I very much appreciate Tabatha’s follow-up to my earlier post, and I especially appreciate her discussion of the new article Dismantling the Party System: Party Fluidity and the Mechanisms of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Politics by Rachel A. Shelden and Erik B. Alexander, which I found very interesting although not entirely persuasive.

I’m not sure there’s much disagreement between Tabatha and me. As she says, she doesn’t take issue with my basic point. To the extent that there appears to be some difference of opinion, it may be based on different understandings of the key sentence that I quoted from the Washington Post explainer that prompted my initial post. Here, again, is that sentence: “For much of U.S. history, there were more than two major political parties, and that could emerge again.” 

I interpreted this sentence as meaning that for a large portion of U.S. history there was a major third party and perhaps even additional major parties. I based that interpretation in part on the end of the sentence saying what occurred before, but doesn’t exist now, could occur again. Because we currently have minor third and fourth parties, like the Libertarians and the Greens, I assumed that the author of the explainer intended to mean that third (and perhaps more) parties in much of the past were major rather than minor competitors in electoral politics. Given that interpretation of the sentence, my contention was–and remains–that it is inaccurate.

But perhaps it is possible to interpret the relevant sentence as meaning only that for large chunks of American history, more than two parties existed even though these additional parties were not major electoral competitors. This interpretation would require treating the minor parties that exist today as insignificant in a way that minor parties in previous eras, even though minor in comparison to the two major parties, were not insignificant. If interpreted this way, the sentence is not inaccurate. It is indisputable, as Tabatha and the Sheldon-Alexander article describe, that in the nineteenth century minor parties were more of a factor in electoral competition than subsequently.

Even so, it remains true that the plurality-winner rule that has dominated American elections since the Jacksonian era has not permitted third and other minor parties to become major parties unless and until they replace one of the two previously existing major parties. Insofar as the Sheldon-Alexander article takes issue with this point, I think it is mistaken. The article argues that it is wrong to think of a “party system” existing in nineteenth-century America. The article contends, instead, that there was much more fluidity in nineteenth-century political competition than is suggested by the idea of a party system.

I agree that there was much more fluidity in partisan dynamics in the nineteenth century, but I don’t think that truth undermines the basic point that party systems existed as a result of the plurality-winner rule and related election laws and, as a consequence, no more that two major parties were sustainable at any given time.

If this is correct–and remains so as long as the plurality-winner rule stays in place–then we need to ask what possible roles exist for minor parties within the existing system. One possibility is that the presence of minor-party candidates can determine which major-party candidates wins. Whether or not we use the term “spoiler” to describe this role, we must understand that substantively it describes a negation of majority choice: the key point when this occurs is that the other major-party candidate would have received a majority of votes if the election had been limited to solely the two major-party candidates; but with the additional minor-party candidates in the race, a different major-party candidate receives a plurality (but not a majority) of the votes. It is important to appreciate the consequences to collective self-government from letting minor parties play this outcome-determinative role.

In the existing plurality-winner system, minor parties also (at least theoretically) could play the role of a power broker or “kingmaker” by throwing their support behind one of the two major-party candidates. This is the kind of role that is envisioned by advocates of fusion voting. But this kind of role can exist even if laws are not changed to facilitate fusion voting on the government’s ballot. There is currently nothing stopping the formation of third (and more) parties, and for those new parties to tell their members to support their preferred major-party candidate.

Moreover, Tabatha’s call for “relegalizing fusion” (so that minor parties can show their support for major-party candidates directly on the government’s ballot) is a confirmation of my most basic point: that the only way for third (and more) parties to play a truly robust role in American electoral politics is if election laws are changed to facilitate that. To be clear, I too want the enactment of some of those reforms, although I’m dubious that fusion voting alone is enough. Some forms of ranked-choice voting, in my judgment, would do much more to invigorate the possibility of electoral competition from third (and other) parties. Ultimately, I think it is important to be realistic about the role third parties will continue to play without this kind of reform.