Escaping the Partisan Death Spiral

Lee Drutman wrote about the need for multiparty democracy in America for the July/August Cato Policy Report.

As we lurch toward another national election, steel yourself for the familiar ride: incendiary threat rhetoric about the end of America as we know it; cramped debates where nobody proposes anything new and nobody changes his or her mind; and the seemingly pointless marshaling of billions of dollars to generate an endless stream of substanceless attack ads to blanket the handful of “swing” states and districts, where perhaps just a few thousand late‐​deciding low‐​information voters could determine the fate of the country. Even as we watch what feels like a highstakes contest, in the end our political future will probably be more endless partisan fighting, endangering basic constitutional norms, and now, thanks to COVID-19, our economy and our health as well. A genuine contest of ideas and visions, it will not be.

To work well, self‐​governance must be a contest of ideas where competition can drive innovation and change. But because of America’s unusual two‐​party system, which is largely a product of our antiquated usage of “first‐​past‐​the‐​post” elections, voters will head to the polls this November with only two realistic choices, unless you don’t mind “wasting” your vote on a candidate who can’t win. For almost all voters, though, there will really be only one choice — both because most voters are reliable partisans, and because most voters live in lopsided districts and states where either a Republican or a Democrat has no real shot of ever winning. The marketplace of political competition is decidedly broken.

But it gets even worse. It’s not just that the political marketplace is broken — it’s that the broken political marketplace is now breaking the fundamental foundations of modern liberal democracy: the rule of law and adherence to constitutional norms. In the constant jockeying for narrow elusive majorities, partisans are putting short‐​term gains ahead of long‐​term stability and disregarding long‐​standing norms in order to win the next election and humiliate the other side. When “winning” becomes everything, and winning means dehumanizing the other side for short‐​term gain, it legitimates increasingly extreme behavior on both sides.