A Dangerous Monopoly: Why We Should Reform the Two-Party System
A Dangerous Monopoly: Why We Should Reform the Two-Party System
By: Marco Dorazio
A two-party system relies on the Downsian theory of convergence on the median. For readers who do not know, Downsian theory is a political science theory created by American economist Anthony Downs. He presupposes three major concepts. One: that voters are rational and two: parties will act rationally. And three, that parties will offer policies similar to one another to try and maximize their appeal to the general public. But, as I will discuss and hopefully you’ve noticed, in our current government, parties do the exact opposite. Parties often attempt to differentiate themselves and create antithetical policies and agendas that categorically oppose the other party. We have lost the overlap of moderation between the parties and it doesn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon.
So how do we fix this? In order to address this issue and hopefully dissolve or significantly reform the two-party system, a number of solutions have been proposed by experts across the country. The solutions that will be explained in this article are the topics of campaign finance reform and ways to split up the parties via government intervention. Ultimately the solution one wants to see implemented is up to the reader, but one thing will be made clear, our political system needs to be reformed.. The two-party system is the core driver of polarization, partisanship, and the general decline in democracy in America. How did this all start?
The two-party system came into popularity in the 19th century. At the time, the Democrats and Republicans still ran the political scene. From that time until the modern day, third parties have rarely entered the ballot. Parties like the Bull Moose Party and Anti-Masonic Party have gained some popularity since the 19th century, but they did not stick around for nearly as long as the Republicans and Democrats did.
It is important to note that the founders did not think the US could only function under a two-party system. Levitsky & Ziblatt argue in their article The Political Theory of Parties and Catching Up that, “political parties are vital for democratic legitimacy and stability” and that “parties play a special role in political justification as agents of public reason.” Parties have historically been playing a special role in political rivalry, but recently these positive qualities have not held up. Frances E Lee argues in her new book, “Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign,” that because of polarization due to the two-party system, political parties and elections have become tools to exacerbate partisan divides and hinder the ability of lawmakers to govern effectively a point where Congress often stands in a gridlock, making no progress and passing small amounts of legislation. So why is our system not working and how can we prove it isn't working?
Why is this issue just becoming a problem? Like I had said before, the two-party system has been around for centuries, so why is this only now so important? Well, this is the first time we’ve had a truly two-party system with two distinct different parties that share little to no overlap. Democracy needs compromise to function, our liberal democracy is built on the principles of cooperation and peaceful dialogue between opponents. But because of the two-party system, we get what I will call the magnet model in practice, below is a diagram of what I mean.
Credit: Marco Dorazio
As stated in “Insecure Majorities”, the competition for the majority by both the current majority party and the minority party has caused both sides to lean into messaging in an attempt to highlight the differences between the two parties. These messaging battles often undercut the “prospects for legislative success” because they look for ways to expand the differences between the two parties.
Highlighting differences is only one of the many red flags which show us how our party system is not working to pass the legislature. Along with the two-party system comes the weird (and confusing) filibuster. A filibuster is a tactic used by members of the Senate to delay or prevent a vote on a bill. This is due to a process known as “cloture,” which requires a three-fifths majority vote to pass a bill. The two-party system has the effect of creating a “minority” and “majority” party. Which party holds these titles depends on the election results, but each title requires a different method of destructive political strategy. It is important to remember that this kind of scenario is only possible in a two-party system. The minority party, according to Lee, has one goal, to prevent the majority from making any progress in passing bills, as if the majority party can succeed in passing bills, it makes the majority look good. Minority members have an “incentive to stand on principle” and refuse certain compromises because the minority party does not feel responsible anymore for getting legislation passed. This intense political gridlock is only possible because of other polarizing effects of parties (I like to think of it as a political sports team) that the two-party system has exacerbated, perhaps this could be why we see this issue becoming more and more prevalent as time passes. Lilliana Mason describes in her article, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, political identities have become more important to individuals than their shared national identity, leading to tribalism and polarization. In her example, she describes the “Robbers Cave Experiment” to demonstrate how like-minded individuals (think of Americans) can quickly be turned against each other because of group identities. The two-party system intensifies the effects of group identities, like two trash-talking sports teams, neither side wants to lose to the other, which is not how a democracy is supposed to work. She importantly states that “When the electorate is moved to action by a desire for victory that exceeds their desire for the greater good, the action is no longer responsible.” As parties begin to become more ideologically homogeneous and emotionalized, less possible progress can be made.
