Since our founding, Americans have taken issue with political parties, as well as the system that ensures there shall only be two of them in power.
So what else is out there?
Today in our first episode of US vs, we explore how our democracy compares to others around the world. What are the pros and cons of the various systems? Is there a perfect democracy? And why are we talking so much about Street Fighter 2?
This episode features two professors of political science, Robin Best from Binghamton University and Guillermo Rosas from Washington University in St. Louis.
Transcript
Nick Capodice: You watch enough political speeches, Hannah, and it gets to the point you don't even hear it anymore.
: Oh, but don't let anyone tell you that America isn't great.
: I think we have to get back to what this election has to be about.
: Ok, listen, we this is the greatest country in the history of mankind. In the greatest nation on Earth. Thank you. I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America…
Nick Capodice: You're [00:00:30] listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Capodice,
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy,
Nick Capodice: And today we are asking how we measure up against the rest of the world. It seems, Hannah, every few weeks we come up with another series on our show, but this is one I desperately want to revisit. It's called us vs. or U.S. versus where we compare other successful or sometimes unsuccessful governmental systems to our own. And today something we get asked about constantly the [00:01:00] two party system. Why do we have it? Can it change? And most importantly, how does our system compare to other democracies? And yeah, I'm doing like a whole street fighter two thing. This is the opening music to that, by the way.
Hannah McCarthy: What is streetfighter two?
Nick Capodice: It's a violent lesson in democracy, Hannah. Players pick a fighter who lives in a country somewhere in the world, and they fly around the world visiting other countries and do battle with other fighters there.
Hannah McCarthy: So it's an arcade game,
Nick Capodice: It's an arcade game.
You win! [00:01:30]
Nick Capodice: And right off the bat, I have to say that is ridiculous. There is no M. Bison to defeat at the end of this episode, but I do want to say one thing, and it's a fast, personal anecdote. Did I ever tell you about the play that I was in in New York that was really bad?
Hannah McCarthy: From what I understand, you were in a lot of really bad plays,
Nick Capodice: That's fair.
Nick Capodice: This one was one of the worst and I'm not going to name the director, but I was having a tough time in rehearsal one night because I didn't like any of the choices they were making, and I was upset [00:02:00] and a friend of mine, said Nick. No matter how bad you think a director is, they've got a better seat than you, and I'm never going to forget that.
Hannah McCarthy: Meaning you can't accurately critique your own performance because you're You.
Nick Capodice: Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: So to take that lesson to heart for civics, it's hard to study American governmental systems when you're in them, you're basically on stage,
Nick Capodice: Right. So first, I'm going to explain why we have a two party system, but then we'll talk about the pros, cons [00:02:30] and how other democracies do it.
Hannah McCarthy: Hold on a second, nick. I can hear the gathering of pitchforks. There are other parties in the United States.
Nick Capodice: There are, there are many other parties. Keep the pitchforks in the barn. But I will say, as of this recording December twenty twenty one, every member of the House of Representatives is a Republican or a Democrat, and in the Senate there are two independents, but they always caucus with the Democratic Party. Of the seven thousand three hundred and eighty three seats in state legislatures. [00:03:00] Only 25 of them are held by members of other parties.
Hannah McCarthy: So while there are other parties, we are known internationally as a country that has a two party system.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, and to continue on that thread to put us in the US versus frame of mind, I talk to a specialist in that in comparative politics. Guillermo Rosas, he teaches at Washington University at St. Louis.
Guillermo Rosas: Comparative politics basically uses the comparative method to [00:03:30] say meaningful things about politics in general. And here the emphasis is in using a different, the domestic politics of different countries as data points, as observations that we can leverage to make general claims about political phenomena in general.
Nick Capodice: Guillermo told me that his students get very animated when he teaches the two party system because they are frustrated.
Guillermo Rosas: It's not that they are apathetic, but they certainly feel alienated [00:04:00] oftentimes, right? They see two options nowadays. It used to be that because I'm old enough to have to have had a student that are now in their 30s or 40s. There was a time when, you know, people complained that the parties were too similar, so there was no real option
Hannah McCarthy: When in modern history were the parties considered too similar?
