There is growing support for a third political party in the US. However, because of ideological reasons, it will never survive. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say the particular party will not survive but that the concept of three parties will never survive in the US.
Because of the emphasis of the two-party right/left divide, there can be only two parties. A third party may replace an existing party, but the only possibility there is of three political parties in the US political landscape would be if they divided along similar ideological lines (i.e. a ‘left’, ‘centre’, and ‘right’). In the remainder of this article, I will use this spectrum to hash out two generic examples of why a third party will always (ultimately) fail. I will use current popular third parties as exemplars of their position in the spectrum.
In the Centre
My first example is best witnessed in the Libertarian Party. Along the American spectrum, its recent invocations (the past 20 years or so) have fallen around the centre-right area. When they masquerade in the two big parties, they are almost exclusively Republicans who happen to vote against their party at times (e.g. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich). In fact, because of this positioning, they sometimes have difficulty separating themselves from the GOP. If they were to become a major political party, they would continue to occupy the centre of the spectrum, likely fighting the GOP for votes and members.
As a result of this tension, two scenarios are likely: a simple replacement of the incumbent right-side party (e.g. GOP) with the new (e.g. Libertarians) or a distancing of the two with one (Libertarians here) moving closer to the centre and the other (Republicans here) moving further right. However, a centre-right party will not be able to gain many votes/members from the left side of the spectrum, which means any result would be a weakening of the right-side of the spectrum and more than likely a reconciliation or coalition of the two parties, resulting (ultimately) in a single right-side party that has two manifestations. The same outcome is likely for any centrist party that sufficiently leans one way such that it will not be able to take from both sides simultaneously.
Bookends
The other possibility is that of a bookend party, either far-enough left or far-enough right that it is placed on the outside of its related major party. For this example, I will use a stereotypical far-left party: the Socialist party.
Imagine this party gaining strength. Like the first example, it will do so at the cost of its related major party (i.e. the Democrats). Also like the previous example, it will result in either a replacement of its major party or a distancing of the two. However, where we see the biggest difference is in this distancing because it will be pushing the remaining Democrats right but more than likely not enough to push them straight into the major right-wing party (i.e. the GOP), we will see instead a weakened centrist Democratic party that pushes the major right further right while also taking from its membership a small amount. In other words, it would force three parties split along the left/right spectrum with a centrist middle party.
However, I will be bold here and suggest that the centrist party will exist in name only. In practice, it will stand torn between the two other parties, unable to find an ideological position of its own. This is because American political ideology is so entrenched in a two-party system that the option of a middle-ground third party is unfathomable as an ideological position. This ideology crushes any and all middle third parties by ideological attacks from both sides. Instead of a centrist party, there will instead be many centrist third parties unable to coalesce into a major political party or ideological position, much like there is already today. In other words, much like the previous situation, the displacement needed for a third party will ultimately lead to the downfall of an actual third party and become, yet again, a simple replacement of an existing incumbent party.
Plurality
The only possibility of a sustainable ‘third party’ is really through the formation of, in my own count, 4 major parties that break the left/right spectrum. These 4 parties would be split so that one could see two left parties and two right parties, however there are enough ideological beliefs in the four so that there exists a tangible regular alliance across the left-right distinction (e.g. along the lines of government size which would see both left anarchists and right libertarians side together). However they are created and displaced, there will still be a central region which remains undecided which will still be unable to coalesce into its own ideological position. In other words, neutrality–as an uniting ideological position–remains impossible.
The U.S. is a two party country because of the first past the post election system, and possible secondarily because of the Presidential (as opposed to parliamentary) system. The European countries with legitimate third parties tend to have a sort of proportional representation (Germany, Italy) or a run-off system (France). The U.K with a parlimentary system and first past the post is a 2.5 party system.
Canada is alot like the U.K. with a regional (Bloc) added for a 3.5 party system. A regional party can work in a parliamentary system because they have a chance to have power in a coalition government. Of course, someone could argue that the 2 U.S. parties are already coalitions formed before the election instead of after like what happens in parliamentary systems.
The Libertarians (I hope you didn’t mean Newt for an example) do seemed to have drifted to the right lately (emphasizing their gun rights and fiscal concerns to the damage of their traditional social rights issues), which I think is a mistake. If that’s what they want they should just be Republicans. Libertarians were never meant to be center or anywhere on
the American left/right axis, they were supposed to be off the axis altogether.
