Entrenchment pervades democratic politics far beyond legislative and election rules

Evidence

At the very least, courts and scholars, along with voters and citizens, would do well to recognize that it is not only the arcane possibility of legislative entrenchment or the transparently strategic features of election law like gerrymandering and voter ID requirements that should be viewed through the prism of entrenchment. Labor law reform ought to be understood as a partisan battle between incumbent Democrats and Republicans fighting over their own election prospects, and not only as a contest over union organizing rights and labor-management relations. The same is true for immigration law, tort law, and many other policy initiatives. It is also true for the creation of central banks, human rights treaties, and the question of whether or not the District of Columbia should become a state. And it is true about environmental policy and the Affordable Care Act. Recognizing that these and many other policies and political arrangements have important implications for the prospects and pathways of change opens a new perspective on entrenchment as a pervasive feature of democratic politics. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 536

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s model that rationalizing ideologies persist through structural/physical entrenchment (central banks, treaties, statehood) rather than only through rhetorical justification — feeds institutional-persistence theory. — connects to: Scholarship fails to see functional entrenchment as equal in democratic stakes to formal entrenchment — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 26; Scholars treat legislative, electoral, and constitutional entrenchment as unrelated despite functional similarities — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 34; Electoral and legislative entrenchment form one larger insulating phenomenon — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 41 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Political entrenchment operates through informal and coercive means, not only formal legal rules #expands (0.82) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 48
• Political entrenchment means making political change more difficult than it otherwise would be #expands (0.78) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 47
• Entrenchment works by capturing politics’ basic ground rules. #expands (0.75) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 117