Does America Need a Third Political Party?

With dissatisfaction with the U.S. Congress at a record high here, is it time for a challenge to the traditional two party rule, and if so, what form should a third party take in order to be successful? Does the future lie to the right along the libertarian lines of the tea party, or should the wild eyed liberals finally get behind a true socialist party with teeth in it? Should there be even more than three parties for a better representation of the people's interests and a government that works through compromise and coalition, as many countries seem to have?

Since we haven't had a poll in this forum in awhile, I'm going to phrase these questions and concepts that way, and invite anyone, regardless of country, who has a thought or an opinion on the matter to vote and discuss.

I'm including a 'none of the above' response for those who have alternate plans, so if you vote that way, please indicate why.

Unless you change your election system any upcoming party will just replace an existing one.

That said I prefer multiparty systems as they cover the political spectrum better, and voted "more than one". On this side of the pond we traditionally have Socialists, Conservatives, and Liberals (smaller than the other two and with a fairly different meaning than the US term) as the three poles, and recently added Greens as a fourth force. That way it is easier to find a party that matches your values, and it is a heck of a lot more transparent how your vote affects the makeup of government policy.

Given what I know about the US parties it would make sense to break down the dems into socialists, (social-) liberals, and greens, and the republicans into (bog standard politically "cautious") conservatives, market liberals/libertarians, and religious conservatives (a subgroup distinct enough to deserve it's own voice). Then you coul form coalitions with the policy shaped by the relative size of the constituencies of the winning side.

That's exactly what I'd like to see happen, Zaleukos. Thank you for phrasing it so succinctly. You're spot on on the various group identities as well I think. It's unlikely the wild eyed liberals will ever get up the same kind of fervor and motivation that you see in the other more right-leaning groups, but I really really wish they would cast aside their academic disdain and effeteness and do something even if it's wrong.

I realize this whole discussion is theoretical, hypothetical and even fantastical, but I don't know that anything short of a complete do-over is going to result in an accountable, competent government that serves the people.

I completely agree. We need a third (or perhaps more) political parties.

I think the issues we face are constitutional, though. We'd need to seriously rewrite large chunks of our Constitution (the electoral college/election of the President comes in mind) or else every single Presidential election would be decided by the House. I imagine we'd probably have to rewrite most of the House/Senate governing rules too...

What Rith said. Given that the establishment isn't going to be interested in complicating their bipolar scam, I just don't see it happening. Look what happened to Jesse the Body up in Minnesota a few years back—both sides of the aisle told him to get bent and gridlocked him up.

A definitive " YES !" - because only two parties are too much like ... Oligarchy to me.

My main concern with more than 2 parties is further gridlock, and less actually getting accomplished, which may be favorable to conservatives, but is not favorable for change and improvements.

Well, we have gridlock right now that seems insurmountable. If everybody had to get votes from someone else to advance a piece of legislation, it would have to reflect more than just one party's values, and you'd have alliances and discussions instead of fullscale rivalry and war. Though of course it could get carried to extremes if you had too many parties.

That's my take anyway.( Not that it could ever happen, but theoretically.)

I don't know if it actually works that way. If you look at Italy, for example, it's so fractured by many parties, that no legislation gets through, and it just becomes a political circus. No one agrees on anything, no majority whatsoever. Of course, that may be an extreme example...

I have begun to see a 2 party system as not a democracy. A democracy requires the PEOPLE to have the power, and they have no power if all they can do is to pick A or B. People need the power to organize and quickly get into government themselves if they get enough who agree with a question they propose. If you only have two parties, there are no way for people to get something up there that aren't represented by those two.

Another thing that needs to be done is to shut off the TV and begin to organize publically. Get into questions. Get educated. A population that just consume what's offered by the tube isn't in touch with reality.

Unfortunally the Swedish parties form alliances still, so you still get the blue vs red block. However, you get some power in Sweden by simply having 4% of the voters. When people grow too tired of the main parties they begin to vote on the small parties, sometimes as a protest. We have had several parties that haven't quite made it past that border but still managed to get their voice heard, a feminist party, a piracy party and in the next election the nationalist party might get in. We also have plenty of small parties that been in the government for awhile with just 4-5% of the voters, a Christian party, an ex-communist party, an environmental party etc.

Personally I find the old triad Socialism/Conservatism/Liberalism/Libertarianism to be outdated and unscientific. New ideas need to get in based on current insights.

JemyM said:

I have begun to see a 2 party system as not a democracy. A democracy requires the PEOPLE to have the power, and they have no power if all they can do is to pick A or B.

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Actually it is 1 party and i am not only talking about the US ...
It is rather unlikely to leave a big rich country at the hand of the voters.

