A New Explanation of Partisanship.

I just read an essay by Ilya Somin, Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University.
The essay is called, "Knowledge about Ignorance: New Directions in the Study of Political Information." It's pretty interesting stuff; he assesses the problem of political ignorance in American society and discusses its implications for a wide range of topics.

Somin asserts that the American public is largely ignorant about political issues. Furthermore, he makes a distinction within the portion of the public that is somewhat knowledgable about politics. The majority of Americans who are informed usually possess distorted information from unobjective sources. This is because most of these "informed" individuals do not seek information to cast a more informed vote, but instead to satisfy personal curiosities. Somin thus introduces partisanship in the context of marginal political awareness. Here, he discusses the drive to gather information and the need to reinforce presupposed ideological biases as causes for partisanship.

I think Somin's explanation of why the U.S. political landscape is so marked by partisanship is much better than the others I've heard. He says that partisanship comes naturally to our politically ignorant electorate because it constructs an easy model for understanding political affairs. Framing politics as a simple struggle between two opposing forces presents voters with two packages of opinions to choose from. Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat. By framing political dynamics in this way, voters can more easily comprehend the political process. By packaging opinions as political ideologies in this way, voters can easily reach an established position on a range of complex political issues. Rather than putting in the time to research a candidate's policies or the implications of a given issue, voters can rely instead on ideological labels to make the decision for them. This branding system manifests in a more concrete way in the branding distinction between Democrats and Republicans.

Ascribing the prevalence of partisanship in American politics to the American people's predilection for political ignorance is, in my opinion, a really fucking good idea. It is true that the majority of the American people aren't interested in governmental policies, legislation, etc. But what gets people interested in anything is competition. Humans are naturally drawn to it, and to see this you need look no further than our obession with sports in American society. Given the reasons why Americans love athletic competition, why should we think that the reasons for interest in political competition would be any different? Partisanship, or its current incarnation in political branding, is our way of turning politics into just another sort of sport. The Republicans are the red team, Democrats the blue. This also ties in neatly with the trend that the extreme wings of each party have usurped control of them, since it has blurred the distinction between Democrat and Liberal, and between Republican and Conservative.

The comfort or convenience of relying on partisan labels to determine an individual's political opinions also explains the tendency of marginally informed individuals to have more partisan tendencies. In other words, there is a correlation between political awareness and partisanship. This section of the electorate has a little more information, perhaps reads the paper more often, watches the 24 hour news networks for a few more minutes a day, and engages in the occasional dialogue over controversial political issues. However, most of these individuals rely on what Somin refers to as "shortcuts" for gaining political information. These shortcuts include not only reliance on partisan labels for voting purposes, but also on the so-called "opinion-makers" like pundits and media commentators for determining their own personal opinions. Once again, changes in media over the last decade bear out this theory. In light of easily observable biases in networks like MSNBC, CNN, and last but not least, the ever "objective" Fox News, it's easy to see the reflected effects of growing partisanship in our society. In general, these networks select which stories to report selectively, arrange which pundits to comment on these stories selectively, and display a clear attempt to appeal to ideologically inclined viewers. This tendency manifests much more vividly in "opinion journalism" shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann and its ideological (and intellectual) opposite, the O'Reilly Factor. Considering media partisanship in the context of political ignorance reminds us that if anyone is to blame for unobjective journalism, it is the viewers of these networks, whose own desire for a shortcut to information demands it.

Somin's essay is here.