Rejecting Compromise

de Sarah E. Anderson, Daniel Butler, Laurel Harbridge-Yong

"Congress has failed to make even incremental progress on a range of pressing problems in recent decades (Binder 2014), and many Americans are frustrated by the gridlock (Newport and Saad 2016). Scholars attribute gridlock to partisan polarization, which has made it harder for legislators to find common policy ground (Binder 2014; McCarty et al. 2006; Mann and Ornstein 2012; Shor and McCarty 2011). But even on issues where agreement is possible, legislators may reject compromise proposals that move policy only partway toward their preferred outcome. Voters recognize that this type of behavior contributes to gridlock. In a 2013 Pew survey, for example, 36 percent of Americans thought that the main reason for inaction in Congress was that "a few members who refuse to compromise keep things from getting done" (Pew 2013)"--