In an op-ed published on September 4 in the Washington
Post, political theorist Danielle Allen correctly pointed out that the
forces that have propelled Donald Trump to the top of the polls are best
thought of as a “solidly right-wing ethno-nationalist voting bloc that has been
growing since the mid 1990s.” She
likened this group of voters to the United Kingdom’s Independence Party and the
National Front party of France.
Her point
was that the difference between the voting bloc currently supporting Trump and
the European ones is that “their parliamentary systems register them as “parties,”
whereas our two-party model makes it harder to see that what we’re confronting
truly is the rise of a new party.” She
went on to argue that it would be healthy for the U.S. if the Trump supporters
would leave the Republican party to the centrists and form their own party.
It’s an
interesting insight, but Duverger’s Law, makes it highly unlikely.
Duverger’s
Law says that electoral system in which elections are decided by a plurality of
the vote will tend to be able to support only two major parties.
Here’s why:
Consider a
constituency with three main parties that can elect one representative using a
plurality vote system. On election night, Alice is elected with 40% of the
vote. Betty and Carol lose with 25% and
35% of the vote respectively.
Alice’s
supporters are ecstatic, but the remaining voters are angry. Not only did their preferred candidates not
win, but because democracy didn’t prevail.
Democracy says that the majority should win, and here, a 60% majority
preferred somebody else.
Next time
around, though still favoring Betty, a reasonably large percentage of her
voters decide that she doesn’t have a chance of winning, and so instead of
“wasting their votes” they vote for Carol, giving her 49% of the vote, beating
Alice, who still gets 40% of the vote.
Betty only gets 11% of the vote.
By the
third election, everybody realizes that Betty’s party isn’t competitive
anymore, and so Alice and Carol scramble to scoop up all of Betty remaining
supporters. On election night, either Alice or Carol will win with a clear but
probably narrow majority. In the
election’s aftermath, only two parties remain in the constituency.
Duverger’s
Law, unlike the laws of physics, is not absolute. Smaller parties do exist in places with
plurality voting. But other features of
the American system make it hard for third parties to get on the ballot, and,
once on the ballot, to win elections.
State legislatures, dominated by Democrats or Republicans, draw
legislative districts to favor their members. To have any impact at a national
level, a small party must be able to get on the ballot in a large number of
states. And political money tends to be “invested” in politicians who stand a
chance of winning, not largely in idealists who want to use an election to make
a statement.
Yet,
Allen’s insight about the multiparty nature of American politics is largely
correct. We do have a multiparty system,
but its operations are largely kept hidden.
And that’s why John Boehner’s resignation last week was so dramatic.
Neither the
Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is monolithic. Both are coalitions of smaller economic, ethnic and ideological groups whose members may or may not
resemble the other members of their respective parties.
In the
Democratic coalition, for example, the members of its African-American subgroup
tend to be more religious than those of its wealthy and highly educated subgroup
of whites who prefer more liberal positions on same-sex marriage and abortion. The Evangelicals in the Republican Party may
not be as interested in taxes as the big business Republicans are.
What we’ve just
seen in the House of Representatives is a vote of no confidence in John Boehner,
who saw that his “government” did not have majority support and honorably dissolved
it by resigning.
In a true
parliamentary system, a vote of no confidence or the resignation of the Prime
Minister triggers a new election.
Unfortunately, in the U.S., our Constitution doesn’t allow that to
happen.
And so any
number of things can happen. The next
most senior Republican, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, might try to repair the
coalition by making additional concessions to the conservatives who would not
cooperate with Boehner. In that case,
House will continue to pass even more extreme legislation that cannot survive
the Senate or President Obama’s veto.
Or, perhaps
the conservatives in the House will demand that McCarthy be passed over in
favor of someone is truly one of them.
In that case, we’re likely to see deadlock within the Republican
coalition leading to chaos in the House until a new election can give one of
the factions a clear advantage in building a governing coalition.
Or, perhaps
a third faction within the Republican Party will try to build a “national
unity” government with the Democrats that aims to stave off chaos and keep the
government functioning at current levels until the voters resolve all of the intra
and interparty disputes in the next election. Of course, that would require the
cooperation of a Republican Congressperson who, having already announced his or
her retirement, wouldn’t face retribution from Conservatives after the next
election and could be elected Speaker by a coalition of Republicans and
Democrats.
That may be
what Boehner is trying to accomplish by announcing his resignation. If so, it’s a shame that he hadn’t decided to
place country above party until now.
No comments:
Post a Comment