Conclusion

Political parties are essential to democracy. They recruit candidates, mobilize voters, aggregate interests, and translate electoral victories into governance. When parties are healthy, they connect citizens to political power and hold leaders accountable. When they are not, democracy suffers. 

Participants in this convening agreed that U.S. parties are not healthy, even as they brought differing perspectives about causes, mechanisms, and remedies. State and local party infrastructure has eroded. The talent pipeline has narrowed. Short-term electoral thinking crowds out long-term capacity-building. Citizens experience parties primarily as sources of fundraising spam rather than as organizations that represent their interests and earn their trust.

Making parties healthier is not the only path to making democracy healthier, but it is a necessary one. Structural reforms to electoral rules, campaign finance, and redistricting matter—but parties will remain the organizations that contest elections and govern. Movement-building and civic engagement matter—but without parties to channel that energy into political power, engagement dissipates.

The questions identified in this report matter because under any theory of political reform—structural changes to electoral rules, movement-building, or policy development—parties remain the essential organizing units of electoral politics and representative government. If they function poorly, democracy functions poorly. Understanding why they function poorly, and what might help, is important work.

The scholars and practitioners who participated in our discussion remain engaged with these questions. The research agenda is underdeveloped but tractable. The intervention space is underexplored but promising. This is a problem area where serious intellectual work remains to be done—and where that work could inform consequential action.