Aiming for the Moon
Aiming for the Moon
112. When National Politics and State Governments Collide: Dr. Jacob Grumbach (Author of "Laboratories Against Democracy")
What if the very structure of American politics is threatening democracy itself? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Jacob "Jake" Grumbach, author of "Laboratories Against Democracy", as we uncover the collision between national political parties and state-level governments in the United States. Learn how technology, changes in media, and fundraising have contributed to this unique situation, and understand the increasing importance of state governments in shaping the policies that affect our lives.
We'll also dive into the impact of nationalization on states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and explore the relationship between ordinary citizens and their local governments. Dr. Grumbach shares insights on the role of technology and media in transforming the political landscape, and the emergence of labor unions as a platform for collaboration across demographic lines. Furthermore, we discuss valuable advice for Gen Z on how to navigate this complex world of politics, emphasizing the importance of focusing on policy change over individual successes, and understanding the long-term nature of political involvement. Don't miss this enlightening episode that will leave you with a deeper understanding of the current state of American democracy.
Topics:
- National vs state politics in America
- The nationalization of state politics and why this is a problem
- Creating political change as a young person
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Professor Grumbach's research focuses on the political economy of the United States. He is particularly interested in public policy, American federalism, racial and economic inequality, campaign finance, and statistical methods. His book, Laboratories against Democracy, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics since the 1970s. Additional recent projects investigate labor unions, election law, and money in politics. Professor Grumbach teaches courses in statistics for the social sciences and in state and local politics.
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Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming on aiming for the moon. I'm so happy you could come on.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor Bledsoe:Yeah, so you are the author of Laboratories Against Democracy, which is a really interesting book, and can you kind of give the thesis of it to start off?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Yeah, absolutely, um, so there's a lot to talk about there. So the first being that, uh, this is a book about American politics right now and what's going on and how the political parties in the US the Democratic and Republican parties are operating within the rules of the US Constitution. So, uh, one thing zooming out really far to say is that, so, the US Constitution that creates the rules, so we have, you know, the national government, we have the White House, we have the US House and US Senate in Congress and we have the Supreme Court, and that's the national government. But then we also, really importantly, have state governments in the US, like the government of New York or Vermont or Texas, right, and that's actually pretty unique around the world. So most other democracies don't have both a national government and these really important state level governments. So that really matters.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:And in the US, uh, this is not some sort of natural occurrence that we have state governments in a national government. That's the product of battles between political groups over long periods of time to set the rules of how American politics works. And then, right now, what we have is we have two parties. If I could really summarize the book in one sentence, it's that we have two parties that are national political parties the Democratic and Republican parties but the US rules of politics are really focused on not national rules or national governmental issues, but rather the state level state governments. So right now we're seeing this collision between these national parties and state level governments And to some extent, it's threatening American democracy itself.
Taylor Bledsoe:So to not. We have a diverse listener base, So not to alienate any particular group of the listener base, but so you have these two national parties And the interesting thing about it is, as you said, the laws were designed for state level and it almost seems like obviously, this constitution in the bill of rights were all written a long time ago, Um, and they didn't have things like the internet that make globalization and interacting with people on a national level really really easy. Do you think? like, how did we get to this problem where there's this conflict here? Is that because of technology? Is it just culturally like what? what are some of the effects?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:That's a really nice point, taylor. So technology is one of the major reasons the parties became national, right. So the democratic and republican parties you know have existed the democratic party for a very long time, since maybe the 1830s, the republican party since the 18th, since about 1860. Um, and those parties, uh, you know, there was also always some national elements to them, but they were decentralized, meaning if you were a democrat in, you know, the 1950s, it really mattered where you were from. A democrat in the U S South was very different from a democrat in the U S North. right, the parties were decentralized, just like the rules of American government in the constitution, right. So decentralization meaning a lot of authority for the state level. So states can be very different California can be different from Texas, which can be different from Wisconsin, which is different from New York, and so forth. Um, so that's a uh, uh big, uh changed sense over the past generation is that the parties became national.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:And one reason, exactly like you said, taylor, is technology. So the rise of national news through cable TV, so the rise of channels like Fox news or CNN, the rise of the internet and social media, where people get most of their political information and news, and the internet. Even before social media, there was Craigslist, um, and Craigslist destroyed the advertising revenue of classified ads for state and local newspapers. So now what you have is a sort of media and technological environment where it's really hard to know what's going on in your local level area And it's a lot easier and more attractive to us. Like it's kind of a little bit's our fault too, because we click so much more on national conflict. I'm much more likely to click on, you know, some national controversy. Uh, you know that my political team is can really dunk on the other team. Nationally is a lot more attractive than boring.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:You know, here's what's happening with the POP holes in this neighborhood And that's a big change And all that means. So technology is one part of that, but also partially due to technology changes in where political fundraising comes from. It's much more national, and organizations like environmental groups or evangelical sort of conservative religious groups or LGBT rights groups and all types of political organization, gun rights groups and gun control groups they all became much more national as well over the past generation. All of this contributed to having two national teams. But what's really weird again unlike other countries around the world that are democracies is. The US has these really important lower level of governments, the state level, and what's happening now is, ironically, as the parties have nationalized, the states have gotten more important for your actual policies you live under.
