Season 2, Episode 16 | Parties and the Constitution: Why the Founders Feared Parties and Created Them Anyway

How did a political system founded by leaders who warned against factions end up making political parties an indispensable part of democracy? And why has the United States remained a two-party nation for nearly two centuries?

In this episode of This Constitution, host Matthew Brogdon sits down with political scientist Daniel DiSalvo to trace the fascinating constitutional and political journey of America’s party system. From Jefferson’s “party to end all parties” to Martin Van Buren’s invention of the enduring two-party model, they unpack the forces that created, shaped, and sustained the parties we know today.

The conversation explores how early mechanisms like the “King Caucus” gave way to national conventions, how parties managed (and sometimes suppressed) divisive issues like slavery, and why the two-party system has proven so resilient thanks to first-past-the-post elections, the Electoral College, and state ballot laws.

They also tackle a deeper question: how political parties and the Constitution are in constant tension. The Constitution disperses power through the separation of powers; parties try to assemble it to win and govern. That push-and-pull has defined American politics from the 1790s to the present.

In This Episode

• (00:13) Introduction to Daniel DiSalvo and the study of political parties
• (01:16) Founders’ skepticism toward parties and their early emergence
• (04:30) State governments’ role in shaping elections
• (06:03) The “King Caucus” and constitutional concerns
• (09:44) Jefferson’s “party to end all parties”
• (10:58) Van Buren’s case for permanent parties to avoid sectionalism
• (12:16) National conventions as a political safety valve
• (15:19) Tariffs, internal improvements, and keeping slavery off the agenda
• (18:18) How parties suppressed abolitionist voices
• (20:38) The Republican Party’s rise as the only successful third party
• (24:22) Why the U.S. has a two-party system
• (26:19) First-past-the-post elections and the Electoral College
• (31:13) The appeal (and limits) of the two-party model
• (36:00) Consensus politics in a separated-powers system
• (39:32) Why parties remain essential to democratic accountability

Notable Quotes

• (01:23) "Jefferson's opposition didn't last very long. You could say that maybe his statement shows that many statements in politics are in bad faith, since he still hopes to go to heaven, even though he was one of the founders of the first political party." — Dan DISalvo

• (02:10) "The Constitution, which sets up all these institutions, doesn't specify a way that these offices are gonna get filled up. So how are you gonna get people to be elected to these offices?" — Dan DISalvo

• (03:15) "Parties become the ligaments and the muscles that tie it together, tying citizens to the institutions set up by the Constitution." — Dan DiSalvo

• (06:30) "The process for electing presidents became what was then called the King Caucus, which was what these nascent parties in Congress were." — Dan DiSalvo

• (13:00) "Van Buren's idea is we're going to take away, get rid of this King caucus, and we're going to have this idea of national conventions." — Dan DiSalvo

• (29:00) "The Electoral College system makes it very hard for third parties to get in." — Dan DiSalvo

• (32:30) "In our system, you campaign inside your own party to win a primary election, then you campaign on what you think is good." — Dan DiSalvo

Transcript

Intro
 [0:00 – 0:13]:
 We the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution.

Matthew Brogdon
 [0:13 – 0:34]:
 Welcome to This Constitution. I'm Matthew Brogdon and I've got a special guest today. Dan  DiSalvo is joining us from the City College of New York. Dan is a scholar of American politics, American public policy. American political thought, and he's come to chat with us today about political parties in the United States. Dan, welcome to the podcast. 

Daniel DiSalvo
 [0:37 – 0:38]:
 My pleasure to be with you, Matthew.

Matthew Brogdon
 [0:39 – 1:23]:

