Unresolved Questions

While participants reached broad agreement on party dysfunction, they disagreed—sometimes fundamentally—about both the nature of political parties and the possibilities for reform. These disagreements are not merely tactical; they reflect unresolved questions that must be addressed before practical debates can be resolved.

Parties are expected to perform four distinct functions, one participant noted: electing people, recruiting people, holding members accountable, and governing. But these functions require contradictory skill sets and organizational structures: “The people who are good at electing people are historically bad at recruiting and maintaining people.” An organization optimized for winning the next election looks nothing like one optimized for long-term leadership development or deliberative policymaking.

The convening never resolved which function should be primary. Different participants implicitly operated from incompatible premises:

• If parties are primarily electoral machines, then centralized control over candidate selection makes sense, professional management matters most, and local committees should be evaluated on voter contact metrics.
• If parties are primarily membership organizations, then internal democracy and grassroots participation become paramount, and electoral effectiveness follows from authentic organizing.
• If parties are primarily governing institutions, then policy expertise, congressional capacity, and competent administration matter most.
• If parties are primarily civic organizations that build social capital, then the megachurch model becomes relevant: Parties should offer services and create spaces for nonpolitical connection.

Political parties need to function as coalitions that “set aside some of their differences.” This idea cuts two ways, however: Leadership must prevent interest groups from imposing purity tests while also picking candidates and ideas that motivate voters. One participant used the metaphor of “moons orbiting planet Democrat,” suggesting parties are solar systems where different elements need alignment at critical moments. A leader of an emerging party offered another analogy: “You don’t just start a record label—you need artists.” Parties need candidates at the center: “Coalitions form around people, not platforms.”

But when should elements align? Who decides? As one participant argued, “An element of a healthy party is when the party cares about doing all three things together”—electing, recruiting, and governing.

The next question concerns whether parties are simply making bad choices or whether they are behaving rationally given perverse constraints:

• If parties are making bad choices, then reform can happen through better leadership, changed incentives, improved rules, and strategic investments. They can fire predatory fundraising consultants, impose bylaws to strengthen local committees, and fund leadership development. The problems are internal and therefore fixable.
• If parties are acting with bounded rationality, then they are optimally adapted to a hostile environment—campaign finance laws, geographic polarization, media fragmentation, and donors’ short-term perspectives. Telling party leaders to “do better” is useless in this case; the environment must change first.

“Parties bear the brunt of a much more broken political system,” one participant said, implying that parties are victims, not villains. But the consensus description of fundraising as “borderline grifting” that “parties are letting happen” implies agency and choice. 

Several voices noted that mainstream parties in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are also struggling, even though they aren’t burdened by the pathologies of American campaign finance incentives. Perhaps the U.S.-specific diagnosis is wrong, then, and something more global is happening—technological, economic, or cultural—that no party-level reform can address.

One respondent to our pre-convening survey acknowledged this bleakly: “I’m not persuaded that there is much any one person could do to foster a healthier party system (whatever that means)—certainly not the head of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] or RNC [Republican National Committee].” Another wrote: “I’m also over trying to find institutional fixes to social problems.”

These questions about the core purpose of parties and whether they can change themselves surfaced in concrete form across the practical debates that follow. Participants who emphasized different party functions reached different conclusions about structure: Those who believed in party agency supported internal reforms, while those who saw structural constraints emphasized environmental changes.

The question of who should control candidate selection exposed one of the convening’s deepest fault lines, revealing a tension between academic analysis and practitioner experience.

The Case for Centralized Control

Parties with more open and democratic internal processes tend to empower more extremist members and produce less representative candidates. When parties open nomination processes to broader participation, those who show up are not representative of the general electorate: They are either “cheerleader partisans” who already love the party or activists seeking to change it in ideologically extreme directions.