I dont think two-party systems necessarily are undemocratic, but I'd say they tend to be less transparent as any negotiation and compromise will be handled internally within the parties, and you as a voter never really knows which facet of the party your vote will strengthen.

Thrasher said:

I don't know if it actually works that way. If you look at Italy, for example, it's so fractured by many parties, that no legislation gets through, and it just becomes a political circus. No one agrees on anything, no majority whatsoever. Of course, that may be an extreme example…

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First Italy is not your average multi-party system as it AFAIK has a low bar (2%?) for entry. Second the fragmentation and instability is somewhat exaggerated. On paper they've had a lot of government changes, but most of those have been reshuffles within a ruling coalition. Actual crisis and deadlock is rare. Italian governments have been more stable than Norwegian (that country well known for political anarchy and bickering) ones during the last few decades. The country has serious issues, but they dont come from the multi-party system.

There are also at any rate a ton of pretty technical solutions that can be applied to make governments in multi-party systems more or less stable.

magerette said:

Well, we have gridlock right now that seems insurmountable. If everybody had to get votes from someone else to advance a piece of legislation, it would have to reflect more than just one party's values, and you'd have alliances and discussions instead of fullscale rivalry and war. Though of course it could get carried to extremes if you had too many parties.

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US gridlock comes from the checks and balances and the executive and the legislature having separate mandates. It can be impractical at times but works as the founding fathers intended, and is in some sense more democratic than the parliamentary systems most other countries have. The US system is from what I can tell designed to prevent concentration of power (partially due to the diversity of the country, partially due to the discouraging example of George III's attempts at increasing royal power before he went crazy). And as I've said before our prime ministers in many ways have much greater power than US presidents, even if they formally are at the mercy of the parliament and the pres isnt...

I think the US will want to hold on to checks and balances and such for a number of reasons. With that in mind I think it would be a good idea to reform the election system along these lines (which would give you a multi-party system without introducing Euro style parliamentarism):

The house: Change to proportional representation for every state. This would reduce the problem of gerrymandering and the number of "wasted" votes from people living in the wrong district. You can very well have personal mandates within a proportional system (Finland has one solution to this problem where you tick your preferred candidate of a party list) so people can have their own congressman.

President: Direct proportional election. If no candidate breaks 50% the two frontrunners go into a second round. This way it'd be worth it for democrats in Texas and Republicans in California to vote. The arguments for the electoral college are somewhat obsolete, and when you vote for one individual parts of the country will feel short changed no matter what.

Senate: The same system as in the presidential election, but for each state.

Italy most be the worst examplel like ever…. the entire country is more or less ruled by one man. The reason he can rule supreme is that he even has some control over the mafia, he controls the major newspapers and tv-stations, and he bribes and commits crime at will always manage to free himself because of his power. Italy should be left out of any debate about democracy….

I dont think two-party systems necessarily are undemocratic, but they are surely less transparent.

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Well... it kind of makes 3... even if a bit of a nutcase http://www.votenader.org/

Choosing between two has some benefits..... the two main good parts are.

1. If one does badly you can choose the other one, thus putting pressure on the leader to do what the majority of the people want.

2. It gives a very strong power to the one who wins, unlike in sweden where none can do what they want. However this is also dangerous ( war / research / cloning etc )

The swedish system gives more power to smaller groups, like for example the environmentalist.

GothicGothicness said:

Italy most be the worst examplel like ever…. the entire country is more or less ruled by one man. The reason he can rule supreme is that he even has some control over the mafia, he controls the major newspapers and tv-stations, and he bribes and commits crime at will always manage to free himself because of his power. Italy should be left out of any debate about democracy….

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All significant Italian problems that have zero to do with the political system. It should be noted that the pre-Berlusconi governments were more stable than the number of prime ministers indicate as well.

Well… it kind of makes 3… even if a bit of a nutcase http://www.votenader.org/

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Adding a third party while keeping the first past the post electoral system will only result in vote splitting and less representative results. The UK is a prime example, with it's fairly strong but geographically spread out third party (the liberal democrats, a social-liberal party) that leads to a lot of representatives getting elected with 35-40% support in their constituency. That is really the worst of both worlds.

Choosing between two has some benefits….. the two main good parts are.

1. If one does badly you can choose the other one, thus putting pressure on the leader to do what the majority of the people want.

2. It gives a very strong power to the one who wins, unlike in sweden where none can do what they want. However this is also dangerous ( war / research / cloning etc )

The swedish system gives more power to smaller groups, like for example the environmentalist.