Nick Capodice: Well, after World War Two, there was this era of political postwar consensus where policy had very [00:04:30] little to do with whether you had a D or an R next to your name. Most of the bills that passed in the nineteen fifties and sixties were with bipartisan support, and voters expressed frustration with the fuzziness of the two parties. They didn't know who to hold accountable or what it was their representatives even stood for.
Guillermo Rosas: Now, that's not the complaint. The complaint now is that there's certainly a lot of difference in the platforms of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, but [00:05:00] that they feel too far away from these parties that they would like some other option that's closer to them. And that's a common complaint when you have a two party system. It makes sense, right? Two parties, two options. And of course, these are parties that are going to have to pack a lot of content in their platforms.
Hannah McCarthy: This is something that I have heard, not just from listeners to our show, but guests. I did an episode on Independence, and one guest said she considered being an independent to [00:05:30] be an act of noncompliance, a political statement of great importance.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, and I get that. We are at a moment right now of severe polarization. And if you told someone where you stood on a hot button social issue, they could predict the probability of where you stand on 20 other issues that aren't even related to it.
Hannah McCarthy: So you're saying there's frustration when the two parties are too similar. And also when they are too different, then why do we have it? Is the two party system in the Constitution? [00:06:00]
Robin Best: Yeah, that's a really good question. It is not enshrined anywhere in our founding documents.
Nick Capodice: This is Robin Best, professor of political science at Binghamton University, who also teaches comparative politics.
Robin Best: And in fact, there's nothing in the Constitution that needs that says that we have to have either a particular type of electoral system or a particular type of party system. The primary reason why we have a two party system in the United States is the electoral system that we use for many of our elections and almost all of our national [00:06:30] level elections, which is the single member district plurality method of election.
Hannah McCarthy: So I think many of our listeners know how we do elections in America, but they might not be familiar with that term. Can we define it?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Single member district plurality method of election. SMP for short also called first past the post voting, it's a winner take all system, it's just how we do it. You live in a geographic district and in that district you vote for one elected official [00:07:00] like a senator, congressperson, and the winner is the person with a plurality of votes. We can't say majority because there are usually more than two people on the ticket. It's it's usually a plurality. So say the first place gets 40 percent of the votes. Second place gets 30 percent and the rest of the votes go to other candidates.
Robin Best: And whoever wins that district, whichever candidate wins that district wins the seat and the loser gets absolutely nothing. And what this does is [00:07:30] it really focuses political competition between two candidates, but also two political parties, so one political party could conceivably win the district seat and then there's a political party that kind of comes in second. It might be able to overtake the winner the next time around.
Nick Capodice: But this leaves those parties that came in third or fourth with little to no chance of winning over time.
Hannah McCarthy: And is this why you see candidates leave third parties and join one of these big two?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. I mean, if you're losing [00:08:00] over and over as a Green Party or a libertarian candidate, chances are you might change your affiliation to a D or an R. So you got a chance. And the same goes for voters. Hannah, if a voter keeps voting for that third party and they never win anything in this winner take all system, they too will start to align with the red or the blue. And it's this combination of systems that creates a law.
What is the law?
Nick Capodice: Duverger's Law. [00:08:30]
Guillermo Rosas: Duverger was very celebrated and with good reason as having come up with a statement that, you know for political scientists, basically has the force of law.
Robin Best: This is one of the closest things we have to a law in political science is deeper. So this was Maurice Duverger who expressed this relationship between a single member district plurality method of election and a two party system. So different law is very simply that [00:09:00] the single member district plurality method of election tends to favor a two party system. There is the law it on man. And it's for precisely the reasons that we've been discussing, so Duverger himself separated the process here into a mechanical effects and then a set of psychological effects,
Nick Capodice: That law says as long as we have winner take all single district plurality voting, it's a pretty sure bet that will [00:09:30] be in the two party system.
Hannah McCarthy: But that's not to say that we're going to forever be Democrats and Republicans. We have had a lot of parties over the years.
Nick Capodice: Oh, we sure have. Should we go through the list just for old time's sake?
Hannah McCarthy: Maybe we should get you a button that you press that just as classical music and carriage running down a cobbled street because it would save you a lot of time?
Nick Capodice: It's true.