One scholar pointed to the 2016 Republican presidential primary: A Wall Street Journal poll found that although a majority of Republican voters could not see themselves voting for Donald Trump, the rules allowed him to win with a plurality. Internal ranked-choice voting or a brokered convention might have produced a different outcome. “The more internally democratic the party is, the more it gets captured by extremists,” the scholar noted.

Practitioners Defend Internal Democracy

A political operative who has worked Democratic conventions since 2008 pushed back from experience: “The Dem presidential nominating process is the greatest episode in small-d democracy in the world. Show me another party that has ceded its most important decision to the people.” The rules are transparent and genuinely participatory. “The process is there to be understood by anyone willing to engage.” 

The problem in 2024 was not the nomination process; it was that no primary occurred. One participant who worked in Democratic party politics has lobbied to change the delegate allocation formula and calendar to “prioritize general election swing states”—but within the existing democratic framework, not by returning to elite control.

A political scientist proposed a middle path: bottom-up flows of authority where party leaders are chosen by members but remain empowered to make strategic decisions. This is “probably the goal that the early reformers had in mind”—not that every member votes on everything, but that leadership is accountable to a membership base with real power.

Another noted that attention to nomination rules has atrophied: “The current Dem rules are a compromise from decades ago, and nothing has changed.” Getting good people onto rules and bylaws committees “could be a place for serious change.” But the calendar and delegate allocation—concrete, actionable reforms—received less attention than the abstract centralization-versus-democracy debate.

Before debating how parties should engage citizens, a prior question divided participants: whether most people want the kind of engagement reformers imagine.

The Participation Model

Research on megachurches and local organizing suggests people will commit substantial time and energy when they feel they are accomplishing something tangible and building rewarding relationships. But the parties offer little room for participation, other than through fundraising. 

“Most people experience politics as spectacle,” one participant noted, “and producers have the incentive to produce spectacle.” Some argued that if parties give people opportunities to solve problems, build relationships, and develop skills, they will take them. Megachurches succeed because they “invite people to take actions in which they solve problems themselves.” People can be transformed through participation. “Most people don’t understand what voice is,” until they have a truly participatory experience. This is particularly true for younger people, a pollster argued.

The Representation Model

A longtime organizational leader offered an alternative view: “Serving people and representing their interests is not the same as assuming people want to participate. A lot of people want to just live their damn lives, and trust that the system works.”

Reformers project their own enthusiasm onto voters who want something different: competent representation that delivers results. Voters may choose candidates who seem effective over candidates who only invite participation.

Why It Matters

If the participation model is right, parties should invest in participation infrastructure—lowering barriers, offering meaningful engagement, and building relationships. Interventions like community spaces, civic services, and megachurch-style programming make sense.

If the other view is right, parties should focus on governing competence and delivering material benefits, treating most voters as constituents rather than potential activists. The emphasis shifts to candidate quality, policy expertise, and demonstrated effectiveness.

This is not purely an either/or proposition. One participant’s finding that young people want “constituent services” but do not see elections as powerful suggests a possible synthesis: parties that deliver (representation model) while inviting those who want deeper engagement (participation model). But the resource allocation and strategic emphasis differ dramatically depending on which model is prioritized.

A recurring proposal in the convening was that parties should embed in civic life through services and community presence, even in activities that are not specifically election-related. That idea collided with principled objections about the proper boundaries of partisan activity.

The Case for Civic Integration

As noted above, megachurches and other community groups have succeeded by inviting people to solve problems, offering child care and food to lower barriers to participation, and building dense social networks. Several convening participants proposed specific constituent services parties could provide:

• “311 or ombudsman services” to help navigate complex government systems
• Help with accessing new services that use intimidating digital portals, and with filing and paying taxes

The vision behind these actions is that parties can become embedded in communities by doing things that make lives tangibly better and creating reciprocal relationships, much as parties did for newly arrived immigrant groups in the twentieth century.

