What can supercomputers tell us about the way that government operates, or in some cases doesn’t operate? Quite a bit, actually. In a new feature piece on the Texas Advanced Computing Center website, science writer Makeda Easter shares how one TACC researcher is using the center’s Stampede supercomputer to analyze the link between federal spending priorities and partisan conflict in Washington.
Like many of us, Eric Svensen, a researcher and lecturer with the Department of Government at TACC, has seen the level of vitriol and gridlock in Washington reach new heights in recent years. With sequesters, budget delays, a government shutdown and threats of others, productive legislation has been hamstrung. The partisan tension is undeniable, but what causes it? Many experts point to the so-called divided government effect, where the presidential party differs from one or both houses of Congress, but Svensen thought that this explanation did not full account for the rise in discord over the years.
“Even during the Nixon administration, where there was a Republican president and Democratic Congress and a major war, government passed a large number of landmark laws,” he stated.
Svensen theorized that divergent spending priorities and a shrinking discretionary pot were at the root of the growing discord. He devised a way to connect these data points using polarization scores drawn from a scaling application called DW-Nominate. DW-Nominate uses roll call voting to create ideology scores for legislators ranging from -1 for extremely liberal to +1 for extremely conservative. Zero would be a perfectly neutral score.
Writes Easter: “Svensen argues that the shrinking discretionary fund, due to programs like social security, welfare, and Medicaid, cause Republicans and Democrats to battle over a decreasing part of the discretionary spending pie. He’s also working to use the polarization data to monitor how ideology scores change, allowing him to see whether legislators become more or less conservative over time.”
His graph reflects how increased polarization tracks with discretionary spending since the post World War period.
Svensen is a big proponent of using supercomputing for research efforts in the social science — even among non-programmers. The initial plan was to run the codes on his laptop, but when the true scope of the project revealed itself, Svensen recalled the supercomputing resources that were available to him as TACC researcher. With the help of TACC Director of User Services, Chris Hempel, Svensen completed his dissertation “Reconceptualizing Divided Government” in 2014.
“TACC is one of the most valuable resources that people of the university should be more aware of,” Svensen shared. “In the social sciences, it seems like we’ve exhausted everything in small data. With big data and data analytics, you need high processing power from supercomputers, people just need to figure out how to use it.”