Two Parties Are Better Than Three (or More)

 
shutterstock_115516774

Why?

In a previous post, I mentioned, in passing, that the American, two-party political system has significant advantages over other democratic models and promised to expand on the matter another time. To that end, this post will discuss why there are two major political parties in the United States, how we arrived at this arrangement, and why that’s generally a good thing. This topic is especially germane given our current predicament, where both parties’ prospective nominees are phenomenally unpopular, and persons such as myself find themselves tugged between principles that seem irreconcilable.

As some people have recently discovered, the two major American political parties are private organizations that work in concert with state and local governments to set the timing and rules under which elections occur. Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be? Why doesn’t a third — let alone a fourth or a fifth — major party receive this sort of deference? The answer to that question rests primarily in the fact that our government is structured to have winner-take-all (“first past the post“) elections rather than the system of proportional representation found in parliamentary governments. In the language of game theory, American electoral politics is zero-sum and second place in an election is merely the first loser.

The practical consequence of this reality is that Americans — again, in contrast to those in parliamentary systems — are essentially forced to form our electoral coalitions before elections happen. We’ll touch on third parties again later, but in the meantime, here’s how the pre-election coalition-forming occurs:

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 7.42.50 AM

(l-r: Democrats, Republicans)

In a Hayekian, emergent-order fashion, the major ideological factions of the nation arrange themselves into a bimodal distribution prior to elections in order to give themselves the best chance of getting elected under this winner-take-all scenario. The parties’ centers of mass are situated to the left and right of the mean with the hope being that they are ideologically situated so as to attract enough voters in order to win elections. These clusters of voters are called the “Democratic” and “Republican” parties and consist, internally, of groups of people that sometimes have radically different agendas and interests. Nonetheless, they ally with one another under the banner of a particular party in order to gain political power.

(It should be noted that the means of the two modes have moved further apart in recent years, so the amount of overlap between the two parties has correspondingly decreased. This explains some of the ideological rancor that we’ve seen in recent years: As the parties have “sorted” themselves ideologically and geographically, the average member of each party has gotten further away from the average member of the opposite party, both literally and figuratively. It has been harder to find common ground as the rift has grown deeper.)

Now, contrast the American arrangement with a parliamentary system like Great Britain’s, where the prime minister is chosen by a parliament. Because parties often fail to obtain a majority of the vote (and thus, a clean majority) you often see absurdities like the Liberal-Democrats allying themselves with the Tories. For those unfamiliar with the Politics of Blighty, this would be like the Republican Party having Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer caucus with them in order to take control of the Senate.

Thus, this post-electoral coalition-forming is frequently necessary in order to seat a government, and causes unusual bedfellows to take up residence. It also means that voters tend to find themselves unable to know how their vote will ultimately relate to the governance that emerges, and end up essentially voting for a black box. Proportional representation (a system which democratically divides the legislature up by relative percent of the votes earned by party) only enhances this problem.

I much prefer our system. It tends to reward voters for being engaged in the process early (you can leverage the power of your vote in our primary system) and allows for people to be involved in the party’s process in a meaningful way rather than merely showing up and voting once.

As for third parties, another positive aspect of our system is how it discourages, rather than rewards, extremism. From a governing perspective, the American system offers little advantage to forming a political party that appeals only to the most leftward or rightward percent of the electorate, as failing to get a majority or a numerically superior plurality is functionally the same as getting nothing. This is unlike the parliamentary proportional delegation system, where a party receiving 10 percent of the vote gets roughly 10 percent of the representatives. The hope in forming such a party is to take part in a coalition government, assuming no majority has been won because of the fractiousness of the electorate. Thus, splinter parties can earn influence far outside of their actual representation on the basis of their ideological purity. As you can probably tell, such a system actively encourages extremism rather than moderation and consensus-building.

So, under the rules of the American electoral system, because of how the parties arrange themselves ideologically, there’s little room in between them where a third party could conceivably pick up enough votes to win elections, and there is precious little ideological space to attract voters. The “No Labels” movement claimed to be just such an organ, but you can see how that worked out. That leaves as the only credible option for outsiders the left flank of the Democrat party and the right flank of the Republican party. The best hope a group seeking to form a third party has would be to (paradoxically) peel off enough voters from the party nearest them to deny their own coalition a potential victory.

For this reason alone, both parties have a vested interest in heading-off third party challenges. The risk inherent to the system is that a third-party run from either side most likely results in elections being decided not by a head-to-head matchup between two well-matched ideological opponents, but a contest between one full-strength competitor and another who’s having to fend off an angry fan. You might think this is a flaw, but it works well as a safeguard, in that no party can stray too far from its ideological “lane” with impunity. If they were to do so, that party would quickly find itself facing a possibly lethal challenge from its flank or risking the alienation of those towards the middle of the overall ideological distribution.

