While the left rejoices over the Democrats' election sweep and the right bows its head in frustration, have there been any real change in American policy?

Not really.

Although the Democrats have gained the House and Senate, and balanced the Bush administration's power, the two-party system in the United States inherently limits any substantial changes in policy when power changes hands.

As someone interested in economic development and poverty, I tend to analyze U.S. politics from an international policy perspective. When looking at U.S. administrations from this perspective, there is little difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Comparing the similarities between former President Clinton's administrations and the first and second administrations of current President Bush demonstrates the limited options in U.S. politics.

Most Democrats and Republicans, albeit to varying degrees, support classical (often called neoliberal) economic theory. This prevents a wide range of economic views from being represented in U.S. politics from the outset.

For example, Clinton and Bush passed almost identical free trade policies in the Americas. President Clinton passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, and President Bush passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) last year.

Both NAFTA and CAFTA are written in complex, almost illegible legal jargon that provides corporate loopholes, allows for environmental degradation and favors U.S. exporters.

Undoubtedly, there are legitimate reasons to support free trade. But if both parties support these agreements, the concerns of unions over job losses and environmentalism will not be included in these agreements.

These economic similarities apply to international politics as well. Almost every U.S. president has claimed to promote democracy and human rights while supporting dictators and allowing violence to continue.

Violence in Rwanda and the Sudan highlight this contradiction. During the genocide in Rwanda, in which almost 1,000,000 people were murdered by machete, Clinton decided to apologize after the violence had subsided instead of sending in support while it was ensuing.

Today, the genocide in the Sudan continues, yet the Bush administration sits idly by.

These political similarities can be understood analogously through the economic theory of duopoly, or a two-firm model. In duopoly there are two firms in an economy, and instead of producing differentiated products and selling to different consumers, they naturally tend to sell similar products in attempts to capture the whole market.

In the case of Democrats and Republicans, instead of differentiating their policies and appealing to the far left and right, they essentially market similar policies in attempts to capture the whole voting market.

But this analogy does not hold at its crux. In a duopoly, the only implication for consumers is less variety of goods to buy. In U.S. national politics, the implication is far greater. Because Democrats and Republicans have similar opinions, there is little substantive debate in U.S. politics, preventing the development of policies that support the broadest range of citizen needs.

Without the representation of a diverse range of opinions from every side of the political spectrum, U.S. politics will remain more or less as they are now. And if you haven't noticed yet, that is not a positive thing.

Columnist Brooke McKean: brookemckean@thedaily.washington.edu