In his 1963 book The Deadlock of Democracy, political historian James MacGregor Burns offered anovel suggestion. Then as now, most academics agreed that Americas party system was an unusually stable one. Ever since the Civil War era, when the election of Abraham Lincoln helped to consolidate the dominance of two major political parties, Republicans and Democrats had ruled with relatively little outside contestation. But Burns saw things differently. America did not have two political parties, he argued, butfour.
In Burnss formulation, each of the major parties was split into two branchesa congressional wing and a presidential wingand there could be significant tensions between the two. Today, the specific division that Burns highlighted has been largely forgotten by history. But his approach of surveying American politics by dividing it up into factions more nuanced than Democrat and Republican has been much more resilient. For example, in 2021, author and journalist George Packer published abook arguing that the nations politics are not driven by division between two groupsliberals and conservativesbut rather by conflict between four tribes: alibertarian Free America, anationalistic Real America, atechnocratic Smart America, and aprogressive-minded JustAmerica.
In creating such aclassification, Packer stands in acrowded field. Since Burnss time, aplethora of columnists and commentators have followed in the historians footsteps, dividing the electorate into rival blocs and asking the provocative question: What if America did not have two political parties, but three? Or four? Or six? What if this were not ahypothetical scenario, but rather areflection of our currentreality?
Whether we like it or not, Americas established two-party order shows little sign of being replaced in the near future. But it can still be valuable to examine how the voting blocs that exist in U.S. politics might align if we were in, say, Germany, Spain or New Zealand. Instead of simply classifying voters as Democrats or Republicans and treating the identity of these parties as static, we can examine the shifting factions that have contentiously vied for control within each party. This way of looking at political factions is more than an interesting thought experiment. For organizers, it can allow for better strategic decision-making, yielding new insights into influencing other groups, building coalitionsand winning realpower.
Breaking down multi-partyAmerica
Of the many efforts to divide the American body politic into groupings thatin another contextmight be cohesive enough to function as independent political parties, perhaps the most long-standing has been that of the Pew Research Center. Since 1987, Pew has gathered survey data and released areport approximately every five years that seeks to look at internal divisions within both the Republican and Democratic coalitions. The original report, written in the waning days of the Cold War, said that, In 1987, the conventional labels of liberal and conservative are about as relevant as the words Whig and Federalist. The report argued that these expressions have not only lost much of their traditional meaning, they do not even remotely come close to defining the nature of American publicopinion.
To more actively characterize the divisions among the U.S. public, Pews researchers identified nine basic values and orientations that served to motivate voters and divide people into groups. These were: religious faith, tolerance, social justice, militant anti-Communism, alienation (or the belief that the American system does not work for oneself), American exceptionalism, financial pressure, attitudes towards government, and attitudes towards corporations. Ask someone about these issues, the surveys logic went, and you could find their true politicaltribe.
Over the years, the cleavages highlighted in Pews political typologies have shifted somewhatfear of Soviet Communism, for example, has been supplanted by concerns about immigration as adriver of political behavior. But the overall approach of breaking the American public into subgroups based on their attitudes toward key issues has remained constant over eight reports spanning more than three decades. Others have also joined Pew in creating like-minded typologiesamong the more detailed of which are from the right-leaning Virginia-based think tank Echelon Insights and progressive political scientist Lee Drutman.
So how do Republicans and Democrats breakdown?
With regard to those on the right wing of the political spectrum, the very first Pew report contended that The Republican Party has two distinct groups: the Enterprisers, whose more traditional form of Republicanism is driven by free enterprise economic concerns, and the Moralists, an equally large, less affluent and more populist group driven by moral issues and Militant anti-communism. Thirty-five years later, such adivision may still be valid. At the same time, Drutman, alecturer at Johns Hopkins University and asenior fellow at New America, has offered some updates for the current political climate. He believes that, if operating in amulti-party system, Republicans would probably split into three: acenter-right Reform Conservative Party (think Marco Rubio), aconsistently conservative Christian Republican Party (think Cruz), and apopulist-nationalist America First Party (think Trump). He also allows that Maybe asmall Libertarian Party would win someseats.
