familiar?

And much like here, the two emerging issues for the super-power are economic inequality and economic competitiveness, with Obama’s agenda focused on investments in railways, broadband and other infrastructure, and in 21st century schools. Excuse me, which is the developing country and which is the developed one?

Finally, I conclude on a much more optimistic note – at least for Kenya. I am currently involved in a project to introduce a results-focused performance management system into national and county governments, and I wish to share my delight over the enthusiastic response to the initiative we have been treated to from each and every leader with whom we have engaged.

These people are actually relishing the prospect of increased accountability the system will bring, and this so they can deliver better and faster service to citizens.

Such attitudes and aspirations are not the stuff of screaming newspaper headlines. But I want the world to know that behind all the noise and bluster many good people in our government are hard at work trying to move this country forward.