Is the American two party system too bi-polar to meet America’s needs?

Posted on 09 August 2009

The American political party system when compared to that of other democracies around the world there are two striking diferences; first in the US the two dominant parties, Democrat and Republican offer the only real chance to govern, in other democracies multiple parties share governance, the second difference is that relative to parties in many other democracies, America’s two dominant parties are weak.

On almost every issue the pro and con arguments militate toward the polemic extremes of one ideology or another, a good example being with healthcare reform this week – Democrat’s bill proposed long-term care and advanced health planning so people could be sure to understand things like advance directives, healthcare proxies and DNR instructions. The Republican camp immediately started to liken it to putting elderly citizens and disabled children before a “death” panel to see if they were worth allowing to live …. how can we get anywhere like this!

I wrote on that issue yesterday to find that Ms. Palin’s statements were in the worlds of a fact checking organization “pants on fire” wrong.

The U.S. has two dominant parties the other parties in contrast to their counterparts in other democracies are unable to place candidates in national office.

In the U.S. there exist numerous other parties, the most prominent of which are the Reform party, the Libertarian party, and the Green Party – but these other parties have almost no chance whatsoever to place candidates in national office and with regard to presidential elections their ability to produce a candidate capable of winning the U.S. presidential election is non-existent.

In countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany the situation is fundamentally different. While the smaller parties in other countries are like those in the U.S. unlikely to win the general election, because of the parliamentary system they are still able to win legislative seats and actually govern. In England as of July 24th 2009 this was the composition of the British House of Commons by party:

In Germany, for example, the German Green Party holds around seven and a half percent of the lower house seats in the German Parliament (Bundestag) and in a manner we can barely even imagine in the U.S. they also control the Environmental and Foreign Policy as a result of their alliance with the dominant governing party – the Social Democrats. The American Green Party holds no seats in the US Congress and no cabinet or departmental positions. The same could be said of the other two large third parties in the US the Libertarian Party and the Reform Party – they are completely unrepresented in Congress and on the Cabinet.

Relative to European Parties, America’s Two Big Parties are Weak. American political parties are weak in the following senses:

There is weak voter identification with party’s in the US. Party loyalty is much weaker than in Europe. Moreover, in the US Congress, one occasionally finds Congressmen who shift party identification themselves. That would never happen in Europe.
American political parties have a weaker sense of ideological coherence & consistency. By that I mean that they attempt to accommodate a much broader range of views and the necessity to find common ground waters down the ideological coherence of the party. Moreover, American Political Parties are more likely to switch their views than European parties. For example, the American Democratic and Republican parties totally switched their positions on the importance (or relative non-importance) of paying down the national debt rapidly as a high priority item. In the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – Democrats were arguing that it was not that important to pay down the national debt and Republicans were calling for paying in down at a faster rate. However, in the last Presidential Election, Al Gore argued for paying down the national debt at a much faster rate while George W. Bush put a much higher priority on a tax cut.
The American Political Party Organizations are fragmented into only loosely-allied party groups with their own fiefdoms: One of the fundamental divisions is between the national and state (and often county) party HQs which often have competing agendas. Secondly, during Election years there is often competition between the individual campaign HQs v. the national and state Party HQs.
In American Political Parties, the leadership of those parties does not select who their party’s candidates. As a result, candidates can get elected who are not favored by the party leadership. This happened in the Democratic Party in the early 70’s when George McGovern won the nomination – and was subsequently trounced by Richard Nixon in one of the largest landslides in American Presidential History. In the last election, the Republican Party Leadership had strong reservations about John McCain’s candidacy. While McCain ultimately did not win, he won enough states to give the Republican leadership a scare… That would never happen in European Democracies.
Finally, there is little party discipline; the Democratic and Republican Party Leadership in Congress has much less leverage over the members of their respective parties in Congress than their counterparts do in Europe.

