While there is certainly reason to be cautious in proclaiming California's only recently functional legislature as a success, recent legislative success, with Republicans backing liberal ideas and Democrats backing conservative ideas, suggests that some recent structural reforms have created a more civil and functional legislative environment.  Among the reforms recently enacted are:

– Redistricting by a non-partisan commission, leading to more balanced/competitive districts
– Non-partisan primaries, where the top 2 finishers, regardless of party, run against each other.

Both of these reforms make politicians more accountable to the broader electorate, instead of to the more extreme members of each party which tend to dominate partisan primaries.  

At CivilPolitics, we feel that these reforms are particularly likely to be the cause of a more civil legislative environment, given that their effect would have been predicted by research on "the dark side of moral conviction", which illustrates how our noble intentions can often lead us to be blind to the negative side-effects of realizing these intentions.  Introducing accountability to those who are more balanced in terms of their worldviews will naturally mitigate the danger of excess moral conviction leading to extreme political positions, of the sort that have led Washington D.C. to dysfunction.

From the New York Times:

“It’s given more courage to my Republican colleagues,” he said. “They were afraid of getting primaries. Now, it’s not just their base they have to appeal to.”

Adam Mendelsohn, a former senior adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who championed the ballot changes, said they were altering the nature of the Legislature but also his own party.

“It gives Republicans the chance to break from their caucus on certain issues,” he said. “It is very different than it was four or five years ago.”

Democrats may also be changing. The state Chamber of Commerce reported last month that 39 of the 40 bills it had described as “job-killing” — regulatory legislation that typically was supported by Democrats — had been defeated this year.

“In the freshman class, a lot of the folks had moderate voting records,” said Anthony Rendon, a Democrat who was elected to the State Assembly last year, evidence of the need for many legislators to appeal beyond the Democratic base.

– Ravi Iyer

CivilPolitics.org is undergoing a transition where we move from trying to bring groups and individuals together to leveraging our academic/research expertise to support other groups doing such work.  One such organization that we are working with is Living Room Conversations, a group founded by MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades, in collaboration with a former GOP-operative.  In an experience that dovetails well with research showing that personal relationships matter and finding common goals helps create common ground, we were recently heartened to hear how she invited Mark Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, over to her house for tea.  According to the article from the San Francisco Chronicle:

[Living Room Conversations] involves one or two co-hosts pulling together an intimate gathering of folks who might believe they agree on little politically – until they sit down together to listen to one another's perspective. Civilly…  Eventually, they find places they agree…After three hours of watching one another's media caricatures evaporate, the six decided that, for starters, they'd all support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act….Too often, outfits like MoveOn and the Tea Party get so wrapped up in beating each other in the partisan, Twitter-driven politics of the moment that they don't take time to see who is picking both of their pockets.
 

If you'd like to support the efforts of Living Room Conversations, consider signing their petition available at this link.

– Ravi Iyer

As I write this, reports indicate that moderate Republicans (Susan Collins) and Democrats (Joe Manchin) appear to be spearheading bipartisan talks to avoid the economic consequences of a debt default and also end the partial government shutdown.  This is in marked contrast to partisans on the left who are willing to endure some economic hardship to regain political power and partisans on the right who are willing to endure some economic hardship to achieve policy goals.

Strong partisans tend to have strong moral convictions, which can certainly lead to pro-social behavior in many cases.  One principle of practicing political civility is to try to accept the genuine good intentions of others, and I have little doubt that those on the left and right have good intentions for the country.  Yet psychological research on moral conviction shows how it is precisely those individuals with the strongest moral desires who are often willing to overlook the consequences of their actions (e.g. shutting down the government and threatening to breach the debt ceiling) in service of their goals.  

This review paper by Linda Skitka and Elizabeth Mullen provides a nice overview of this research:  

Although moral mandates may sometimes lead people to
engage in prosocial behaviors, they can also lead people to disregard procedural safeguards. This article briefly reviews research that indicates that people become very unconcerned with how moral mandates are achieved, so long as they are achieved. In short, we find that commitments to procedural safeguards that generally protect civil society become psychologically eroded when people are pursuing a morally mandated end. Understanding the “dark side” of moral conviction may provide some insight into the motivational underpinnings of engaging in extreme acts like terrorism, as well as people’s willingness to forego civil liberties in their pursuit of those who do.

 

It is precisely for these reasons that partisan gerrymandering, which makes politicians accountable to the extremes who vote in primaries as opposed to moderates, threatens to lead to more future crises.  If moderates like Olympia Snowe leave and their influence is replaced by hardliners like Ted Cruz, we are all bound to suffer the consequences of their moral conviction.

– Ravi Iyer