Following up on a couple of interesting posts at the ever-interesting PoliBlog…
Steven refers to a piece by Mark Tapscott, who suggests that it is time for a new party, on account of what is being reported as the “10-year low popularity of the US Congress,”* just months after Democrats took control of the institution.
There is thus a growing perception of Washington as a Tweedle-dee/Tweedle-dum kind of place in which the two political parties are merely two sides of the same coin.
This is the single most significant fact about the political landscape – a growing public disgust with both major political parties.
As Steven notes, the single-seat districts (SSDs) under first-past-the-post (FPTP) by which the US congress is elected makes the emergence of new parties difficult. He mentions both the interparty dimension (the high barrier to entry for a new party created by the need to win a substantial share of the vote in order to gain any significant representation) and the intraparty dimension (the ability of individual legislators to cater to their districts with pork and services distinct from the national party identity).
Really, two-partism is over-determined in the US. It’s not just FPTP. After all, most FPTP systems, such as the UK and Canada, have far more important parties other than the top two. It’s also presidentialism, yet most presidential systems, too, have more than two major parties. Also the use of primary elections and the electoral college–both of which are unique to the USA and either raise the barriers to new parties (the interparty dimension) or increase the opportunities for local tailoring of legislative campaigns (the intraparty dimension).
My response to such arguments about the unlikelihood of new parties absent institutional reform is always as follows:
I can’t name one case in which major change away from single-seat districts to a more representative and democratic electoral system ever occurred without the rise of new parties first.
So, my advice to people who feel it is time for a new party is simple: Find one and participate in and vote for it.
Since 1990, third-party voting in congress is at the highest it’s been in the post-WWII era (see graphs). Make it higher.
On the Tweedle-dee/-dum question, Steven notes that it sounds a bit old-fashioned nowadays:
Ironically, one could argue that with the re-alignment of Southern conservatives in the 1990s from the Democratic to the Republican Party that the two parties are more distinct now than they were ten to twenty years ago.
That certainly is fundamentally right. The centers of gravity of the two parties are further apart than ever, due to greater internal discipline and homogeneity In turn that’s a result of increasing geographic segregation of the parties’ electorates and the impact that has in a single-seat district system. But I doubt the full range of represented views is any greater than in the past. In fact, we would not expect it to be if the major change in the party system is simply the movement of one block of interests (“southern conservatives”) from one party to the other.
Even more to the point, I suspect that that actual range of views represented in the US Congress it is actually narrower–largely as a result of the ever-increasing need for corporate money–once you discount the few who speak up for relatively radical viewpoints from the safety of their own uncompetitive districts (Tancredo, Kucinich, etc.).
On the general subject of congressional approval (the subject of the other PoliBlog post I alluded to), it seems to me that these numbers need to be situated in the context of a major change that has taken place in the last decade (-plus).
Before Newt Gingrich became the closest thing the USA has ever seen (by far!) to a “co-habiting” prime minister, the Speakership and the Congress-as-an-institution that the Speaker heads never had a position within our political system of significant national and partisan profile.
I continue to ask myself: how long can we sustain this new combination of increasingly partisan, nationalized congressional elections with a constitutional structure designed for non-responsiveness to the democratic (small-d) will and more suited for nonpartisan, localized congressional elections?
And, yes, to articulate demands that are currently either not represented at the national level or are bargained away at the elite level, generating frustration and low public approval of our democratic institutions, we do indeed need new parties. And institutional reform. But we’ll need new parties to arise in the current system before we get democratic institutional reform.
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* No discussion of this story would be complete without a link to Charles Franklin’s analysis of the trend.
Time for a New Party?…
Mark Tapscott thinks the combination of historically low poll numbers for President Bush and the drop in Congressional job approval to a mere 27% may signal that the public is finally fed up with “business as usual.”
