No Confidence

            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.