In their new book on electoral reform [reviewed by me here and here] Diamond, Pildes, Foley, Drutman, et al. take a fairly decisive position on the question above. They argue that an extremely polarized group cannot be governed democratically--or cannot be for very long. And they provide numerous reasons for that view. For example, in the Introduction to the volume, Diamond makes the following assertions [internal quotations and citations here omitted].
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"A major driver of America’s democratic distemper is deepening partisan polarization."
"The problem is not simply that Democrats and Republicans are further apart in their beliefs. It is that they are also much more likely to hold extremely unfavorable views of the other party and even to regard it as an existential threat to the country’s well-being."
"Intense partisans of each party hold major misbeliefs about the other party’s preferences that lead them to think there is far less shared policy belief."
"There is now essentially no ideological overlap in voting patterns between the least conservative Republican and the least liberal Democrat in either house of Congress."
"Intense polarization threatens democracy for several reasons. First, it makes governing more difficult. Particularly in a country with bicameralism and the separation of powers, it is harder to forge the minimum consensus needed to pass legislation and implement policies when representatives of the two parties—and behind them, their most vocal supporters—are so far apart in their views and policy preferences."
"Second, intense polarization makes it more difficult to sustain policies over time. Even if a temporary majority can adopt a certain policy, the next administration or the next Congress may seek to repeal it. It is difficult to govern when policy lurches from one strongly defined position to another in a short period. Both markets and social actors need some degree of stability and predictability to function well."
"Third, opposing political parties that take an extremely dim view of one another also harbor mutual distrust. And that may lead their partisans to reject the results of an election out of a belief—and an underlying readiness to believe, in a context where the opposition party is essentially seen as evil—that electoral defeat could only have been produced by fraud or manipulation of the rules."
"Finally, if both parties view the other as an existential threat to their values, they will be more inclined to do whatever is necessary to keep that party from coming to power or from exercising power effectively. In such a scenario, adherence to the rules breaks down and politics becomes political warfare, a naked struggle for dominance. That, in turn, leads to the kind of violence and insurgency witnessed on January 6."
For political extremists, the outcome of political conflict is more important than adhering to democratic methods."
"[I]f conflict becomes too intense and existential, it is difficult to contain within constitutional boundaries. Hence, for democracy to be sustainable over time, citizens must commit to pluralism by accepting the legitimacy of and need for coexistence among diverse political entities, ethnic groups, [and] ideas."
"With mutual tolerance—the acceptance by competing parties of one another as “legitimate rivals”—must go “forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives,” write Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. These two norms, they argue, have constituted “the guardrails of American democracy” for most of the twentieth century."
"If norms are no longer sufficient to contain polarization and discourage extremism in politics, then we must examine whether and how institutional designs can generate incentives for moderation or at least a willingness to compromise—by making getting elected harder for factional candidates (who are more likely to be extremists, in both senses of the term) and easier for politicians whom a majority of the general electorate support."
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These points are made with the intent of bolstering a change in our electoral rules to a Condorcet-compliant system. Such a round-robin or pairwise competition scheme is considered by several of the contributors to this book to be more likely to produce the elections of centrist candidates and to drag the electorate toward the embrace of more moderate policies
Suppose one were to agree with Diamond and Foley that, for one or more of the reasons set forth above, it is indeed impossible to have a functioning democracy where there is an extremely polarized electorate. Would that provide a sufficient reason to make the sort of electoral and other governmental changes that are claimed to cause the citizenry to either become less polarized, or at least act as if they were during elections? Should changes of that type be made even if they are themselves not wanted by a majority of the electorate? (That is, if fundamental principles of democracy are too important to leave to the voters, in a perfect world would the sought changes be imposed?) In sum, with such changes made, would we be at least a bit closer to authentic democracy?
Well, let's think about it. Suppose we belong to a group whose political views can be represented by something like the following picture:
XXXx...........XX..............XXXXx
To be more specific, let's say roughly 35% of the electorate are (far) leftists, about 20% are centrists, and the remaining 45% are (radical) right-wingers. Is democracy impossible in such a polarized environment under all voting systems except those advocated by Foley and his colleagues? And, it is declared to be feasable, under one or another system, is this so only if policies/representatives are chosen that are satisfactory to the (in this case) small number of centrists?
