American Politics Feels Weird Because it’s Jammed Between Two States – The Old and The Unknown

Right now, I’m a bit obsessed with a concept from physics: Metastability. I think it usefully describes our current politics — why everything feels so weird right now, why things can’t go on like they are forever, but why they might go on as they are longer than we might think.  

In physics, a metastable (as in meta-stable) state describes a system in an odd state, odd because it is really between two states.  It describes, for example, the state of “supercooled water” (yes, that is a real thing) in which H₂O remains in a liquid state despite a temperature of below freezing

I confess, I don’t entirely understand the atomic-level physics of it. But it is possible under certain conditions. And it can exist for longer than you might think, as long as the perfect conditions are maintained. But, when the state breaks, it breaks suddenly and dramatically. A simple disturbance of the supercooled water turns an entire bottle of it into ice at once.

So, is American politics in a metastable state? I think it is. It feels like things can’t really keep going on like this, can they? We can’t really be sliding into another knife’s edge Biden-Trump rematch, can we? Surely something has to change, right? Yet, at the individual level, we are acting to reinforce more-of-the-same because any individual deviation feels too unpredictable or potentially damaging. Stay in line, we are told. 

In a previous post, I explored this weird tension in American politics. Seeming stability and calcification at the surface in the super-consistent election-to-election partisan balance, rumbling discontent below the surface in the tensions and fights within the parties. Or put another way, behavior and attitudes seem at odds. Voting behaviors are remaining stable, but voter attitudes are shifting and fracturing. It seems… unstable? 

Yet the idea of metastability suggests that arrangements that appear unstable can go on like this — on the edge of chaos – for quite a bit. They can go on because individual actors (or atoms, in supercooled water), are behaving based on a few simple rules and patterns that keep the system in its previous state. 

But the key thing about a metastable state is that it depends on a very specific pattern of behaviors and interactions. If a small but critical group of actors deviate from this pattern, it can have dramatic reverberations throughout the entire system.

Explaining metastability with highway traffic

Highway traffic offers a good way into understanding this idea of metastability, and some useful metaphors for explaining our politics. 

Highway traffic is a weird, complex system. It can suddenly go from a free-flowing state to a jam just because one person hit the brake a little too hard. There’s a whole science of “phantom jams.” It’s called “jamology.” (Again, not making this up)

This science tells us there is a rough pattern to the system of highway traffic. Highways have a kind of “carrying capacity.” That is, on average, a given strip of highway road can handle a certain number of vehicles at a time, depending on the number of lanes, the road surface, the weather conditions, etc. 

If the number of vehicles is less than the “carrying capacity,” traffic should usually be in a state of “free flow” — that is, cars and trucks can move as they like. They can speed up or slow down, change lanes, get on the highway, or get off the highway. No traffic jam will emerge. In this sense, the system of highway traffic is resilient when there is enough room on the highway for cars to move around more freely. 

But as the number of cars passing a given strip at a time, the highway hits its carrying capacity. In simple terms, the highway gets more crowded. And when the highway gets more crowded, small shifts by individual drivers have bigger reverberations. This is how “phantom jams” emerge. One person brakes. The driver behind brakes a little harder. The driver behind that driver brakes a little harder. And eventually, a driver brakes to a stop.

However, the exact carrying capacity at which a free-flowing highway turns into a jam depends on the behavior of individual drivers. If all the drivers are in sync with each other, moving at the same constant high speed, and staying in their lanes, the highway can go beyond its expected carrying capacity. This is a metastable state. 

But this state is just one lane shift away or tap on the brakes from turning into a sudden traffic jam. A car switches lanes. The car behind brakes. A cascade of braking follows, each driver over-compensates just a bit. And bam: the fast synchronized flow flips into a major jam, and the jam clogs traffic for hours. Eventually, it clears, when the number of cars on the highway reduces significantly. 

Some traffic jams, of course, are caused by accidents. Accidents are mostly caused by driver error, and so a significant driver error in a metastable traffic flow will have more catastrophic effects. Bad driving conditions make driver error more likely, so a sudden storm in a metastable state could make traffic more catastrophic as well.