 So political parties in America have undergone quite a roller-coaster ride. Thomas Jefferson said about political parties. If he could only go to heaven with a political party, he'd just rather not go. Then I think if we fast forward to the middle of the 20th century, one of the most important thinkers about political parties, E.E Schattschneider, big mouthful, said. That it was impossible to conceive of democracy, save with political parties. So that seems like quite a disparity. I mean, parties have gone from being sort of persona non grata among the founding generation to being an indispensable part of modern liberal democracy. So, help me understand why the founding generation is so antithetical or, or feel such antipathy toward this.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [1:23 – 1:44]:
 Yeah, it wasn't just Jefferson that was opposed to political parties, although Jefferson's opposition didn't last very long. And, you could say that maybe his statement shows that many statements in politics are in bad faith since he still hopes to go to heaven, even though he was one of the founders of the first political party, the Republican Party at the time, or sometimes called the Democratic Republicans.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [1:44 – 2:06]:
 So in that sense, it wasn't just Jefferson, it was also probably Madison John Adams. George Washington. So one, reading any of the writings and speeches of many of the founders would come across all these statements condemning political parties, worrying about political parties, thinking that they were something that was gonna be detrimental to the American Constitutional government.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [2:06 – 2:39]:
 The truth is, of course, that it's not long on the heels. In fact, by the 1790s, Jefferson and Madison and others and Hamilton were hard at work building political parties and. We go on to have many different incarnations of parties in American politics that we can talk about. I think part of the issue is that what they found is that even though parties are nowhere mentioned really in the constitution, is that the Constitution, which sets up all these institutions, the executive branch, the presidency, Congress, the House and Senate, and the judiciary.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [2:39 – 3:21]:
 Doesn't specify a way that these offices that it creates are gonna get filled up. So how are you gonna get people to be elected to these offices? How are these people going to campaign? Mm-hmm. How are these people going to present themselves for office? How are we going to know the number of people who would like to be in Congress? Yeah. Right. And get down to a manageable number. None of that is spelled out in the Constitution. So it's in those gaps that parties come to play this essential role. If you could say, if the Constitution is sort of the skeleton and the vertebrae of our political system, the parties become the ligaments and the muscles that tie it together, tying citizens to the institution set up by the Constitution.

Matthew Brogdon
 [3:21 – 4:07]:
 Well, that's an interesting way to think about it, because we usually think of the Constitution as establishing a mode of selection because in the case of the House of Representatives. It's specified that members of the house representatives would be chosen by the people. So we think, well, you've got an office, you've got qualifications for that office. So we've said, you gotta be such and such an age, and you know, a citizen for so many years. And then you've said, who's gonna choose them? You establish a constituency. The people. Are going to select members of the house, but it, it's easy to miss just how much of our actual sort of system for selecting someone who holds office is missing in that, you know, I, I guess I think about how thick the institutional environment is for elections now.

Matthew Brogdon
 [4:07 – 4:30]:
 You know, we elect a member of Congress, there's a whole set of stepping stones to even become sort of a candidate. Right. Figure out who's really in contention for a seat in Congress and who do they need to impress, right? Whose Rolodex we would've said some time ago, do they need to get their name into, get their name on a ballot? So the Constitution doesn't really answer that many questions for us, so. How did political parties fix that problem?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [4:30 – 5:12]:
 Well, partly it's also important, just building on the point you just made important to remember that the founders didn't totally overlook this. They were in part, assuming that, and which is true up until today, that state governments are gonna be the primary actors in figuring out the electoral rules between the qualifications for office. The constituency, the people, well ballot access rules, the way voting is gonna occur, the kind of ballots all of those decisions were, and to a large extent still are the province of state governments. Right. So that was what was gonna figure these things out because in part American politics and American government at the time of the founding and really all the way until.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [5:12 – 5:30]:
 One could argue even the 1930s was enormously decentralized. Mm-hmm. Um, where state and local government was really where the action was much more than the national government. So I think that's an important part. But so parties really get going as helping, you could say, or you. To figure out what exactly are gonna be these mechanisms for nominating candidates for office After George Washington's election, a lot of people would've liked, even at that time, ambitious politicians wanted to be president.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [5:40 – 5:58]:
 Well, how are we gonna sort out who should be the candidates for president that the voters can pick from. There's no process that's specified in the constitution. There's this process of the electoral college where the electoral college would be this deliberative body that would sort of take into account what the people wanted and then make a choice.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [5:58 – 6:21]:
 Mm-hmm. But again, that only worked. You could say the way it's designed in the Constitution for two elections, Washington's election and reelection. Right? And then, and then after that, they said, well, we need to figure out a new process. And the process for electing presidents became what was then called the King Caucus, which was, what were these nascent parties in Congress?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [6:21 – 6:40]:
 People would get together and say, well, we think it should be this person, or we think it should be that person. But it didn't have any constitutional status. People worried that it was violating separation of powers. Mm-hmm. Because now it sort of looks like the Congress is having a substantial say in who's gonna be president, more like a parliamentary system.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [6:40 – 6:55]:
 Mm-hmm. So that doesn't seem to square. So it's in this very slow working out process of what the parties are and should be partly at the state and local government, partly at the national level, especially related to the presidency.