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1 Requires the two to represent different enough positions. This is not more likely in the case where you only have two candidates.
2 That depends on technicalities in the design of the political system and is not necessarily a feature of two-party systems, nor always desirable. As I've said Swedish prime ministers are extremely powerful compared to American presidents. As long as they arent directly tampering with the constitution they can push their agenda until it collides with reality. A radical healthcare reform would be trivial to push through here if the winning coalition had it on the agenda.
3 A two-party system really doesnt prevent that. As only two parties can win they tend to attract all kinds of factions and become big tend parties (our social democrats with their 35% support has such tendencies too, as do the German Christian democrats), and it is entirely possible for small internal sects to hijack a party. The difference is that it is less transparent and way harder for the voters to target that sect directly. Here voters could simply support another party within the coalition. This is where I think multi-party systems tend towards greater transparency.

JemyM said:

Personally I find the old triad Socialism/Conservatism/Liberalism/Libertarianism to be outdated and unscientific. New ideas need to get in based on current insights.

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I wouldnt worry much about that, ideologies evolve over time and adapt to current realities (or implode).

All significant Italian problems that have zero to do with the political system. It should be noted that the pre-Berlusconi governments were more stable than the number of prime ministers indicate as well.

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Might very well be, but something is wrong with the system as well if one man can get such a ultimate power, and it doesn't work as a sample since it doesn't work in reality.

Adding a third party while keeping the first past the post electoral system will only result in vote splitting and less representative results. The UK is a prime example, with it's fairly strong but geographically spread out third party (the liberal democrats, a social-liberal party) that leads to a lot of representatives getting elected with 35-40% support in their constituency. That is really the worst of both worlds.

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Agreed.

1 Requires the two to represent different enough positions. This is not more likely in the case where you only have two candidates.

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I don't know about more likely or not, but they certainly offer a big difference in the US. Besides one side will surely adopt to please the majority to try to win the power from the other side.

A radical healthcare reform would be trivial to push through here if the winning coalition had it on the agenda.

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Really? what if Reinfeldt hated public health care and wanted to remove it? ( He'd never get in power of course if he wanted this ) so just the rich could get good care like in the US ? basically that what Obama is doing but in reverse.

Unless one party get over 50% of the votes in Sweden everything you do is bound to be a compromise…. of course US is also plagued by some such a things. Reinfeldt does not have the power of veto, and a lot of other powers which US president have, I very much disagree he has more power over Sweden than Obama have over US.

A two-party system really doesnt prevent that.

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Not exactly prevent, but look at the case of the nationalist party, neither of the two biggest block want to touch them, but they can get over 4%…. granted some parties said they'd work togheter to not give them any power, but they'll get budget for passing the 4% limit, and I think they'll have influence in certain seesaw questions etc. If we had a two party system in neither biggy wanted to touch them, they would not get the seesaw position.

Two would be plenty, there's other things wrong with your country and your political system. The stupid filibuster nonsense, the lack of relationship between senate seats and state population, the vast cost of political campaigns in the states making every politician so beholden to special interests that they might as well not be there etc

We've basically just got the two parties here in the UK and it works well enough as a dynamic, absolute voting on party lines is very much a rarity and there's enough cooperation to keep things basically moving.

Mind you, full proportional representation might be good as well.

GothicGothicness said:

Really? what if Reinfeldt hated public health care and wanted to remove it? ( He'd never get in power of course if he wanted this ) so just the rich could get good care like in the US ? basically that what Obama is doing but in reverse.

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IF he and his coalition managed to get elected on such a radical platform he could do that, no problem.

The difference is that our system filters policy in the election phase, while the US system filters policy in the legislative phase, after the election.

Our politicians have to struggle to get elected but once they've won their political opponents can do little to stop them. As Obamas (apparent) health care fiasco illustrates winning the election was nothing but the first part of the struggle.

On the democratic aspect of this you could say that Reinfeldt had to sell his program to the electorate, while Obama sold a vague message to the voters and now has to sell his (previously unknown) program to congress. I am biased but I much prefer the former political process

I don't know about more likely or not, but they certainly offer a big difference in the US. Besides one side will surely adopt to please the majority to try to win the power from the other side.

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On some issues they emphasise their differences, sure, but there is also a pretty significant risk that both sides will try to cater to that perceived majority. I am for instance sure that there are some liberal (in the US sense) democrats in Texas, or conservative republicans in Massachusetts who dont find any candidates representative of their views.

I thought it is pretty obvious that the more options you have the more of the political spectrum is covered

Unless one party get over 50% of the votes in Sweden everything you do is bound to be a compromise…. of course US is also plagued by some such a things. Reinfeldt does not have the power of veto, and a lot of other powers which US president have, I very much disagree he has more power over Sweden than Obama have over US.

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Yes, and anything a big tent party does is also a result of compromise, only it is internal and I as a voter have no idea which faction I've strengthened with my vote. In our system it is true that parliament formally reigns supreme. On paper our most senior politician is the speaker of the parliament, not the prime minister. This misses the informal but important point that the head of government already has a parliamentary majority behind him. Due to party discipline they will vote yes on government propositions and no on opposition motions. As long as he propositions are constitutional (and even that hurdle is weak since constitutionalism is weak in this country, laws have have to be "obviously unconstitutional" for the supreme court to challenge them) he'll be able to push them through.