I’ll leave it to the reader to contemplate what the effects will be as both parties slide inexorably to the Left.

Published in Domestic Policy
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  1. C. U. Douglas Coolidge
    C. U. Douglas
    @CUDouglas

    Good post. I’ve watched third parties in the past crash and burn, and cause the center right to do the same. (See any of my past rants about the Oregon GOP). There’s a lot more strength in our two-party system than its critics want to give credit.

    • #1
  2. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Nice analysis as always Maj.

    Regarding the closing question I have no well reasoned answer because so much this year has defied well reasoned conclusions. If as you say both parties continue to the left it seems a void will appear on the right that will inevitably be filled and drive the two existing parties to merge.

    What will fill that void? I don’t know, but if the best anyone can do is Republicans pre-Trump they deserve the second helping of doom they asked for. Will it be more Tea Party esque? Perhaps, but that seems a small minority as of now.

    No matter how bad people think this is I don’t think it is bad enough yet. We need a revolution, not a course adjustment, and we are not at revolutionary levels of frustration and despair.

    Thanks again for breaking this down. Glad to see it on the front page.

    • #2
  3. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    BrentB67: No matter how bad people think this is I don’t think it is bad enough yet. We need a revolution, not a course adjustment, and we are not at revolutionary levels of frustration and despair.

    The trick is what is the ideological coloring at the moment when we hit that moment of frustration and despair.  If the revolution came tomorrow, I would be worried that it would be a left-wing revolution that would make things vastly worse.

    • #3
  4. Matt Upton Inactive
    Matt Upton
    @MattUpton

    Great post. It’s telling that while new major American parties have emerged, they have completely replaced their predecessors. Without a parliamentary system, it also stops the rise of regionally focused parties like the Scottish National Party.

    • #4
  5. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    Parliamentary systems and proportional representation are not synonymous. The UK still has a first past the post system.

    The LibDems (in Britain) are not like Boxer and Sanders. They are, more or less, in between the Conservatives and the Labour party.

    Except they aren’t, because there isn’t one dimension to measure, but many. And these dimensions shift and renew.

    I think the strongest argument against a multi-party system is that having to build coalitions to exercise power gives too much influence to party leadership at the expense of the electorate. But, in reality, how much business gets done in Congress by party leaderships building ad hoc coalitions to, say, freeze out the right of the GOP by allying with Dems on procedural or substantive issues?

    For an electorate with the size and diversity of the US three parties is too few. I would prefer to see dozens, if not hundreds. For a party with a small, targeted voter base, a threat to vote for someone else is real. For the Dems and the GOP, voters who are genuinely engaged find it hard to hold the leadership accountable. A two party system caters to the soggy, uninformed, unengaged middle – and incentivizes both parties to maximize the size and minimize the civic literacy of this blob. (Hence the leftward/statist drift.)

    • #5
  6. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now.  If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it.  But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it?  The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    • #6
  7. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Quinn the Eskimo:

    BrentB67: No matter how bad people think this is I don’t think it is bad enough yet. We need a revolution, not a course adjustment, and we are not at revolutionary levels of frustration and despair.

    The trick is what is the ideological coloring at the moment when we hit that moment of frustration and despair. If the revolution came tomorrow, I would be worried that it would be a left-wing revolution that would make things vastly worse.

    I think the left wing is the majority right now, but the right wing Tea Party minority is not ineffectual.

    The revolution may look more like a non violent civil war.

    • #7
  8. KC Mulville Inactive
    KC Mulville
    @KCMulville

    Intriguing and incisive as always, Majestyk.

    I disagree, but not because you’re blind or foolish. I deny the core premises, which is why I deny the conclusion.

    Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be? […]The answer to that question rests primarily in the fact that our government is structured to have winner-take-all (“first past the post“) elections …

    No. The much more cynical (but likely) answer is that the government officials who cooperate with the two parties … belong to the two parties. They are quite literally using state and federal resources for the sake of their private organizations, and to exclude competitors.

    The parties’ centers of mass are situated to the left and right of the mean with the hope being that they are ideologically situated so as to attract enough voters in order to win elections.

    Here’s my main objection: I disagree, because politics is not linear. We describe our factions as Left and Right (linearly), but that’s only because of our poverty of imagination. Reporters can’t grasp more than one dimension. In reality, there are perhaps a dozen theories and remedies proposed for each issue, and there are dozens of issues (foreign policy, taxes, Supreme Court, etc.). There really is no “center” that ever falls between two poles.

