Statutory change often needs functional supermajorities despite majority-vote rhetoric

Evidence

For example, when constitutional law in the United States is described as entrenched, reference is typically made to the “supermajorities” needed to effect constitutional change, in contrast to the “majorities” needed to enact a statute. This is obviously a highly stylized, even formalistic, vision of how actual lawmaking processes operate. With respect to statutes, we might push past the caricature of “majority rule” to notice, for example, the different majorities implicated by electing senators, representatives, and the President, and the likely supermajorities necessary to assemble a prevailing legislative coalition. Moreover, the procedural barriers to statutory enactment would be only part of a functional assessment of political difficulty, which would depend on many other variables—the formation and alignment of coalitions, the ability of interest groups to block action, internal legislative procedures and agendasetting power, and much else. For present purposes, however, the important thing to see is that the baseline being used to define entrenchment is the (more or less hypothetical) alternative of effecting political change through some process that (better) tracks the preferences of democratic majorities or the median voter. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s framework: the ‘durability’ of an embedded ideology depends partly on how high the procedural bar to dislodge it actually is — a formal supermajority requirement versus functional coalitional friction are different stickiness sources. Connects to Krehbiel pivot politics / Tsebelis veto players. — connects to: Structural constitutional rules resist change despite eroding functional justification; Majority rule has no automatic superiority over supermajority rules in constitutional theory — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 16; Constitutional designers protect property from majority rule using supermajorities and courts — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 186 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Constitutional designers protect property from majority rule using supermajorities and courts #exemplifies (0.85) — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 186
• Substantive policy choices produce entrenchment just as formal rule changes do #expands (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 2
• Fragmented U.S. lawmaking institutions structurally favor slow incremental change over sweeping reform #expands (0.84) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 170
• Majority rule has no automatic superiority over supermajority rules in constitutional theory #expands (0.82) — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 16
• Law changes by layered accretion rather than revolutionary overhaul. #expands (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 75
• Structural constitutional rules resist change despite eroding functional justification #complicates (0.78)
• Substantive policy entrenchment outlasts and outperforms partisan entrenchment in durability. #corroborates (0.72) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 166