The Case for Separation

A party operative objected on principle: “Please keep politics out of that. My most important job was softball and baseball coach.” He pointed out that in countries where parties sponsor youth sports and social activities, “it’s not good. They sponsor graduations, and there’s a different one for each party.” Constituent services already exist—provided by elected officials’ offices, not parties. “We get people passports” through congressional casework. This is good precisely because it is nonpartisan; people do not have to affiliate with a party to get help. “Government should be less partisan, not more.”

The deeper concern is that if parties become service providers, they risk creating clientelistic dependency rather than democratic citizenship. In such a scenario, people end up supporting the party not because they share its values but because they need help navigating bureaucracy. This is the logic of machine politics—effective at mobilization, but also corrupt and undemocratic.

The proliferation of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations has created a parallel infrastructure that sometimes complements and sometimes competes with parties. Participants were divided on whether this represents a healthy diversification of the party ecosystem or parasitic fragmentation.

Outside Groups as Competitors

Multiple participants argued that advocacy groups have become problematic competitors, drawing off resources and talent while lacking electoral accountability.

“Local sectoral issue groups challenge existing parties,” one political scientist noted. They impose purity tests, push candidates toward positions that hurt them in general elections, and fragment party messaging. They are accountable to donors and issue constituencies, not to coalitions of voters or broader electoral needs. “The problem with the influence of c3/c4 groups is they don’t have accountability to the party. They’re presented to donors as the place connected to the voice of the people, but they’re still suffering from the same pathologies and disconnection as the parties.” 

A leader of such organizations identified the root of the issue in philanthropy itself, suggesting that groups funded to push specific agendas have incentives for ideological rigidity rather than coalition-building.

Outside Groups as Collaborators

In defense of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) groups, one activist stated that “TPUSA [Turning Point USA] and Indivisible innovated and brought people in.” They went on to note that “the groups care about things other than parties. It’s lazy to blame them and see them as hindrances when the parties should be evolving.”

A new party organizer noted that “a healthy ecosystem has diverse institutions with different functions. Not everything should be party-controlled.”

Within this broader disagreement, a specific question emerged: Should parties reclaim the work of policy development from outside groups?

Those in favor argued that party-developed policy creates electoral accountability and reduces dependence on groups with their own agendas. When the American Civil Liberties Union sends out candidate questionnaires, they are setting party policy without facing voters.

But others implied that the division of labor is appropriate. Parties lack policy expertise; groups have it. Trying to rebuild policy capacity within parties may be inefficient when specialized organizations already exist.

Why It Matters

If the view of groups as competitors to parties is right, donors should invest in rebuilding party policy capacity and reducing group influence over nominations and platforms. Interventions should strengthen parties relative to outside groups.

If the collaboration view is right, foundations should help parties and groups coordinate better rather than compete. Interventions should build ecosystem coherence—perhaps through convenings, shared infrastructure, or formal partnership models.

The Working Families Party (WFP) represents one synthesis: a party built through membership-based organizations, in which groups are integrated partners rather than external competitors. Whether such a model might work for parties in the ideological center remains an open question.

Tabatha Abu El-Haj and Didi Kuo, one of this paper’s authors, have argued that one way to revive nineteenth-century structures (local presence, membership organization, material benefits) without the corruption, racism, and sexism is through “associational party-building.” The WFP in New York demonstrates that this remains possible. Skeptics, however, questioned whether intensive local organizing can compete with nationalized media and politics.

The WFP’s formative years offer one useful model:

• Building through existing organizations: Rather than recruiting isolated individuals, the WFP partnered with unions, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), and community groups. This provided both initial membership and ongoing infrastructure.
• Creating social capital: Strong and weak ties connected leaders, members, and potential voters through overlapping networks.
• Securing material benefits: The WFP understood that “transactional politics” matters. Advocacy in favor of increasing the minimum wage, reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws, and securing other tangible deliverables gave people reasons to stay involved.
• Maintaining internal democracy: Institutional and individual members participated in endorsement processes. Leaders “always had a pulse on what their members wanted” because decision-making was genuinely participatory. Although “all party policy formation and direction was top down,” leaders led while remaining responsive.

