> Can you show evidence of this strategy working somewhere else?
The best example of this strategy in action would be the US Congress before the 1984 Chevron Deference ruling.
Was Congress more effective back then? One way to check if people got more grandstanding or less grandstanding is to see if there was more bipartisan legislature before 1984 than after.
There was more bipartisan legislature before 1984 and the difference is dramatic [0][1].
I'm not a social scientist and one could possibly bring up all sorts of other reasons to justify this as a coincidence or caused by something else entirely or whatnot. I don't have the resources here to put together an entire detailed study to find and untangle confounding factors.
I will only point out that as many things being common as possible (same congressional body, same voter base, same senators) - the time before Chevron deference was dramatically different from the time after Chevron deference, in terms of what Congress felt it should do to earn reelection. It acted accordingly.
There were so many changes to politics in the 1980s that trying to connect the Chevron ruling to the decrease in bipartisanship, which was already decreasing as the political parties transitioned into opposing alignments, is a serious stretch IMO. The 1980s, starting with the election of Reagan, were when the Conservative party realigned itself entirely in opposition to the Liberals of the time.
It is hard to imagine now, but political scientists in the 50s and 60s were arguing we needed more ideologically pure parties because the parties were so intermingled with each other.
My pet opinion is that in the late 1960s to early 1970s the United States, for all intents and purposes, became a post-scarcity society. This means that politicians stopped trying to figure out how to make the pie big enough for everyone, which they could find some middle ground arguments for, to how the pie should be distributed. The latter is not a solvable problem, just an endless argument, so here we are.
The best example of this strategy in action would be the US Congress before the 1984 Chevron Deference ruling.
Was Congress more effective back then? One way to check if people got more grandstanding or less grandstanding is to see if there was more bipartisan legislature before 1984 than after.
There was more bipartisan legislature before 1984 and the difference is dramatic [0][1].
I'm not a social scientist and one could possibly bring up all sorts of other reasons to justify this as a coincidence or caused by something else entirely or whatnot. I don't have the resources here to put together an entire detailed study to find and untangle confounding factors.
I will only point out that as many things being common as possible (same congressional body, same voter base, same senators) - the time before Chevron deference was dramatically different from the time after Chevron deference, in terms of what Congress felt it should do to earn reelection. It acted accordingly.
[0]. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/u...
[1]. https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8485443/polarization-congress-...