Matthew Brogdon
 [6:55 – 7:20]:
 Yeah. I'm glad you bring up King Caucus because it's a complex sort of episode in our history. And isn't intuitive, but it is the first example of a sort of party based process. The party is an institution displacing some part of the constitutional structure. Yeah, and maybe you get to dive into that for just a second, because my understanding of King Caucus, you basically have the parties in Congress.

Matthew Brogdon
 [7:20 – 8:00]:
 So, uh, you've developed a caucus, the, you know, a gathering of the members of the party. And because by 1816, the Federalist Party had more or less died. I mean, it's really diminishing in power. Jeffersonian Republicans are, they're the 800 pound gorilla of American politics. By that time, they really, I mean, my impression is, maybe I'm right about this, that the national level federalists are sort of out of the contest in a substantial way. So that means whoever Jeffersonian Republicans pick in this party caucus in Congress, which I think at one point like Jefferson, even presided over the Republican caucus.

Matthew Brogdon
 [8:00 – 8:21]:
 Mm-hmm. In Congress. So Jefferson and Republicans in Congress would get together, the president would actually meet with them and whoever they selected was destined to become president. So literally, Congress was picking the president 'cause it was a foregone conclusion. Whoever the caucus picked, I think there's actually a protest that comes out of, is it out of Tennessee? There's a famous protest that comes out arguing that, look, the framers of the Constitution explicitly, well, maybe not explicitly, but very emphatically put the selection of the president somewhere other than Congress because like Congress picking the president was the worst possible sort of outcome in terms of presidential selection, and here you're using this political party system to undermine that whole separation of powers.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [8:47 – 9:07]:
 I think it's important to consider the status of thinking about what political parties are and the legitimacy of parties. As a whole, we started on this point of Jefferson saying that parties are, and many of the other founders, Washington's farewell address, thinking that there's something illegitimate or bad about political parties.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [9:07 – 9:35]:
 Mm-hmm. And if we look back at Jefferson and Madison's efforts to create the Republican party, how did they conceive of this party? They said, look, we wanna get back to a nonpartisan system. We don't want parties. But Hamilton, their great adversary, or Jefferson's great adversary, he's creating a party and he has all these other federalists and people who are closet monarchists and they're not really on board with liberal democracy or they're just bad, and we've gotta defeat them.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [9:35 – 10:00]:
 And the only way we can defeat them is by creating a political party. But this political party is gonna be a party to end all parties, meaning it's not really legitimate. It's only for this one time purpose until everyone is converted to the cause of American liberal democracy, properly understood. IE understood in the way Jefferson, Madison, mm-hmm.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [10:00 – 10:31]:
 I think they should think about it. Then the party can go away. It can wither away. And that was really, in some ways, you could say by the time we get to 1816, the Federalists sort of shot themselves in the foot. Yeah. And maybe to some extent showed their colors that they had not fully adapted to the new dispensation of American liberal democracy. You end up with what's then called the era of good feelings, which is like, oh, we don't need this party anymore because we're all of the same mindset. We're all thinking like there's a broad consensus or National Unity government is what we would hear about today. A national Unity government, that's what we would have.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [10:31 – 10:58]:
 But this problem of selecting candidates, as you suggested, still persists. And that's where someone like Martin Van Buren, who later becomes president, comes out of party politics in New York State, and his nickname was The Little Magician, but became one of these people in the 1820s that started thinking about, look, this King Caucus is not fully legitimate and many people are worried about its constitutional status.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [10:58 – 11:38]:
 This idea that the parties are gonna wither away is potentially dangerous, especially because if they wither away, what's gonna replace them is gonna be divisions, not between parties, but between sections between north and south over slavery. Mm-hmm. And that threatens the potential civil war that we want to avoid. So Van Buren said we need to try to knit the party together with a party competition that's going to be new kinds of parties. That is gonna persist. They're not gonna be parties to end all parties like Jefferson's idea. They're gonna be parties that are gonna alternate in power, and it's a new conception of parties where opposing the party in power is no longer seen as potentially treasonous.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [11:38 – 11:49]:
 Mm-hmm. Or seditious. We think back to the Alien and Sedition acts under President Adams, but these parties are gonna have a kind of legitimacy even in opposing the current administration.

