EXPERIENCIAS EN SALUD INTERCULTURAL (11) a) Salud Intercultural en el MSP

This section takes a first look at these data to see if they reasonably comport with what we would expect to find in a measure of party polarization. From the roll-call record, we know that party-line voting is much less common in today’s politics than it was in the 19th century. The marked, if not steady, decline of party-voting between the late 19th century and the 1970’s was one of the central pieces of evidence cited to support

the party decline thesis Brady, Cooper and Hurley (1979); Collie (1984); Hurley and

Wilson (1989). Levels of intra-party cohesion have declined for both parties, a smaller proportion of all votes now fall along party lines, and ”universal” votes (votes on which nearly all representatives voted in the same way) have became more commonplace Collie (1988). From the end of the Civil War through the stock market crash of 1929, levels of party-line voting declined somewhat. Following the first years of the New Deal through the 1960’s, party-line voting continued to become less common. Party-voting reached its historical low-point in the 91st Congress (1969-70) but has become more common again subsequently Bond and Fleisher (2000); Fleisher and Bond (2004). Like Mark Twain, reports of the parties’ death were grossly exaggerated. Congressional polarization has rebounded in the last three decades but, at least in the case of party-line voting, has not reached pre-WWII levels. If platform symbolism captures disagreements that help shape congressional voting coalitions, we should see differences in platform word-usage reflecting what is known about how the parties behave in Congress.

Figure 7.1 shows the degree of polarization revealed in the policy-specific symbols used in the two parties’ national platforms. To make these data work in the same direction as polarization, the cosine estimates were re-scaled so that larger values indicate greater differences between the parties and smaller values denote more similar documents. The cosine measure is bounded between 0 (no similarity) and 1 (perfect similarity), so the original values were subtracted from 1, such that a .8 becomes a .2 on this scale.

Year Policy Polarization 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1856 1864 1872 1880 1888 1896 1904 1912 1920 1928 1936 1944 1952 1960 1968 1976 1984 1992 2000

Figure 7.1: Polarization in Policy-Specific Symbols: 1856-2004

The long-term trend in these data reveal that, like party-voting in Congress, differences in policy symbols are not as pervasive as they once were. The contemporary parties apportion their attention to specific policy issues in far more similar ways than did their counterparts of the 19th century. Since the Great Depression, only a few years have rivaled levels of polarization registered before 1920. Even then, platforms that are highly polarized by modern standards are still rather moderate when compared to documents from the 19th century.

Many of the fluctuations within this trend also comport with what scholars of parties and polarization would expect. The differences between the parties declined markedly,

if not steadily, between the end of the Civil War and 1920. With the onset of the New Deal, the parties polarized somewhat but only until 1952. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, the era of “me-tooism” in American politics, the parties published platforms that were more similar than at any other point in American history. The only marked exception is 1964, the year in which Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination by pursuing a decidedly more conservative agenda than his immediate predecessors, so even this ex- ception makes substantive sense. Finally, there are some indications that Democrats and Republicans have polarized discursively since the 1970’s. Starting in 1980 with Reagan’s first candidacy and reaching a contemporary high point in 2000, larger differences in the policy priorities of the two parties once again emerge.

Year Symbolic Polarization 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1856 1864 1872 1880 1888 1896 1904 1912 1920 1928 1936 1944 1952 1960 1968 1976 1984 1992 2000

Figure 7.2: Polarization in Value Symbols: 1856-2004

Figure 7.2 shows the same measure of polarization within values symbolism. The parties’ use of abstract values shows the same long-term convergence that took place within policy discourse and congressional voting. Parties are not only discussing more of the same policies, they are also emphasizing more of the same values as they defend their positions. Today’s parties have real ideological differences, but their use of ideals is not

wildly different. The symbolic differences that were commonplace in the 19th century and immediately following the Great Depression appear to have dissipated in the modern era. While value and policy discourse move together in the long run, there are not identical. Indeed, comparing figures 7.1 and 7.2 reveals some visual evidence that value symbols are often more indicative of how polarized the parties are than their policy language.

The most striking example involves the watershed election of 1932. Value polarization rose much more dramatically and immediately following the stock market crash of 1929 than did differences in policy-specific symbolism. Most of the specific policies that would constitute the New Deal were not clearly articulated by the Democratic platform in 1932 and the parties’ policy language was not dramatically more different than in 1928. In value terms, on the other hand, Democratic and Republican language diverged distinctly in 1932 and by 1936 they were more discursively polarized than in any subsequent year. This indicates that, as Democrats and Republicans forged a new terrain of party competition, it was initially reflected more clearly in how they used symbolic ideals than in which policies they emphasized.

Finally, the fall and reemergence of polarization since WWII is also clearly present in value language. The low-ebb of polarization during the 1950’s and 1960’s translated into fewer value distinctions between the parties’ platforms than at any other point in history. Starting in the early 1970’s, when party-line voting began to rebound, the parties’ use of value symbolism polarized visibly. The contemporary high point in disagreement over abstract ideals was in 1996, which makes very good sense. Following the Republican take-over of Congress in 1994 and with Newt Gingrich leading the conservative charge, the platforms of 1996 indicate that substantial philosophical arguments had once again become central to the partisan divide. All in all, these data reflect much of what we would expect to find in a measure of party differences over the last 150 years.