“IF I sponsor a bill declaring apple pie American, it might fall victim to partisan politics,” declared Barack Obama over the summer. His statement came in a speech on the border crisis, but could have been made about any number of recent issues. From the federal shutdown to gun control, stalemate is America’s political norm. Congress is more interested in playing politics than solving problems. Even discussions about congressional gridlock have come to resemble the gridlock itself, static and tired. Language, like politics, reaches an impasse. In a recent study for the Brookings Institution, Sarah Binder seeks to place the discussion on firmer empirical ground. Her study examines America’s history of legislative dysfunction in order to contextualise the contemporary stalemate. Part of the challenge involves measuring legislative success: what’s the baseline against which to compare output? At what point does a system designed to encourage healthy checks and balances become detrimentally deadlocked?

To analyse the productivity of Congress from 1947 to 2012, Ms Binder settled on a metric: the ratio of failed measures to all salient issues on Washington’s agenda. (For an issue to be “salient”, it needed to inspire at least four New York Times editorials in a given Congress.) By this measure, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Congress holds up as the most productive post-war session—just 27% of salient legislative issues remained unresolved. By contrast, three-quarters of the salient issues on the current legislative agenda are going nowhere fast. Even during the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority in 2009-2010, proposals to address big issues, such as education, campaign finance, climate change, immigration and gun control, stalled in legislative limbo.



Ms Binder finds that the recent stalemate fits a well-established pattern: when elections yield more polarised parties and chambers—as they did during Bill Clinton’s second turn and Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive era—bargaining becomes strained and compromise is increasingly out of reach.

Yet the data affirm that gridlock has worsened over the past half-century. Between 1947 and 2000, for instance, conference agreements averaged about 100 per congress. Between 2001 and 2012, however, the number was just over 20. This number plummeted even further during the 112th Congress, from 2011 to 2013, when only seven final agreements were reached via conference committee. There is also some troubling evidence that politicians can’t quite agree on what constitutes a “salient” issue. When Clinton pushed for health care reform in 1993-1994, the GOP insisted there was no health-care crisis. Today, the parties disagree about whether budget deficits are problematic, whether the minimum wage needs to be raised, and whether campaign-finance reform is needed. At times they even differ on the basic facts, like whether there is evidence that human behaviour is influencing changes in the climate.

What went wrong? Ms Binder points to the nature of electoral change. Before President Johnson passed civil-rights legislation in 1964, the South was Democratic and the parties were ideologically diverse. There were liberal and conservative Republicans and liberal and conservative Democrats. It was easier for legislators to find common ground because there wasn’t the same ideological gulf. But the passage of the Civil Rights Act fundamentally changed partisan politics in the South: the Republican Party gained a foothold and lost many moderates. Liberal Republicans are perhaps extinct, Ms Binder argues, and centrists are becoming an endangered breed. Liberals are now aligned with the Democrats and conservatives are with Republicans—and never the twain shall meet.

Americans have grown increasingly accustomed to this “us” versus “them” mentality. And there is no indication that current levels of partisanship will subside soon. In fact, the Brookings study affirms that the ideological distance between the parties has returned to heights not seen since the end of the 19th century. Polarisation in the House is unprecedented.

Because control of the House and Senate now swings back and forth, parties see no need to compromise, Ms Binder argues. Politicians presume they can simply wait till their party is back in charge, and pre-empt lawmaking in the meantime. This strategy has been on display by the Republicans in recent years. After losing the White House in 2008, the party shifted towards the right. (Indeed Republicans have moved farther right than Democrats have moved left, Ms Binder points out.) Such partisanship is exacerbated by the Republicans’ minority status; it’s easy to oppose everything when you’re not in charge of governing, Ms Binder notes. They don’t think the public will hold them accountable—so they can get away with being unco-operative.

How can such a system correct itself? It might help if negotiations were taken out of the public eye, suggests Ms Binder. Legislators in the spotlight feel pressure to stay true to their ideological base, but behind closed doors they might have an easier time crafting solutions. Take immigration reform. Republicans want border security; Democrats want a path to citizenship. A deal could stitch these demands together, but legislators hesitate—particularly before an election—because they don’t want to risk being pilloried as disloyal by the public.

Some suggest the answer might lie in the power of a singular personality—as exemplified by the case of Teddy Roosevelt, who was able to rouse Congress from its sluggish standoff. When Barack Obama was first elected president, many had hoped that he, too, could transcend partisanship and enable more cooperation. But such dreams have long since been crushed.

At the most basic level, politics can be a very personal game, requiring trust and mutual respect, much of which seems absent from the contemporary political scene. “Nobody knows anybody up here," observed Joe Manchin, a moderate West Virginia Senator, to Time in June. "There just aren’t enough real relationships.” It seems Ms Binder’s wariness about the degree of political gridlock now is justified.