Let's take a couple of examples based on policies currently under discussion in the U.S. (although, obviously, the distribution of views on these policies are here entirely fabricated). Suppose the 35% on the left are opposed to a U.S. takeover of Greenland; 45% are in favor of such a takeover; and the remaining 20% don't care one way or the other. In addition, say the leftists are generally in favor of more "open borders" and are opposed to deporting any immigrants who have not been convicted of a crime independent of their immigration status. In contrast, suppose the rightists want everybody but current citizens expelled, and the centrists, not terribly interested in this matter, are largely content with whatever happened to be in effect during the Biden administration. Again, suppose the leftists in this jurisdiction want funding for the Department of Education to be dramatically increased; those on the right want that department to be completely eliminated; and our few centrists are OK with the funding for that department to be left where it is. Finally, assume the same sort of distribution with respect to Federal tax rates. One group wants to eliminate the income tax completely; one wants taxes to be generally increased--and dramatically so upon the richest citizens and corporations; and the remaining cohort is OK with taxes pretty much as they are (though maybe they'd like their own tax liabilities altered a bit in one direction or the other).
To avoid the complications surrounding initiative positions and referendums, I will suppose that, corresponding with each view mentioned here there is exactly one popular candidate proposing precisely what the various constituent advocacies desire on all four matters.
It seems clear that those who hope for a general move toward "the center" of policies favorable to the electorate will want to focus on the tax example. One large group wants 0%, another somewhat smaller group wants, perhaps, 80% on some segments. Let us agree that a reluctant consensus in our fictitious state might settle on compromise of something like a 30% average rate. While even this prediction seems overly optimistic to me, it is surely the case that nothing like that sort of agreement can be reached in the other two examples. This is so in no small part because the very suggestion of a consensus is likely to be seen with respect to those policies as being nothing more than an endorsement of the status quo, something that most voters in this jurisdiction vehemently oppose. In such cases, acceptance of the "middle position" would simply leave a very significant majority of voters stuck with policies they very much dislike. Would it be correct to call something a democracy where only 20% of voters are getting anything like what they want? Or would we have to wait until voter preferences are successfully nudged toward the middle, something Foley insists his electoral proposals would do?
Recall that Foley specifically endorses Condorcet-compliant election schemes. That is, he wants all and only those candidates (and policies) to win that will beat every rival in successive one-on-one contests (assuming there actually IS any such person). Now it seems likely that in the made-up scenarios above, since there really is no middle, right-wing candidates would soundly thrash every adversary. If so, there would apparently be no impetus for such candidates to moderate their positions. On the other hand, it might be argued that centrists could conceivably field a candidate who can pick up enough of the most moderate (or least vehement) voters on both the right and left wings, and in that way beat the right-wing favorite. There is at least a smidge of hope!
Well, for what it's worth, that is the sort of sentiment that impels Approval Voting (AV). The main difference between the two proposals is that with AV only a most-approved candidate can win, whereas with Condorcet compliance, if some group's favorite can garner more votes in one-on-one "Who's the best?"contests, this candidate would also defeat the person that AV would determine to be the person most likely to be minimally acceptable to the largest number of voters in the jurisdiction, and that (probably right-wing here) favorite would be declared the winner. It would not matter that this "favorite" is minimally acceptable to many fewer citizens than the AV winner. [I here ignore strategic voting, since I have discussed it at length elsewhere.]
If we look back on the concerns Diamond expresses that I have quoted above, it is clear that Foley and other Condorcet advocates hold that round-robin favorites will be more likely to successfully govern a polity than would be a winner produced any competing electoral rule. I suppose that is possible, but I believe that an ability to govern in a lawful manner would be considerably more likely with AV winners. For, even without any optimistic empirical assumptions made by IRV supporters regarding either (i) centrist-candidate competence to scrape off voters from both poles (I mean, could Liz Cheney really have defeated either of her rivals?) or (ii) the effects of increased centripetal gravitation of preferences that will arise as a result of the impostion of a Condorcet-compliant rule, AV (again, without any such lovely sanguinity) would deliver, at worst, a minimally acceptable executive. And what is an "OK leader" but someone who can get at least a bit of governing done without having to calling in the troops?
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