Performative parliamentarianism and the incentives of the congressperson.

Embattled Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) took to twitter recently to post a picture of her hanging a transphobic sign outside of her Congressional office. The sign reads: “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE “Trust the science!” Greene claims the sign is in response to her Democratic neighbor rep. Marie Newman (IL-3) who erected a flag for transgender rights outside her office. The spat is just another example of the social media focused representation from Greene who rode into office from being a highly-online, conspiracy theory boosting, lib roasting troll. Her victory in the Republican primary last summer all essentially guaranteed her position in congress in the bright red Georgia 14th.

Also on Twitter, Congressional reporter Matt Fuller for HuffPost noted:

"Genuinely struck by how much new Republicans believe the job of “Member of Congress” is to just post online and do performative lib owning.How many bills do you think people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert or Madison Cawthorn plan to get written into law?"

And he has a point. All three of the mentioned freshmen Congresspersons represent an extreme but predictable form of representation: the performative parliamentarian. These are elected representatives who have recognized, through their own volition or via happenstance, that the current structural constraints of American governance and the deep partisan divisions in the country provides a lane for unserious lawmakers to be elected into those roles through performative partisanship. 

While many lawmakers have been and will continue to be performative in their congressional duties, the majority to this point have seemed to recognize their awesome power to shape policy and transform American institutions. However, as gridlock has become the lawmaking norm and partisan actions have become tethered to the potential results of the next election, elected officials have fewer traditional mechanisms with which to prove they should be reelected for continued service. While the ideal of representation is that lawmakers will make policy, their constituents will decide if they like or dislike said policy and thereafter choose whether to reward or punish their representative for their lawmaking, the current calculus has become more about how closely a representative can cling to party orthodoxy.

I think we will continue to see representatives elected to Congress to act as partisan and ideological cheerleaders first and actual lawmakers second. When the incentives to act in the role of lawmakers or representatives to individual constituencies are replaced with the incentives of hewing to partisan authority, representatives have little reason to even pretend to be lawmakers. While I find the behavior of politicians like Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, and Greene to be abhorrent, they are acting in their own political best interest. We can be horrified at the things they say and the way they behave but that won’t get their districts to stop voting for them. They have no electoral incentives to NOT act as partisan trolls, in fact, it’s they are rewarded for their bombast.

In a world where partisan opponents are recast as existential enemies, the strongest fighters get the most support. Greene’s past behavior became a topic for concern in her own Caucus when they decided to hold a closed door meeting about whether to take disciplinary action against her. Ultimately, they decided against any disciplinary action against her and she reportedly received a ‘standing ovation’ from her fellow Republican caucus members. While I have no doubt many members of the Republican caucus find Greene’s past comments disgusting or unpalatable, she is still a member of their party and, as a party under siege, they decided to circle the wagons. 

This behavior from Republicans certainly isn’t new. The entirety of the Trump presidency is descriptive of this rationale. Trump spoke plainly, derisively, and distortedly on nearly every subject. He showed little inclination to lawmaking or leading. He was clearly outmatched in the role of the presidency. He weakened America’s position in the world and damaged relationships with allies. He also lost the House, the Senate, and the White House in only four years’ time having failed to ever poll above 50% of the country and was the popular vote loser in both his elections. Trump’s political career was as unexpected as it was disastrous for the GOP. A normal party would be attempting to flee his yoke as quickly as possible. He is a political loser on a historic scale. But for all his faults, he was a fighter. And being a fighter is the main quality that a party which perceives itself under assault desires. 

The desire to fight is and will continue to be the main quality the GOP voter looks for in a candidate. In a world where partisans are punished for voting with opponents, where distancing oneself from a political loser results in party discipline, and where mean tweets excite voters more than substantive policy, the incentives to behave like a normal lawmaker are gone. 

The performance is more important than the substance. Performative parliamentarianism gets clicks, news coverage, outrage, and recognition. The incentive structure favors that behavior because of how incentives have shifted in the age of digital media. While politicians used to shy away from scandalous news coverage before, now they have the ability to use that news coverage to their own benefit. A disparaging news story in the 1990s was how most voters would receive information about a candidate or elected official. Now, that same candidate or official has their own ability to shape the narrative and cast themselves as victims or heroes. Furthermore, partisan news outlets can elevate those narratives and reinforce partisan biases. The old capitalistic maxim ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ now holds true for politicians as well, it just took a failed businessman turned politician to show us. 

I wish I could propose a simple fix for what is becoming a serious crisis of partisanship and confrontation but the reality is that the deep structural flaws that have led us to our current gridlock seem to be the only options out of this rolling disaster. The electoral college, partisan gerrymandering, uneven representation in the Senate, procedural rules like the filibuster, journalistic bothsidesism, and disincentives to lawmaking in Congress are all broadly issues which have contributed to performative parliamentarianism. 

America’s democracy is in dire need of experimentation and innovation. A system developed over the last 250 years but still rooted with a conception that late 18th century thinking is superior to anything we could dream up today. That’s wrongheaded. It's obvious that a system is no longer working when the problems it is meant to address are left untouched because there is no means by which the system can address those issues. Performative parliamentarianism is just the symptom of systemic gridlock, it may cause very real pain, it may enrage us today, it may lead us to click on articles, engage with tweets, and tell our friends about the latest outrageous behavior from an elected official, but it won’t go away until we actively attempt to address the structural problems that plague us. Until then, I suspect we’ll see ever more success from Marjorie Taylor Greene-esque candidates and politicians, they have the incentives.