Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Bridges to Nowhere

Did James Madison predict earmarks and bridges to nowhere?

Looking further into Federalist 10, have the evils that Madison associated with political parties come to pass, now that political parties have been a fixture of American politics for over 200 years? He feared that special interests could achieve economic gain by becoming the majority party:

Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.


Whether you label government support of specific economic interests favorably as “industrial policy” or unfavorably as “corporate welfare”, I don’t think anyone can dispute that such support exists, and has existed for a long time. Does a partisan political system produce such results? It’s hard to say, because we don’t know what a non-partisan system would have produced. I can’t think of any democratic country that doesn’t have competing political parties. Indeed, some deem that necessary to democracy. In other words, I know of no controlled experiment on that question.

But can one point to any aspect of parties that specifically works toward those types of policies? I’m reminded of a classic political quotation: “Money is the mother’s milk of politics”, usually ascribed to Jesse Unruh, late speaker of the California State Assembly. One could think of money as being recycled through the political system: part of what gets paid out as government subsidies comes back as political contributions (or outright bribes). Does the need for money to finance the competition between parties cause the politicians to support economic interests who will then fill the parties’ coffers? And to close the loop: did that cycle eventually go on to produce the bridge to nowhere? Please comment on what you think of those questions.

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