I'm all for an independent 3rd party called, likely enough, "Independents".

We'd still all check and balance each other, and we'd probably do a better job of it than we have these last 50 years or so (if not more).

How many parties do we need?

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

"The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties,

ALL OF WHICH STANDS FOR THE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of the means of production,

and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class."

"The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles."

Maybe what we really need is a NEW Magna Carta, a new Social compact, but I can assure you, those who stand against the status quo will find it to difficult to overturn the deeply entrenched.

My immediate, uncharitable, reaction was "is this a joke?" I realise this is probably unfair to you, but it should be clear that two parties cannot even begin to sufficiently represent the variously divergent and convergent interests of individuals or smaller groups.

I therefore submit the two-party system is taxation without representation.

Great blog and thanks for picking this up.

As mentioned elsewhere and as Karl Marx just alluded to - a two-party system has a natural tendency to exaggerate ideological positions because it creates an environment of binary opposition.

I used to be into multi-party system big time. But then I learned that:

- A multi-party system has a weakness of splitting the vote (where minority can end up ruling over majority),

- reduce government stability over time (because multi-party is essentially multi-faction) and

- tends to rely extensively on coalitions (which would have a similar effect to a two-party system in policy outcome).

So I would suggest we revisit the question - what is it that a two-party system doesn't provide to us that we really really need to have?

A third party, or additional parties beyond that, are likely not possible within the current electoral system. To understand why this is the case, check out this essay by Bill Domhoff. The important thing to take away here is that the structural nature of the Single-Member-District Plurality system tends toward two parties.

If this is indeed true, and additional parties are the goal, then the typical third-party approach, dependent on some sort of as yet unseen shift in consciousness on the part of the electorate, is simply mistaken. Altering the structure of the electoral system would be required. This is possible, but not being seriously considered at this time AFAIK.

All democratic governments represent a coalition of interests that are only roughly aligned.

In a multiparty system, individual parties representing very integrated policy positions get to do more of what they want within a specific area or areas (i.e. the ministries they get under the coalition agreement) at the cost of having less influence over other areas (the ministries the other parties get). Their ability to influence the policies implemeneted in the ministries the other parties control comes only through the threat to abandon their own ministries and go into opposition and/or, if they hold enough seats, bring down the government. Thus, if the Greens, who control the Energy and Environment Ministry, don't like what the Social Democrats are doing in foreign policy, they have to decide whether they dislike it enough to lose control over the one thing they care most about and face the possibility of losing seats in an election to boot. Likewise, the Social Democrats have to decide how far they can go without pissing off the Greens to the point of driving them into the opposition.

The two party system performs the same coalition-building function as multiparty systems do, they just in a different way. Each constituiency has more influence over all the policies of the party than in a multi-party system, but none has the kind of stong influence over particular policy areas they would get if they controlled a ministry in a parlimentary system.

On balance, I think the comparison becomes one of yearning for the greener grass on the other side of the fence. Multi-party systems are not inherently less prone to gridlock than we are. The difference is that here the gridlock is caused by the opposition using constitutional tools to impede the majority whereas when gridlock happens in a multiparty system it comes from within the government due to fear of breaking up the coalition by doing anything one of the parties would disagree with.

In general, I don't think the two party systems is anymore frustrating for voters than multiparty systems. The difference is that in multiparty systems, the voters get to feel ideologically pure and clean (like Naderites in 2000) on election day and the sorting out of lesser evils and the making of deals with the devil gets done by the politicians after the votes are counted. In our system, the voters have to acquiesce in advance to, and actually participate in, the lesser evil choosing and devil dealmaking.

The only notable difference I see is that multi-party voters get to postpone some of their disgruntlement and bitching until after the election, but at the cost of a more general disdain for all of their politicians regardless of party. Prime Ministers are rarely well-liked but they also don't have as much need to be liked because almost all votes will be party line until the one that brings down the government.

And then there's France, saddled with a constitution that seems to bring the voters the worst of both systems. Like Italians, they hold legislators and the ministers in disdain because of the public sausage making necessary to form a government and yet, like Americans, they have to do the pre-election swallowing of qualms and choosing of lesser evils because it is a run-off between the top two vote-getters, both of whom they've had ample time to learn to despise during their years as coalition builders and cabinet ministers.