Matthew Brogdon
 [11:49 – 12:00]:
 Help me understand why Van Buren would think political parties are a solution to Sectionalism. You're saying that slavery is becoming an increasingly divisive wedge that you know, the country's sort of dividing into slave and free.

Matthew Brogdon

[12:04 – 12:16]:

This is because this is a geographical representation in terms of north and south. That's sort of the natural factional makeup in the United States. How did political parties solve that problem?

Daniel DiSalvo

[12:16 – 12:27]:

Well, in Van Buren’s idea, it's gonna be by, and he uses this phrase in this famous letter to a Richmond newspaper editor, they’re gonna knit the country together because…

Daniel DiSalvo

[12:27 – 12:50]:

Inside each party. Each party isn't gonna be the Northern Party or the Southern Party. That's what he wants to avoid. They're gonna be what becomes the Whigs and the Democrats, but they're gonna have members and they're gonna find ways to appeal to people in the south and in the north. So there's gonna be Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats, and they're gonna kind of negotiate to keep slavery mostly off the agenda.

Daniel DiSalvo

[12:50 – 13:10]:

And there's gonna be northern Whigs and Southern Whigs because they're gonna play out on a different set of issue agendas. By putting people from both regions in each party, that's gonna, in some ways, let them prudentially navigate and negotiate this very complex question of slavery in the nation, and that's Van Buren’s idea.

Daniel DiSalvo

[13:10 – 13:41]:

His other way of helping to do this is institutional: we're gonna take away, get rid of this King Caucus and we're gonna have this idea of national conventions. And the conventions are gonna have delegates come to nominate presidential candidates from each state party, and that's gonna be the site where they can get together and negotiate — the Northerners and the Southerners, you know, before the internet and telephone and radio.

Daniel DiSalvo

[13:41 – 14:07]:

They're gonna come to these conventions and meet, and that's gonna be their chance to work out their differences, figure out what their agenda's gonna be. In a way that's not right at the point of legislation — it's not meeting in Congress, section against section. It's meeting in this convention, ironing out differences within the party itself. And it's gonna add this new, you could say, again not specified in the constitution, but a new power center.

Daniel DiSalvo

[14:07 – 14:21]:

Which is this party that's gonna come into being every four years at these conventions from different parts. And these state party leaders are gonna become important political actors, even if they're not elected to any official government position.

Matthew Brogdon

[14:21 – 14:55]:

So in order for that to succeed, to get a National Democratic Party and the National Whig Party — which are the two that we wind up with in that period — and to keep those from dividing along the sectional difference over slavery, I guess there have to be issues in play, other issues that can somehow outweigh slavery. What is it that they find? Maybe it helps to think about some concrete examples.

Matthew Brogdon

[14:55 – 15:11]:

What issues could Van Buren come up with to say, Democrats are about this and it transcends slavery? You know, Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats are in the same party because we want the same outcomes on these policy issues. And to achieve that, we've gotta push slavery to the side. Right? Keep that off of Congress's agenda, keep it out of the presidential election, and instead focus on this other thing.

Matthew Brogdon

[15:11 – 15:18]:

So what are the other issues that can possibly counterbalance or outweigh slavery as an issue in American politics at that point?

Daniel DiSalvo

[15:18 – 15:30]:

Well, in a word that's become much more part of our recent vocabulary: the tariff. Yeah. The tariff is the main revenue mechanism for the national government.

Daniel DiSalvo

[15:30 – 15:50]:

This is before the income tax. Now the tariff obviously affected different economic interests differently. So in the southern agricultural states, which were primarily producing cotton and indigo and tobacco, that was the locus of opposition to the tariff. There was a more free market principle on the Republican side.