Perhaps the best chance to have an influential third part in recent years was the Reform Party, though it failed to amount to anything without Perot. It they had managed to pick up the anti-free trade voters that the Democrats abandoned with Clinton’s move to the center, it may have been able to have a base.
I gave up on your “analysis” after the third paragraph. If you think that Newt Gingrich is a “libertarian”, or that he is in any way comparable to Ron Paul, you really do not know what you are talking about.
It’s nice to see that the author is beginning to contemplate party mechanics, but he is still in the very early stages of this thought process. Jasen has a far deeper understanding of the causes of our current party system, and why other nations have differing systems. “First past the post” (plurality) voting systems will always tend toward a two party system. So long as my vote for a third party causes my “worst choice” to happen, I’ll vote for my second choice any time the race is close. I’d rather vote for the lesser of two evils than get the worst of all evils.
Block systems work fine if votes are dispersed proportionally. If 5% of the voters voted third party, that would be 22 members in the House of Representatives. There, those candidates could lobby for their third party’s interests, negotiating with two major parties. For example, they might agree to a war spending bill in exchange for drug legalization. Both major parties might oppose drug legalization, but one might be willing to allow it to get their war spending bill passed.
First past the post makes achieving second place worthless and third place a spoiler. Anyone voting for the third place guy who also liked the second place guy hurt their own view by voting their conscience. Even in situations where there is only one position (US President, for example), it would be more fair to allow the tertiary candidates to “assign” votes they won based on negotiation with the leading candidates. That way if neither candidate wins a straight majority, my third party cause still gets some value from my having voted for them. What this actually does is move back toward the original intent of the electoral college, where the people voted for electors they trusted to negotiate well for the eventual candidate. Of course, this would again require electoral votes to be assigned proportionally, rather than first past the post in each state as is currently done. Third parties simply aren’t logical in a first past the post system.
If one thinks I was writing about party mechanics, one is sorely mistaken. I was very clear in my first paragraph that I was speaking of ideologies, not voting systems or voter strategies. That’s for a different breed of human. Thankfully, one commenter was very clear in expressing the ideology I was exposing:
This is dead on. And I *hope* it is happening now. I spent a lot of time in the conservative movement moving out further and further to the “right” until I now believe I am equidistant from centre right and left (if political ideology is a circle). I have found just as much affinity with the radical left as I have the radical right. Browse wikipedia on “anarchism” and it is clear that this is the point where left/right politics becomes very confusing and there is a great deal of overlap.
I think the four party concept is a good course, basically creating four sets of divisions and alliances:
left/right
authoritarian/libertarian
One would think that this would provide a better check on the ideology of government in a democracy. If it shifts too far authoritarian, then the libertarian alliance (left-libertarian and right-libertarian) forms. If it shifts too far right, then the left alliance forms (libertarian-left, authoritarian-left).
Unfortunately, I think with plurality voting, this will not be articulated politically because of the “lesser of two evils” mentality. However, ideologically, I think we are getting there even now. The presidency of GW Bush has awakened a large amount of the libertarian-right. Obama is just the kind of president to awaken the libertarian-left.
The good news is that our current governmental fiscal crises have breathed new life into the electoral reform movement because it can save money. Even Los Angeles is now seriously considering replacing their multi-election runoff system with Instant-Runoff-Voting. Most people in the electoral reform movement consider IRV a first step toward proportional representation. For more information on electoral reform please visit www.fairvote.org or if you happen to be in CA visit www.cfer.org (Californians for Electoral Reform).
June:
IRV is not significantly better than plurality voting, while being more confusing to the voter. Ideal known voting systems would be either Approval or Ranked Pairs.
IRV (compared to Approval) adds:
Clone independence (identical candidates don’t hurt each other)
Condorcet loser (candidate losing individually against all others loses)
At the cost of:
Monotone (candidate can’t be hurt by voters voting for them)
Consistency (candidate who wins two halves wins the whole)
Participation (is participating honestly always better than not voting)
Honestly, I prefer the current plurality system to the failings of IRV, which I view as more dangerous.
Cchrisr:
I agree. My point was similar to Colin’s, that “with plurality voting, this will not be articulated politically because of the “lesser of two evils” mentality”. Ideologically, it is absolutely essential that parties greater than 2 be such that they can form alliances with multiple other parties, otherwise they will simply be marginalized or merged into the party they agree with the most. This is achievable with only 3 parties if the third party bounces back and forth, but would be far more stable in the kind of 4 party structure you described.