Tag Archives: United States

Riding the populist wave: the UK Conservatives and the constitution

Posted on by

At a recent Constitution Unit event (available in video and podcast form), Tim Bale discussed the challenges posed to mainstream conservatism by the recent rise in successful populist politicians. Here, he sets out those challenges, how conservatives have traditionally faced them, and concludes that the UK Conservative Party is so determined to ‘unite the right’ and supress support for a challenger party that it risks transmogrifying into a populist radical right party.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with costochondritis – a minor and surprisingly common condition involving the cartilage that joins your ribs to your sternum but which produces chest pains that make some people suffering from it worry they’re having a heart attack.

The standard treatment is to take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen. For me this presented a bit of a dilemma. Like many other people, I don’t tolerate ibuprofen: it irritates my gastrointestinal tract – something I’m wise to avoid doing because I also suffer from something called Barrett’s oesophagus, which, if you’re unlucky, can turn cancerous. So, on the assumption that the costochondritis would eventually resolve itself, and given the fact that the discomfort involved was irritating but far from overwhelming, I decided just to put up with it.

I’m sharing this bit of my recent medical history not because I particularly enjoy talking about it but because it produces a useful analogy for a question that I want to ask – namely, are politicians on the mainstream right so concerned about countering the rise of populist radical right parties that they end up proposing things that risk doing more harm to society and to the polity than if they were simply to admit that those parties are now a normal rather than a pathological feature of contemporary politics?

The background to this is the book I’ve recently co-edited with Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, called Riding the Populist Wave: Europe’s Mainstream Right in Crisis. We look at how mainstream right parties – which aren’t written about anywhere near as much as their counterparts on the left or, indeed, on the far right – have handled (or in some cases failed to handle) some of the challenges that they’ve been facing for the last three or four decades. Over that time, they’ve suffered significant electoral decline, although, as we show in the book, the extent of that decline varies not just between countries but between party families, with Christian democratic parties suffering more than conservative parties, which, in turn, have suffered more than (market) liberal parties, which have actually managed to hold pretty steady.

We argue that the difficulties they’ve faced are partly down to their having to cope with something of a double whammy.

Continue reading →

The 2020 US presidential election: nine lessons

Posted on by

As reported in the latest issue of Monitor, the US presidential election raised even more constitutional issues and questions about the US system of elections than many anticipated. Colin Provost and Nadia Hilliard of the UCL Centre for US Politics discuss how the election was administered, and the roles of the judiciary, Electoral College and social media in the process.

The US presidential election of 2020 has been perceived by many observers as one of the most important elections in American history. A highly polarised electorate turned out in record numbers in the middle of a pandemic and for the first time, the incumbent president refused to concede after a clear result, while pushing a steady, yet unsubstantiated series of claims about voter fraud and voting irregularities. Given the highly unusual set of circumstances surrounding this election, it is worth considering how well US institutions performed with respect to the conduct of a free and fair election, and what lessons should be learned for future electoral cycles.

1. States can run elections smoothly.

Although federal laws that are harmonised across the states might seem to make more sense for national elections, the US Constitution allows each state to set its own election laws, as long as they are in compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other relevant, federal legislation. Keeping that in mind, it is important not to understate the fact that, on average, the states performed well in terms of administration of this election. Despite the pandemic, millions of people were able to vote and perhaps more importantly, a large subset of those people were able to vote by mail, so that they would not have to put their health in jeopardy by waiting in long – and often cramped – queues. Ultimately, those votes were all counted, even if a victor could not be declared until 7 November —five days after election day.

2. US electoral institutions are resilient.

The institutions of election administration proved to be resilient in the face of baseless allegations of voter fraud and voting irregularities: those allegations were many, and continue to be made. In a normal election year, post-election lawsuits are practically non-existent, but in 2020, the Trump campaign filed dozens of lawsuits across several states, nearly all of which have been found to be lacking in merit, while tweeting inaccurate information about the election and its results. Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler suggested that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger – the state official in charge of overseeing elections and certifying the results – should resign after not finding evidence of electoral fraud in that state. Additionally, President Trump invited the leadership of the Michigan legislature to the White House, apparently with the goal of getting them to nominate different electors to the Electoral College that formally votes in the new president than those selected by the Michigan Democratic Party. The only legal basis for this occurring is if one believed that Joe Biden did not clearly or lawfully win the state, even though his margin of victory was in excess of 150,000 votes. Finally, a large number of Trump allies in Congress, the media and elsewhere supported these actions, implicitly or explicitly. Despite all these challenges, the votes were counted and certified by all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Continue reading →

Executive Orders in the Trump presidency: a short introduction

Posted on by

nigel-bowles

Since Donald Trump’s term as US President began in January his use of Executive Orders has been high profile and highly controversial. In this post Nigel Bowles explains what these are. He writes that the constraints upon their use are contestable, contested, and contingent, but that to be effective they must at a minimum be competently and intelligently drafted. Trump’s ‘immigration ban’ order fell short of this standard.