Nick Capodice: George Washington was our only president who wasn't aligned with a party. He hated parties. That man saw a balloon on a mailbox he would drive right by. He would see [00:10:00] them start to form during his administration. But in his farewell address, he excoriated parties. He said the spirit of parties "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeebled the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms. Kindles the animosity of one part against another. Foments occasionally riot and insurrection." But they happened right away. We started with the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton [00:10:30] and the anti-Federalists, led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The anti-federalists start to go by the Democratic Republicans, The Federalists die out around the War of 1812 and the Whigs rise to take their place. The Andrew Jackson led Democrats come to contend against the Whigs, the Republican Party branches off the Whigs and grows into power to battle the Democrats. And from 1854 to now, it has been two parties, Republicans and Democrats,
Hannah McCarthy: And I have to add what those parties stood for changed an awful lot over one hundred and fifty years. [00:11:00] We've done episodes on the Republican Party and the Democratic Party if anyone out there wants the full story on realignment. But I can't help but wonder, is there a possibility of fulfilling George Washington's fantasy? Can we exist without parties at all?
Nick Capodice: It seems improbable, Guillermo told me about a famed political scientist named Eric Elmer Schattschneider, who said that contemporary representative democracy is really not even imaginable in the absence of parties. [00:11:30]
Hannah McCarthy: Why?
Guillermo Rosas: Let me see if I can put this encapsulate this in a one minute elevator pitch. I may fail. But the best explanation is that once you have representatives in Congress, you are selecting people that come from geographically circumscribed territories. So there is in principle, no reason why people that show up in Congress or in parliament the first time have some sort of pre-built allegiance to a particular party, right? However, once they once they show up, they [00:12:00] realize that they are going to be there for a while, right? Their terms, their terms vary from two years to three or four whenever the next election is, and that they are going to have to be passing laws and building coalitions.
Nick Capodice: And if you want to succeed, if you want to get laws passed that your constituents love, and don't forget, if you want someone to bankroll your campaign, you align with one of these coalitions. You may not agree with them all the time, but you do most of the time.
Guillermo Rosas: The [00:12:30] dirty secret is that politicians themselves know that they are tying their hands when they enter into a party, right? They are tying their hands, and they are oftentimes called to do things that they do not necessarily believe are in their best personal interest. But they trade this off for the opportunity or for the predictability of belonging to a to a to a coalition that they understand
Hannah McCarthy: Parties in politics, two parties in America. They are here [00:13:00] and they're here to stay. But is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Nick Capodice: Well, we'll talk about that as well as how we measure up to other countries right after the break.
Hannah McCarthy: But first, if you want to read about how the parties changed as part of a complete primer on how America works. Check out our book A User's Guide to Democracy. It has got the 101 on everything and is peppered with wonderful cartoons by New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro.
Nick Capodice: Also, we got a fun, goofy free newsletter called Extra Credit. Let [00:13:30] us say hello in your email every two weeks and tell you about the stuff we cut out from our episodes. Subscribe at civics101podcast.org.
Nick Capodice: We are back and don't forget Civics 101 is always free to listen to but thrives on listener support. Please contribute to civics education with a donation at Civics101podcast.org. All right, so we got our hands up, they're playing our song, it's two parties in the USA.
Hannah McCarthy: Ok, now to the U.S. [00:14:00] versus do any other countries have a system like ours?
Nick Capodice: Here's Robin Best again.
Robin Best: It's really fun to teach American students about comparative politics because you learn how weird the U.S. is. The U.S. is actually really strange and unique on a number of dimensions. And the two party system is actually in this day and age, quite rare as well.
Nick Capodice: There are a few countries that have a system where the same two parties are vying for seats like us, notably Jamaica, the Bahamas [00:14:30] and Zimbabwe. And there are other countries that vote like we do, but don't have a two party system.
Robin Best: Some of the other countries that have, that use single member district plurality elections like Canada or the United Kingdom. They have very significant third parties that manage to enter their national legislatures, and we just don't. And one of the reasons why you might think that's the case is you might say that instead of two parties, we actually have one hundred.
Nick Capodice: And here is where we are truly one of a kind. Political parties in the U.S. [00:15:00] are organized on a state by state basis.