Pews recent surveys further draw out some of the fault lines. The most business-minded Republicans, which in 2017 Pew called New Era Enterprisers, demand aggressive tax cuts and deregulation, but they may be open to immigration and tolerant when it comes to same-sex marriage. They are relatively cosmopolitan and largely internationalist, supportive of government efforts to advance corporate-led globalization. These well-off conservatives stand in contrast with another group, dubbed the Populist Right in the 2021 survey, which is most likely to find its ranks based in rural areas. Its members are rabidly anti-immigrant, show significant resentment toward banks and corporate elites, and rail against free trade treaties. Athird group, Faith and Flag Conservatives are older and overwhelmingly Christian. Diverging from the populists, they generally view the U.S. economic system as fair. Instead, they are driven by the culture war. Seeing themselves in an electoral battle against abortionists, homosexuals, and radical feminists, they have never met a Dont Say Gay bill they didntlike.
The fact that New Era Enterprisers, the Populist Right, and Faith and Flag Conservatives have been able to hold together within the Republican Party coalition is remarkableand sometimes tenuous. The Tea Partys challenges to incumbents they dubbed RINOs, or Republican in name only, illustrates that the coexistence has not always been peaceful. As for points of unity, Pew noted in 2021 that the factions are fairly aligned in beliefs about race: the groups consistently rebut the idea that white people benefit from advantages in society that Black people dont have and largely contend that increased public attention to the history of slavery and racism in America isnegative.
With regard to the political left, the Democratic coalition contains divisions of its own. When asked ahead of the 2020 presidential primaries about the prospect of former Vice President Joe Biden winning the Democratic Party nomination, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) memorably groaned. Oh God, she remarked to New York magazine, In any other country, Joe Biden and Iwould not be in the same party, but in America, weare.
A variety of political analysts have backed Ocasio-Cortezs sentiment. In a2019 studyentitled What if the U.S. Were aMulti-Party Democracy?Echelon Insights imagined the Democrats splitting into three distinct groups in aEuropean-style party system, with its members divided between the Acela, Green, and Labor parties. The neoliberal Acela Party would be oriented toward business-aligned centrists. In the studys words, it would aim to Advance social progress including womens rights and LGBTQ rights, work with other countries through free trade and diplomacy, cut the deficit, and reform capitalism with sensibleregulation.
Progressives on the left end of the Democratic coalition would hardly find this to be an attractive platform. Instead, Echelon predicted that they would join a Green Party led by Ocasio-Cortez and other members of The Squad. This party would seek to pass aGreen New Deal to build acarbon-free economy with jobs for all, break up big corporations, end systemic inequality, and promote social and economicjustice.
Between these two poles would fall most traditional Democrats. Echelon envisioned that abloc of people possibly more than twice as large as each of the other groupings might join aEuropean-style Labor Party. This party would put the middle class first, pass universal health insurance, strengthen labor unions, and raise taxes on the wealthy to support programs for those less welloff.
Members of the hypothetical Acela, Labor, and Green parties might actually agree in their diagnosis of many problems, and yet disagree on the solutions. Pew argues that, within the Democratic coalition, intensity of belief is often more important than cleavages based around issueswith mainstream liberals being content with modest reforms and younger radicals believing that much more drastic change is needed. In amulti-party system, this dynamic might force these parties to work in coalition, even as they remain at odds about what specific actions the state shouldtake.
The value of understandingfactions
Not all attempts to think about the United States as having amulti-party system are driven by the same motives. While some political observers are merely launching what if? conversations, other advocates are pushing for America to fundamentally revise its election lawsan improbable goal given the strong incentive the two dominant parties have to maintain theirnear-monopolies.
