Political entrenchment is coextensive with history’s influence if defined by dead-hand sway

Evidence

If the salient feature of entrenchment is that past political decisions continue to hold sway over the present, then entrenchment is a vastly broader category than is commonly perceived. To the extent history matters—which is to say, to a virtually unlimited extent—present political decisions will be shaped and constrained by prior choices. Ongoing rule by the dead hand of the past is a ubiquitous and unavoidable feature of temporally extended democracy. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 502

Categorization

• QUESTION: Flags the central boundary problem the reader is wrestling with: what distinguishes entrenchment-as-harm from ordinary historical path-dependence?
• XREF: connects to: No existing framework bounds the entrenchment category once formality is dropped — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 503; Political entrenchment means making political change more difficult than it otherwise would be — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 47; Dead-hand control of the past pathologies applies equally to party and policy entrenchment — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 171 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Stabilized politics make direct legacy influence fade into structure #corroborates (0.90) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 135
• A history’s chosen beginning and ending points encode political judgments into its form. #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 527