American Decision Making

In a country characterized, like the United States, by decentralized political power, the best way to obtain political representation is through the confluence of diverse interests. The so-called “iron triangle” represents the best example of this phenomenon, as it is here that we see the combination of a federal agency with regulatory powers, a Congressional committee or sub-committee and a pressure group.

In such a triangle, the agency regulates a specific economic activity, the Congressional committee is in charge of approving the agency’s funding and supervising its activities and the pressure group — which represents the economic interests being regulated — finances the careers of the legislators which sit on the committee. Thus, each scratches the other’s back in a perfect harmony of vested interests. It is not for nothing that 80 percent of Americans surveyed by the Political Attitudes Program believed that their political system is controlled by an extremely powerful minority that only looks out for its own interests. The decision-making process within the iron triangles tends to be efficient to the extent that all parties are pursuing the same thing.

Of course, these triangles require opacity in order to function. In matters of national interest, when the spotlights are turned on, things change. Here, the participants are the White House and the two chambers of Congress. In these cases, the process is reversed and roadblocks to the decision-making process may spring up at every turn. To the extent that the U.S. political system was designed to encourage joint ownership between opposing political powers, each one limiting the other, cooperation between the parties is the decisive factor. As long as the center of the political spectrum prevailed over the extremes, such cooperation was practical, and the institutional machinery was able to function via the route of compromise. However, in cases of political polarization, such as has prevailed in the United States for years, the machinery halts. Only when the same party controls the White House and the majority of the two chambers can there be a functioning joint ownership and a fluid decision-making process. However, this frequently is not the case. During the eight years of Reagan and the four years of the first Bush, this did not occur; nor did it occur in six of Clinton’s eight years, in two of the second Bush’s eight years, and in one of Obama’s three years.

As the case of the debt ceiling negotiations demonstrated a few months ago, the system’s capacity to produce results can disappear almost completely. In this case, political irrationality ended up eclipsing the fiscal and economic irrationality that it was attempting to address. How can a superpower aspire to maintain its standing when its decision-making process oscillates between fluidity when vested interests are involved and near total gridlock on matters of national interest?