In other words, the mo…
Scion grafted by Outside The Beltway | OTB — 12 June 2007 @ 17:58
What would this new party be? Would it be a party inbetween the Democrats and Republicans? I think the center is so tight that their isn’t a need for such a party. What issues would they advocate?
There is always talk of Americans wanting to vote for such a party. But they never vote for it. It’s like people wanting more family TV shows, but they won’t watch such TV shows. I want a third party, but I won’t vote for it because I will waste my vote. FPTP voices the voter to vote strategically. You want your vote to have an influence.
The only reason why third parties succeed in other countries because these parties are regional parties. This country could have regional parties and it is a bit odd that we don’t have them. America doesn’t have large populations of geographically concentrated minorities like India and Canada has only geographically dispersed.
It is true that the Democrats are disproportionately overrepresented in Urban areas and Republicans are overrepresented in rural areas. If this country moves to PR, it has to be done at the city, country, state level before it is to be tried at the Federal level.
Also this country would not like any List based system of proportional representation. It would too reminiscent of party machines that corrupted city halls in the past. This country is also very anti-party. The only system of PR that this country could live with is the Single Transferable Vote that is used in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta, Australia, and even in Cambridge, Masschusetts.
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 12 June 2007 @ 21:48
I have a couple of thoughts on the relationship between electoral reform and the growth of third (and fourth, fifth …) parties.
(1) There have to be some institutional mechanisms that enable small parties to develop, partially compensating for winner-take-all, directly elected executive, etc. This just cannot happen by will power and good intentions alone, no matter how low Congress’ poll numbers sink.
(1a) In order to get anywhere under FPTP-plus-other-factors, small parties pretty much have to be geographically concentrated, at least early in their histories. So all Calfornia Greens should move to Humboldt and Mendocino counties, all California Libetarians should move to Sierra and Nevada counties, etc. I’m half-serious about this.
(1b) Larger legislative bodies (fewer voters per district) would also help. But that seems almost as unwinnable as PR itself.
(1c) Does anyone have other ideas?
(2) I think that, in general, change happens when some people are in front of the train pulling it while others are behind it, pushing. In this context that means building the small party of your choice and working on electoral reform — not one or the other. Most individuals can’t be active in both, but both kinds of folks are necessary.
While electoral reform isn’t possible on the national and state levels, it is already happening — in fits and starts, but happening — in local government. Here’s an example in California. This is where activism has to start, and the train is already leaving the station.
Seed planted by Bob Richard — 12 June 2007 @ 21:54
Good comments! Yes, under FPTP, by definition, “successful” third parties have to have regional bases, although they can still be national parties. Canadian and British parties like the BQ and SNP are obviously regional parties, but the NDP and LibDems are not, even if the only way they can win seats is if they are particularly strong in some regions of the larger nation.
The US has third parties, and they are national, not regional. So, yes, migration to create regional concentrations would be one way to gain a regional foothold for national parties like the Greens and Libertarians!
My position on “wasted vote” is that the only way a vote can be wasted is if the voter gives it to a party/candidate who is not his/her sincere preference. I know that turns the usual understanding on its head, but really strategic voting by individuals makes no sense. The individual’s vote is a means of expression, not influence. To have influence requires organization, which ought to include organization of third parties by those voters who are disaffected. Even without PR, a third party that was organized in the electorate could coordinate the “lesser of evil” voting in a way to ensure influence on the major parties. Short of organization, voters who would prefer a party other than the two big ones really are throwing away all hope of influence when they decide to vote for a major party every bit as much as if they “throw away their vote” (in the conventional understanding) by going for the third party.
Uphill battle? Yes. Impossible? Never!
I certainly endorse the idea of working towards electoral reform from local level on up.
Seed planted by MSS — 12 June 2007 @ 22:47
Addendum to post #3 above:
(1d) Build your party from the local level up. Run for dog catcher until you win. Do a good job as dog catcher, then run for the sewer board until you win. Do a good job there and then run for city council. And so on.