    I welcome any reply.

    • #8
  9. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    • #9
  10. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    That is why I am for Open Primaries. Use tax dollars, you lose some control. You want it closed, pay for it all.

    • #10
  11. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Maj,

    Well put. I need to send this to some people.

    • #11
  12. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    One other thing I would mention is that the OP reminds me of some of Madison’s analysis on the rise of political parties.  It’s been too long ago to remember exactly which writing exactly.  To the extent it is, you are in excellent company.

    • #12
  13. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    BrentB67:

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    I suspect that the parties hate primary elections, and would much rather go back to smoke-filled rooms where the party establishment chooses its own champion.  Primary elections have been forced on the parties by the ever-growing demand for direct democracy, that goes back at least to the 17th Amendment in 1913 (direct election of Senators).

    Count me as one of those who likes the smoke-filled room approach.  The Founders tried to protect us against direct democracy at the federal level.  They tried to protect the power of the states, and to funnel that power to “wise men” like party elders, who were to fulfill the role of (among other things) the Electoral College.

    I understand that we are stuck with primaries, but really… Please don’t blame them on the self-serving “Establishment.”

    • #13
  14. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    BrentB67:

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    To explain ‘why’ state governments and the political parties cooperate in the conduct of preference polls is fine, but the question I have is how is state government involvement and taxpayer expense in such a private endeavor in any way made legitimate?

    • #14
  15. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Bob Thompson:

    BrentB67:

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    To explain ‘why’ state governments and the political parties cooperate in the conduct of preference polls is fine, but the question I have is how is state government involvement and taxpayer expense in such a private endeavor in any way made legitimate?

    It isn’t legitimate.

    Neither is confiscating our private property and denying us the resources to pursue life, liberty, and happiness then returning that money to states with endless strings attached to favor certain constituencies that ultimately donate to the parties.

    That doesn’t stop it from happening.

    • #15
  16. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    What about instant runoff/preferential voting?

    • #16
  17. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    BrentB67:

    Bob Thompson:

    BrentB67:

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    To explain ‘why’ state governments and the political parties cooperate in the conduct of preference polls is fine, but the question I have is how is state government involvement and taxpayer expense in such a private endeavor in any way made legitimate?

    It isn’t legitimate.

    Neither is confiscating our private property and denying us the resources to pursue life, liberty, and happiness then returning that money to states with endless strings attached to favor certain constituencies that ultimately donate to the parties.

    That doesn’t stop it from happening.

    Remember that the modern primary process arose after the 1968 Democratic Convention descended into riots. As usual you can blame the Democrats for this one.

    • #17
  18. BrentB67 Inactive
    BrentB67
    @BrentB67

    Jamie Lockett:

    BrentB67:

    Bob Thompson:

    BrentB67:

    Fake John/Jane Galt:

    Majestyk: Why do the states cooperate so completely with these ostensibly private organizations, even going so far as to foot the bill for the parties to hold private elections where they decide who their nominees and officials will be?

    I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. If the private organizations want to hold elections I am fine with it. But why must the taxpayers be on the hook for it? The parties need to pay for their own elections instead of creating just another method to take money from the people.

    The state and local governments are inhabited by the same parties as Washington.

    To explain ‘why’ state governments and the political parties cooperate in the conduct of preference polls is fine, but the question I have is how is state government involvement and taxpayer expense in such a private endeavor in any way made legitimate?

    It isn’t legitimate.

    Neither is confiscating our private property and denying us the resources to pursue life, liberty, and happiness then returning that money to states with endless strings attached to favor certain constituencies that ultimately donate to the parties.

    That doesn’t stop it from happening.

    Remember that the modern primary process arose after the 1968 Democratic Convention descended into riots. As usual you can blame the Democrats for this one.

    It’s more fun to blame the establishment and get everyone riled up.

    Good point though.

    • #18
  19. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    BrentB67:It’s more fun to blame the establishment and get everyone riled up.

    Good point though.

    As the song goes, “Blame is better to give than receive.”

