The Two-Party System
Through the years, the two main parties in American politics have oscillated around various positions and constituencies. The Federalists were replaced by the Whigs were replaced by the Republicans (were almost replaced by the Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives shortly after 1900). But there's never been a serious third-party presence other than during those brief intervals of transition when a party got replaced. Why?
The main issue is the Constitution. By mandating geographical representational districts, it all but gaurantees a two-party system. Senators come from states (chosen first by the legislature, and after 1913 by direct election), which are geographical entities, and a Senator represents an entire state. Representatives are chosen from geographical districts, and always have been (although aside from the minimum-of-one rule, it isn't clear that this scheme is as firmly mandated).
Given that these posts can't be shared, this is often referred to as "winner-take-all." Meaning that whoever gets the plurality of the vote gets to represent 100% of the constituency.
So now imagine a voting populace with no parties. They're electing a representative. Assuming they are allowed to communicate, if there is subset of the voters which can agree amongst themselves to vote for the same person, then the largest such group will win the election. There's then the problem of trying to make sure the representative does what the group expects them to, so it would be more stable if the group's reason for existence was built on some kind of ideology such that the person they chose could be trusted to follow through on the intent of the group. But with elections every two years, the US House of Representatives offers ample opportunity to punish misbehaving group members by picking someone else.
So if the voting population is allowed to talk, they'll form groups. How many will they form? Well, they'll form two. Why? Think about it this way. Let's call the biggest group A, then B, then C, D, E, and so on. As above, the A group wins every election. Why? Because it's the biggest. But the B group, if it could just make common cause with some other smaller group (say D and G), would be bigger! Then it would win. The more groups there are, the more opportunity for making common cause. It is better to find someone ideologically compatible with group B who is not totally unacceptable to group D and G. Even if this isn't the "ideal" group B candidate, it is better than nothing! Winner-takes-all ensures that. But once this happens, the B-D-G coalition wins every time. So A recruits C and F. Then B-D-G recruits E.
This ends up looking for all the world like the factions within the two main political parties. Every now and then, a particular constituency will desert one party and go to the other. There's some jockeying, and it sometimes takes years, but the equilibrium position is for two roughly-equal-strength coalitions to form.
It isn't clear this is so bad. After all, if there were dozens of tiny parties, the winner of an election might have only 5% of the vote. As it is, a plurality, often a fairly large majority, is satisfied with their representative. (Or, to be more precise, not sufficiently unhappy to vote for someone else.) In the multiple-party scenario, potentially a large majority would have voted for someone else.
So in a single geographically-represented district, you end up with two parties of roughly equal strength. But why do they hook up across the country into two national parties? One way to look at it would be by shared cultural effects. There are explicitly very few barriers to movement, communication, or anything else between states. Consequently, it would be amazing to find geographical districts right next to each other in which the parties (if they were really independent) had no kind of relationship.
But even just looking at the mechanics of the presidential election means that national parties would have to emerge. Suppose that each state had its own parties. Then potentially each one would nominate its own presidential candidates. Its electors would vote for them, and the biggest state would win every time. But just like in the case of the single geographic district, a couple of fairly big states might join together and start winning. So then the mechanics end up the same: the states should end up allied in two competing camps. But given the free cultural exchange between them and the geographical mechanism they've by-and-large used to choose their electors, the emergence of exactly two main national parties is virtually inevitable.
Another way to think about this is more historical in nature. Things didn't start out party-less and have two parties eventually emerge. They basically started off with two parties instantly. I suppose it could be argued that those involved were so smart they saw that the mechanics of the Constitution would lead almost inevitably to a two-party system, and so they just cut to the end. But this is almost certainly not the case, and it isn't clear that the framers of the Constitution really thought that parties would play a big role in politics. (Perhaps they feared they might and hoped they wouldn't.)
But whatever their attitudes, the tensions inherent in the Constitutional vs. Federation of States systems meant that there were naturally two main schools of thought: those favoring more centralized government and those opposing it. Or large-state, small-state conflicts. Or slave/free states. There are a few axes of division, and the principal components there account for the factions in each group, but by and large, once two parties emerge, the system will be stable. The reason it is stable is because of the geographical representation. As constituencies defect to the other party, or change in relative size, the parties adapt to form new constituencies. They have to, or else their opponents will win every election. It is far better to swallow your pride and make common cause with the most unhappy group in the other coalition than to be out of power forever, so that's what's happened.
Throughout history, the parties have shuffled constituencies many times. For instance, the Republicans enjoyed near complete control over the Northeast in the late 1800s after the Civil War. Now, a hundred years later, that has reversed, and the Democrats have near complete control over the Northeast, and the Republicans are strong in the South.
There's something else to wrap up here. If in each district there are pressures to have the parties be equally strong, then why do we see such wide disparities in vote totals? There are lots of "safe" seats where there's virtually no chance that one party's candidate will be defeated. Why is that?