Robin Best: So you could think of the U.S. is having like a New York state Democratic Party and then a Texas Democratic Party or New Hampshire Republican Party and a Colorado Republican Party, and that you actually get some ideological and strategic differences between the party organizations by state. So the U.S. is actually quite unique in the structure of its party system, not only because it's a two [00:15:30] party system, but again because these parties are kind of they're very large, their umbrella parties. And because of that, they can mask a lot of underlying variations, a lot of which take place at the state level if
Hannah McCarthy: The two parties are Umbrella's, each encapsulating 50 state parties. I can see true federalism at work. A country where people are frustrated that they're Democrat or Republican Party isn't necessarily repped at the federal level.
Nick Capodice: It's a good point.
Hannah McCarthy: So let's get into it. Give me a country [00:16:00] that does it differently.
Nick Capodice: You got it. Here is Guillermo Rosas again, with Germany
Guillermo Rosas: In Germany, there probably are five to six parties represented in the in the Bundestag.
Nick Capodice: Germany has a multi-party system. They are a federal parliamentary representative Democratic Republic. The Bundestag, which he mentioned, is their federal parliament and members of it are elected by the German people. There are 736 seats in the Bundestag. Indeed, divided by six parties.
Guillermo Rosas: So there is in principle there's there's [00:16:30] something for everyone, right? You can you can feel very close to a particular party, but it is not entirely. It is not entirely obvious to voters what kind of governing arrangement they are going to get after all of the bargaining is done once the election has taken place.
Nick Capodice: And that's not the case in the U.S. Sure, we have moderates and far left and far right politicians, but they're [00:17:00] all aligned under a majority umbrella. In contrast, when you have a lot of parties, something for everyone, and there's no clear majority, how is anyone going to get legislation passed? Only through working with other parties. Sure, I'll sign your clean energy bill, but only if you add X, Y and Z and then you sign my bill, which may be your constituents are going to hate.
Hannah McCarthy: So the trade off here is that you can elect someone who lines up exactly with what you [00:17:30] want a member of your very specific party, but you have no idea if they're going to succeed at getting anything done.
Guillermo Rosas: And the corollary of that is that it's also going to be more difficult for you as a voter to know exactly who you whom you need to hold accountable for things that you dislike.
Hannah McCarthy: Ok, that's an example of a multi-party system, is there such a thing as a one party system,
Guillermo Rosas: Most one party systems are occurring [00:18:00] in countries that are not democratic. Right. So China is a one party system. Cuba is a one party system. Vietnam is a one party system. There are other systems, more and more so we in political science were moving away from a strict dichotomous division between authoritarian countries and democratic countries. Think about the United, United Russia in in Putin's Russia, right? That would also be a competitive, authoritarian regime where other parties cannot take representation in the Duma. [00:18:30] But you know, it's it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty hegemonic presence of of the of the main party.
Nick Capodice: The State Duma is Russia's elected legislative body, and of its four hundred and fifty members, 326 are the United Russia party.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, we're not going to get into the pros and cons of non-democratic or authoritarian systems in this episode, but I will say, ah, it's pretty effective.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's easy to get stuff done if you just do away with elections and democracy [00:19:00] and representatives. A lot less gridlock.
Hannah McCarthy: I think I understand the pros and cons of two party versus multi-party. Two party systems like ours are relatively easier to govern. One party is in power for a while and they can get laws passed until the other party wins control. And the downside is a lack of choices. You've got two ways to address every issue in America, and multi-party systems offer more diversity of thought, [00:19:30] but have more trouble passing laws and there's less accountability.
Nick Capodice: That's a pretty good summation, and I think Guillermo and Robin would both be proud of it.
Hannah McCarthy: I bet Guillermo wouldn't say being a political scientist and all, but did he give any hint of what he thinks is the best of these democratic systems? Is there one that surpasses all others as champion?
Guillermo Rosas: Many students, especially the young ones, believe that somewhere out there there is a perfect political system that [00:20:00] has the right amount of parties that has the right configuration to allow laws to be passed effectively and implemented with some good sense. And it is true that I think some systems are better than others, but that that's a holy grail, right? I mean, it's well, it's not a search that we have a clear final goal where you're going to find the perfect system.
