There’s an interesting article at The Moderate Voice which ponders what an optimal number of political parties is, comparing the issues with American duopoly, with the zaniness arising from the umpteen bazillion parties which have held seats in the Israeli Knesset…and George Washington’s warning against having any parties.
Well, just to throw my thoughts into the ring—I agree that “zero” (or “as many parties as there are elected officials”) is an optimal, but unrealistic answer.
The duopoly we have in the U.S. is likely, of necessity, the stable number of parties given how our government operates. We elect single representatives in winner-take-all elections from geographic districts. This almost necessitates a two-party system, since having multiple parties active in a jurisdiction with overlapping views will tend to hand a non-overlapping party the win.
I could imagine the American system supporting, say, four parties (e.g., the four quadrants of a Nolan Chart) in theory, if all four parties were sufficiently strong enough to survive competition…or the threat of fragmentation… but I think it would be unrealistic to not expect such a system to devolve back to a duopoly if any one of the four parties crumbled.
The wackiness seen in some parliamentary systems, like Israel’s, is also presumably the result of how the system is designed. Voters cast their votes for particular parties, with a an executive coalition drawn from the legislative body. Such a system opens the door to a wide range of views being represented, but the deal-making involved in assembling the executive coalition from the legislative pool opens the door to graft, pork, and other nastiness.
Aside from issues arising from having a duopoly, I think America has a pretty good system of government. Having three mostly-independent branches of government with different responsibilities, and the ability to act as a check-and-balance on the other branches provides some measure of protection from tyranny. I prefer when different parties control the legislative and executive branches, to provide an extra layer of “check-and-balance”…but that’s just gravy.
If Americans did want to see a broader array of political viewpoints represented in Washington without changing over to a pure parliamentary system of government, we’d have to rethink some of the underlying conventions behind our elections.
Moving away from single-representative districts to multi-representative superdistricts or non-geographic-based voting would open the door to minority views being represented (assuming that the requirement that a person vote for only one candidate is maintained).
Or, another alternative would be to shift to an electoral system where candidates may draw support from, and appear on the ballot listed under multiple parties. For example, within Connecticut state politics, the Working Families Party has been having some modest success with its practice of nominating major party candidates—some Democrats, some Republicans—on its ballot line, to advise voters of which candidates are more representative of that group’s views, thereby granting the party some influence to advance its platform.
However, I will agree with George Washington and the author of the TMV post—zero parties would be ideal. Having elected officials acting and voting for the best interests of the country is far, far better than the current inclination of politicians to work primarily to increase the potency of their parties.