The first reason is the ever-increasing role of the executive. At this point, a district's participation in the presidential election may be on par in relevance to the district as its selection of its own direct representative. This tends to make it much less important for parties to compete in each district. And indeed, in many cases they have sought to manipulate the districts themselves so they don't have to (gerrymandering).
Another is that the existence of national parties, able to coordinate action across districts, means that although a group in the opposition party in some gerrymandered district may not technically have any hope of direct representation, they are still relatively well represented by their party's national apparatus, so there is not as much clamor as there might be for fair direct representation.
Also, the regional variation in party ideology should not be overlooked. An opposition representative in a "safe" district will very often adopt positions at odds with the national party in an attempt to capture more of the vote in that district. Often the national-party identity is strong enough that this is a difficult position to take, especially with the advantages of incumbency and the centralized funding priorities of the national party.
Yet another way to think about the stability of the two-party system comes from thinking about making a third party. If you want to build a new party from scratch, you need to convince half the people to join. Why half and not a third? Because if you are at a third, the two main parties will simply coalesce. They'd rather make common cause and win with a two-thirds majority than to have your party win.
If you want to take over an existing party, though, you only need to convince a quarter of the people to join. With that following, your faction will be in control of one of the major parties, and can pick your candidate. Of course the price for this is you have to compromise with the other constituencies in that national party or else they'll bolt for the other one. If your group is unwilling to compromise with the half of the electorate most predisposed to your position, then almost by definition you won't be able to attract the support of half the electorate, so you have no hope of success. In other words, given the two-party system, it is very difficult to create a new movement externally, especially as compared to the relatively smaller job of creating a movement within one of the parties. Which is why on those few occasions when parties have emerged, they have done so by replacing an existing major party.
What about other countries? Most other constitutional democracies have proportional representation, which is much more amenable to multi-party systems. Although even there, there will typically be a couple of major parties, and then a tail of less important ones. The executive politics is done in the (proportional) legislature, which means that popular presidential politics don't result into a coalescing into two main parties. In that system, it isn't exactly that you have a proportional executive, but it can be kind of like that if one coalition party demands such-and-such a position in the government. Since the government is formed by the legislature, it can put a coalition into power, and is not bound by a single executive election as is the United States. ¶ 10:36 PM
Friday, November 14, 2008
The United States has two main parties. It has ever since George Washington took office, although in those days of political hope, they were better characterized as the Federalist faction and the anti-Federalist (Democratic) faction. The Federalists favored more centralized forms of government. More stable "elite" bodies doing the decision-making, and more power over more parts of society being given over to those bodies. The anti-Federalists thought the reverse: that it was better to entrust more decision-making to the body politic at large (although for them "large" doesn't mean what it does today), and that power should be more decentralized.
Through the years, the two main parties in American politics have oscillated around various positions and constituencies. The Federalists were replaced by the Whigs were replaced by the Republicans (were almost replaced by the Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives shortly after 1900). But there's never been a serious third-party presence other than during those brief intervals of transition when a party got replaced. Why?
The main issue is the Constitution. By mandating geographical representational districts, it all but gaurantees a two-party system. Senators come from states (chosen first by the legislature, and after 1913 by direct election), which are geographical entities, and a Senator represents an entire state. Representatives are chosen from geographical districts, and always have been (although aside from the minimum-of-one rule, it isn't clear that this scheme is as firmly mandated).
Given that these posts can't be shared, this is often referred to as "winner-take-all." Meaning that whoever gets the plurality of the vote gets to represent 100% of the constituency.
So now imagine a voting populace with no parties. They're electing a representative. Assuming they are allowed to communicate, if there is subset of the voters which can agree amongst themselves to vote for the same person, then the largest such group will win the election. There's then the problem of trying to make sure the representative does what the group expects them to, so it would be more stable if the group's reason for existence was built on some kind of ideology such that the person they chose could be trusted to follow through on the intent of the group. But with elections every two years, the US House of Representatives offers ample opportunity to punish misbehaving group members by picking someone else.
So if the voting population is allowed to talk, they'll form groups. How many will they form? Well, they'll form two. Why? Think about it this way. Let's call the biggest group A, then B, then C, D, E, and so on. As above, the A group wins every election. Why? Because it's the biggest. But the B group, if it could just make common cause with some other smaller group (say D and G), would be bigger! Then it would win. The more groups there are, the more opportunity for making common cause. It is better to find someone ideologically compatible with group B who is not totally unacceptable to group D and G. Even if this isn't the "ideal" group B candidate, it is better than nothing! Winner-takes-all ensures that. But once this happens, the B-D-G coalition wins every time. So A recruits C and F. Then B-D-G recruits E.
This ends up looking for all the world like the factions within the two main political parties. Every now and then, a particular constituency will desert one party and go to the other. There's some jockeying, and it sometimes takes years, but the equilibrium position is for two roughly-equal-strength coalitions to form.
