One of the persistent oddities of the American political experiment is its binary structure. It is a democracy in which the high offices of state are almost universally filled by members of two old and entrenched parties. It is a two-party state. This is unsusual in the western world, especially in the modern era.

Although many people complain that that their country is dominanted by two austere monoliths carving up the national turkey between them, the reality is that most states in the developed world are in fact multi-party democracies. This fact can easily be disguised by majoritarian political systems that under-represent smaller parties and the viewpoints of their voters.

But Australia has its Greens, its Nationals and now apparently One Nation. The UK has the Lib-Dems, the SNP and a host of smaller factions. The continent of Europe is almost entirely habituated to multi-party coalition governments. Even Canada, America’s friendly neighbor to the north, has three significant national political parties, with the NDP forming the opposition in the last parliament (admittedly for the first time). It seems virtually everywhere in the OECD there are significant minor political parties that get a decent proportion of the votes and go on to influence the discourse, whether from government or not.

And yet the United states persists in its odd duopoly, everyone being represented by either a Republican or a Democrat.

So why is it so?

There are weighty tomes written by eminent political scientists on this, but i’m going to do the McDonalds version. There are three big factors that allow this to persist.

 

Personality

It is important to remember that the United States is a Republic. Thats not just to say they don’t have a royal family. Many of the Founding Fathers were concerned about what they called ‘Parliamentary Tyranny’. What they thus devised was a Republican, not a Parliamentary democracy. Soverignty is vested in the people, rather than in the institution of parliament or of the crown-in-parliament. They were worried not just about dictatorship as we would be today, but about a parliament encroaching further and further upon their new-won and much cherished liberties. And so the President, a direct representative of the vox populi was concieved, a sort of modern day Tribune of the Plebs to guard against this encroachment and act on issues where the deliberative style of the legislature was inefficient.

This ideology and system has made  American Politics very personality driven. To get the biggest prize, you need mass support rather than just elite support.  And early political parties in the U.S were almost entirely based around who you would support for the Presidency. That really defined which party you were in.

If you wan’t to be president you really can’t be too odd or strange. As with all popularity contests, the least offensive option to the majority has a much better time of it. And if you are a third party, unhappy with the two extant major parties, aren’t you probably just a little bit odd? Those dissatisfied with the consensus are almost by definition in a minority. When they are not is when you see parties break through. But usually the larger parties just co-opt your issues and eat away at your support. So its a hard-life for a minor party.

No prize for coming in third

Really. You don’t get anything. Its a very raw deal. And why would people keep gifting you with ther money and their time so you can run into a brick wall once every election cycle? Pretty soon it starts to look quixotic, and not in an romantic way. And then they accuse you of being a spoiler, of ‘stealing’ votes from other parties who would win without you in the race. Witness Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who is said by man to have lost Al Gore the Presidency. Its just not an edifying experience.

So who does it?

Generally people who are already famous, eccentric rich men, and people who are a little bit odd or care deeply about things that other people don’t care about much at all.   And remember what i said about being a little bit odd. Why would a high-quality candidate run for a minor party when he can run for a major party? Or at least, the seductive fiction goes, he could if he won the primary. Thats the route Bernie Sanders took, entering the primary of  a party with which he had been only informally associated. The primary system allowing this is another blow to third parties, as it opens up a more plausible alternative. Enter the primaries and win, and you and your ideas are suddenly much more mainstream.

America is Really, Realy big.

Seriously. Its huge. Look at the map, thats most of a pretty large continent. And there are lots of them, 318 million at last count. And they live all over the place with huge cities on both coasts. Running a truly national campaign in a nation like that is exhorbitantly expensive. If you want to play at the big-boys table, you are going to need friends with deep pockets. And people with deep pockets didn’t get them by backing losers. Some degree of plausibility is generally required.

America is Very, Very Diverse

Being such a large and populous country, people living in differen parts of the Union or from different communities have wildly divergent ideas of what constiutes good government or the good life. Its a big, loud, colourful and discordant mess. What someone in Massachusets and someone in Alabama might want the government to do are not necessarily the same thing. You can make political hay by representing the peculiarites of your region, but that is limiting in terms of national appeal. For instance, the Dixicrats (conservative Southern democrats who split with Truman) did well in the south, but didn’t even really bother with the rest of the country. Finiding an unrepresented national sentiment is difficult to do. They tend to be well staked out already by the extant parties. So minor parties often get trapped in geographical corners, unable to break through into regions that dont share the values of those whose support they already have.

Can one break through?

Yes. It does happen. But usually that coincides with one party disintegrating at some level, bleeding large chunks of support that make room in the landscape. That is why the troubles of the partis are worth watching. Because if the fault-lines keep growing a split is not inconcievable, particularly within the GOP. And that could change things entirely.