Judging partisan entrenchment depends entirely on which baseline is chosen

Evidence

As we have seen, it is not even clear whether—or when—the status quo ante should be the dispositive baseline for measuring entrenchment. If we looked instead to majoritarian preferences, that might lead to a different view of partisan entrenchment. Returning to the labor law example, suppose a prounion policy shift has the effect of bringing previously disfranchised voters to the polls and thereby pulling partisan and policy support closer to majoritarian political preferences. Now a prior enactment diagnosis of entrenchment competes with a majoritarian baseline diagnosis of dis-entrenchment. A court called upon to police labor law for partisan entrenchment might well wonder what to do. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 420

Categorization

• XREF: This baseline-contest problem maps onto the reader’s own question about ideology stickiness — whether a durable ideology reflects genuine majoritarian will or ‘artificial’ impediments is structurally parallel to the entrenchment-vs-responsiveness distinction here. — connects to: Substantive policy entrenchment outlasts and outperforms partisan entrenchment in durability. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 166; Labor law rules function as tools for partisan entrenchment — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 241; Entrenchment analysis must bracket preference formation and judge only barriers to present majority will — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 57 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The disenfranchisement-empowering-pro-union-voters example is a genuinely interesting test case for when ‘entrenchment’ and ‘democratic responsiveness’ collapse into each other.

Broader Connections

• Entrenchment analysis must bracket preference formation and judge only barriers to present majority will #qualifies (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 57
• Choosing a starting point can bias history without any falsehood #exemplifies (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1838