It isn't clear this is so bad. After all, if there were dozens of tiny parties, the winner of an election might have only 5% of the vote. As it is, a plurality, often a fairly large majority, is satisfied with their representative. (Or, to be more precise, not sufficiently unhappy to vote for someone else.) In the multiple-party scenario, potentially a large majority would have voted for someone else.
So in a single geographically-represented district, you end up with two parties of roughly equal strength. But why do they hook up across the country into two national parties? One way to look at it would be by shared cultural effects. There are explicitly very few barriers to movement, communication, or anything else between states. Consequently, it would be amazing to find geographical districts right next to each other in which the parties (if they were really independent) had no kind of relationship.
But even just looking at the mechanics of the presidential election means that national parties would have to emerge. Suppose that each state had its own parties. Then potentially each one would nominate its own presidential candidates. Its electors would vote for them, and the biggest state would win every time. But just like in the case of the single geographic district, a couple of fairly big states might join together and start winning. So then the mechanics end up the same: the states should end up allied in two competing camps. But given the free cultural exchange between them and the geographical mechanism they've by-and-large used to choose their electors, the emergence of exactly two main national parties is virtually inevitable.
Another way to think about this is more historical in nature. Things didn't start out party-less and have two parties eventually emerge. They basically started off with two parties instantly. I suppose it could be argued that those involved were so smart they saw that the mechanics of the Constitution would lead almost inevitably to a two-party system, and so they just cut to the end. But this is almost certainly not the case, and it isn't clear that the framers of the Constitution really thought that parties would play a big role in politics. (Perhaps they feared they might and hoped they wouldn't.)
But whatever their attitudes, the tensions inherent in the Constitutional vs. Federation of States systems meant that there were naturally two main schools of thought: those favoring more centralized government and those opposing it. Or large-state, small-state conflicts. Or slave/free states. There are a few axes of division, and the principal components there account for the factions in each group, but by and large, once two parties emerge, the system will be stable. The reason it is stable is because of the geographical representation. As constituencies defect to the other party, or change in relative size, the parties adapt to form new constituencies. They have to, or else their opponents will win every election. It is far better to swallow your pride and make common cause with the most unhappy group in the other coalition than to be out of power forever, so that's what's happened.
Throughout history, the parties have shuffled constituencies many times. For instance, the Republicans enjoyed near complete control over the Northeast in the late 1800s after the Civil War. Now, a hundred years later, that has reversed, and the Democrats have near complete control over the Northeast, and the Republicans are strong in the South.
There's something else to wrap up here. If in each district there are pressures to have the parties be equally strong, then why do we see such wide disparities in vote totals? There are lots of "safe" seats where there's virtually no chance that one party's candidate will be defeated. Why is that?
The first reason is the ever-increasing role of the executive. At this point, a district's participation in the presidential election may be on par in relevance to the district as its selection of its own direct representative. This tends to make it much less important for parties to compete in each district. And indeed, in many cases they have sought to manipulate the districts themselves so they don't have to (gerrymandering).
Another is that the existence of national parties, able to coordinate action across districts, means that although a group in the opposition party in some gerrymandered district may not technically have any hope of direct representation, they are still relatively well represented by their party's national apparatus, so there is not as much clamor as there might be for fair direct representation.
Also, the regional variation in party ideology should not be overlooked. An opposition representative in a "safe" district will very often adopt positions at odds with the national party in an attempt to capture more of the vote in that district. Often the national-party identity is strong enough that this is a difficult position to take, especially with the advantages of incumbency and the centralized funding priorities of the national party.
Yet another way to think about the stability of the two-party system comes from thinking about making a third party. If you want to build a new party from scratch, you need to convince half the people to join. Why half and not a third? Because if you are at a third, the two main parties will simply coalesce. They'd rather make common cause and win with a two-thirds majority than to have your party win.
If you want to take over an existing party, though, you only need to convince a quarter of the people to join. With that following, your faction will be in control of one of the major parties, and can pick your candidate. Of course the price for this is you have to compromise with the other constituencies in that national party or else they'll bolt for the other one. If your group is unwilling to compromise with the half of the electorate most predisposed to your position, then almost by definition you won't be able to attract the support of half the electorate, so you have no hope of success. In other words, given the two-party system, it is very difficult to create a new movement externally, especially as compared to the relatively smaller job of creating a movement within one of the parties. Which is why on those few occasions when parties have emerged, they have done so by replacing an existing major party.
What about other countries? Most other constitutional democracies have proportional representation, which is much more amenable to multi-party systems. Although even there, there will typically be a couple of major parties, and then a tail of less important ones. The executive politics is done in the (proportional) legislature, which means that popular presidential politics don't result into a coalescing into two main parties. In that system, it isn't exactly that you have a proportional executive, but it can be kind of like that if one coalition party demands such-and-such a position in the government. Since the government is formed by the legislature, it can put a coalition into power, and is not bound by a single executive election as is the United States. ¶ 10:36 PM
