Two-Party System in America: A Brief Primer

The Two-Party System in America Christopher Malone, Ph.D. Associate Dean, School of Natural and Social Sciences Lehman College History What’s in a Name? The Political Scientist Wilson Carey McWilliams once observed that “In the Constitution of the United States, political parties are like a scandal in polite society; they are alluded to but not discussed.”1 Indeed, unlike our national political institutions, the Constitution makes no mention of political parties – their creation, their structure, their powers or the limits on them. But the Framers were well aware of the existence of political parties and certainly sensitive to their dangers. James Madison wrote famously in Federalist #10 about the “mischiefs of faction,” and how a proliferation of prejudices and interests at the expense of the common good could inevitably rip a society apart.2 For Madison, parties enabled factions. Moreover, in his Farewell Address, President George Washington (who refused to become part of any political party) admonished: “Let me…warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally…[T]he common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”3 Party-in-government (elected officials)

Political Parties

Values, Ideas, Issues, beliefs National Government

President Congress

Courts

State Governments

Governor Legislature Courts

Party-in-electorate •  •  •  •  • 

Voters Interest groups SuperPacs Unions associations

Party organization

•  Staff •  Campaign organizations (RNC, DNC, RSCC, DSCC, DCCC, etc.)

City Government Mayor

City Council

V.O. Key’s tripartite model of political parties: party-inelectorate; party-in-government; party organization. Parties capture state power through elections at every level of government.

At the time of the nation’s founding, political parties were seen as divisive and destructive – conflict-ridden institutions to be restrained and even discouraged, according to Washington. Many today would say, similarly, that political parties are at best more concerned with their selfpreservation than the common good. Yet, somehow they have persisted, endured, and even thrived. Over time parties have become an indispensible aspect of the democratic processes of the United States, ensconced at every level of our federal system of government. In a word, they are here to stay – and the road to any political reforms of the electoral process must go

through them. Why? One answer lies in the very definition of a political party. According to the economist Anthony Downs, “a political party is a group of [individuals] seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election.”4 The simple fact is that political 1

Wilson Carey McWilliams, “Parties in Civic Associations,” in Party Renewal in America: Theory and Practice, ed. Gerald Pomper (New York: Praeger Press, 1980). 51. 2 James Madison, Federalist #10, http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm. Accessed July 25th, 2016. 3 “Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796,” Yale Law School Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp. Accessed July 25th, 2016. 4 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper Row, 1957), 25.

parties serve as a fundamental link between the “people” and their democratic-representative system. Parties not only organize voters in the electorate and office holders across political institutions; they also set the parameters (usually through laws) under which the very election of the latter takes place by the former. Why Only Two Parties? The United States is generally classified as a competitive two-party system. Of course there is no law or constitutional provision ordaining that we must have only two major political parties. Moreover, the American political landscape is populated with dozens of minor parties. Nonetheless, the hallmark of the American electoral scheme over two centuries has been a relatively stable, two-party system. The reason is deceptively simple. In the middle decades of the 20th century, the French Sociologist Maurice Duverger theorized that states with single-member districts (i.e., one unique winner) and plurality-rule elections (i.e., “first past the post” or the individual with the most votes wins) tend to institutionalize a two-party system.5 “Duverger’s Law,” as it is known, has provided convincing explanatory power for two reasons. First, in a winner-take all system individuals tend to engage in strategic voting for one of the two major party candidates because it ensures that their votes are not “wasted” on a candidate who has no chance of winning. Second, it incentivizes minor parties and candidates to fuse with one of the major parties in the hopes of becoming part of the “winning team,” thus sharing in the spoils of victory at the same time ensuring their relevance.6 This is not to say that there aren’t a significant number of voters who cast their votes for third party candidates each election cycle and feel strongly that these votes are not “wasted.” Neither does it suggest that there haven’t been successful third parties in U.S. history, or that third party candidates have not had an enormous impact on the political system. Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Teddy Roosevelt all spring to mind as significant presidential candidates representing third-party movements that affected the outcomes of presidential elections. What is clear, however, is that historically these third-party movements get subsumed into and co-opted by the two major parties.

5

Maurice Duverger, “Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State,” (London: Methuen; New York: Wiley, 1954). 6 https://www.projectrhea.org/rhea/index.php/Team1_MA279_fall2013. Accessed July 25th, 2016.

