interviews
The Nationalization of U.S. Elections
by Dan Hopkins
December 31, 2020
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
An Interview with Jeffrey Shumaker
by Max Moinian
May 31, 2018
Who are you and where are we?
My name is Jeffrey Shumaker and we are in Bryant Park by my office.
What’s your favorite privately-owned public (POP) space in Manhattan?
One of my favorites is Grace Plaza. It was recently renovated with an Amanda Burden touch: many types of seating, movable and fixed, and lots of planting. POPS can be controversial, viewed as privatizing public space. Unfortunately there are many POP’s I don’t like, built under the original rules which had virtually no design requirements whatsoever. These spaces need to serve the public, but we need somebody to own them, otherwise no one will take care of them. They’re often lost in limbo.
You mentioned Amanda Burden. What were her main goals that you aligned with during your time at the DCP?
I think the main thing she brought to the Department of City Planning and to the city was a pedestrian and human perspective. Even in the work we presented to her. They were otherwise generic diagrams about rezoning or changing a neighborhood. No surprise the community wouldn't understand what you were talking about. A lot of credit goes to Amanda and the Urban Design office in bringing the work down to the human, through sketching and clearly communicating intent on proposed changes. Not just from the air, from a helicopter view, but from the ground. That’s the vantage point that people live and experience the city from.
The intention is to make legible drawings. But does the act of drawing perspectives rather than plans change the design?
Absolutely. It definitely changes the design. It forces you to get into the qualities of things that only you as a person can really appreciate. When you draw from the air you’re focusing more on the roofs of buildings, mechanical, and other things. From the ground you start looking at use, transparency, materiality, street trees, the design of the sidewalk. All the things you wouldn’t see from above.
During your master’s at MIT, what was the urban crisis everyone was talking about?
That’s a good question. Compared to what’s happening in the world now, it was a relatively happy time. I worked with Dennis Frenchman on projects in China. I think the crisis was the rapid development of cities, and not necessarily in the best way.
What are some of your favorite planner jargons?
Resilience, sustainability, livability, equity. Not to say that they’re not important. With PlaNYC, the whole city was viewed through these lens and it was groundbreaking when it was first released in 2007. What I am saying is that
We should not be exclusive. You want people to understand the process so that they can advocate for better planning and design in their own communities.
Public realm is a good one. When you speak to communities often times they dont even understand what you’re talking about when you use the term “public realm.”
What’s the alternative?
Public life, public space, streets, parks -- call it what it is, what people can identify with.
Can you talk about autonomous vehicles (AV)?
Everything cycles back around. For example, street car designs might be useful for AV: the idea of dedicated zones to move efficiently. We’re looking at older streets to inform future ones. Maybe using different technologies now, but the design is essentially the same.
In this rendering, there’s no difference between the sidewalk and the road. There’s a kid on a scooter in front of a car. When you’re speculatively designing future streets, who is at the table and how is safety discussed?
Those renderings were very aspirational. There’s a big role for urban designers to play in preparing cities for this technology when it’s ready. There’s still a lot of work to do before we get to truly safe streets. And there’s always a risk that the technology may fail. But I think it’s important to be optimistic about what the future could be.
It’s a call to action.
Those renderings are part of a conversation we’ve been having with the City. To remind them that now is the time to lay the groundwork for this technology when it gets here.
Did the vision of a shared street start from another discipline? Is the car company telling you this is the vision?
It was very much internal. Based on my experience at the City and with DOT, but mostly internal. It was our idealized vision of what could be.
All of the major car companies have a research wing looking at the future city, showing nice images of pedestrian-friendly, smart cities. You have to wonder: what are they in it for? Are they sincere in wanting to make cities better for everybody? I think there’s a need for strong government and regulation to counter that.
I doubt you were talking about AV when you were in school. What do you think prepared you for this work?
Trends change, the terms we use change, but the fundamentals are the same. Fascinating to me now that I’m working internationally is that from the ground, cities are very similar. The character, design, and neighborhoods are different, and you celebrate those differences. But having places to sit, good sidewalks, plants, places of interest…that is everywhere.