So, if we accept that electoral structures are unlikely to significantly transform anytime soon, why is it useful to look at various efforts to think of America as amulti-party system?
First, it allows us to better understand what the Democratic and Republican parties actually are. Instead of seeing the two major parties as ideologically well-defined groups with stable sets of beliefs, we can view them as fractiouscoalitions.
Various legal structures, electoral rules and political norms have created asituation in the United States in which forming new parties is difficult. Those outsider parties that do form tend to have limited success. Therefore, competing groups often instead seek influence within the dominant parties, which end up being big-tent entities that try to keep many constituencies together under the same roof. Inside the tent, factions make uncomfortable truces in order to create majorities that can hand them ashare ofpower.
While political conflict in Europe often is expressed in arguments between different parties, in the United States, we are just as likely to see tensions playing out as arguments within the major parties. The Democrats and Republicans contain subgroups that rise and fall over time, and with their ascent or decline, these factions change the demographics and ideologies of the parties. Winning power requires thinking about how your faction can become dominant. As organizer Alexandra Flores-Quilty put it in arecent report for Momentum, Political parties are not monoliths. They are open terrains of conflict andstruggle.
At several key junctures in the past centuryincluding during the New Deal, and the emergence of the religious right in the 1970s and 80swhat it has meant to be aRepublican or Democrat has fundamentally altered. Attention to rising and falling factions allow for insight into how major realignments happen within mainstreampolitics.
Thinking about America in amulti-party context can be useful particularly for those on the political left. The landscape of political blocs illustrates how, even if the left had its own party that was more ideologically coherent than the Democrats, it would still have to deal with the problems of interacting with otherfactions.
Disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans, advocates of third parties often promote afresh party infrastructure as apanacea. But the creation of anew party does not solve every political problemit only introduces new sets of problems that then must be resolved. Because groups of people with different beliefs will not simply disappear, even those pursuing athird-party strategy must be attentive to fault lines within the electorate. They will need to consider which factions can be peeled off from the existing parties, and what narratives they might use to unite disparate groups. When the traditional parties try to win back their members by co-opting some of the third partys issues and exploiting divisions in their ranks, they will need to find ways torespond.
Questions of coalitions also remain. Athird party might have the advantage of amore disciplined and principled ideological identity, but purity only goes so far: European parties must constantly consider what groups they are willing to join in alliances with, and which they would never join. They must decide whether they might be willing to serve as apartner in agoverning coalition led by others, or whether they want to stay on the outside. If they do opt to go inside, they must consider what gains it allows them to secure, and what it costs them in terms of principles and their political appeal. As a2020 headline in the Irish Times observed, Serving in coalition government can be bad for junior partners health. On the other hand, being perpetually excluded from power altogether can lead aparty to lose followers and to grow ever more insular andirrelevant.
These considerations do not pertain only to hypothetical party coalitions. Many observers have contended that, within the current Democratic Party coalition, progressives can be seen as ajunior partner in just such agovernment. Those who would ultimately like to see this faction form its own party, as well as those seeking to make it adominant force within abigger Democratic tent, must deal with many of the same strategicquestions.
In 2019, Waleed Shahid, aspokesperson for Justice Democrats, agroup that backs progressive Democratic primary challenges, told Politico, There is going to be awar within the party. We are going to lean into it. Nearly adecade before, Tea Party advocates sought to reshape the Republican Party with RINO hunts that took down figures as prominent as former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (RVa.). In each case, the insurgents in question might have more easily created new parties under adifferent political system. But in America, these factional battles have played out under the cover of what might look from the outside like aplacid and stable two-partyorder.
In this respect, the type of thinking encouraged by James MacGregor Burns nearly 60years ago has grown in importance not only for those who want to understand the rifts driving American politicsbut also those who seek to make the most of the opportunities theypresent.
Research assistance provided by CelestePepitone-Nahas.
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What If America Had Six Political Parties? - In These Times