The biggest disadvantage of multiparty systems is that they frequently bestow far too much power on upon small but parties of monomananical loons and/or dangerous radicals (*cough*Israel*cough). The big disadvantage of our system is that no constituiency one ever seems to get everything they want when they want it, but when you think about what some of the things major constituiencies in our two parties--especially theirs--have wanted over the years, I'm not sure that, over the long haul, that's a bad thing.

As to what's going on right now, the country is most definitly not "split down the middle." Instead, you've got one party with the kind of broad coaltion necessary to govern, along with all the broad-spectrum frustration inherent in any coalition, and another party that's rapidly turning itself into the kind of narrow entity that can only function in a multi-party democracy. I increasingly think that all the insanity and raving we hear coming out of the GOP is the sound of the party's death agony. When one of the parties in a two party system starts sounding and acting like a mainline extremist party in a multiparty European country, it means they've completely abandoned the kind of accomdationism necessary to form a governing coaltion. The steady decline in Republican self-identification since 2005 is both cause and result of the party's self-destruction. The crazier it gets, the more people leave, the more people leave, the crazier those left behind become.

Gridlock comes when one side refuses to compromise. Compromise is not found in common ground. Compromise is found when concessions are made in exchange for advantages in other areas. Common ground means quite literally, I will agree where we both agree. Brilliant! Who cares that what was stated was already obvious. Common ground is no change at all. It prevents movement in any direction. Sounds nice, though.

The only way for things to loosen up is for the 60th Senator to be elected in favor of the Dems. Otherwise, we fall back to what the Reich was doing, or gridlock. The interesting thing is that regardless of all the intransigence on so many issues, Congress still pumps out news laws all the time.

My question is, when will we have enough laws? I wonder why we are still making new ones. 200 years later and we can't figure it out?

What Obama has been doing, and why he has been successful, is finding the common ground. The Reich has been so adamant with their all or nothing agenda amd their binary characterizations wherein they declare what the other party represents, that there is no room for even conversation. We have to divide and conquer. We need to reveal to the people on the Right that they do NOT agree with everything they claim to accept about their party, and we are not a party with some single agenda without any variations.

This is why we have so many independents in the first place, IMHO. These are honest people who have their own identity and therefore cannot sign up for one party's ideology.

Frankly, I do not want any more parties. I would prefer people who lean Right clean up their act, and people who lean left keep on trucking.

Very good post!

From what I've read of Jefferson's writings, TJ never intimated that Washington was a monarchist, and in fact stated he was not, because Washington was revered enough in early America to have been appointed President for life, yet walked away from it. Jefferson spoke with reverence about Washington's honour, and believed that Washington had listened to Hamilton too often, instead of his advice. Jefferson was the first Sec. of State, appointed by Washington.

Jefferson did believe that Hamilton was a monarchist, and because of that, was a threat to The Nation. For a long time, TJ also placed John Adams in with the monarchists, and the two did not speak to each other for many years, yet became friends who corresponded often in their later years.

Washington did not consider himself to be a Federalist, and in his Farewell Address spoke of partisan politics' dangers:

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

George Washington's Farewell Address 1796

You say that I have been dished up to you as an anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of not1ce to merit citing; but since you ask it, I will tell it to you. I am not a federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction, is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther from that of the anti-federalists. I approved, from the first moment, of the great mass of what is in the new Constitution; the consolidation of the government; the organization into executive, legislative, and judiciary; the subdivision of the legislative; the happy compromise of interests between the great and little States, by the different manner of voting in the different Houses; the voting by persons instead of States; the qualified negative on laws given to the executive, which, however, I should have liked better if associated with the judiciary also, as in New York; and the power of taxation. I thought at first that the latter might have been limited. A little reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be.

Thomas Jefferson, To Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789.

The known bias of the human mind from motives of interest should lessen the confidence of each party in the justice of their reasoning.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Ross, May 8, 1786

It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party.

Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1818

I don't ask questions, don't promote demonstrations,
don't look for new consensus, don't stray from constitution
if I pierce the complexity I won't find salvation
just the bald and over truth
of the evil and deception

there is an inner logic,
and we're taught to stay far from it
it is simple and elegant,
but it's cruel and antithetic
and there's no effort to reveal it

no equality,
no opportunity,
no tolerance for the progressive alternative

"Inner Logic", Greg Graffin, Bad Religion
"Stranger Than Fiction", Atlantic, 1994