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Political Parties: What Are They Good For?

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Political Parties: What Are They Good For? December 2019 Political Parties: What Are They Good For? An Essay Collection on Democracy Lee Drutman, Didi Kuo, Lilliana Mason, Sheri Berman, Lily Geismer, Sam Rosenfeld, John Kane, Daniel Schlozman, Julie Wronski, & Mark Schmitt Last edited on December 11, 2019 at 10:18 a.m. EST Acknowledgments This report originated as individual posts on the Vox blog “Polyarchy," based on a selection of papers prepared for a conference organized by Didi Kuo. The resulting series was edited by Lee Drutman, Mark Schmitt, and Didi Kuo. Many thanks to Vox editor Tanya Pai for her editorial work and facilitation help. Thanks to our New America communication team, Maria Elkin, Joe Wilkes, Joanne Zalatoris, LuLin McArthur, and Alison Yost, for their help preparing this report; to Monica Estrada for her help with footnotes; and to Elena Souris for packaging the report. newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/political-parties-good-for/ 2 About the Author(s) or full participatio John V. Kane is an assistant professor at New York owth to the Am Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform University’s Center for Global Affairs. His research program. areas include political partisanship and ideology, public opinion and behavior, political psychology, foreign policy, and quantitative research methods. Didi Kuo is a fellow in the Political Reform program and manages the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at Stanford University's Daniel Schlozman is Joseph and Betha Bernstein Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Law. Didi Kuo published her first book, Clientelism, Hopkins University. His book, When Movements Capitalism, and Democracy, in which she showed Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American how national business organizations pushed parties History (Princeton, 2015), emphasizes the crucial role to adopt programmatic reforms. in American party development of alliance between political parties and social movements. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, n+1, Dissent, Lilliana Mason is an assistant professor of and The Nation. government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Julie Wronski is an assistant professor of political Identity. Lillian Mason’s research focuses on partisan science at the University of Mississippi. Her research identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American lies at the intersection of American Politics and social polarization. Political Psychology. By using survey, experimental, and quantitative research methods, she focuses on how group identities and personal dispositions shape Sheri Berman is professor of political science at political behavior, public opinion, and vote choice. Barnard College, Columbia University. She does Her research has been published in the Journal of research on European history and politics; the Politics, Political Psychology, and Political Behavior, development of democracy; populism and fascism; among other peer-reviewed outlets. You can follow and the history of the left. Her latest book is her work on her website and on Twitter. Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (2019). Mark Schmitt is director of the Political Reform program at New America. Lily Geismer is an associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College. She is the author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party and the co- About New America editor of Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century. Lily Geismer’s We are dedicated to renewing America by continuing research focuses on 20th century political and urban the quest to realize our nation’s highest ideals, history in the United States, with an emphasis in honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid liberalism. technological and social change, and seizing the opportunities those changes create. Sam Rosenfeld is an assistant professor of political science at Colgate University, specializing in party About Political Reform politics and American political development. His book The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our The Political Reform program works towards an Partisan Era was published by the University of open, fair democratic process, with equitable Chicago Press in 2018. opportunities for full participation, in order to restore dynamism and growth to the American economy and society. newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/political-parties-good-for/ 3 Contents Introduction 6 The Development and Decay of Democracy 8 Organizational Innovators and Champions of Democracy 8 Social Democratic Foundations of Successful Democracy in Europe 9 Social Democratic Decline and Challenges to Democracy 10 Social Democracy and the Future of Democracy 13 Challenges to Parties in the United States and Beyond 15 The Decline of Trust in Parties 16 Gatekeeping 18 Responsiveness 20 Democrats and Neoliberalism 22 From Watergate Babies to New Democrats 23 The Clinton Revolution 25 The Dilemmas for Democrats in Three Past Visions for the Party 27 Programmatic Liberals 28 Mid-Century Pragmatists 29 McGovern-Fraser 31 newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/political-parties-good-for/ 4 Contents Cont'd Trump Support is Not Normal Partisanship 34 Intolerance: The Sordid Consequence of Social Sorting 34 In-Group Love and Out-Group Hate 35 Some Well-Timed Data 35 Why Support for Trump is Not “Normal” Party Support 36 Feelings Toward Republican-Linked Groups 37 What Drives Trump Support? 38 Base Politics 39 newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/political-parties-good-for/ 5 Introduction Didi Kuo How democratic do political parties have to be to serve democracy? Parties receive much of the blame for the current crisis of democracy. At times, they are decried for being undemocratic: Party elites are described as out of touch with voters, currying favor with donors, special interests, and ideological extremists at the expense of the majority of citizens. Yet they are also criticized for being too democratic, valuing electoral expediency over all else, refusing to place principle over party. Political parties are still the central organizing feature of modern democracy. Every aspect of representative government—from assessing what voters need, to fielding candidates, to assembling coalitions for policy passage—is mediated through parties. But the fact that parties are crucial to democracy also makes us ambivalent about the role they play, historically and through the present day. Democracy is a set of institutions that places checks on power, while the pursuit of power is often a party’s raison d’etre. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once argued that this pursuit of power was justified only if a party’s cause was “right” and “moral.” His sentiment echoed a longstanding fear that parties are incompatible with democracy. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison warned about the dangers of faction. In his Farewell Address, President George Washington railed against parties for enfeebling public administration, kindling animosity and riot, and opening the door to corruption.And it was a study of German parties that led sociologist Robert Michels to develop the iron law of oligarchy, a theory that all organizations tend to centralize power among a small elite. Voters, for their part, have also become more wary of parties over time. Today, the growing distrust of parties fits a larger pattern of declining faith in formal and informal democratic institutions across the advanced democracies. Yet parties are also crucial to democracy. They have been the vehicles for leaders, ideologies, and groups to expand the state’s rights and obligations, to grow the economy, to protect new and marginalized citizens, and to broker compromises between extremism and moderation. At the local level, parties have been particularly important as sources of information and education. Parties help individuals organize their complex political views and interests, and work collectively. But owing to the developments of the past 50 years, voters today are more likely to identify drawbacks of party politics than any of these benefits. After Watergate and the economic crises of the 1970s, trust in government began to decline. The rise of polarization and inequality date to this period, as the parties became more ideologically cohesive. Economic policies also drove a shift away from newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/political-parties-good-for/ 6 manufacturing, towards freer trade and globalization. Parties devoted more resources to national campaigns and elections, rather than local and state party organizations. In an era of fewer unions, civic associations, and local parties, the connections between citizens and parties became even more tenuous. In this series, leading scholars of parties and politics update this long debate by looking at American parties as they stand today, and what the future might hold. Across Europe and the United States, Didi Kuo shows that parties face ongoing challenges related to responsiveness and gatekeeping. In the next essay, Sheri Berman traces the specific decline of social democracy across Western Europe. While social democratic parties once relied on everyday ties—through grassroots associations and party meetings, for example—to their members, these ties began to erode. As she argues, this had significant consequences for democracy itself. Though the United States
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