    • #19
  20. Oblomov Member
    Oblomov
    @Oblomov

    This is all fine in theory. But problem number one is that for most practical purposes we live in a #OnePartyState. All of the important centers of power in American society are dominated by Democrats. Academia, the education establishment more broadly, Hollywood, the news media, the legal profession, and the state and federal administrative bureaucracies are all wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. In academia loyalty to the Democrats is somewhere around 95%. In the other centers of power the imbalance may not be quite as ludicrous, but it is certainly in the same ballpark. The only national institution that is not dominated by Democrats is the military, which is politically irrelevant. Republicans really only have a firm foothold in some state legislatures. But, because we abolished federalism a long time ago, the states don’t really matter when it comes to important national issues. And increasingly they don’t matter when it comes to local issues, either, as with the impending Federal takeover of the suburbs. We live effectively in a one party state, kind of like California, Chicago or Turkmenistan. This is not a good development.

    • #20
  21. Oblomov Member
    Oblomov
    @Oblomov

    Problem number two is that, while parties used to be defined by ideology and by group economic interests, in our new multicultural utopia, they are increasingly defined by race and ethnicity. This is something Hamilton, Madison and Jay did not foresee when they wrote the Federalist Papers. The Republican Party is now the de facto party of white people. This is also not a good development.

    • #21
  22. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    BrentB67:

    Quinn the Eskimo:

    BrentB67: No matter how bad people think this is I don’t think it is bad enough yet. We need a revolution, not a course adjustment, and we are not at revolutionary levels of frustration and despair.

    The trick is what is the ideological coloring at the moment when we hit that moment of frustration and despair. If the revolution came tomorrow, I would be worried that it would be a left-wing revolution that would make things vastly worse.

    I think the left wing is the majority right now, but the right wing Tea Party minority is not ineffectual.

    The revolution may look more like a non violent civil war.

    I didn’t realize you were such an optimist.

    • #22
  23. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Problem with this paradigm:

    Political parties are, at heart, merely coalitions of different interest groups.

    When building a coalition, one only invites the minimum number of interest groups required to win, because one wants to minimize the number of disparate interests vying for power within the coalition.

    When the ethos and identities of political parties become set in stone (as they have been in the USA with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, since the freaking Civil War) it becomes much more difficult for parties to recruit interests to their coalitions on an election-by-election basis.

    The coalition members tend to become ossified, while the issues of importance and the demographic makeup of the electorate changes over time.

    Prior to the Civil War, when the “parties” were more informal, they were (arguably) able to be more flexible in their coalition-building. This is why prior to the Civil War there was much more movement between parties, and party names changed more frequently.

    In multi-party nations, this ossification of party identity is lessened (though not eliminated). In Canada the dominant “conservative” party has been renamed and reorganized (and, arguably, rejuvenated) between five and seven times (depending on your point-of-view) over the past hundred years. The dominant “liberal” party has done so at least twice, and the dominant “socialist” party has done it once.

    /Cont…

    • #23
  24. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Oblomov:This is all fine in theory. But problem number one is that for most practical purposes we live in a #OnePartyState. All of the important centers of power in American society are dominated by Democrats. Academia, the education establishment more broadly, Hollywood, the news media, the legal profession, and the state and federal administrative bureaucracies are all wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. In academia loyalty to the Democrats is somewhere around 95%. In the other centers of power the imbalance may not be quite as ludicrous, but it is certainly in the same ballpark. The only national institution that is not dominated by Democrats is the military, which is politically irrelevant. Republicans really only have a firm foothold in some state legislatures. But, because we abolished federalism a long time ago, the states don’t really matter when it comes to important national issues. And increasingly they don’t matter when it comes to local issues, either, as with the impending Federal takeover of the suburbs. We live effectively in a one party state, kind of like California, Chicago or Turkmenistan. This is not a good development.

    Good assessment. A preference for large and powerful institutions give Democrats (Leftists) a natural advantage, especially once those institution are large. The question is how can conservatives or others who prefer small and less powerful government contest this problem.

    • #24
  25. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    /…cont.

    In Britain, it may very well have been an “absurdity” for the Lib-Dems to form a coalition with the Tories. But then, that’s precisely why that particular coalition only lasted for the length of a single parliament. Had that coalition been more of a success it’s likely they would have folded the coalition into new, blended party.

    In Canada, for much of the 20th Century we had the “Progressive Conservative Party”, which also seemed like an absurd oxymoron. In reality, it was the result of a merger between the Conservative Party (which was loyal to the Crown and suspicious of the United States) and the Progressive Party (a socially-conservative party of farmers in favour of free trade with the United States).

    As separate parties they didn’t have a chance at power. They formed a coalition, and ultimately merged into a single party.

    Over time, the original meaning of the party’s name became largely forgotten and irrelevant, and the Progressive Conservative Party became stagnant and out-of-touch. At that point a new “conservative” party was formed, called itself the Reform Party, and competed against the Progressive Conservative Party.

