How to strengthen American democracy and fight back against illiberal authoritarianism by rebuilding the center

American democracy is facing three existential threats: hyper-partisan polarization, the illiberal authoritarian takeover of one of our two major parties, and deep distrust in our institutions of government. This is all well-known.

What is less widely appreciated is the extent to which these problems are interrelated, and share the same core cause: our starkly binary party and electoral system, with a collapsing center. Absent attention to that core problem, the future of American democracy is dark.

Let’s start with hyper-partisan polarization.

For many years now, pundits and politicians alike have observed a steady change in how Washington works. In an earlier time, partisans came together to solve public problems. They came to Congress as Democrats or Republicans, but they worked diligently to find common ground. Voters identified as Democrats or Republicans, but if their side lost an election, it didn’t feel like the end of the world.

Underlying this widespread bipartisanship was a sense (based in reality) that Democrats and Republicans weren’t all that different. Both parties were loose, overlapping coalitions, with their liberal urban/suburban and conservative rural factions. In many ways, there was a multiparty system hidden within our two-party system, and this multiparty system made fluid coalitions and bargaining possible.

But starting in the 1990s, the parties began to sort into more distinct geographical coalitions, with liberal Republicans in the Northeast and on the West Coast slowly disappearing, and conservative Democrats in the Great Plains and South steadily vanishing. Without these overlapping factions, the center began to drop out of politics. Without their Northeastern wing, the Republican Party became unmoored from their traditional values of restraint and classical liberalism. The center of gravity in the Republican Party shifted south, and an aggrieved and radical white evangelical wing took over the GOP.

Meanwhile, as more conservative Southern Democrats vanished, the Democratic coalition became much more centered in the big diverse cosmopolitan cities, building a strong multiracial coalition that paired college-educated white liberals with most voters of color.

As these competing coalitions shared less and less in common, they came to demonize each other more and more. The stakes of each election became higher and higher, and more and more existential. Politics became more and more apocalyptic. When the fight is over the meaning of American identity, it is hard to find a compromise position in the middle. Under this intense partisan conflict, the center has collapsed.

Now let’s turn to the illiberal authoritarian takeover of one of our two major parties.

Importantly, this polarization has been asymmetrical. Most significantly, on basic issues of democracy and pluralism, the Republican Party has radicalized. Though some of this preceded the rise of Donald Trump, much of it occurred during Trump’s presidency. And his post-presidency has only made it worse.

Put simply, Trump heightened the contradictions. By taking radically combative positions in a binary party system, he pulled Republicans to illiberal extremes. Republicans had to defend him: he was their president, and the most visible leader of the party. To disagree with him or contradict him would help Democrats. In a binary two-party system, there were only two options. So, whatever Trump did, fellow Republicans had to side with him. And with each conflict, the mainstream Republican position radicalized further.

The clearest example of this dynamic has come since the November election. By defining the election as “stolen,” and by inciting a violent riot at the Capitol, Trump has drawn a clear line and dared fellow Republicans to deny him. Few have. Instead, the energy in the Republican Party has gone from refusing to challenge Trump’s claims to echoing them and embracing a radical anti-democratic approach to voting under the guise of “election integrity.” In a binary conflict, Trump took advantage of the simple reality: Republican identity was driven as much by loyalty to the GOP as hatred of the Democrats. As Trump stoked these flames, alternatives were foreclosed and anti-democratic behavior became normalized. He radicalized the Republican Party.

Notice how this is only possible because moderate, non-steal Republican voters and politicians lacked an alternative party that they could support without lending their support to the Democrats. Thus, the illiberal authoritarian turn in the Republican Party is birthed by hyper-partisan polarization and grows stronger as the viable political center dissipates.

In studies of democratic collapse, the existential danger of binary partisan conflict and the collapse of any viable political center is a telltale alarm bell heralding troubled times ahead. When a country is divided, the compromise and broad coalition-building necessary for stable democracy becomes impossible. Politics becomes a war of one half of the country against the other half of the country. Only one side can win. Democracy becomes a casualty.

Finally, we turn to the collapse of trust in our governing institutions.

This collapse has many causes, but the two main ones are those just described: hyper-partisan polarization, and the illiberal turn in the Republican Party. The result is the increasing appeal of authoritarianism in politics.

