Seemingly substantive policy domains conceal underlying partisan self-entrenchment battles.
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. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 536
Categorization
- QUESTION: If nearly every mainstream policy arena doubles as a self-entrenchment battleground, what distinguishes an entrenchment scheme from ordinary partisan policy—or is the distinction dissolved entirely?
- XREF: connects to: Political actors route around legal bans through substitute channels, not direct violation. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 530; Local officials can engineer their electorate with policy comfort and discomfort. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 281; Some policies are self-consciously designed to entrench themselves and their creators. (+13 more)
Broader Connections
- Apparent conservative ideological contradictions are strategically coherent
#expands(0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1693 - Systemic harms persist when beneficiaries dominate the policy audience
#complicates(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 361 - Dead-hand control of the past pathologies applies equally to party and policy entrenchment
#expands(0.72) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 171