Explaining Lack of Viable Third Parties + Existence of "Weak" Parties in US

A variety of different explanations have been offered to explain the lack of viable third parties in the US and the fact that the two viable parties we do have are weak. These explanations are not mutually-exclusive; all of them could play in. However, it is probable that the last two reasons are the most important.

Sociological/Cultural Explanation of Two Parties: We might have only two viable parties because, relative to European societies, American Public Opinion is More Centrist/Less Polarized than Public Opinion in Other Democracies. Perhaps this may be due to the fact that we do not have a pronounced Class System and/or history of Feudalism and class revolutions. But since American public opinion tends to concentrate heavily in the middle – rather than spread out across the political spectrum as European democracies are more inclined to do – this fight for the middle of the spectrum itself reduces the probability that more than two parties can be viable.

Historical Accident & Inertia as Explanation of Two Parties: While the framers of our political system – did not want or anticipate the emergence of political parties in the US; almost immediately two political factions emerged (Federalists and Anti-Federalists) in the debate of the ratification of the Constitution. These two factions coalesced into our first two political parties. Once in place, the system (esp. Congress) began to adjust its organizational norms to accommodate these two parties – and from then on – simple political inertia kept the two party bias in place.

Political Bias As Explanation of Two Parties: Rules are never neutral. Politicians write the rules to serve their own interests. And if individual politicians do so, so do political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties set a number of rules at their state and national legislatures that intentionally stack the deck against the emergence of third parties. They are reinforced in this effort by the media and the US educational system.

The state legislatures (controlled by Democrats and Republicans) set rules for getting candidates on their ballots in the general elections. Of course the candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties are automatically on the ballot – not so the third party candidates – who must "qualify" to get on the ballot. These rule may include a number of signatures or amount of money which must be amassed by a particular date to qualify. The higher the Democratic and Republican state legislatures set the bar, the more difficult it is for third party candidates to get on the ballot.
State legislatures (controlled by Democrats and Republicans) control redistricting of Congressional districts following a census. Every ten years, the Congressional Districts to the US House of Representatives must be redrawn. The two parties will vie with one another to draw the districts in such a fashion that will benefit their respective parties but they share one thing in common: they don’t want any districts favorable to third party candidates. So it is difficult for third party candidates to win Congressional office. Without a Congressional office and the national recognition and media attention that goes with it, it is difficult to garner the necessary name recognition to run later as President.
There is a vicious cycle on campaign contributions that works against third parties. Public funding for the two major parties is automatic for the Presidential races (if they wish to accept the restrictions) third parties must "earn" it. The body that decides when third parties get money – and how much is called the FEC - like the state legislatures, is made up exclusively of Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps even more importantly, it is difficult for third parties to gather private contributions from interest groups because there is little general perception if probability of success. Consequently, fund-raising for third parties thus turns into a negative self-fulfilling prophesy. Why give money if they have no chance of winning? And without the campaign contributions, they don’t have a realistic chance to win.
The media and Educational System tends to reinforce the misperception that there are only two parties.. There is a media familiarity with, and media connections to, Democrat and Republican parties; third parties tend not to have these connections. The Democrat and Republican candidates are automatically invited to nationally televised Presidential debates. Sometimes one additional party candidate is invited, but usually only if both of the major parties agree, and only then when the candidate – on their own – has attained a fair degree of national prominence (usually this requires that they are wealthy like Perot).