Not exactly prevent, but look at the case of the nationalist party, neither of the two biggest block want to touch them, but they can get over 4%…. granted some parties said they'd work togheter to not give them any power, but they'll get budget for passing the 4% limit, and I think they'll have influence in certain seesaw questions etc. If we had a two party system in neither biggy wanted to touch them, they would not get the seesaw position.

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If we had a two party system the politically savvy part of that party (or of the greens for that matter) would likely infiltrate one of the major parties and try to push their agenda in there instead. Again it would be less transparent and the voters would have less say on the influence of this group.

Germany has currently ca. 5 main (read: biggest) parties. That works fairly well, but leaves a little bit more democracy to be desired, imho.

The worst point in my opinion is, that parties who have similar philosophies are more likely to "come together" than parties with different philosophies, like the "Green Party" ("Die Grünen"), for example, which is mostly looked upon (in a negative way) by the industry, which is on the other hand more than happy with the conservatives (CDU/CSU, whereas the CSU is Bavarian-only !and the liberals (the FDP). The left-wing party, the SPD has been doing so much for the industry in recent years that a frightening big amount of their clients feel betrayed by them. As a result, the far-left-wing party "Die Linke" (in English simply "The Left One" has only recently been erected (only 1-2 years ago, I think.

These are the biggest and main parties, and they are always looking for allies for their philosophies.

But recently - in principle even longer, but only recently it reached the attention of the masses - we have seen the problem - again, that is my subjective view of it - that the political parties have a frightening tendency to do everything they seem fit to keep themselves and their allies (the industry, for example) at the "points of power".

The newest scandal, fort example, is, that in the course of trying to push the domestic consumption a bit more (Germany is great in exports, but extraordinarily weak regarding internal/domestic consumptions), several laws have been made effective to help companies through these weak times.
Among them was a law that lowered the hotel tax from several percent (I think it was 12 ? ) to I think it was 9 % . Which came totally unexpected, because there NEVER was any sign ot the hotel and accommodation industry being weak.
Now, the scandal comes in that in a recent news it was revealed that the liberals, who are in the current government, had received a million-euro donation for their party - from as big businessman in that hotel and accommodation industry.

Now to everyone is clear: That law has been made to help him.

Donations from companies are allowed, but the public frownes upon them, because they always imply a strong tendency of bending the laws towards the "non-political) parties (or, like in this case, the industry) who are donating them.

So, as a result, a current survey revealed that this current government consisting of CDU + FDP, has been fallen, very, very deep in the reputation. Over 60 % of all people in that survey said that this government wasn't working for the public's well-being anymore.

Seeing this from my own country, I have the strong fear that even less parties might see a country as a convenient way to exploit and plunder it for the benefits of their own members and allies.

And that's something Greek has been seeing during the last decades, it appears to be, and now Greek is almost bancrupt.

Just a small correction "far left" means several (A) kind of ideas , as far as i know there isn't any (A) kind of idea that supports participation in elections.

In general the more parties = the more varied ideas and groups will be represented in the parliament(s) ; i am just not sure if this can fit inside your political culture.

Very interesting debate, and peek inside other countries' governments and how they work. Thanks to all for posting their insights. I can see that having various parties isn't an across the board solution necessarily, but it's very hard to visualize from here how a multiple party system wouldn't be an improvement over what we have now if only for one reason—the current stranglehold corporate lobbying and special interests have on both parties.

Here, the government/country imo has basically become a plutocracy controlled by those with the power and affluence to buy the votes of legislators who depend on them for re-election money. They only have two candidates in any given race to subvert, so they've learned to hedge their bets and subvert them both, because they have enough money to do that. Example: the financial industry and bankers used to primarily support the repubs, but in the Clinton years the dems started putting their hands out for a share and deregulation began to accelerate on an across-the-board scale, since both parties had a financial stake in making that happen and were rewarded for it. Healthcare, same deal. That's why I say we basically have a system with all the rigidity and disadvantages of a one party government atm and all the polarization and disadvantages of a sharply divided two-party system, and none of the advantages of either.

There's only a very little of the democracy the founders envisioned left in the actual day to day workings of our government. I agree the Constitution is a great framework for an effective government 'by the people' but there's nothing that can't be subverted over time if you have enough power and influence. And with the latest SCOTUS ruling on unlimited corporate finance at every level, I don't see much hope of things getting better until people take to the streets and we get what we fondly used to call "The Revolution" back in the 60's, a joke and disaster that may actually come to pass one of these days if things don't get some radical reconstruction in Washington.