This is a companion strategy to winning electoral reform on the local level first.
Yes, it will take a long time and the policies you founded your new party to change will still be in effect at the national level in the meantime. But you will be making (some) progress instead of standing still. You will also be learning how to govern, which very few small party candidates are actually prepared to do.
P.S. — I am in complete agreement with the Head Orchardist about wasted votes.
Seed planted by Bob Richard — 12 June 2007 @ 23:35
The Australian Senate changed to STV in 1949 without there being any third party arising. The previous system of block-voting preferential so distorted the results that the change just made sense.
As a non-American, I may be howled down for my next comment, but the more I learn of the US political system, the more extraordinarily inefficient and ineffective it appears. I think the USA’s commencement way back in the eighteenth century has been a long-term disadvantage. As I understand it, members of Congress attach clauses to bills that have nothing to do with the subject, such as a defence facility for Lake Woebegone tacked onto bill providing for no child to be left behind. The states or even counties manage the federal votes. There is no system of independent boundary-drawing commissions. Party labels are particularly loose. The disconnect between the executive and the legislature means no president can get a program fully carried, and no congressional party can get one past a presidential veto either. There are 40,000 law enforcement authorities. Louisiana used to have and may still have a law that says individual parishes can opt out of state laws. A judge takes a law suit for $A64 million because a dry-cleaner lost his pants. Voting is voluntary, thus effectively excluding the poor from the political process.
Alone among developed countries, the US has no national health scheme yet spends more money on health for worse outcomes than Australia. It has a minimum wage that is half what Australia’s is. It has a murder rate that is five times ours. But everyone trembles before the NRA. Yet it is an exceedingly prosperous, innovative nation with fantastic universities and a rich tradition of philanthropy. Perhaps, it is several nations in one.
Then you have the huge cost of campaigns, which makes it so difficult for anyone to break into the system. I have no solutions. Australians often complain about their politicians, but they rarely vote for anyone outside the two main parties, so I guess at the bottom of it all is human nature, which is pretty much the same the world over. However, in the end, determination wins over inertia.
Seed planted by Chris Curtis — 13 June 2007 @ 12:30
PS. The Australian Senate did not have single-member seats, but three-member seats. Even so, the effect was the same as in single-member seats because the same party would commonly win all three, even with less than half the vote initially. The part about moving to a more democratic system without the pressure of a new party still applies.
Seed planted by Chris Curtis — 13 June 2007 @ 12:35
I almost noted that there have been cases of moves to PR from MNTV or other multi-seat plurality/majority systems (e.g. Australian Senate), as well as from single-seat two-round systems (as in most European countries that have adopted PR). However, except on a local level, that is not as relevant to the prospects for democratic electoral reform in the US as is the experience of systems that had FPTP.
And on your litany that begins:
Indeed. And that point about the “long-term disadvantage” pretty much sums up why this American started this blog!
Seed planted by MSS — 13 June 2007 @ 14:44
I just added the following to one of the linked PB threads in response to a question on the UK. It seems appropriate here as well:
Of course, the UK has never (i.e. in the mass-suffrage era) been a “two-party system†in the electorate, except perhaps briefly in the 1950s, when, alas, most of our received textbook “wisdom†about the UK and the US as supposedly similar party systems was handed down.
And currently it is not even close to being a two-party system. Labour won 35% of the vote in the 2005 election, yet a huge majority of seats. FPTP in action.
It is worth noting that the more parties there are already in the system (and the UK has always had important third parties), the less “regional†parties other than the leading two have to be to win seats. It is one thing to beat a party that is currently winning 60% of the vote in a district (as is commonly the case in US districts). It is quite another to displace one that is winning less than 45% in all but its safest seats, and often under 40%.
Britain’s very large parliament also makes it easier for multiple parties to win seats: around 630 districts for a much smaller country than the USA, with its 435.
Seed planted by MSS — 13 June 2007 @ 15:00