It’s not enough simply to refer to this so-called “law”. If you believe that FPTP inevitably produces a two-and-only-two party system, as many Americans seem to believe, you have to explain why Duverger’s “Law” seems never to have been in force in Canada, India and the UK.
For a detailed rebuttal from a pol-sci prof at the London School of Economics, see:
Okay, cool. So why don’t they generally have political parties? Because they don’t actually need them. Judges can get appointed without a party affiliation. Happens most of the time. Why? Because legislators are perfectly capable of basing nominations on something more than party affiliation. The voters don’t punish them for choosing judges based on qualifications that aren’t political. In fact, they usually don’t like it when that happens.
I’d like to see an alternative explanation for the American two-party system then. What this link says is that Duverger’s law STILL seems to be working in the US, but other factors in other countries may be at play, such as regionalism.
Right- in the article, they point out that in places like the UK, you end up with regional 2 party systems that end up translating into a multiparty national system, that historically has still been a predominantly 2 party system.
I get the impression, but don’t have any citations or anything, that the UK regions have a bit more political identity than the US ones; Southwest England doesn’t have any other organization to address its particular political needs and concerns, while areas of the US have their State governments to address a lot of that kind of thing, so there aren’t really “Southern” parties, or “Western” parties, or anything like that.
Not a “two-and-only-two party system,” just a two-party system. There’s a huge difference there. If the Green Party suddenly started winning around 5 seats in the House of Representatives each election, the US would still have a two-party system.
Look around the world: Has any democracy managed to get by without political parties? They just seem to come with the territory. That might not have been obvious in 1789, but it is now.
The USA is not a democracy nor should it be.
Agreed, there is a major difference between a duopoly (two-and-only-two parties) and a multi-party system with two dominant parties. However, what I’m responding to is the statement I’ve frequently seen here and from other American sources is that the reason the US has two and only two parties is because of FPTP.
If FPTP and single member constituencies are what create a two-and-only-two party system, then we should find two-and-and-only-two in other countries that use FPTP/single member.
But we don’t see that elsewhere, at least not in the examples I’ve given. Therefore, there must be other causes for the unusual US duopoly.
I’m trying to think of another democratic country which has a duopoly like the US model. Is there one?
Exactly - I think that explains it. The US simply doesn’t have regional parties. Even when it has had parties dominating a region, they have managed to stay linked, at least in name, with the same parties in other regions. I’m thinking of the Democrats in the South who were conservative and segregationist yet coexisted with other more liberal Democrats in the rest of the country. So the next question is why did they stick together?
Yeah, thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
Thanks for getting the discussion back on track - we diverged from talking about parties to talking about two-party systems.
Parties are a natural and normal phenomena. People who agree are going to line up. That’s the very essence of voting for candidates - everyone who supports a particular candidate is a group that can constitute a party.
The USA is a democratic republic. As opposed to say, an aristocratic republic, like the old Roman Republic or Venetian Republic.
IME, anyone who says “The U.S. is a republic, not a democracy,” is not arguing but ranting/whining. What they usually actually mean by it, when they mean anything, is, “The U.S. is a federal state, not a unitary state” – which is true, but has nothing to do with any “republic”/“democracy” distinction. Or sometimes they mean it is a rule-of-law republic with constitutional checks and balances instead of the 51% immediately getting whatever they want – which, likewise.
Exactly. It’s not like people someday woke up and got the idea of forming political parties as they exist today - it was a long process, every step of which made absolute sense in terms of efficiency of broadcasting one’s ideas and winning votes. The first organized parties were nothing but machines designed to win elections (e.g. the German SPD, the “electoral Panzer” as my teacher dubbed it).
The Founders were notoriously appalled at the idea of parties (and were this close to banning them constitutionally), but that’s because they were appalled at the idea of common people voting in the first place. Once you extend the vote to the entirety of the population (which is desirable, I shan’t bother to explain why. Ask your wife, she knows :p), parties form organically if only for ease of communication & identification purposes. The average lower/middle-class Joe, being not a quasi-aristocrat free to live a life of leisure and/or philosophickal contemplation, doesn’t have the time to participate in day-long debates over political minutiae. So he has to delegate those to a handful of party leaders, who in turn are moved to simplify or compromise with their ideas to reach the most voters, etc…
Because to win the presidency, you need a broad-based national party.
That is different from the situation in Canada and Britain, where population imbalances mean you can form government with support drawn primarily from one or two regions.
Not a fair statement at all. Of the relatively small number of nations that conducted elections in the 1780’s, the US had by far the widest suffrage in the world. Property qualifications in most states were quite modest.
And, I would add, experience with these party systems was not entirely salutary, which is one reason why so many Founders disliked it.
The Eighteenth Century parties arose in legislatures dominated by a non-elected executive–the King in Great Britain, Royal Governors in the colonies. Partisan activity involved the King trying to cobble together a “king’s party” or “court faction” to get his way in the legislature, by distributing favors and patronage. It was inherently corrupting.
And the opposition, frozen out of power, wasn’t always loyal, as when excluded Tories backed the Jacobite Rebellion in England and Scotland in 1745.
But ultimately I think there is truth in this sentiment:
That’s true. I thought of that as a possibility. Perhaps our once-every-four-years, one-office election holds our parties together nationally.
“Gerrymandered”? What gives you that idea?
I’ve never heard about a proposed ban before. Could you elaborate?
He’s sort of ignorant, and doesn’t realize that the US isn’t a straight popular democracy, but rather a federal republic.
And as a federal republic with a bicameral legislature, we have an upper house (the Senate) where the states themselves are equally represented, and a lower house (the House of Representatives) where the people are represented.