Whatever else President Trump might yet contribute to academic and popular understanding of the power of the United States presidency and the rule of law, he has already reminded the world that the occupant of his office has the institutional means to disrupt settled orders of public policy, to scorn norms established by predecessors, and to breach customary standards of presidential behavior. At the second and third of these three activities, President Trump excels. But his talents in these arts will not help him craft a productive presidency in a system of coordinate governing institutions. For that, he will need a sense of purpose, a feel for power, and a recognition that he is as obliged as any other citizen to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. Unless the President quickly comes to appreciate those qualities’ importance, the cost to his professional reputation within Washington and beyond is likely to be high. The first month and more of his noisy administration indicate that his standard mode of organisational leadership is caprice. That is no basis for government in any system, especially one such as that of the United States which sets high institutional barriers against those who show disdain for the customary rules of political coalition-building.

Despite his advantage in having Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, the President has chosen not to engage on legislation with those majorities but instead to rely upon unilateral moves. He has spent precious capital on quotidian and querulous hectoring via his Twitter account, including using that platform to denounce public institutions and those committed to pursuing the public good for being the people’s ‘enemies’. Such behaviour might in the short-run please his political base, but is unlikely to advance his broader purposes (whatever they might prove to be).

A more established unilateral option is that of the issuing of Executive Orders, instruments of presidential authority with considerable potential effect. In issuing such orders, presidents have the opportunity to alter both policy content and the politics of that policy. Here, presidents can and may exploit the advantage of their office’s singularity. They can by their decisions do what individual senators, representatives, and federal judges cannot. They may, as Kenneth Mayer has written (pp. 4–5), change policy’s content and its administration, reorder executive branch agencies, and set out what they will and will not understand by those provisions that Congress writes into law.

Continue reading →

The US presidential transition will occupy the Trump administration for months to come

Posted on by

Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th US President next week, but the vast task of assembling the new administration will continue for months to come. In this post Donald F. Kettl explains what America’s unique transition process involves and outlines what progress Trump has made so far.

There is nothing in the world quite like the American presidential transition. In the foreground is the mega-debate about how the new president will shape policy (see our previous blog posts, here and here). But in the critical background, there is the incredible job of actually putting the new administration together, a challenge unlike that facing any other major democracy in the world.

It is an unusually long stretch between the election and the start of the new administration –10 weeks, compared with the virtually instantaneous transition in the United Kingdom.

In the US, the transition involves far more people – nearly 700 top officials, who head government agencies, nearly all of whom require confirmation by the Senate. There are another 4,000 appointees across the government, including policy assistants and political staffers, that the president appoints and who do not require Senate confirmation.

In the US, many of the appointees come into government with relatively little preparation. Despite constant warnings from experts about the need to plan months before the election for the complexity of the transition, the search for cabinet ministers often doesn’t begin in earnest until after the election. British transitions are much easier, with shadow ministers in the opposition bird-dogging the government, with fewer positions to fill, and with no separate legislative confirmation process.

For better or worse, there are reasons why the American system has evolved in this way. The transition period is actually shorter than it used to be – until 1937, the inauguration was in March, because it often took months in an agrarian society for newly elected officials to put aside their work and make their way to Washington. Having so many political appointments has long been thought to be a good thing, at least by some people, because it provides a way for new presidents to put their stamp on the workings of government. Senate confirmation has provided a reinforcement of the checks-and-balances system on which the US Constitution builds.

Continue reading →

Will Congress be able to hold President Trump in check?

Posted on by

nigel-bowlesDonald Trump will become the 45th President of the United States in January, but will he actually be able to carry out his agenda? Nigel Bowles writes that he will largely be able to. In the areas of trade, security, taxation and judicial appointments Congress will struggle to constrain him under current law and politics. Changing immigration law and reforming the Affordable Care Act are likely to prove more challenging. Nonetheless, during the first year of the Trump presidency American politics is likely to give the appearance of being what it only rarely is: a presidential system. For better or for worse, President Trump really will be in charge.

The United States constitution is Madisonian in design and spirit. Separation of powers and federalism in combination are the structure against which, through which, and by which American politics plays out. Much else matters: party, ideology, public opinion, crises external and internal, leadership’s quality of imagination and purpose, especially. But the system’s architecture is Madisonian. It is not (not usually, at least) a presidential system. Instead, federal government comprises separate but coordinate institutions sharing in authority and in power. Article I of the US Constitution places Congress first in this separated Madisonian order. The symbolism of first place reflects Congress’s abundant richness in authority.

Yet Congress’s authority is limited by recurrent and systematic collective action problems. Those problems spring from Congress’s bicameralism, from its four-party organisation across the two chambers, and from its committee structure. They arise, too from electoral bases of legitimacy: from Senators’ identifications with state interests and cultures, from Representatives’ dependence upon their districts’ majority party voters and party activists for biennial re-election. The collective action problems are exacerbated in the early twenty-first century by ideologically distinct, and typically hostile, Congressional parties; and they are complicated by clashing personal ambitions of legislators. These constraints upon Congress’s authority in turn limit its political effectiveness and, accordingly, its collective capacity to bring about intended effects – in other words, its political power.

Continue reading →