Daniel DiSalvo

[15:50 – 16:16]:

But there were still obviously lots of farmers in New England who also wanted to sell their goods on international markets and did not want retaliatory tariffs, especially in Britain and elsewhere. So they might find common cause. They said, we don't want this powerful federal government managing this tariff system, and we're in the north and, well, we might not think so much of slavery, but we have seen a common interest because there were still tobacco farmers in Connecticut.

Matthew Brogdon

[16:19 – 16:24]:

Right. What about the other way around? The other way around — where were the Whigs in the south?

Daniel DiSalvo

[16:24 – 16:34]:

Again, a small portion, but they're still southern manufacturers, small southern retailers that would be retailing tools and equipment. Well, they might wanna say, look, we can be charging a premium to sell shovels made in America rather than buy the British shovels.

Daniel DiSalvo

[16:34 – 16:54]:

So we are more respectful and we want to increase our ability to manufacture goods in the south. How are we gonna do that? The other piece of the Whig program, led by Henry Clay — who's the…

Matthew Brogdon

[16:54 – 16:57]:

…southerner, well, kind of a westerner slash southerner, right?

Daniel DiSalvo

[16:57 – 17:21]:

Which shows exactly how to knit these things. Clay is a perfect in-between person to announce this policy of what was called internal improvements. The federal government is gonna use this tariff revenue to improve dredging rivers, improving harbors, creating roadways, and helping to finance all those, knitting the nation together with a system of roads and canals, and that's gonna facilitate commerce.

Daniel DiSalvo

[17:21 – 17:37]:

So anybody in the south that is not in the plantation and agricultural industry — anybody outside of that — might see some benefit to the Whig program. And that's gonna obviously tie them to manufacturing and financial interests, which were obviously bigger in the Northeast.

Matthew Brogdon

[17:37 – 18:09]:

That's a great explanation. Then we're gonna add the west and all that, so we'll leave that out for now. But we have westward expansion, so that's gonna make things much more complicated than North and South eventually. Okay. So political parties come along. We've seen at least some of the things that they do at this point. They help us manage this candidate selection system, how we're gonna figure out who's running for office and sort of who's gonna climb the ladder into the next open congressional seat.

Matthew Brogdon

[18:09 – 18:18]:

We've seen people like Van Buren and Henry Clay help them transcend slavery and keep that off the national agenda so we can stave off the Civil War. And instead fight over more mundane policy stuff and economics. So it lowers the temperature, it sounds like, in American politics in some ways.

Daniel DiSalvo

[18:18 – 18:32]:

Well, perhaps not. I don't wanna breeze over this issue of slavery too quickly because it's obviously a huge issue of justice, which is to say that the parties in some sense are suppressing a choice over a huge historical injustice.

Daniel DiSalvo

[18:32 – 18:53]:

Now, one can argue that the Van Buren position — this is prudential, we're gonna end up with a bloody civil war if we don't have that. And truth be told, that's what happens. About 40 years later, in 1860, the country did decide to confront slavery. Would it have been better or less violent or less bloody if it had occurred in the 1820s? Oh, I don't know.

Daniel DiSalvo

[18:53 – 19:18]:

But it is suppressing an intense issue and it's also pushing outside of party politics the abolitionist movement. And so if you think that the abolitionist movement is pushing away from the party system because this is the most important issue of the day and we can't get it a hearing through the current party system, then perhaps that radicalizes the abolitionist movement.

Daniel DiSalvo

[19:18 – 19:32]:

The famous statement of one of its leaders, William Lloyd Garrison, is that the Constitution is a pact with the devil because it protects slavery. And so getting a hearing for that position, at least in the halls of Congress, is partly suppressed by the party system. So this is a little bit of parties trumping morality.

