Is Democracy Here for the Party?
Part 1: Should We Hate the Partisan Player or the Political Game?
As a professor of political science, I would regularly hear from students that the problem with the American political system is its two-party system. Most of the arguments included some reasonable claims like the parties don’t represent all Americans, parties are controlled by out of touch elites, elected officials who belong to parties are pawns of a corrupted system, etc. And to a degree, these and other complaints about the two-party system in America have some merit. The weakness of this line of thinking is that it assumes a conclusion, that the two-party system is the problem, without actually proving it or weighing the current system against its alternatives. In this post, I will explore whether or not the two-party system is the problem itself or merely the symptom of a larger malady.
To start, why does America have two major political parties and other countries like the UK, Denmark, and Chile have multiple competitive parties? In the 1950s, Duverger came up with what became known as “Duverger’s Law,” which states that winner-take-all systems (like America) will favor two-party domination, while proportional systems will tend towards multiple parties. In other words, because parties that do not get a majority of the vote in proportional systems can still get representation (proportional to their vote share, as the system’s name indicates), they don’t have an incentive to create a larger party. These conditions make several smaller parties competitive. In winner-take-all systems, as its name suggests, there is only one winner so minority parties have an incentive to come together and create a party that can compete with the majority party and win. This results in two “big tent” parties competing for a majority of the votes.
So, which system is better? Well, it depends. In proportional systems voters choose party platforms instead of candidates, have more choices, and are more likely to have their specific political positions represented in government. These systems, however, still rely on building majority coalitions after elections, which leads to more instability that the American system. Furthermore, while there is more representation of minority positions, having a seat at the table is not the same as getting policies passed. Winner-take-all systems engage in coalition building before elections, tend to focus more on candidates than party platforms, and are usually more stable systems.
All of this to say that if we want a robust, multi-party system in America, we would have to reform the very structure of our elections and legislative institutions and take on a whole different set of challenges associated with a proportional system.
Part of the problem that people tend to attribute to the two-party system is that voters tend to have an inaccurate, and often contradictory, view of Congress. For example, the same people who say that they want Congress to be productive, solve problems, and compromise are usually the same people who don’t want politicians to compromise on the issues that matter the most to them. And when politicians do compromise, voters will likely punish those turncoats by primarying them out of office. What is more, the incentive for one party not to compromise so that its competitor with a majority of congressional seats will fail is not unique to a two-party system.
The American public also believes that policymaking should be simple. If most of us want educational reform, a clean environment, and better roads, that should be a pretty easy thing for Congress to fix. The problem is that even when most of us share outcome preferences, or the end goal of a policy or program, there is usually quite a bit of division when it comes to our policy preferences, the specific policies implemented to arrive at a particular end. For example, we all want better schools, and some people think increased spending on education is the key. Others want school vouchers, some want to change testing and graduation standards, and other people want more teched out classrooms. To complicate the matter, those who call for school vouchers are usually opposed to more spending, and on it goes.
Add to this our system’s status quo bias (the system is somewhat resistant to change) and the system’s multiple veto points (bills can fail at numerous points in the lawmaking process), and the policymaking process is usually painfully slow. The founders designed our system this way so change would be deliberative and require the support of clear majorities.
Finally, there are externalities, or unintended consequences, that ripple out from policies that even policy experts cannot fully predict or even understand. And the public tends not to think about these externalities. For instance, a majority of Americans support rounds of stimulus checks during the pandemic, but how many of them know that those checks require printing more money, which makes all of our money worth less?
I also know that Americans across the political spectrum complain about the obscene amount of money in politics. And I agree that it is ridiculous. That being said, since political expression requires money to disseminate it (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976), taking all money out of elections would violate the 1st Amendment. And there are extensive ethics guidelines that are intended to prevent corruption; I’ve personally been instructed on these guidelines as a congressional intern. One thing we tend to forget is that candidates and politicians spend a majority of this money on messaging, media, and electorate engagement. How much of this would be necessary if American voters were more active, sought out information on candidates and relevant issues themselves, and behaved like educated, responsible citizens?
All of this is not to say that there aren’t problems with the two-party system. Our system tends to focus on the policies that matter the most to swing state voters and voters who are not solidly captured by one major party. The two parties are usually less willing to come up with creative solutions; they tend to wait and see how minor parties with new ideas fair and then co-opt successful policies, which is usually the end of those minor parties. And depending on how you define representation, there are ways in which the two-party system is less representative.
Even so, problems like elitism, corruption, and gridlock are not unique to, nor are they caused by, the two-party system in American politics. I would say that our problems with democracy are less a cause of the party system structure itself and are more a result of partisan politicians. So, I think it’s appropriate to hate the partisan player more than the political game.
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