The WFP was powered by the electoral option of fusion voting—“a ballot line” that allowed it to endorse candidates who appeared on both Democratic and Working Families lines, giving members distinct identity and leverage.

Multiple participants suggested fusion voting might be a necessary enabling condition for associational party-building. Without a ballot line, factions lack the independence to hold major parties accountable. However, an emerging party leader noted that the New York State Assembly “raised the threshold for signature collection to kick [his party] off the ballot”—a reminder that major parties can actively suppress fusion voting if and when it threatens them.

The Skeptical View

Others questioned whether local, relationship-intensive organizing can compete with nationalized media and politics. “The influential people in [the] local community used to be involved in [the] local party, but that’s not true anymore,” one organizer said. Community leaders no longer see local committees as worth their time.

Several participants worried that the WFP example is not generalizable. It succeeded in New York City with (since weakened) fusion voting, in a dense urban environment with strong unions and community organizations, and at a particular political moment. Replicating it in suburban or rural areas, in right-to-work states without labor infrastructure, and in an era of weakened civil society would be more difficult. 

Notably, this debate proceeded with almost no systematic evidence. As one survey respondent observed, “There is almost no academic knowledge about the formation and operation of state party and faction ecosystems.”

Why It Matters

If the associational model works, it calls for experiments in associational party-building and fusion voting campaigns. The WFP model—or adaptations of it—becomes a template.

If skeptics are right, such investments will fail outside exceptional contexts. Resources should flow to interventions that work within nationalized politics rather than against it.

The fusion voting question is particularly consequential: If a ballot line is necessary for faction accountability, then structural reform (discussed in the following section) becomes a prerequisite for organizational reform, not an alternative to it.

As discussed earlier in this report, the gathering identified lack of competition as a core problem, but participants divided sharply on sequencing: Can structural reforms create competition, or do reforms require prior political success that noncompetition makes impossible?

This debate frames everything that follows. If structural reform is achievable, certain interventions make sense. If it requires organizational capacity that does not yet exist, different interventions take priority. If both are needed simultaneously, the resource and coordination demands multiply.

The Reform-First View

Lack of competition affects everything else. “Functionally, most places only have one party,” one participant noted. 

This is an argument for structural reform. Without competition, organizational investment is irrational—there is no electoral payoff for building capacity, recruiting talent, or engaging citizens. The rules must change first to create stakes worth organizing for.

Multiple survey respondents proposed specific structural reforms:

• Fusion voting to enable faction-building with electoral leverage
• Redistricting reform with independent commissions to create more competitive districts
• Proportional representation to ensure that minorities within districts can elect representatives
• Ranked-choice voting to produce more consensus candidates
• Open primaries to reduce partisan capture of nominations

The reform-first logic assumes that current rules entrench noncompetition. Incumbents in safe seats have no incentive to build party capacity, respond to constituents, or tolerate internal democracy. Changes to rules would change party behavior.

The Organizing-First View

Others emphasized a practical problem: Structural reforms require legislative victories, but legislators elected under current rules have little reason to change them.

To pass redistricting reform, legislative majorities are required. To win legislative majorities in gerrymandered districts, you need redistricting reform. To relegalize fusion voting, you need to win lawsuits overturning 100-year-old bans. Why would legislators do this?

Populist anti-system framing might provide a path. Reform campaigns that channel voter frustration at “the system” might succeed where good-government arguments fail. But it requires organizational capacity to run such campaigns.

Whether based on populist or good-government language, this approach calls for building faction strength and organizational capacity with available tools. Reform campaigns should aim to create political conditions that make reform possible, starting with fellowships, leadership development, local party grants, and civic infrastructure. A synthesis of the arguments recognizes that structural reform takes years or decades, while capacity-building can begin now.