Taylor Bledsoe:So what are the effects of these national parties? now? So is it? what are the good sides? and are there any good sides? and then what are the bad sides?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Yeah. so I wouldn't say that national parties are necessarily good or bad, but I would say the combination of having national parties and sub national, decentralized rules, that's a real challenge. So I think if you have both decentralized rules and decentralized parties, you could maybe make it work. If you have what most countries have in wealthy democracies in Europe and East Asia and things like that, whether you're Japan or the UK or the Netherlands or something like that, you have parties that are national, but you also have the politics and the rules are all national too. That's a really different type of politics.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:So when something goes wrong in the country, everybody can say oh, the party that controls the national government, they mess this up, let's kick them out and get the other party in or the other parties in many countries, whereas in the US you have your local mayor, who's very important. you have your state level state legislature and your governor. So you have, if you live in Nevada, the Nevada state legislatures, like the Congress of your state, plus you have a governor, plus you have the president and Congress in Washington DC And if something goes wrong like in COVID, things go badly in your area or the factories leaving your town.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Who do you blame? Is it your mayor? Did they mess up? Is it your governor? Did they mess up? The president, is it the party in Congress? It's really, really hard to know. In the US political system. So that disconnect between national parties and subnational rules means it's really hard to know who to reward and who to blame, and that makes politics and democracy a lot harder to work for regular people.
Taylor Bledsoe:The argument that I always hear in favor of the federalist system, as it's called, is basically so yeah, you might not be able to blame everyone, but then they might not have as much stuff to be blamed for. So if there was one person in charge of everything, then of course it, the blame would be on him. But like, well, that guy is all the problems, he is all the power. So is there like what? how do you answer this thing? because you have the balance of responsibility, but then you also have, well, obviously, the responsibilities. You don't want one person in charge of everything. So how do you like? what's your response?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:such a nice point. So, going back all the way to the founders, like James Madison, who wrote a lot of what's called the federalist papers, this is when they're trying to sell the US Constitution to the states, to the colonies. Right, so it's after the Revolutionary War, the US is gaining independence and they're saying, you know, the elites at the times, or the wealthy men, are saying how do we, you know, create a new constitution for a country? right, the colonies all got together to fight this war against the British, but they're just some independent colonies. It's not really a country.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:And there's this debate about sort of should we make it, you know, important national level government and politics have more of a unified country, like what's called a unitary system, again what most other democracies have, or should it be really state focused and decentralized? and they met, they did pride mostly decentralization, but they had some important authority for the national government to sort of unify the country in a tackle national problems. And it's true that. So one big argument for decentralization was oh, we don't want this one-size-fits-all solution to the whole country. It's a very diverse big country. Even at the time when it was like only property owning white men could vote, it was still like. There are a lot of different types of property owning white men of different sort of different sort of Christian religious sex. You know, some were really into slavery, some were kind of anti-slavery at the time. Different beliefs about. You know how much taxation should happen, how farms and agriculture should be organized, how trade should happen, which wars to start, all types of differences, right. So they said it would be great if we could customize policy based on the different sort of cultures across the country. So that's a important argument. But on the flip side, what we haven't emphasized enough, i think, is the flip side of that argument, one we just talked about it's harder to know who to blame, so nobody really has an incentive to actually fix any problem because you can always blame somebody else, right? whereas if you centralized accountability, you're gonna get blamed, so you better do a good job. That's one.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:And then there's a lot of other problems as we get into the modern era with modern technology. So there are national and global problems like climate change, or national problems like COVID hitting the US. National problems like an economic crisis which happened in 2008 when I was in college, and then again during COVID. So millennials, elder millennials like me, definitely got unlucky with that, but in general that's hard to tackle from decentralized states, right? so in the beginning of COVID there wasn't much coordination and governors were trying to coordinate with each other. Same thing in tackling climate change, where it's really hard, where you know, everybody kind of has to take a little bit of tough action to stop carbon emissions and methane emissions to avoid climate change. But if you have a decentralized system, it makes solving national problems really difficult. You don't know who to blame. It's hard to coordinate across states.