So how do we get our democracy to work then? If we have lost the overlap of moderation between the parties and it doesn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon, how do we fix this?
The best solution that has been proposed by experts, such as political scientist Lee Drutman, is to create a multi-party system. As we see a movement away from the center (magnet model); the multi-party system would counteract this. He explains that “policy tends to converge more on the median in a multi-party system because you tend to have pivotal groups in the center of the political spectrum wind up playing an important role at the party coalition.” Unlike the two-party system, in which the winner takes all governmental roles for passing legislature, the multi-party system ensures that a coalition of like-minded groups must come together. The feeling of powerlessness that comes from the two-party system would also be eradicated, as, within a multi-party system, “losing” parties would still hold a role in legitimizing bills and passing legislature. A multi-party system would still have left/right components, we know this because many European countries following the multi-party model do. This kind of system would also incentivize voters to become more focused on policy rather than party. Voters would not know what kind of coalition they would get before elections, and because of this voters would have to pick the party they think represents their views the most. Often people refer to the phrase “the lesser of two evils,” but when you have four, or even more parties, there are no longer only just “evils” to pick from.
The problem of polarization, which stems from the “winner take all” kind of system in the US, would also be lessened; as there is no “winner takes all” in a multi-party system. The majority and minority titles given to parties would no longer apply. Now that we understand some of the potential advantages of the multi-party system, we need to understand how to practically implement this.
To fix the issue of the two-party system, we need to make the multi-party system possible. Our first step should be to force the government to break up both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The best way to think about this is like the political form of antitrust laws. This kind of pro-party-competition law would have to be issued by the government to some major federal entity like the FBI, or NSA. Perhaps even the U.S. Department of Justice could create a temporary task force to enforce this law. This law would be similar to the Sherman Act. It would state that if the parties did not split themselves in one or more ways by a certain deadline, then the party would be forcefully dissolved or fined millions and even billions of dollars until they split up.
The Sherman Act was the first antitrust law that banned monopolistic business practices, and it was passed to address the concerns of consumers who felt like they were being cheated out of their money. The two big parties should be treated like monopolies because they produce the same negative results that market monopolies do (a lack of competition and stagnation of progress). The Sherman Act was successful in its goal to break up monopolies and promote competition, and so would this recommended law be. The constitutionality of this law is questionable, but it would certainly provide the United States with a level playing field to set up a multi-party system.
Following in the footsteps of James Madison’s Federalist 10, which argues that factions are dangerous to a purely democratic system, we should try to mitigate the effects of parties as much as possible, even if it means enacting some questionable laws. As Madison says, “The instability, injustice, and confusion, arising from a government too weak to control the interests of its own members, must be avoided.” We can think of factions as modern political parties; they follow his definition of factions as they are “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or interest.” When the parties split up, it is only rational to think that they will still try to factionalize with each other, and so this would have to be restricted until later in time. While in this process of splitting and shaping up the shards of the two major parties another important piece of reform must come into play.
Starting with campaign finance reform. Creating a third party in the United States is an impossibly hard task. While there are many, many third parties active in the United States, nearly none of them end up on the ballot. Often, the two parties in power will attempt to increase election thresholds to make this even harder. This law would have to remove or significantly reduce the threshold to be included on the ballot. This would ensure that the multi-party system is actually democratic, and voters would not be coerced into voting for one of two parties, even while not identifying with either. Along with a reduction in the election threshold, the law must provide a way to standardize handouts and tax breaks for parties meeting the election threshold and attempting to run for election. Of course, with this comes the possibility of loopholes, which is why it is important to enforce a more fluid set of guidelines to determine if a party is actually a party and not a money laundering scheme. It is also important to regulate or encourage television stations to run ads from every political party.