Matthew Brogdon

[19:37 – 20:00]:

Well, and even constitutional rights, because there's the petition controversy in Congress in the 1830s. Both Houses of Congress — the House and the Senate — had a rule, a standing rule, that if any petition comes into Congress on the subject of slavery…

Matthew Brogdon

[20:00 – 20:09]:

…any petition on the subject of slavery would immediately be tabled. Congress would not have the petition read. And this was, some argued, including John Quincy Adams, a direct violation of the First Amendment right.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:20:10 – 00:20:28]:
 To petition the government for a redress of grievances. If the people have a right to petition, then Congress has an obligation to read it. Quite interesting. So of course, we do also know political parties. The two-party system does not successfully stave off slavery. Eventually, it becomes a big enough issue.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:20:28 – 00:20:52]:
 All those abolitionists and others have been pushed outside and do manage to build the only successful third party in American constitutional history. You made this observation when we were talking with some undergraduates during your visit about the Republican Party that Lincoln built—it is the only successful third party to elbow its way into the party system and become a majority party.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:20:52 – 00:21:09]:
 In the narrow sense, you could say there have been lots of successful third parties, depending on the criteria of success. But successful in the sense of getting into the system at the national level and supplanting one of the existing parties—in this case, the Whig Party, which had itself fractured over the question of slavery.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:21:09 – 00:21:34]:
 Between the 1820s with Martin Van Buren up to the 1850s, the issue you also mentioned is westward expansion. What’s going to happen when new states come in? Congress in the 1820s had passed the Missouri Compromise, but is it holding? Ultimately, the controversy over slavery really fractures the Whig Party.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:21:34 – 00:21:54]:
 It tears apart those northern and southern coalitions. The Republican Party really comes into being mostly as a party of some of the westward expansion and the North, and in that sense divides along sectional lines, leading to the effort to secede by the southern states.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:21:54 – 00:22:03]:
 So eventually the two-party system Van Buren created to avoid sectional division becomes a vehicle for sectional division.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:22:03 – 00:22:37]:
 I might say more: it ultimately could not stave off these sectional divisions. Much also happens between the 1820s and 1850s in terms of changes in the southern economy and the southern slaveholding population. Growing, and a radicalization on both sides outside the party system. We’ve mentioned the abolitionists, but even in the South, by the 1850s, you had a group called the “Fire-Eaters,” whose policy position was to reopen the transatlantic slave trade. A real radicalization that the party system could no longer contain.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:22:37 – 00:22:53]:
 You mentioned that one definition of success for a third party would be becoming one of the two majority parties. I guess the other definition of success would be just ruining someone else’s electoral chances—being a spoiler.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:22:53 – 00:23:25]:
 That has certainly been a role played by third parties, often serving as a vehicle for the presidential aspirations of one person. But even if you think about a successful third party, it would be the Progressive Party of the late 19th century. In some ways, it was co-opted by the Democratic Party of William Jennings Bryan, but it had elected people under its label to Congress, reshaped the Democrats’ policy positions, and had a large impact on the political system.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:23:25 – 00:23:36]:
 You could see the Progressive Party as reconfiguring the Democratic Party’s policy positions and agenda in important ways, as an example of success.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:23:36 – 00:24:16]:
 So you become a center of gravity, pulling one of the parties in a different direction than they’d otherwise go. Now that we’ve walked through a saga—starting with Jefferson and Madison building an opposition party, the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans, against Hamilton’s Federalists. The Federalists die, then we get the Era of Good Feelings. By the 1820s, the remaining coalition splits into Democrats (Jacksonian Democrats) and Whigs. That persists for about 30 years until the Whig Party collapses in sectional controversy over slavery, and we get the Republican Party. Democrats and Republicans manage to weather the Civil War and remain the two principal political parties in our system.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:24:16 – 00:24:52]:
 So American politics is a two-party system. It’d be helpful for us to tackle that question: why is American politics a two-party system? Because that’s not the only way to structure political parties. What are some of the alternatives?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:24:52 – 00:25:36]:
 On the two-party question, staying far back in time, there was a famous observation by political scientist Nelson Polsby that we actually had 102 parties—assuming 50 states—because even though they shared the same names, Democrats and Republicans in Utah were not the same as those in New York. And they would have been even more different 50 years ago. Then you’d have the two national parties, which gives you two per 50 states plus the national, showing more diversity in the federal system.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:25:36 – 00:25:55]:
