The Importance of Political Parties

Second in a series on moving toward a multiparty democracy

To understand how the United States might move away from the toxic partisanship of the last forty years, it’s important to recognize that political parties are not themselves the problem.  In fact, political parties are essential to the functioning of any but the smallest democracy.

Most Americans mistrust political parties and, perhaps covertly, wish we could do without them.  More people identify as independents than as either Democrats or Republicans.  Many of the Founders were suspicious of parties, and the Constitution does not provide for them.  The Progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century likewise mistrusted parties.  When we consider the toxic partisanship of contemporary American politics, it’s easy to conclude that political parties are themselves the problem.  

Modern political scientists, however, are unanimous in their belief that democracy requires political parties to structure conflict, to allow disparate citizens to work together in common purpose.  In Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, Lee Drutman writes,

• Modern mass democracy really is unthinkable without parties because parties are the key institution leading disparate citizens to common purpose.
• Parties help citizens to feel represented, giving them a stake in the larger political system.
• They engage citizens who would otherwise ignore politics.
• They explain to ordinary people why they should care about politics by broadcasting and raising the stakes. …
• Parties set the alternatives and frame the debates.
• They organize political conflict to render it comprehensible.
• They help channel political ambition into responsible service and vet candidates for quality.
• Without competing parties to aggregate and simplify alternatives, voters lack meaningful and quality choices. …
• Dictatorships have no party competition. Democracies do. (p. 41)

So political parties are necessary.  

Political conflict and partisanship are necessary parts of the process, too.  The naïve notion of the Founders and later the Progressive Movement that all issues could evolve toward consensus — and thus no ultimate need for political conflict — misunderstands the nature of politics.  Issues about which there is consensus don’t need the political process.  In real life, however, groups have different interests and the political process is necessary for making decisions when groups cannot agree.  Compromise — not consensus — is the end result of the political process.

As I explored in the last post, however, when there are only two parties and they become ideologically sorted, the devolution into toxic partisanship is virtually inevitable.  The solution is not getting rid of parties but, paradoxically, to change the electoral process to encourage more parties.  The next post will describe how a multiparty system blunts the toxicity of political parties and encourages cooperation and compromise.