Money plays a big factor while campaigning for office. Because the two big parties have a monopoly over the votes, they also have a monopoly over the campaign donations. Peter Schuck, a professor at Yale University, writes that “financial support is indispensable for candidates,” and in only a couple of years, the Democrats and Republicans managed to spend $6.5 billion dollars on advertising and publicity. We cannot expect other parties without a base to gain support or, at least, make their presence known to the voters without some kind of base-level funding. This proposal is not a new thing either, readers should know that “this resonates back over at least the past century”. There is a disturbing symmetry between the monopolies of the Gilded Age and the current two-party system, both financially and politically; which is why we should treat them as such. A political landscape without the prospect for the competition of ideas is just as worrying as an economic landscape without innovation. After reforming campaign finance to better allow new parties to gain a foothold then our two-party monopoly would be shattered.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There is a lot of work to be done and some of these proposals are extremely hard to implement. The roots of both the Democrats and the Republicans run deep into the foundations of our political structure, and so uprooting them will be a daunting task.
Here is where I would like to address some of the criticisms and challenges these proposals will face. To begin, I will discuss some issues that may arise with a multi-party system within a country like America. Due to the nature of a multi-party system, party coalitions must be formed for the legislature to pass. Coalitions of parties will not be as stable as a single party, and so if stability is of the utmost priority, then a multi-party system may not be as effective, but then again neither would a two-party system be. If parties begin to form on principles of ethnic or religious messaging, then this is when things start to get unstable and dangerous. Another possible problem is if too many parties begin to form, then the sheer amount of options is likely to confuse voters. But both of these issues can be moderated! For one, guidelines can be made which ban political parties that promote secession or political violence. Voting can be made clearer by formatting and informing citizens of the key ideas and proposals for each party.
We may also see strong resistance to proposals suggesting campaign finance reform from voters themselves. I’d expect that many voters and readers of this article do not like the idea of forcefully splitting up their party. We already see proponents of the GOP striking down bills that propose finance reform. Many senators stated that “It would become a partisan weapon.” Decreasing the election threshold will also face criticisms from the current two major political parties, who do not want voters given other options besides themselves. I’d expect any campaign finance reform bill to be controversial because of the possibility of ambiguity in the ways that the reform is promised. For example, I proposed giving monetary benefits to smaller parties, but drawing the specific cut-offs for what a “small party” is and how many benefits should be given is something that will need to be specified.
Other critics of a multi-party system argue that it provides a platform for extremists and hate groups to take power. However, the strength of a third party relies on its ability to attract and secure voters. If a party is able to do this then it should be taken seriously. Extremist groups that are not promoting violence will have to be outvoted in polls. But this issue brings up a larger more underlying one, the matters of tribal and liberal democracies. A multi-party system without any sort of regulation on the kinds of parties that can be established inherently promotes illiberal tendencies. For example, if a government lets any number of hateful or aggressive agendas into the government, then the liberal democratic way of securing certain rights goes under threat. It was under a multi-party system that Benito Mussolini’s Partito Nationale Fascista grew in popularity in Italy. The one advantage that a two-party system provides is that it is relatively easy to moderate the ideas that come from each party. A non-regulated multi-party system provides the perfect climate for extremism and radical populism to grow. To prevent this, our multi-party system must be designed to fairly regulate the parties allowed to appear on the ballot. But even this may get criticized by those who believe that any kind of regulation on representation is a slippery slope toward authoritarianism. This is why keeping the systems that regulate parties in check will be of the utmost importance. Robert Kaplan discusses the failures of tribal democracies in his Atlantic article, “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” He importantly discusses the idea that tribal democracies are value neutral. This neutrality has led to many shortcomings in countries where instituting democratic pluralism has failed. For readers who do not know, tribal democracy differs from our liberal democracy because tribal democracies do not protect certain rights or values. This is by far the most important criticism that needs to be handled in order for my proposal to work; because it is one of the more dangerous aspects of a multi-party system in a political landscape as diverse as the United States.
Our party system is in dire need of a 21st-century upgrade. Breaking up the parties and forming a functional multi-party system will be a challenging if not nearly an impossible task, but it is a task that must be completed to protect our democratic system. If we want to have a chance at improvement then these proposals should be considered seriously by voters. After all, in our democracy, the voices of the voters still matter no matter how polarized they may be.
Sources:
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Theory of Rational Choice.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed January 18, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-science/Theory-of-rational-choice.
Weiner, Daniel. (2021, May 17). GOP resistance to campaign finance reforms shows disregard for US voters. Retrieved January 18, 2023, from https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/553835-gop-resistance-to-election-reforms-shows-disregard-for-us-voters/
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