 But if you think about why there are only two parties per state—or two nationally—the biggest reasons are the electoral rules. What political scientists call first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all elections, or plurality elections. These terms all mean the same thing: whoever gets the most votes wins.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:25:54 – 00:26:19]
 For an election win and you're only competing for one seat per district. So in that sense, if we have three candidates in a race, two could each get 30% and the person who got 40% would win. But the other two obviously would've a next incentive to combine their forces in the next election. Yeah. And the next election, we have a two party system and that combination is presumably gonna win 60-40.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:26:20 – 00:26:23]
 So does that make a two party system kind of inevitable in that context?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:26:23 – 00:26:50]
 Well, that's been one of the strong things. First pass, the poll systems are much closer now. There are other electoral rules that states can and do adopt that facilitate the creation of second or third parties or other parties. In my home state of New York has a curious system of called fusion voting, which is, is, uh, other parties can cross endorse major parties and if they get a sufficient number of votes, they can continue to remain on the ballot.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:26:50 – 00:27:08]
 So. In New York State and local elections, we have the Working Families Party. Mm-hmm. On the left that cross endorses the Democratic candidate and then people who voters would like to indicate that they'd like to move the Democratic Party further to the left vote for the Democratic candidate on the Working Families party line.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:27:10 – 00:27:16]
 So they sort of adopting the Democratic Party candidate. Exactly. Impute their label. Their label to it.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:27:16 – 00:27:26]
 Right. And then that is very interesting. And then that allows the party to also exist for city council elections in New York City, a number of city council members are working families party members.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:27:26 – 00:29:02]
 So a lot of this is getting us at these. First pass, the post issue is the key driver of the two party system. Now that can be weakened by other electoral laws and state and local governments. The other big driver of the two party system is the electoral college, because that same winner-take -all system applies to electoral college votes in every state except for Maine and Nebraska.
 Mm-hmm. Which means whoever wins the most votes in a given state wins all the electoral college votes. The classic example here is Ross Perot ran as a reform party candidate in the 1992 election against Bill Clinton for the Democrats and George HW Bush for the Republicans. Perot received 20% of the popular vote.
 Strong showing for a novice politician, but he won zero electoral college votes. Why? Because in every state, either Bush or Clinton won more votes than Perot did, so they were always scooping up all the electoral college votes. So that electoral college system makes it very hard for third parties to get in.
 In addition, the last feature is states controlling. Means for third parties to get on the ballot in all 50 states is often very expensive and difficult. So take the example of Ralph Nader's campaign for the presidency in 2000, which did have a big impact. Nader spent almost all of his campaign war chest fighting legal battles against the Democrats to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states because the Democrats were worried, which ultimately did happen that Nader would suck off votes from their candidate Al Gore.
 Mm-hmm. And he would. Lose to George W. Bush. So again, these electoral college dynamics are also a powerful enforcer of a two party system.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:29:12 – 00:30:49]
 Now, everything you've described in terms of enforcing the two party system are all creatures of state law, as far as I can tell. So with the exception of the electoral college, that is true.
 You could argue the electoral college. Sort of demands institutionally, a decisive outcome in terms of one candidate, a clear majoritarian outcome. And that sort of pushes states to adopt some kind of first pass the post system. But it also doesn't require it. I mean, there's nothing actually to stop states from adopting a more pluralistic multi-party approach to electoral college delegates.
 I know a lot of people would like to see some sort of, you know, uh. Proportional vote mechanism, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, you get whatever percentage of the state's electoral votes your party's represented by, and then you could divide New York and Texas. Mm-hmm. You know, they wouldn't just have to go Democratic and Republican could divvy them up and then maybe other parties could.
 So the Constitution itself has some built-in inertia that suggests the two party system, particularly with the presidency, just 'cause you want decisive elections. Mm-hmm. But states are technically free to structure the selection of members of Congress as they wish, as long as they're picked by the people.
 Mm-hmm. The particular mechanism you use for candidate selection or picking the people who occupy the seats are all left up to states and the allotment of electoral college votes. So, and even ballot rules like you're talking about. Yeah. With this, uh, allowing others. Parties outside. The two major parties to participate are all within the power of states to do, but we've made the judgment not to.
 So that indicates to me that there's a sort of collective American judgment. I mean, 50 separate states in the District of Columbia have all chosen to have these majoritarian systems that reinforce the two party system. So what's so great about the two party system is that everyone would just follow Martin Van Buren's lead for 180 years now and go this route.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:31:13 – 00:33:38]
