Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

I’ve been following a discussion by Steve Greene on his blog about political ideologies and happiness. The discussion started with a post on Arthur Brooks’ op-ed piece that alleged that conservatives are happier than liberals. Furthermore, the extremes in ideology (extremely conservative and extremely liberal) are happier than ideological moderates. Brooks has also posted a five part series on politics and happiness here . The one in which I am most interested is part 4 . This chart from the 2004 General Social Survey is especially interesting: Now, look at this chart from the 2010 General Social Survey: What strikes me is that the percentage of extremely liberals that are very happy is approximately the same as the percentage of extremely conservatives that are extremely happy. Furthermore, the extremes in ideology are not happier than those who are liberal or conservative. This chart is from Jay Livingston’s blog about Brooks’ op-ed here .  So what’s the p...

Several recent books on United States politics and polarization have noted that the most extreme polarization has occurred in the Republican Party, where members have become more conservative in the policy views and voting behavior than Democrats have become liberal. Notable books include Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and, most recently, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (2012). Mann and Ornstein make the case that that the extremism attributable to the Republican Party and the “Young Guns”—Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, but it started with former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in 1995. Has the same type of asymmetry occurred in Texas? Has the Republican Party become even more conservative ideologically while the Democratic Party has remained m...

This blog is devoted to the relationship between political ideas and political institutions. Nowhere in Texas government is the relationship more evident than in the Texas House of Representatives. Created as the “people’s branch,” the Texas House is supposed to represent the people who inhabit the legislative district. With the polarization of the parties, the consequences for representation are great. This is especially true when there is a shift in partisan representation in the House (e.g., a Democrat is replaced by a Republican). Notice what happened between 2009 and 2011 in the Texas House when several Democrats were replaced by Republicans. HD Name Party Lib-Con 2009 Name Party Lib-Con 2011 Difference 21 Allan Ritter Dem 0.15 Allan Ritter Rep 0.32 0.17 11 Charles Hopson Dem 0.05 Charles Hopson Rep 0.34 0.29 69 David Farabee Dem ...

I mentioned in a previous post that I would have more to say about partisan leaners in a future post. Well, this is the post. First, let’s agree on what party identification is because there are several competing definitions. I am a traditionalist, perceiving party identification (PID) as a psychological attachment to a political party. This definition was originally offered in The American Voter by Professors Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes at the University of Michigan , which was published in 1960. They maintained that this is one of the stronger political attitudes, which means that it is less likely to change than other attitudes. They also maintained that it was usually adopted from one’s family. Because of its strength and relative permanence, they argued that it is a filter through which other political attitudes have to pass. They referred to a “funnel of causality,” tracing a person’s other political attitudes to one’s partisan identification. Voting behavior, ...

Voter turnout in the United States is a problem, assuming, of course, that high voter turnout is a good thing. If you don’t believe that, then this post is not for you. The voter turnout in the May 29 th primaries was not good, especially in the Democratic Party’s primary. Here are the stats. First, only 2,030,927 Texans voted in both parties’ primaries. That’s an anemic 15.54 percent of the 13,065,425 registered voters in Texas. Turnout was particularly low in the Democratic Party’s primary, where only 587,146 voted. If 33 percent of Texas’ registered voters are Democrats (strong and not-so-strong Democrats), then there are approximately 4,311,590 Democrats who were registered to vote in Texas. That means that voter turnout in the Democratic primary was 13.62 percent. In the Republican Party’s primary, 1,443,781 voters participated. If 36 percent of Texas’ registered voters are Republicans (strong and not-so-strong Republicans), then there are approximately 4,703,553 Republicans ...

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. -Senator Barry Goldwater I would not normally quote Barry Goldwater (although when I was a 2 nd Lieutenant in pilot training, I did run into him in the men’s room at Andrews AFB in 1964, but that’s another story for another time). Today, Memorial Day, however, I’m proud to quote him. Not so much for the first sentence—but for the second. It seems to me that the pursuit of justice (in the broadest sense) is what is missing in contemporary politics. When I think of my friends from the Air Force who died while on active duty—John Banks, Tom Fiedler, Jim Goodman, I know that they would want both the defense of liberty and the pursuit of justice. Their lives lost were in vain if we don’t work tirelessly to achieve both. May God bless all veterans today.

With the decision by 43 Catholic organizations to challenge the Obama Administration's rule that contraception must be covered (see here ), I think that an earlier piece that I wrote originally as a letter to the editor of the Austin American-Statesman (but never sent) may be appropriate here. So here it is: The controversy over the Obama administration’s ruling that access to contraceptives must be provided in healthcare plans offered by religiously-affiliated colleges and universities, hospitals, and charities provides an interesting insight into the conduct of contemporary politics in the United States. The rule was established based on state law in California and New York. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in February 2012, 28 states “currently require insurers that cover prescription drugs to provide coverage of the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices.” Two of the states exclude emergency contraception and one state excludes minor dependents from...