Nanshan Center, by KPF
LVGEM Baishizhou Master Plan Shenzhen (c) KPF
Elements that every city needs, but is there a model that you can just drop on cities?
That’s a good question, and it’s a tough one. Good urban design principles may be basic to you and me, but sometimes it’s important to state the obvious.
What are the principles that carry over form public to private practice?
Certainly in this country, cities are fighting for every last dollar, and need to be smart about leveraging private development for the benefit of the public. New York has become an expert at this, for public space, subway improvements or waterfront access, there are many ways...
At the City, you can’t realize anything without the private sector. We depend on them for affordable housing, parks... But when you’re working for the City you’re a public servant. You are ultimately working for the public. In the private sector, you work for clients and you can only push things so far. But, no matter where you work, you are always trying to find a balance between doing what’s best for the private property owner and what is best for the city and the public.
Some people may think that government work is actually more restricted.
In a way, yes. There are many layers to it. A lot of the work we did was never shown publicly, it was really meant to keep the conversation going for us. Sometimes the City is your client, and that could be the best of both worlds. The smarter developers realize that generally what’s good for the city is good for the bottom line.
Planners have been repairing past mistakes. But now there’s a big shift into thinking about the future … I don't know if that existed as much before?
I haven't really thought of that. A lot of the work I was doing was essentially how do we bring a sense of urbanity back into places. Infilling surface parking, mixing uses… Now, given the challenges of climate change, technology, cities are just trying to keep up, let alone get ahead. It forces everybody to think differently, in more immediate and longer terms about where cities are going.
Is it cyclical? Or do we keep refining big waves?
Maybe the waves are getting smaller and faster. All the disruptive technologies are happening at a pace that cites can't keep up with. At least with the kind of zoning we have in New York, which is frankly old-fashioned.
Do you think there are too many rules?
Yes I do. The physical zoning resolution just keeps getting thicker and thicker. Its three very large volumes. We don't tend to take out, we just keep adding to it.
Was there a point where you shifted into thinking more about the future?
City agencies aren't necessarily known for being the most proactive or progressive, but the Bloomberg administration was different. The now famous Bloomberg pilot project: we don't have to change the rules to try it, and if it works, then we change the rules. A good example of this is micro-unit housing. We removed the minimum unit size requirement and held a design competition. Some very creative designs showed how outdated the rule was. Carmel Place was built and is very successful, and we ultimately changed the rule citywide.
What is going on in New York City right now?
I think the affordability crisis gives a sense of urgency that is understandable and warranted. There is a need to create lots of affordable housing fast. The rush is too fast for many neighborhoods. As much as everybody wants affordable housing, there is pushback. Anytime you talk about neighborhood change people get very defensive. Particularly when it’s their neighborhood. In theory everybody wants affordable housing and nobody wants to shut the door on newcomers.
But we’re at a tipping point: so many people want to be here, which shoots up prices. Even in East New York, the first neighborhood under the de Blasio administration to be rezoned. Investment was brought there for the first time in a very long time. And the minute the City announced its plans to rezone, speculators started buying and flipping property. Then you see the values go up, and up, and up. It’s a tough issue. Cities have gotten so expensive and exclusive. If people can’t afford to live here, what kind of city are you left with?
Are you a fan of infill development projects?
Yes. I think it achieves a lot of urban design goals. I think most would agree now that the tower in the park model was just anti-urban. It created campus conditions. You're either in it or you're not. And in talking to NYCHA residents and tenant associations over the years...there is a strong sense of us vs. them, people who live in the development vs. those who live outside. That’s not an urban position.
I understand the defensive nature against an infill proposal and the valid fear of losing one’s home, but the status quo is just not sustainable. Without more Federal money, NYCHA has to figure out how to generate income on its own. I think there's a way to do it that could keep everyone in place, probably even add affordable housing along with market rate units. Create better communities with less space -- better quality, not quantity. So they're not campuses. So they're part of the urban fabric.
Do you think there’s a need for more private planning firms?
Definitely. There are very few firms you could go to for planning and urban design that really get it. That understand and focus on the zone between the city and regional scale and the building scale. I think ultimately more firms and more competition is better for cities.