Third Way: The Next Party System
Al Drago / Stringer
The last few years have seen party polarization in the United States reach new highs. Liberals and conservatives define themselves by their party’s ideology. Compromise has become decidedly rarer, as settling for a policy can look like a betrayal when citizens see political colour as an identity. Being a Democrat or Republican means choosing between two bitterly divided sides which barely fit into neat boxes.
It would be a platitude to say that United States party politics were not always like their modern form. It is well known that George Washington warned of the "baneful effects of the spirit of the party" in his farewell address. James Madison also warned of factionalism in Federalist paper number ten and during a debate in 1787, although Madison would later co-found and name the "Republican party". Although Madison foresaw that a minority party may "clog the administration [and] may convulse the society" but eventually find itself thwarted by the constitution, national party politics of today, which this quotation evokes, is not one many are happy with.
% of Americans Concerned About Partisan Division
What the scrutiny on large scale party division reveals the most, however, is how overly focused United States citizens are on the macro role of their parties rather than the real function parties have in politics. The spike in voter engagement during the 2020 election proves this point further, as engagement is likely to dwindle during a less theatric and polarising Biden administration. The focus on the macro, of course, is not entirely misplaced; the primary job of parties is to get candidates elected and influence the national party. Parties do, however, have many other roles in politics, ranging from voter education to increasing political participation among the electorate. As strict party membership (rather than simple statements of loyalty) continues to decline in the United States, it will be less imperative for parties to focus on these auxiliary roles, resulting in increased party high jacking from outsiders, less political education in general, and a weakening of the way civic society and citizens can communicate with their elected officials. The centre-left has the most to lose from this, as the Democratic Primaries of 2020 saw hyper-partisan candidates take the stage to win the nomination, causing many strong centrist candidates to drop out early. Instead, political parties, and especially the Democratic party, should look towards redefining the parties in, oddly, a similar way to how they were structured in the Gilded Age: focused on electing strong officials, while also providing welfare and other public services.
Before getting into how the Gilded Age of all eras may serve as a blueprint for more successful party politics, an understanding of the actual functions of parties will be helpful. The role of political parties in the United States (and globally), is largely focused on recruiting, training, and nominating candidates to stand for office at all levels of government. This leads to their next major role, which is to push the national government for policies which they support. When a party has a member in power, it (usually) works to support the member's decisions, trying to cast them in the most positive light as the member has become the de facto leader of the party. If that leader moves too far from the party line, however, they may face opposition from their ideological allies. Many tend to believe that this is where the role of parties ends, but parties have other auxiliary roles. These consist of educating members about the functions of the political and electoral system, mobilizing political participation, and helping turn public opinion into policy by communicating with members. All of this can be done through local events, courses, and the general distribution of information. In this way, parties are an institutionalized system which can aid civil society and which civil society can use to communicate with the government.
The institutionalization of parties came into full force in 1828 when Andrew Jackson won the presidency. Leading up to 1828, State party organizations sprang up across the country, and a central party organization for both the Whigs and the Democrats emerged. This shift in party politics commenced the second party system in American history, which cemented modern campaigning to individual voters and the role of parties in American elections. After the second party system cemented the standards of party politics, the third-party system, which emerged as tensions between slave states and non-slave states grew, began in 1854. The third-party system carried on with political patronage, which was a mainstay of the second party system and widely used by Jackson and was most prominently used during the Gilded Age. Indeed, Tammany Hall, which began operating as a political society in the 1790s by the encouragement of Aaron Burr, is the most notable example of the use of patronage to gain office, both during the Jacksonian Era and the Gilded Age. Under William "Boss" Tweed, Tammany Hall employed various means from vote-buying to threats to get Democrats elected, and effectively used the spoils system to dominate the governance of New York. The New York political machine was the quintessential example of a party doing its main task: getting votes for their policy and getting elected officials into office. Educating voters and translating their wishes into policy was barely even a side thought. How is it, then, that modern political parties can learn anything from such a corrupt institution?
Service With A Smile
The corruption of Tammany Hall is well-documented, but there is another side to the historic political machine that tends to be glossed over by historians and educators explored by the historian Terry Golway in Machine Made. During the Gilded Age, Tammany Hall operated as a major resource for immigrants, specifically the Irish, and poor members of the working class. When the federal government deadlock disrupted services, Tammany offered a rudimentary public service and welfare system for immigrants, while also offering paths for assimilation into American society. George Plunkitt, another infamous figure of Tammany Hall, offers a colourful description of this "philanthropy".