Structural-Institutional Explanations of Why we have Two, Weak Parties:

The US Constitution – specifically the winner-take-all feature of the electoral college militates against third parties unless they are concentrated with a majority in populous states. While Perot won 19% of the national popular vote; the national popular vote has no direct effect on who becomes President. What determines who becomes President (as we found out in the last election) is the Electoral College. Perot got ZERO electoral votes because he did not win a single state’s popular vote.
Single Most Important Factor: The Fact that we have a Presidential system of Government with Single Member (Congressional) Districts (SMDs); we do not have Parliamentary/Proportional Representation System: The way that we have structured the relationship of our legislative and executive branches of government and the way we elect people to the legislature both work against third parties. We have a Presidential system with single member districts rather than a Parliamentary System with proportional representation. In a Presidential system there is a strong separation of powers. There are separate votes for the President and the Congress while in a Parliamentary system there is little or no separation of powers, the party (or coalition of parties) that wins the majority of seats in the Legislature gets to send the leader of the majority party to be the Prime Minister (Chief Executive). We will discuss the implications of this distinction in more detail in subsequent chapters, the salient point now is that in it is far more likely that in a Parliamentary system that at least some representatives of third parties will get a seat in the legislature. This is especially true for those parliamentary systems based on pure proportional representation rather than single-member districts such as we are. In our system, one person represents a particular state or district. So you do not have a national vote for the legislature you have a series of district or state-wide votes. Since only one person can win in a SMD race, and the party that nominates that candidate wins, there is a tendency for parties to coalesce into two large parties. In contrast, in a proportional representation system, the vote is national and not by region. Moreover, in a pure proportional representation system one does not vote for individuals – but for a political party. When the seats are allocated proportionately, the percentage of seats that a particular political party gets in the legislature should parallel as close as possible the percentage of votes that party received. So if the "Beer Drinkers Party" (a real party in Germany!) were to win 10% of the national vote – they would get 10% of the seats in the legislature. Hypothetically, if there were 100 seats, the Beer-Drinkers would have ten Beer-Drinker party members in that legislature. Had the Beer Drinkers won 51% (or more) of the national vote they would not only have 51 seats in the 100 seat Parliament AND the leader of the Beer Drinkers Party would become the Chief Executive (our President). Consequently, in most parliamentary system the leader of all but the very smallest minority parties would serve in their legislature. Imagine that we had had a Parliamentary/Proportional representation system when H. Ross Perot ran in 1992. Ross Perot got 19% of the vote of the general Presidential election but neither Perot nor any member of his party went to the US Congress. In our hypothetical example, Perot would get 19 seats out of the 100 possible seats in a Parliamentary system. If we had a parliamentary/proportional representation system in the US instead, H. Ross Perot and approx. of 109 of his followers would have held (19%) or approximately 110 of the current 535 seats in Congress. That is a non-trivial position of power to influence policy and continue to draw national attention to the positions of the Perot’s Reform Party – and thus enhance their chances to capture a majority of the seats in the next election. Instead, Perot spent countless millions of dollars, won the support of 19% of the American electorate, and had virtually nothing to show for it – not a single member of the Reform party went to Congress. With no tangible political reward to show for their efforts, is not a surprise then that support for the Reform party has dropped precipitously from that 19% high in 1992 to around 1-2% in the last election.
The use of Primaries During Nomination Phase Weakens Parties. We will explain primaries in detail in next lecture, for now, it is sufficient to understand that primaries are the way that most Political Candidates (Presidential, Congressional, Governors, etc) are selected in the US. The use of primaries to select candidates – weakens the power of our political parties. This is the case because in a primary system, the national party leadership does not control who gets to run – they local people voting in that primary do. So long as you win locally, you win the party’s nomination. In our system, you can even vote against your national party leadership and get reelected so long as you keep the local people happy. This makes control by the national party weak. Contrast this with parliamentary systems where the national leadership gets to decide who will run. In most parliamentary systems, the leadership of the national parties creates what is called a party list. Imagine a congress/parliament with 100 seats. If that was the case, the national parties would create a list would be numbered 1-100. If a member of the party in the Parliament last time did not vote with the Party – he/she would be demoted to very low numbers on the party list – essentially obviating any chance they have of getting into Parliament. This tends to produce strong party discipline. Thus the power of political parties in our modern system is weakened by the primaries.

The following represent just those American Political Parties that have actually placed candidates – there are many more and we need to hear their ideas and benefit from their differing points of view and thinking.