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DAVID WEBBER: Political scientists finally take a strong stand for democracy

More than 100 academic political scientists issued a statement of concern June 1 about the state of American democracy. See the Statement of Concern at newamerica.org.

The statement’s most immediate spark is the flurry of states that are “reforming” election laws to make it more difficult to vote before the 2022 elections.

The central cause of action in those states is, of course, to satisfy Trump supporters who consistently claim, without evidence, that the former president won the last election. But the statement has a broader, longer historical view: that democracy in America has been slipping away for several decades.

That’s a view I wholeheartedly support and wish that the political scientists’ statement had developed more fully — but then it would have been a full-length book.

The standard political science discipline’s view of the American political systems is that we are a pluralistic, federal system of “checks and balances” where “ambition checks ambition” and things tend to work out in the end.

“Pluralistic” means that many groups and individuals are involved in the political system. That’s true, but well-organized interest can easily outweigh the influence of ordinary citizens.

“Federal” means national and state governments have their own constitutions and are interdependent. While it is slow and messy, I advocate federalism and would allow more variation in state laws than most people, but not the denial of such fundamental rights as voting.

“Checks and balances,” which political scientists and citizens can parrot without much thought, originally meant that the three branches of government are independent in exercising their own judgment about public policy. Our Founders would be deeply disappointed if they came back.

Despite what ordinary people and elected officials might think, most political scientists are not involved in politics, even in their own local communities. They often prefer to argue about new statistical techniques or the increased university parking fees than to focus on current politics.

Oh, I have enjoyed some of that, but I was never as patient as many. That’s why I started writing op-eds in the Missourian in 1994. It made me a better political scientist by sharpening my focus and improving my writing in plain English.

Until the 1960s, academic political scientists took their role as public scholars seriously. But with the advent of statistical computing and public opinion polling, we decided to become “more science and less political.”

So, while there is now a large body of research and some insightful books by individual scholars, we have less to say about American politics from a disciplinary perspective.

The last well-known effort by the American Political Science Association to actively influence American politics was the American Political Science Review’s 1950 report, “’Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System’: Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo-Science?” which we still argue about today.

Maybe political scientists will wake up and take their citizenship responsibilities more actively.

The Statement of Concern has three fundamental criticisms of the current political system: partisan gerrymandering, money in politics and the Senate filibuster. I agree.

What’s really maddening are the minor common-sense changes in each that even school kids would embrace.

Let’s take gerrymandering and unequal influence. Suppose a teacher said to five rows of first graders: “We will have a student council of five representatives with three students from the first row, one each from rows two and three, and rows four and five will have no representation.” Kids know that’s not equal.

Same with money in politics. It is not only an issue of “big money” and “dark money”; it is the lack of accountability. Long before the anonymity of the internet, “money equals free speech” proved to be one of the Supreme Court’s wacky decisions that obstruct the public interest.

The Senate filibuster might be the biggest hoax perpetuated in the political system. It is fueled, in part, by the mythology of Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” who was filibustering for a pork-barrel project, not defending a cherished principle.

Grade schoolers learn “how a bill becomes a law,” but they are seldom taught that, “Oh, yeah, any individual senator can put a hold on a bill, and it can take 60 senators to force an issue to be voted on.”

Even then, if you oppose taking action, you can skip out, as 11 senators — including Missouri’s Roy Blunt — did May 28 when the Senate failed to vote to consider establishing a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. The vote was 54-35, and the 35 won.

Many individuals and institutions, including political parties, some of the media, several well-connected corporations, many institutions of higher education and academic political scientists, have enjoyed prosperity of one type or another during the past dew decades while the trust in the American political system — as well as its integrity — has eroded.

We have been aware of our system’s fundamental lack of representation and influence by special interests for decades. Like a small splinter left untreated, these weaknesses have grown and infected the entire body politic.

My political science colleagues are correct, and bold, in proclaiming that “our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.”

David Webber joined the MU Political Science Department in 1986 and wrote his first column for the Missourian in 1994. He can be reached at Webberd@missouri.edu.

About opinions in the Missourian: The Missourian’s Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form.

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