    Once again, neither party could form government on their own, so they merged and formed the Conservative Party of Canada, which won power under the leadership of Stephen Harper.

    /Cont…

    • #25
  26. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    /…cont.

    So, what’s my point?

    In the USA, the post-Civil War two-party scenario creates a disincentive for political parties to reorganize and rebrand in this way.

    When the sort of organizational flexibility that derives from a multi-party scenario is no longer an option, that doesn’t mean that the need for coalition-building and periodic rebranding goes away.

    Instead, the result is that the only option available for reorganizing and rebranding a US political party is by staging a coup. This is what’s been attempted by Bernie Sanders, and what has been (presumably successfully) attempted by Donald Trump.

    Coups are generally a terrible way to create political stability. They tend to reduce the numbers of the “us” side and increase the numbers of the “them” side, allowing “them” to ultimately win the contest.

    With a robust multi-party scenario, if one coalition member attempts a coup, the rest of the coalition has way more freedom to switch to an acceptable competitor. Coups are therefore disincentivized, because they weaken the coalition. (e.g. Paul Martin’s pretty disastrous coup of Canada’s Liberal Party)

    Long story short: Given enough time, coalitions always collapse. Knowing that, a political scenario should have contingencies built-in for parties to reorganize and rebrand.

    In the US, the post-Civil War two-party scenario is very bad at this particular function. I concede, that may be an acceptable trade-off to avoid (already-discussed) difficulties of multi-party scenarios.

    • #26
  27. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    That was my diagnosis, so (I hear you asking) what’s my prescription?

    My prescription is not that the US should switch from the two-party Presidential system to a multi-party parliamentary system. That would be absurd.

    Rather, my prescription is to find ways to return to something closer to the pre-Civil War scenario, where there are two dominant parties in power, but the parties are a wee bit more informal, coalitions are more flexible, and there are fewer structural barriers to the formation of alternative coalitions with new branding.

    The biggest structural barrier, that I can see, is the degree to which party governance is controlled by legislation rather than by the parties themselves. The fact that state governments run (and pay for) the nomination process just seems weird to me.

    Political parties are private associations. Why do the state governments get to pick and choose which ones are considered legitimate?

    If the two dominant parties lost this governmental advantage, it wouldn’t lead to a “multi-party parliamentary system”, but it would mean fewer structural barriers for alternative parties to form.

    This would have two main benefits: 1) It would create an incentive for the “whacko-birds” to gravitate to the alternatives rather than poisoning the well for the two main parties. 2) In the event of a coup, the rational members of the coalition could have viable alternatives for switching their allegiance (other than simply staying home), thereby diluting the coup’s power.

    • #27
  28. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    Misthiocracy: Rather, my prescription is to find ways to return to something closer to the pre-Civil War scenario, where there are two dominant parties in power, but the parties are a wee bit more informal, coalitions are more flexible, and there are fewer structural barriers to the formation of alternative coalitions with new branding.

    A switch to Preferential Voting would accomplish this all while allowing third parties to gain a following and perhaps influence the major parties in one direction or another.

    • #28
  29. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Jamie Lockett:

    Misthiocracy: Rather, my prescription is to find ways to return to something closer to the pre-Civil War scenario, where there are two dominant parties in power, but the parties are a wee bit more informal, coalitions are more flexible, and there are fewer structural barriers to the formation of alternative coalitions with new branding.

    A switch to Preferential Voting would accomplish this all while allowing third parties to gain a following and perhaps influence the major parties in one direction or another.

    For clarity’s sake: You mean ranked balloting for the presidential nomination process, not ranked balloting for the general election, right?

    I have no problem with ranked balloting for leadership selection within a private association, but I abhor it as a method for choosing a government from among disparate political parties.

    Ranked balloting works when the candidates are basically all rowing in a similar direction. It eliminates outliers from the coalition. That’s a positive.

    (Ontario’s provincial conservative party chooses its leader this way.)

    As a method for choosing a government from a selection of political parties, it merely serves to disenfranchise a great proportion of the electorate. That’s a huge negative.

    (That’s what The Dauphin (Justin Trudeau) wants to institute up here in the Great White North.  It would result in Canada effectively becoming a single-party state as the Liberal Party would always share the #1 and #2 positions with the NDP, cutting conservatives out of the running in perpetuity.)

    • #29
  30. Jamie Lockett Member
    Jamie Lockett
    @JamieLockett

    Misthiocracy: For clarity’s sake: You mean ranked balloting for the presidential nomination process, not ranked balloting for the general election, right?

    Nope.

    • #30
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