American politics appears broken. The Republican Party, which is in control of Congress and the presidency, is internally fractured and incapable of advancing a coherent policy agenda. Moderation and compromise, especially across party lines, are political minefields few politicians dare cross.
The budget process has become a game of chicken and Washington is unable to address pressing public issues. The current healthcare fiasco is Exhibit A: Held hostage by the fringe of their party, Republican leaders are unable to attempt a reasonable, bipartisan compromise.
{mosads}What if a simple fix could encourage a return to bipartisanship? An obscure — though critical — element of the current logjam is the rules by which the Speaker of the House of Representatives can be dismissed. Any member can bring a motion “to declare the chair vacant.”
This motion cannot be kept from the floor, and if it passes on a majority vote, the Speaker loses office. Consider the implications. Members of the minority party are compelled to vote against the Speaker, since Democrats would struggle mightily to explain a vote in favor of Paul Ryan. As a result, even a small faction within the majority party can — by introducing and voting with the minority on such a motion — bring down the Speaker.
The current rules thus allow the extreme wing of the Republican party — including the Freedom Caucus — to hold the sword of Damocles over the Speaker’s head: This constant threat makes efforts at bipartisanship by the Speaker all but impossible. Forging a compromise, bringing it to the floor, and passing it with bipartisan support is likely to cost him his job. It was this threat — and the impossibility of reasonable governance — that convinced John Boehner to resign in 2015.
To change this, we should consider the lessons of the Weimar Republic of the 1930s — a place of political dysfunction and stalemate. Moderate governments were regularly toppled in parliamentary votes of no confidence supported by parties of the extreme left and right. Because a coalition of extremists on opposite ends of the political spectrum could agree to unseat a government of the middle (though it could agree on nothing else), centrist governance became increasingly difficult. The subsequent instability was a significant factor in Hitler’s rise to power.
Aware of this dark history, the founding fathers of post-war West Germany incorporated a subtle but ingenious change to the confidence procedure: Under the German constitution adopted in 1949, a motion to remove the chancellor must in the same motion name the new chancellor.
This requirement deprives a coalition of extremists that can agree on ousting a government, but cannot agree on its replacement, of its power. Undoubtedly, this procedure strengthened German governments, and is partly responsible for the stability of post-war German administrations.
The Weimar experience could readily be adapted to our Congress: A motion to unseat the Speaker must also name his or her successor. Because the minority party and a fringe faction of the majority party are unlikely to agree on a replacement, this change would break the coalition that currently threatens a Speaker who attempts to govern from the center.
Under the Constitution, Congress adopts the procedures for choosing its leaders, so this change could be approved with bipartisan support from moderate members. What might be the consequences for American politics? It is unreasonable to expect any individual reform to cure the current state of affairs. But this change is likely to have two desirable effects.
The first is on the conduct of politics. By making the Speaker more secure against an insurrection from the fringes of the party, the reform lowers the costs of bringing moderate, bipartisan legislation to the floor, and encourages coalitions across party lines. Consider the current healthcare debate and imagine a Speaker free to ignore the Freedom Caucus while finding a reasonable compromise among moderate Republicans and Democrats.
The second effect is more subtle, and concerns the public dialogue surrounding our political affairs. We often hear commentators, politicians, and citizens bemoan the hyper-partisan, polarized state of American politics. But calls for bipartisanship and pleas to put “country before party” are not likely to be effective unless our political institutions are reformed to reward compromise, and reduce the influence of the extreme wings of the parties.
The current proposal is only one modest step in this direction. But in moving towards a more functional system, this reform illustrates a fundamental but neglected truth: A return to more bipartisanship and centrist politics requires changing the rules of the political game in ways that provide incentives for politicians to place the general welfare ahead of narrow partisan concerns.
Georg Vanberg is professor of political science and law and chair of political science at Duke University.
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