If America eliminated the two party political system...?

Question

What kind of system would you like to see replace it or what do you think would replace it? Would we have more parites? No parties? What benefits would you expect? What negative results would we have to deal with? I would love to read all your thoughts and ideas especially if you are a major or are majoring in political science or history!

Answer 1

I would love a multi-party system.

Two parties are all about push/pull and win/loss, not compromise and the common interest.

Put it this way, right now we have two parties, so some one virtually always has a majority in the House and/or Senate. All it takes is a 51/49 split to force something through the Senate that is all about one party's goals and beliefs..

No imagine a 3 party system, where the balance is more like 32/35/33. Now, nothing gets passed without the consent of at least two of the parties. So at least two major parties are being consulted, making the proposal more palatable to more people.

Now image 4 parties with an even 25 all split. Nothing gets passed without approval and buy-in from at least 3 parties.

The negative result is that legislative initiatives are less focused on one party's goals and fewer things get passed in total.

But the positive is that legislative initiatives are less focused on one party's goals and fewer things get passed in total.

The other benefit is that you would hear about more ideas and philosophies in the debates once it isn't an us/them situation. Imagine how different a Republican/Democrat debate would look, feel, and sound compared to a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green debate. It's not 1 against 1, it is 1 against 3. You'd be forced to sell yourself and your own ideas more instead of just tearing down the other guy and his or her ideas. It would be much more positive, I'd wager, as people pushed to get you to vote FOR them and not just AGAINST the other guy.

The best way to get to a multiparty system would be to change the methods of voting so that people could vote for more than one candidate. I love the idea of approval voting. That's where you vote for all the candidates you'd be OK with winning. Maybe you want to vote 3rd party, but you fear "throwing your vote away." In an approval voting system you could vote Democrat AND Green, or Republican AND Libertarian. You'd see the third party vote totals skyrocket.

Answer 2

I think our effectively two party system has failed but it worked when we were not such an information intensive society.  Now that everyone knows everything nearly instantly(or at least what they want to know). We get this small group that hold elective office that will not compromise and spends more time tending their own business rather than the nations.

I would like to see some type of instant voting of candidates on the Internet with both a primary and final election for us to vet the candidates and parties not allowed(call it collusion between candidates) I Do not know if 435 independent thinkers would make for a better government, but it could not be much worse.

Answer 3

We aren't a two party system.  it just seems that way because the system tends to converge to two parties.  One big reason for this is because you can either be for or against an argument, there's not a lot of  room for maybes.  Also, for parties to survive they need to merge to get the majority votes, so we see this convergence happening.  

Answer 4

In most democratic countries there is a range of parties.  So no one party can 'rule'.  To win a majority takes a coalition of parties, and usually they range from nearly center to one or the other extreme.

The advantage of this system is that you don't have one single party that makes all the policy, policy is always a compromise, a consensus. The disadvantage is that smaller parties have proportionately more power because the larger parties need them in the coalition to make up a majority.

In our country, when our Constitution was written, most of the delegates didn't want political parties (they called them 'factions').  But parties were almost immediately on the scene.  And, then as now, the political process was much too strongly influenced by the wealthy for their own greedy motives.  The Federalists, the first party, wanted the federal government to assume the debts accrued by the states in the Revolutionary War.  The reason for this was that bonds sold by the states would go from nearly worthless to suddenly worth a lot of money so certain rich fatcats could make fortunes in 'insider trading'.  The second party, the Democratic Republicans (now the Democratic Party) was reluctantly formed by Thomas Jefferson and others to fight the influence of the Federalists.

In our system we still have coalitions, but they are inside the parties rather than made up of separate parties.  The Republican Party is made up of commercial and financial interests, religious Christians, etc. The Democratic Party represents the interests of unions and labor, trial lawyers, and children and families (education, health care, public health, etc.)  

The problem with having the coalitions -within- the parties is that the weaker (politically)  of the parties' constituencies really get the short end of the stick.  The Republicans claim to represent Christians but their real agenda has nothing to do with Christian values and except for the occasional token gesture the Christians get very little.  Same with unions in the Democratic Party.  If these were separate parties, a Christian Party and a Labor Party, the larger parties might have to make more concessions to keep them in the coalition.

The other thing about two powerful parties is that between them they are able to jigger the system so as to make it much harder for other parties to come into existence.  Also in the last few years money has become the most important thing in politics, and since both parties get their money from the same sources, you really can't expect their agendas to be all that much different.

Answer 5

We already do have more parties.

They just don't get the media attention and financial support that the big two do.

I'd like to see no parties, personally.  Just the candidates and the issues.

Answer 6

you get communism, period.  

Answer 7

We aren't a two party system.  It's just that in recent history, only 2 parties have been the most effective in getting people into office.

Check out a ballot, there are many, many parties.  The Green Party, Libertarian, Constitution, Communist, Democratic Socialists....

Below is a link to a website where you can get more information on the various political parties.