Hyper-partisan polarization undermines trust in governing institutions in two ways. Most directly, it undermines trust because Democrats distrust Republicans and Republicans distrust Democrats, so that when Democrats govern, they can’t draw on any reserves of trust beyond Democrats, and Republicans can’t draw on any reserves of trust beyond Republicans. Is there anything Joe Biden or the Democrats could do to gain the trust of Republicans? Highly unlikely.

Worse, because the parties are so polarized, the Congress is in near-perpetual gridlock. If the stories coming out of Washington are all about the fighting and the dysfunction, it’s difficult to build public trust in government.

Of course, there is again an important asymmetry. Democrats have long been the party of government. Republicans have been the party of less government. Thus, dysfunction helps Republicans because it makes their case for them: that government is broken, and there should be less of it. This simplifies the Republican opposition strategy—throw sand into the governing machine and make Democrats look bad. Democrats, by contrast, tend to be more invested in a functioning and well-funded government. This makes their opposition to Republican rule a little more challenging.

The “Stop the Steal” campaign is also oriented at reducing trust in elections. A foundation of modern democracy is that elections are binding, and that all sides can agree that the elections are free and fair. When that collapses, it paves the way to authoritarian takeover. Unfortunately, this dangerous nihilism has now all but completed its takeover of the Republican Party. Pro-democracy Republican Members of Congress will be few and far between at the start of the 118th Congress in 2023.

But again, Republican voters and politicians who express some concern about the illiberal direction of the GOP are in an understandable bind. They have nowhere to go except to defect to the opposition Democrats. For many, this would be a betrayal of their long-standing identity as Republicans. And the shift among Democrats to the left—however exaggerated by Mr. Carlson and company—it’s still real enough to give pause to a centrist Republican.

It’s important to understand how neatly this all fits together. Hyper-partisan polarization has made the Republican Party vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover because so few Republicans can contemplate going over to the Democratic Party; therefore they must support their Republican president, whatever he does, and update their values accordingly. With trust in governing institutions already battered by hyper-partisan polarization, the ground has been softened for the illiberal authoritarian turn in the GOP. Once faith is “normal politics” destroyed, authoritarianism becomes a viable alternative.

With these trends in mind, the 2022 and 2024 elections come into stark, forbidding relief. In midterms, the president’s party almost always loses seats, largely because public opinion tends to be “thermostatic.” It moves against the party in power. Imagine some portion of the electorate, always wanting to get back to some lost middle ground, frantically adjusting the dial back and forth. These voters can’t signal that they want something in between the Democrats and the Republicans, and they can’t make it clear that they want the government to work better. They can only choose to put a different party in charge, or balance things out by voting for divided government.

But what if there were a way for them to register a setting on the dial that reflected a preference for a more moderate governing regime, something more in the center? A Center Party is occasionally mentioned, but under the U.S. system of single-winner plurality elections, no Center Party is viable. The center is too small, and single-winner plurality elections are hostile to third parties.

The longer term solution would be more viable parties, elected through proportional representation.

A more immediate solution is to allow for more parties to have ballot lines, and choose which candidates to endorse. This is called fusion balloting, and it is used in eight states currently, most prominently in New York and Connecticut.

Under fusion balloting, a Center Party could form, and choose to endorse either of the Democrat or Republican congressional candidates—whichever candidate it views as more moderate and more committed to the rule of law. If the Democratic candidate is also endorsed by the Center Party, voters could choose which ballot line to vote on. Either way, the vote would count the same. But by voting on the Center Party ballot line, a voter would send a clear signal that they consider themselves part of the Center Party. At the end of the election, if the Democrat won, that candidate would know how much of her support came from the Center Party. The more votes come in on the Center Party line, the more leverage that Center Party could have.

It would also give voters a chance to see themselves as part of a Center Party, which over time might support some of its own candidates and build more of an identity.

Of course, fusion balloting would likely spur other new parties to organize and claim ballot lines. The result would be a clearer picture of the multi-party system hidden within our two-party system. By revealing this, we might still yet have a chance to break out of the destructive binary, and enter a new era of compromise and fluid coalition building capable of tackling our biggest problems.