Current Issues The Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum Effect. An ongoing criticism of the two-party system is that voters do not get a robust and diverse set of candidates to choose from, thereby eliding certain issues from debate and discussion during elections. The logic of the winner-take-all electoral system thus forces the two parties (and their candidates) toward what has been called The Median Voter.7 In order to win elections, candidates and parties need to secure the most votes; in order to secure the most votes, candidates and parties must embrace the policies of the “majority” of voters that sit squarely in the political center. The Median Voter phenomenon explains why during presidential election cycles successful candidates in the primaries usually take positions more ideologically aligned with the “base” of their parties (more liberal on the Democratic side; more conservative on the The Median Voter Model. Republican side), only to move to the “center” in the general election in order to capture a larger swath of the electorate. When it comes, the “shift to the center” usually leaves the ideologically pure in both camps feeling somewhat betrayed. Proclamations that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two major party candidates abound, or that voters are inevitably left with a choice between the lesser of two evils.8 Candidates will reply pragmatically: if they lose the election, the “base” will get nothing at all for their ideological purity. It’s arguably a rational (if not altogether satisfying) response to an institutional problem the winner-take-all system presents: in order to be granted the opportunity to make policy, one has to engage in the dirty reality of politics. The Duopoly. A second and related criticism of the two-party system is that the winner-take-all system has left us with two parties that have a prohibitive stranglehold on entry into the “market” of politics. Nearly one hundred years ago economist Harold Hotelling provided the apt analogy: Hotelling asked readers to imagine a beach with only two ice cream sellers. If they're smart, they will set up right next to one another – probably right square in the middle of the beach – in order to be closest to at least half of the beach goers. As long as they are able to lock out any potential competition, the two ice cream sellers can collude to do whatever they want: raise their prices, lower quality, open late and close early…and generally set the all rules and policies that govern supply and demand. Beach goers are at their mercy as long as there 7

See for instance, Roger D. Congleton, “The Median Voter Model,” http://rdc1.net/forthcoming/medianvt.pdf. Accessed July 25th, 2016. 8 http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelmedved/2008/07/09/not_a_dimes_worth_of_difference. Accessed July 25th, 2016.

are no other beaches they can patronize.9 Critics of the two-party system cite a similar concern about a rigged system where both parties collude to make the rules of the game. Through drafting laws and policies governing issues like ballot access and subsidies for campaign funding, the duopoly has made “barriers to entry” so high that no realistic possibility for a viable and sustained third party exists. There is no other political “beach” the American voter can go to, and the prospects for a third or fourth or fifth ice cream seller to break up the Duopoly are bleak. Competitive Elections – Or Lack Therof. It is said that the best way to win an election is to not have an opponent. If you must have an opponent, make sure the election is as uncompetitive as possible. This presents a third criticism of the two-party system in the United States – namely, that it stymies competitive elections through various means. Campaign finance, which we discuss below, is one way that candidates and minor parties are prohibited from competing. Another is partisan redistricting, or what is known as gerrymandering. American democracy is premised on the idea that voters choose their elected officials. Gerrymandering employs the exact opposite logic – namely, that elected officials choose their voters. The boundaries for each political subdivision in the United States (except for states) must be redrawn every ten years after the Federal Census is taken. In most states, redistricting is a deeply political process involving members of the state legislatures and governors’ offices.10 The easiest way to ensure that incumbents and their respective political parties remain in power is to draw political boundaries favorable to them. As Fair Vote’s Executive Director Rob Richie puts it, “partisanship is the dominant factor in determining election outcomes.”11 “Safe seats” on either side of the aisle serve to entrench the two parties in power without any real fear of competition. All is Not Lost Despite these pointed criticisms of the two-party system in the United States, there are those who believe that political parties in general and the two-party system in particular have, on the whole, served American Democracy well. Despite their flaws, political parties are the only institutional means to mobilize 9

Harold Hotelling, "Stability in Competition", Economic Journal 41: 41-57 (1929). Some states have redistricting commissions that redraw the political boundaries. Some of these are completely “non-partisan,” while others are appointed by the legislatures or serve primarily in an advisory/back-up role. See for instance, http://www.ncsl.org/research/redistricting/2009-redistrictingcommissions-table.aspx. Accessed July 25th, 2016. 11 https://www.thenation.com/article/our-elections-really-are-rigged-gerrymandering-and-districtingth abuses/. Accessed July 25 , 2016. 10

the electorate on a mass scale, connect elected officials to the public, and organize the institutions of government in a fractured federal system such as ours. The noted political party scholar E.E. Schattschneier goes further: “The parties, in fact, have played a major role as makers of democratic government… Political parties created democracy, and… modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties.”12 Political Parties are here to stay. As long as the United States has a winner-take-all, first-pastthe-post election system, it is also likely that our two-party system will remain. The other issues discussed here – campaign finance, voter access, and eligibility – are all at the “mercy” of our two-party system. Reform of those issues begins and ends with a stable, healthy, and responsive two-party system.

12

E.E. SchattSchneider, Party Government, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rinehart and Company, 1942). 1.