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The American political climate has become increasingly polarized since the 1970s. Analysis by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal shows that voting patterns within Congress have become increasingly divided along party lines, with fewer and fewer moderates. A major cause of polarization appears to be the geographic sorting of voters: Communities and regions of the country have become more politically and ideologically homogeneous, resulting in constituencies in congressional districts and in states that are more strongly conservative or liberal. Whatever its causes, the effects of increased polarization on political discourse and policymaking are clear: There is less room for deliberation between the two parties, and public policy decisionmaking is increasingly driven more by ideology than by objective analysis of which policies, programs, practices, and processes will produce the desired outcomes at the lowest cost. The mission of the RAND Corporation is to provide just this sort of objective analysis, and today's heated political environment presents a serious challenge to this mission. To help make sure that RAND's objective, nonpartisan research influences the policy debate, RAND must work to identify potentially controversial findings and take steps to ensure that they are not misinterpreted or distorted.

Voting --- Elections --- Party affiliation --- Polarization (Social sciences) --- History --- Rand Corporation. --- United States --- Politics and government

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This report documents the proceedings of a Ford Foundation-sponsored workshop on NATO held in RAND's Washington office, June 10-11, 1981. The workshop brought together a small cross-section of the official and nonofficial strategic community on the two sides of the Atlantic for a candid exchange of views on the problems likely to face the alliance during the coming four years. Although the participants reflected a wide range of views, with divergences within and among individual nationalities, they agreed more than they disagreed. With but a few exceptions, Europeans and Americans alike advocated incremental policies to deal with the alliance's continuing basic problems of security, deterrence, and detente. Although the outcome may have been foreordained by the composition of the group, no one saw the need for or advocated a drastic change in the fundamentals of postwar Western security arrangements.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization.