Political Polarization and the Decline of Power

Abstract

Health care reform legislation dodged yet another threat in the fall of 2013, when a stalemate between theWhiteHouse andCongress shut down the federal government and the United States came within a day of defaulting on the national debt. One of the major points of contention? The funding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many attribute the showdown to a marked rise in partisanship and political polarization, which in turn is a result of the gerrymandering of congressional districts—Republicans and Democrats feel safe in districts heavily stocked with voters from their ownpersuasions.Thus insulated from moderatevoters, they feel littleneed to compromise, especially on controversial, attention-grabbing issues. And there is evidence to support this contention. In 1995 and 1996, the last time the government shut down, there were 79 Republicans in the House representing districts President Clinton had carried in the previous election. By 2013, the number of Republicans in districts President Obama had won was 17 [1]. But such confrontations are not confined to government and politics. That’s according to the hot book in Washington of the past year. The End of Power, written by Moises Naim, former editor of the journal Foreign Policy, analyzes the decline of authority and the retreat of the status quo in these as well as a number of other areas: the military, religions, and business [2]. Naim argues that the decay of historical powers is evidenced by and a result of the rise of micropowers in nearly every sphere of organizational behavior.Micropowers are small, once negligible elements that have found