If there's a fire in Ninth, Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue...any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up, and fix them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics, too—mighty good politics. Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighbourhoods than the rich have in theirs.
While Plunkitt makes it apparent that Tammany Hall's philanthropy, or his notion of "honest graft", is driven by political gain, the altruism of the hall should still not be discounted. While providing votes to the Democratic party, it also provided a service that the government and states failed to offer, and was progressive in its attention to the immigrants and the poor, giving it powerful political leverage. The philanthropy of Tammany also provides a way to reimagine modern parties as another means citizens can use for political assistance and to join the political conversation.
In the past decade, party membership has declined globally. While this seems to have been rebuffed in the United States by high voter engagement during the 2020 election, the number of independent voters has, on average, gradually increased since 2004. According to a survey by Gallup, a pollster, roughly 40% of Americans currently consider themselves an independent, about 10% more than either Republicans and Democrats. A decline in party membership does come with benefits. Less direct democracy in primaries would prevent candidates from catering to the intense partisans of their party (who are most frequently stalwart members, which is itself problematic). This could lead to politicians paying more attention to opinions present outside of their party, resulting in policies that are directed more at United States citizens in general rather than party members. The increased expression of voters opinions on the internet or social media makes party membership look tedious and communicating with government officials through parties antiquated. The absence of increased party membership may make politics more efficient.
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?
The downsides of less active membership in parties are significant, however. Above all, hollowed-out parties will be unable to properly educate voters in politics, resulting in the crumbling of political literacy from voters without access to strong schools or access to reliable news. Misunderstandings of the political process and disinterest in engaging with politics allows demagogues and political celebrities to win elections. A weak party can also allow for elites to dominate policymaking and increases the distance between the citizens and their representatives. Most importantly, the diminishing of party structures would see a collapse in a strong aspect of civil society, as there would be no avenue for easy engagement with policy and politicians. To work properly, civil society requires citizens to understand their political duties, and parties should provide this understanding. While party activism may not strictly decline, the lack of proper political education parties provide would make it more challenging for American democracy to flourish.
To increase membership and enshrine parties as a useful political institution, the structure of parties needs to change. Already parties are barely fulfilling their roles in politically socializing members. According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center in July, one in five Americans digest political news on social media. These voters are typically less engaged and less knowledgeable on political matters, showing that social media provides a poor alternative to the news and other sources for political literacy. To increase membership, the Republican and Democratic party could offer forms of welfare assistance similar to Tammany Hall in the Gilded Age. The United States is undeniably in a similar era to the Gilded Age, yet there is an absence of the political parties working to offer welfare when the government is floundering at doing so. As Plunkitt articulated, this does come across as vote-buying, but that does not diminish the impact the services could have right now, especially with the crushing economic problems brought on by COVID-19. Increasing the services of the parties could also make swing voters less likely to swing, as they would be stalwart members of the party who most concretely serves them. On the flip side, both parties could compete for voters by offering better services than the other, although this has the potential to spiral out of control. For the centre-left, which advocates for increased welfare for the poor and opportunities for upward mobility, offering these services would be a chance to prove why their platforms are the most compelling. Additionally, parties could work to implement their policies on a micro level while not in power, acting as a bulwark against total domination by the majority while still also being dependent on their popularity. This would be a drastic shift in the way modern political parties are envisioned in the United States. Above all, parties with a service sector could also institutionalize civil society, appeasing all parties.
Despite talk about splits between progressives and moderates and Trump Republicans and never-Trumpers, the two-party system in the United States, on a national scale, does not seem to be weakening. The Democratic and Republican parties continue to nominate officials and offer ideological cohesiveness on a broad scale. Yet the parties are lacklustre in fulfilling the other roles expected of them: education, engagement, and communication. Parties have also come to ignore their vital role as a communicator with civil society, shrugging off their democratic purpose and becoming only political machines. After a tumultuous four years and division among the parties, now is the time to take something positive out of the Gilded Age and use it as a way to bootstrap the country out of the Gilded Age it finds itself in.
