Affordable Housing Institute : US

Fluids dynamists speak of two kinds of liquid flow over surfaces and obstacles:

 

• Laminar.  Fluids move smoothly in sweeping curves.
• Turbulent.  Fluids are choppy, broken into eddies that change chaotically.

 

Both laminar and turbulent flow

 

Though the physics of flow are complex, they have a huge influence on the flight of golf balls and the dancing of knuckle balls. 

 

“What the heck does this have to do with affordable housing?”

 

In political calculus, legislative environments may be considered either laminar or turbulent depending on whether the executive and legislative are in harmony or at loggerheads.

 

 

Fluidity states vary by democratic models.  Lamina and turbulence are not just temporary states (in the algorithmic, Turing Machine sense, not political sense), they are also byproducts of the governance and election structure. 

 

Turing Machine states

 

In the British parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is elected by the members of parliament.  In American presidential systems, the executive is elected directly.  It should be no surprise, therefore, that the British model is far more conducive to laminar environments than the American, where the directly elected executive is frequently at odds with one or both Houses of Congress.   

 

Lamina and turbulence apply at all levels of government.  My home town of Cambridge uses an insanely complex system (check out the tiny type!) that, aside from requiring three days to count (I kid you not, as Jack Parr used to say), is all but guaranteed to produce a perpetually turbulent environment, so much so that all real power has been devolved to a (highly competent) city manager, who attends city council meetings now and then to be hectored by city councilors who are kept safely away from any actual responsibility, lest they hurt themselves and the city.

 

Political fluid dynamics and housing program design.  All this is important for a policy and program-design advocate doing housing program design, because:

 

 

 

When legislators trust the executive’s philosophy and its competence, they refrain from writing overly specific legislation; instead they specify resources and outcomes, so the government factory turns out higher-quality products.  (You may not like what it’s manufacturing, but the objects will be well-tooled.)

 

Quite the reverse arises in turbulent political environments.  Now the legislators fear the executive, and vice versa, so everyone micromanages the legislation.  Not only does this put amateurs in the kitchen instead of chefs, the greater specificity violates the rational four-level hierarchy of program definition.  This usurps the traditional role of competence, and the resulting statute is highly likely to be contradictory, impractical, and stillborn.

 

Fluidity, viscosity, and program design.  Beyond the laminar/ turbulence distinction, both fluid and political dynamics also have viscosity, the fluid’s resistance to the movement of objects (like legislation!). 

 

“We’re giving your proposal serious consideration.”

 

Proportional representation, whatever its other merits, usually produces very high viscosity legislative environments as each small party feels a need to defend its own interests — in other words, to impose parochial obstacles on the otherwise free flow of grand conceptions.

 

“You just design that program around our small concerns.”

 

Low-viscosity environments are most conducive to big moves.  Great examples are the first hundred days of new Presidents who swept into office on a broad mandate of change: Ronald Reagan’s first term, or Franklin Roosevelt’s:

 

Roosevelt first called Congress to meet in a special session on March 9; the second declared a four-day bank holiday to stabilize the economy while the administration developed legislation to address the banking crisis.

 

Originally, Roosevelt had planned to pass the banking legislation and allow Congress to adjourn. But after observing the speed and ease with which the legislature acquiesced, the president decided to seize on the momentum provided by the banking victory and use it to drive through the next parts of his New Deal.  [Note political acumen, to which we'll return below. -- Ed.] After being approached by several cabinet members regarding agriculture and the government economy, Roosevelt decided to address farming and government spending and attack prohibition. And so the Hundred Days began.

 

(In Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministership had such windows.) 

 

High-viscosity environments are defensive, and arise when the executive is weakened (lame duck)

 

“I squandered all my political capital right over there.”

 

or redolent of the persistent whiff of scandal.

 

   

What do these three Presidents have in common?  Long stretches of high-viscosity turbulent political environments.

 

Laminar environments always give way to turbulent ones.  Otherwise known as the ’second-term blues,‘ in politics the heady success of laminar achievement leaves its proponents standing like those who rushed through a revolving door, breathless on the sidewalk, wondering what to do for an encore even as new priorities spin through the door behind them and crash into their rears.

 

This means that if you want to enact major program reform, jump on the laminar low-viscosity environment, because it will change all too quickly.

 

Mark Twain, contemplating Cambridge politics

 

“If you don’t like the political weather, wait a minute.”

 – Attributed to Mark Twain, describing Boston politics.

 

Showing his keen sense of political vaporware ….

 

Executive moves betray real priorities.  No one who ascends to the apex of a democracy can be ignorant of the fickle fluidity of political environments.  Because fluidity and viscosity are always in flux, a wise executive knows it must capitalize on the all-too-rare ideal situation of low-viscosity lamina.

 

 

For US affordable housing advocates, for instance, our battle for resources was lost not in 2005 or 2004, but in 2002, when the Administration pushed through several hundred billion dollars’ worth of incentives, few if any of which touched housing.

 

“I’m just not that into you.”

 

Viscosity is tied to complacency.  When legislators are complacent, they are cautious.  Political courage is born of political desperation, which is why catastrophe is a fundamental precondition of reform.

 

It’s no coincidence that the world’s most successful political exercise — the U. S. Constitution — emerged from what might be considered the ultimate laminar, low-viscosity environment — a new nation, in a major political crisis, with a small coterie of like-minded and socio-economically similar participants.

 

And the worst, in political-environmental terms?  The United Nations.  High viscosity, perpetual turbulence, neither elections nor accountability. 

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