quickly Think about the state of American politics. We are polarized – it turns out to be almost cliché.
But why are we polarized? While there are plenty of reasons (some have written entire books explaining them), our the politician And chosen officials Play a key part.
This is a political science phenomenon called “elite polarization,“So that divisions among elected officials spill over into their constituents and the public divides itself into ideological and partisan tribes that mirror what is being signaled from above. That downward message results in what political theorists call “Sensory polarization“A measure of people’s level of hostility toward members of opposing political parties.
But not all elected officials are polarizing Americans — or at least, not all of them are doing so equally, according to New research Political scientists Marc Jacobs of Stanford University, Iftach Lakes of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sean Westwood and Matthew Wetzel of Dartmouth College, confirm what was long suspected.
In a preprint shared with Vox, the researchers report that a handful of “conflict entrepreneurs” in Congress are essentially polluting our national political discourse and eroding the pulse of democracy. They spend more of their time arguing and personal attacks than being productive in elected office. Along the way, they not only polarize the country, but also hamper the functioning of our government.
What makes a conflict entrepreneur?
The researchers define conflict entrepreneurs as elected officials who “frequently insult and name-call political rivals.” They can be contrasted with “policy-focused representatives” – the kind of people who just want to get things done. And the political divide is an entire brand for conflict entrepreneurs, not just part of their public profile.
Using a new artificial intelligence-powered tool they developed, Lelocks and Westwood identified the lawmakers who are doing the most to polarize. Unlike policy advocates in Congress, conflict entrepreneurs spend much of their time and energy attacking other representatives, elected officials, or public figures. These firebrands are “not only barbaric; They use ‘suffering rhetoric’ that attacks the integrity, morality and intelligence of fellow delegates,” the scholars wrote.
They tend to be Republican, more extreme ideologically, and more likely to hold seats in the House of Representatives (as opposed to the Senate). And you can probably guess who some of those people are: Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, is the second-largest producer of personal attacks, according to the tool. Colorado Republican Rep. Lorraine Bobert seventh.
A quick caveat is useful here: both major political parties have conflict entrepreneurs in their ranks. According to the researchers, however, there are more Republican conflict entrepreneurs than Democrats, and not all conflict entrepreneurs are exactly the same; While the tool measures the level and rate of personal attacks on lawmakers, it doesn’t track how extreme those attacks are.
And yet, being a conflict entrepreneur, the researchers found, doesn’t do much to help lawmakers achieve traditional legislative goals. It certainly doesn’t help one pass legislation or advance to leadership positions. But it also helps them get more media coverage: if your goal is to be on Fox News, being bad can help you reach that goal. But that viciousness and the resulting media attention don’t really pay dividends, unless the attention is a goal in itself.
“Our results suggest that conflict entrepreneurs, relative to policy-focused representatives, do not translate media attention into success: they do not raise more campaign donations, they do not perform well in elections, they are appointed to less powerful committees, and they do introduce legislation. or do not increase media attention to co-sponsoring,” the researchers wrote.
In other words, conflict entrepreneurs actually lack legitimate power and influence over government processes. But by receiving the most media attention, they can influence the way people view government work and experience politics.
Conflict entrepreneurs have grown in influence as it becomes more difficult for average Americans to cut through the noise to see how their particular representatives are behaving. The decline of local news, the shrinking staffs of major news organizations, the nationalization of politics at the local and state level, and all the media attention these congressional rabble-rousers garner have obscured another important conclusion: Most elected officials are pretty normal.
The vast majority of federal lawmakers never make personal attacks or make a small portion of all their communications in floor speeches, social media posts, and media appearances. Yet a small number of polarizing figures have helped worsen the public’s view of how divided our government and politics are.
“People hear a lot from a very limited number of members of Congress. They hear the same clips of personal attacks from the same lawmakers, the same conspiracy theories over and over again. But we know very little about other members of Congress. Sean WestwoodDartmouth, one of the co-authors, told me. “What are other members of Congress doing? Are they also involved in conflict entrepreneurship, or do they keep their heads down? Are they working for their constituents or policy?”
This mismatch of attention and knowledge distorts people’s view of the state and the functioning of government. This leads to various problems for democracy, cynicism, pessimism, alienation in national politics and news, and deterioration of trust in institutions.
Researchers have used AI to figure out who the conflict entrepreneurs are
To help identify conflict generators and answer questions about exactly how lawmakers spend their time in office, Westwood and Lelks, who both lead a joint initiative to study public sentiment toward democracy and politics called the Polarization Research Lab, created a tool used AI to scan, process and interpret the speeches and speeches of all 535 elected federal lawmakers. that tool“America’s Political Pulse,” identifies and categorizes lawmakers’ speeches into five different categories — “policy discussion,” “constructive debate,” “personal attacks,” “accomplishment” and “bipartisanship.” The Pulse tool then ranks lawmakers in each category for voters to see how politicians from both major parties spend their time and speak online, in media appearances, in committee and on the House and Senate floors.
The tool easily identifies which top Democrats and Republicans have engaged in personal attacks: Republican Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and California Reps. Eric Swalwell and Robert Garcia top the list of Democrats; Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas, Green, and Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois do so for Republicans.
Spokespeople for Pascrell, Swalwell, Gooden, Green and Miller did not respond to requests for comment. Garcia said in a statement to Vox that “As the only Democrat to sit on the same three committees as Marjorie Taylor Greene, part of my job is to call out her bullshit. Democrats need to put out the fire and push back on their lies.”
You can see who is most focused on discussing policy and bipartisanship: Democratic Sense. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and John Ossoff of Georgia, as well as Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, everyone talks more about policy. 70 percent comments. The tool breaks down examples of how those elected officials communicate through individual profile pages.
Romney is a particular standout, Westwood told me. Perhaps because he is not up for re-election and has decided to retire, “he focuses almost exclusively on policy discussions, and when he does, he tends to discuss policy in very positive terms. He is the least negative senator possible.”
The tool also analyzes and visualizes the locations from which these elected officials receive political donations, helping to illustrate who politicians see as their primary audience. Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, spends a disproportionate amount of time engaging in personal attacks across all her platforms, but especially on social media — and receives a disproportionate amount of donations from donors outside her own state.
“People are clearly cultivating different profiles based on platform. If you compare Marjorie Taylor Green on Twitter versus her floor speeches, there’s a big difference in negativity [online]”Lakes told me. “So when people seem to tune in to their audience [engaging in personal attacks]”
For the moment, the tool is limited to keeping track of federal legislators, but Lelocks and Westwood told me they are soon working to expand it to track the speech of local and state legislators. They also hope to expand on the results they’ve already produced, and as the 2024 election ramps up, they hope the tool can be useful for the public, the press and other politicians to better understand the quality of American political rhetoric. , and to measure how a small number of rabble-rousers make our collective political pulse worse.