Nick Capodice: And I dared ask him, Guillermo, [00:20:30] I know there isn't a perfect system, but if you had to pick, which country do political scientists think is closest to that holy grail?
Hannah McCarthy: Did he choose one? He did. What was it?
Nick Capodice: Spain,
Hannah McCarthy: Spain?
Nick Capodice: Spain!
Guillermo Rosas: Spain would be kind of the place that people had in mind. And you know, if you have been following politics in Spain, it's anything but [00:21:00] placid, right? There's also a lot of problems. It's complicated. But the argument there would be that the way that Spanish voters send representatives to the courts to their parliaments is that they are also divided geographically.
Nick Capodice: I'm going to try to break down how Spain does it, and I hope we don't make a hash of things. But Spain is divided into 50 provinces and each province elects members to Spain's Congress called the general courts. The more people that live in a province, the more seats it sends to the courts.
Hannah McCarthy: It sounds a lot [00:21:30] like our own congressional districts,
Nick Capodice: Yes, but with two massive differences. They do not use the SMP winner take all method. They use a proportional method and the people don't vote for individuals. They vote for a party that has a pre-selected list of candidates. As an example, let's take Cadiz, that Old Town on the southwestern coast, Cadiz sends nine people to the courts. In their 2019 election, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party got 30 percent of the vote and thus [00:22:00] won three seats. The conservative Vox Party got 20 percent and they sent two people to the courts, and so on.
Guillermo Rosas: So what does that buy you? It buys you on in terms of the alienation that we've been talking about. It buys you the fact that you have more parties with, with more with more diverse platforms all over the spectrum, from far left to far right that you can choose from. So that's nice. At the same time, you are not fragmenting [00:22:30] the the the the assembly or the parliament all that much. After all, there's only so many ways in which you can divide eight votes, right? Even you have 14, 40 parties competing, most of them are not going to get a lot of representation.
Nick Capodice: Some political scientists say that Spain's system hits that sweet spot
Guillermo Rosas: In which you are obtaining some of the advantages of a system like the United States where you know who your Congress representative is. Where you know the Congress representative spends a lot of time [00:23:00] in in close to the constituents develops a home style. Once these babies and shake hands and talk to people and all of that and the advantages of the more proportional systems that we tend to find in continental Europe, where there is more possibility for different interests to be represented.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. My last question is how do we measure up? Who wins in this us versus.
Nick Capodice: Now I am not saying [00:23:30] if we want to go back to the Street Fighter two reference at the beginning that we should all choose Vega instead of Guile.
Hannah McCarthy: I think maybe one percent of our audience is going to get that reference.
Nick Capodice: Fair. That's fair. Guile is from the U.S. everyone, Vega's from Spain. But Spain is by no means a consensual nation. Politically, they've got divides and problems like we've all have divides and problems. But to know how the U.S. would do in a comparative matchup against Spain, Guillermo said, We can't. We have to wait and [00:24:00] see.
Guillermo Rosas: You know, the American Two-Party system has has its problems. I'm not going to stand here and say otherwise. But it also I I what I like about it is that it provides ample opportunity to build relatively lasting majority coalitions. I think we are going through a period in American history in which this is not quite working out because we seem to be in the middle of a process of realignment [00:24:30] where the two big parties are trying to figure out how they are going to capture constituencies that they didn't used to represent. And I think it's going to take a while for the parties to sort this out. But what? I like the two party system because of that, right, it's especially in a country that's as heterogeneous as the United States.
Nick Capodice: And in this liminal space of a realignment, the two big parties are looking to their constituents and deciding what their new platforms are, [00:25:00] what the party stands for. And once we get through this phase of what Guillermo referred to me as growing pains, only then can we better assess how we measure up on a global scale.
Hannah McCarthy: And until then, I'm sticking to Tekken.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:30]
Nick Capodice: That'll do it for a two party party cause a two party party is a party I like, this episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and in charge of all social media related to Get Back. Music in this episode by Electroswing, Creo, Bio Unit, George Gaskin that’s this guy, Ari Di Niro, Scott Holmes, Yoko Shimomura who is the brilliant composer of the music to Street Fighter 2, and that composer who didn’t write bobe made a kishke, Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