But here’s the bottom line: An improbable, metastable state can go on for longer than you think. But the more improbable it becomes, the more a slight disturbance can have catastrophic results.

US politics as metastable highway traffic

So, is US politics in a metastable state? I’d say yes. Let’s see how far we can go down this road. 

US national politics is a two-lane highway. Each lane represents a political party. More and more drivers are unhappy with their lanes. But traffic is moving so fast and tight and recklessly that switching lanes feels dangerous. So everybody stays in their lanes and moves with the speed of traffic in their lane, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them. 

This dissatisfaction maps to the growing share of Americans who are dissatisfied with the state of politics and the parties. The within-lane stability corresponds to  the shrinking share of Americans who are open to changing parties. 

More people are unhappy. But nobody dares get out of line, for fear of what might happen if they shift lanes. Given the limited choices available, voters and politicians are behaving rationally. They have picked a side of the road, and whatever their dissatisfaction, they are sticking with their side because changing sides feels too dangerous. There is no middle. 

This metastable state exists because American politics lies uncomfortably and awkwardly stuck between two states. The old state of politics was more free-flowing. The party coalitions were looser, more overlapping, and there was more room to shift around. We used to have something more like a four party (four lane) system, with liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats in the center lanes.

Politics feels weird now because we’ve narrowed the highway, so the traffic that used to travel over four lanes has to go through just two lanes. Driving has gotten tenser and more crowded.  So now wow we’re between the old (the free-flowing state that made sense in the four-lane system) and the new (who knows? But when the weird current metastable state breaks down,  the crashing cascade of jam will probably be dramatic and sudden) 

How will phase change happen? What will provoke. Maybe it’s a future debt ceiling crisis. Or an impending government shutdown. Or a No Labels presidential challenge that throws an election to the House. Or a split within the Republican Party. Or a major natural disaster. Or a war with China. 

But at a general level: there is only so much dissatisfaction a political system can manage without allowing voters to feel as though they have meaningful choices. There is also only so much binary us-vs-them polarization that a political system can handle before elections turn to destabilizing violence and authoritarianism. At some point, that frustration and hyper-polarization upsets the delicate balance holding the current state and collapses into a destabilizing democracy jam.  In fact, this metaphor itself will break down if I push it too far — it has its own type of metastability. 

Clearing the traffic and un-mixing the jam: Some ideas

So how do we build a better, more functional, inclusive democracy highway? The most obvious solution would be to  widen the highway, and build more lanes. In this case the more lanes would be more political parties (natch) to allow for more free flow of political traffic. Obviously this is the one I would prefer. But that takes time. In the interim, we can widen the shoulder, to give drivers just a little more room, and maybe create a few more off-ramps.

Another productive solution might be to direct more traffic to smaller side roads, which could stand in for state and local politics, to help people move in the direction they want to go, but on a different road. Maybe we should all go a little more slowly and cautiously, and take our time. 

An undesirable might be to restrict traffic by putting in place tolls (making it harder for people to vote – one of Vivek Ramaswamy’s more outlandish ideas). Another undesirable solution might be akin to autonomous vehicles, which can perfectly adjust, thus allowing a lot more cars to drive on the highway. That is, get people out of politics altogether, and just run the country by algorithms – or technocrats. 

I understand that in a highway context, expanding the lanes will eventually only create more traffic, because more people will drive more. But if drivers are voters in this model, then, it seems to me that widening the metaphorical political highway here by adding more parties is a good thing. A wider highway will allow more voters to participate freely, and to change lanes as they desire. This means that if there is, for example, an accident or a slowdown in one lane, the entire system can better adjust. This makes the entire system more stable. 

Hopefully this concept of metastability proves useful. Here’s the simple state: If it feels like things can’t go on much longer like this, it turns out they can, at least for longer than you think. But not forever. At some point, a meta-stable state (which is actually not stable, but somehow outside of stability) shifts to an actually stable state. And when that shift comes, it will be more dramatic than anyone expects – and perhaps even more surprising than the lack of change currently. 

So, those of us who care about the future of our democracy should think hard about the eventual state we want to see. And we should start building towards it now, because it might be here any day now. Or in many years. Well, eventually.