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:So at its extreme, back in the day, like really early on, states had different currencies, right. They had different forms of money. So when you crossed from, like you know, maryland into Virginia, you somehow need to, like change your currency to different coins. Like that's pretty, you know it's not that bad anymore, right.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:And then, lastly, just really importantly, when the parties nationalized, a lot of those sort of ideas that you're gonna customize don't really work because when a party controls your state, it's the same type of party, no matter where you are in the country now. So again, you used to have very different. You know, in the 1950s northern Democrats were pro-civil rights and pro-labor unions and southern Democrats were pro segregation, pro Jim Crow right very different, but in the same party, whereas now that's not the case. If your state gets controlled by the Democratic Party now, it's gonna be very similar to other Democratic states, and if it's controlled by the Republican Party, it's gonna be very similar to Republican states. So that's what happened in states like Wisconsin and Michigan in the 2010s is they turned Republican and those Republican state governments made Wisconsin, which was kind of like a moderate sort of liberal state, into a much more conservative state, like the longer term Republican states in the South, for example.
Taylor Bledsoe:The thing. One of the things that's very interesting about it is would this be solved if we had more community and more relationships with the people that we were involved in on a day to day? So we always look at politics on a global, international and national level and we're all like what's, who's the president, who's going to the Senate, who's going to Congress, but in reality, not all of that affects where we are in relationship to our little town or our city or something like that. So one of the ways, if we could, we balance this out by having an increased community awareness and level and interaction on just the mayor level or just the states in it level, or something like that. Is that a way to combat this kind of weird once you've been solved for either political party?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Yeah, that would be great, So great, if possible, i would say. Like you know so I mentioned before it's really hard to do that, it's really boring And for young people especially who don't own homes for a long stretch of the time or you move to go to college or something like that, there's a reason that that. So, ironically, we tend to think in a sort of mythology, the local level is the most small d democratic, where people, ordinary people, come together and solve problems. But actually the lower levels is where we know the least and is the most dominated by older and wealthier homeowners rather than everyday people of all types. So actually, like ironically and sadly, like I wish that were possible, but given the technology you mentioned, it's just a really hard ask to tell people take go to local meetings with your time, even though you're working or going to school. It's really tough And retirees have like unlimited time to go to the local meetings, right, it's really really hard to do that And we know much more because of the way media covers politics.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Like you, taylor, and your friends, i know they know which presidential candidate they're going to support, like who they like and who they don't. We do know what they stand for. Generally. It's not an amazing system, but we know who they stand for and what direction they're going to move the country, whereas even I I'm a professor of political science and I have a hard time voting in state legislative primaries like they're the same party And it's like in for state legislature I have no idea. Like I have to listen to other organizations and interest groups tell me, like how to vote, whereas at the presidential level, like you can be sure, i know, like years out, i know, like who I like, who I don't like, right That. So I think it's just a really tough thing to ask ordinary people to get super involved in local levels. But we have to do our best And one way to do that is to join organizations. So, being an adamant so you kind of said it in your question, taylor So being a lonely voter, disconnected from others, right, you can vote at the ballot box and you can try to pay attention, but politics really happens and you have more influence in politics as an ordinary person.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:If you're a billionaire billionaire you have other ways of influencing politics, but for ordinary people, especially young people, getting involved in organizations, whether it's student groups, community groups, you know, on the environment or guns. You know there's a social movement around all sort of racial justice movements And then, importantly, one I think one of the brightest spots in American politics in terms of being able to organize with it, with a local community, across racial lines and things like that, is that mostly Gen Z kids organizing labor unions at Starbucks and Amazon and so forth. So labor unions are. For a long time in the 1900s, labor unions were the main organization for ordinary people. Labor unions what they do is at work, they organize the workers to bargain over their contracts and their wages and their working conditions with the boss as a collective unit rather than individually. That made workers a lot more powerful over their wages, helped build the middle class and helped create a lot of protections for women, people of color, lgbt individuals at work and made working less dangerous. The eight-year-olds aren't going into the coal mine and getting black lung and things like that create the weekends and all that.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:But really importantly, some of my other research and I talk about this in the book, but it's in a series of other research is that labor unions also really help organize to protect democracy Because it brings people together across racial lines, pulling in the same direction because we all want a better contract at our job. It helps avoid culture war politics that we see and resentment-based politics Where, sadly, you can learn because of the nationalization of politics and resentment-based politics. You can tell more about how somebody votes statistically by asking them what they think of Lil Nas X at the Country Music Awards. Then you can about asking them about the minimum wage or taxes or healthcare and things that actual policy actually affects. That's not a great type of politics where Beyonce's Super Bowl halftime show is more drives people voting more than actual policy with money on the line. So how do we get back to a system where people care about policy? One way is to join organizations that can help you organize around policy rather than just who you want to own.
Taylor Bledsoe:Yeah, so this has been a very interesting conversation, and I want to wrap up here with the last two questions we ask all of our guests, and the first one is what books have had an impact on you.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Yeah, no, that was such a good question. I've been doing some thinking about that And it's a little cliche, i guess, for young men into politics, but I really liked around start of high school and the middle school I really like I found Animal Farm by George Orwell. I found it actually on the street And I was like I had no idea what the book was about.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:I was starting to be a little interested in politics. It was the early 2000s at the time And I was like this is amazing And I was an allegor. I didn't even understand it. It was an allegory to how totalitarianism happened in Russia and the Soviet Union out of what was meant to be a small de-democratic emancipatory movement but became totalitarian. It was about that transition, but using the allegory of animals on a farm, and I found that fascinating and read 1984, also by George Orwell. So those, yeah, i didn't understand quite all of them but they really helped get me even more into politics. And Orwell, as an interesting political figure himself like has super interesting his own political essays from the 1930s in the rise of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe at this time from the vantage point of you know, and it has a lot of relevance to politics around the world.
Taylor Bledsoe:Then our last question is what advice do you have for teenagers?
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Yeah. So I think studying American politics and studying it statistically is really interesting. Where young people do not have much of a voice in American politics. It's really unfortunate It's not talked about enough. We talk a lot about really crucial other economic inequality and racial inequality and politics gender inequality But really crucially, the US is unfortunately what's called a gerontocracy, a rule by the old, and this is really serious, like compared to other countries, it's really extreme and it's causing really bad outcomes.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:So Gen Z, actually of all age groups, does have the best sort of politics, i would say like, has the strong conceptions of freedom, of equality and justice that are really fascinating to see and leave me with some hope At the same time.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Just the incentives of current technology and media are to use that good politics through just like I don't know dunking online, trying to show off and be right about things And politics, unfortunately, is messy and it's not about being right all the time and it's not about it's certainly not about dunking, unfortunately. It's about, like, actually changing policy And that's at odds with dunking. Sometimes you need to build a coalition and to do that you have to have people like you. Rather than dunk on you, like dunk on them. So keep that same Gen Z fiery politics, but understand that politics is really long. I'm looking back on my time learning and working in politics and so forth. Politics is a lifelong thing and keep your eyes on the prize rather than the moment to moment sort of feelings you might get from dunking or saying the right thing or something like that.
Taylor Bledsoe:I guess slow motion dunk on people. Just a very slow motion. Show them that it's right after whatever it's an extended amount of time.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Exactly. Keep your eyes on the politics. It's not about you as an individual. It's about how you and others change something that affects a lot of people.
Taylor Bledsoe:Well, thank you so much, Dr Grumbach, for coming on A Moon for the Moon. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Dr. Jake Grumbach:Me too, Taylor. Thanks so much.