 Well, one way to think about this question is how might we characterize our two party system? It's easy to think about. Some counter examples, one might say about our two party system is we have two big parties, but they're relatively weak parties. Mm-hmm. In governing terms, unpack what that means, whereas you can contrast our system with England.
 Or Great Britain, the what's sometimes called the Westminster model has two big parties, primarily the Tories and Labor Party of the Conservative and Labor in Britain. And those are two big parties, but they're strong. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you can think about systems, say, in continental Europe of multi-party systems.
 They have relatively strong parties. So what are the differences across these three different models? Well, let's take the British example. The parties there are strong because the parties can campaign on a clear platform, and then when they're elected. In the Majoritarian House of Commons, they can pretty much run the table, right?
 They can pass what they want. The opposition can complain and say it's bad policy and set themselves up for the next election, but they can't really stop it. And then when you arrive at the next election, the public can make a judgment and say, well, did things go well or poorly? And they know who to blame.
 They can say, well, this was the Labor Party government's policies for the last few years, and things are terrible. The economy's, you know, not going well, we wanna elect the conservatives or vice versa. In the American case, the parties can campaign on things, but the party as an organization doesn't have a coherent message because all these different candidates from all over the country are slightly running on their own message.
 Mm-hmm. They get to make up their own campaign talking points. They're not running on the party program partly because. In the British case, the party picks the candidates rather than the candidates putting themselves. Forward in our system, you campaign inside your own party to win a primary election.
 Then you campaign on what you think is good. It's much more individual centered. So out of this cacophony of voices, you could say something like the Democratic or Republican party program emerges. But even if you're, that party is elected and wins the presidency, the House and the Senate, which doesn't happen that often to still pass major legislation, they're gonna need the support of the other party.
 Mm-hmm. So at the end of two years before there's a midterm election, which comes up quickly. So there's all these staggered elections. It's very hard for the public to say, well, who exactly is fully responsible for the way the country has gone? Mm-hmm. We often look at whoever the President's party is.
 But you know, major laws often are the responsibility of both parties. Just one historical example of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Many people say, well, that was the Democrats. Bill because Johnson was president and he did a great deal to push it through. But where did the majority of the votes in the house come from?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:33:38]
 Mm-hmm. So at the end of two years before there's a midterm election, which comes up quickly. So there's all these staggered elections. It's very hard for the public to say, well, who exactly is fully responsible for the way the country has gone? Mm-hmm. We often look at whoever the President's party is.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:33:55 – 00:34:00]
 But you know, major laws often are the responsibility of both parties. Just one historical example of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Many people say, well, that was the Democrats. Bill because Johnson was president and he did a great deal to push it through. But where did the majority of the votes in the house come from?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:34:14]
 The Republican party. Mm-hmm. So the Republican party doesn't get any credit anymore, uh, for passing the 64 Civil Rights Act, but it wouldn't have passed without the Republicans because the Democrats were internally divided. So this gets us to this question of big and strong, big and weak, and then the multi-party system.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:34:32]
 We can talk more about that if you want, but it's so, it's another couple. So in the American case,

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:34:35 – 00:34:53]
 I mean, what it sounds like we're describing is that unlike the responsible party model where somebody wins a majority, no matter how Slim and the UK, they get to pass their platform, the American system, because of separation of powers, because of our sort of strong institutional system.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:34:53 – 00:35:21]
 Of a bicameral legislature and a separate executive that resists sort of party control. You actually have to have a kind of consensus legislation. You gotta have a pretty big tent policy to actually get it passed. And the social science on this, right? The most prominent studies, which would come from like Francis Lee, I think folks like that would say, well, there is no such thing as major policy change that happens in American politics without bipartisan support.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:35:21 – 00:35:51]
 Yeah. Um, I mean there might be some very narrow exceptions to that, but major policies that actually stick, that aren't just ephemeral and that have a real impact. Even if you have a unified government, even if the president. And both houses of Congress are controlled by the same political party. You still typically need votes from the other side of the aisle in significant numbers to get a policy that will actually stick and change the country's direction in a significant way.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:35:51 – 00:36:00]
 So that means the American system really puts a lot of emphasis on pluralism and the kind of consensus politics if you wanna accomplish big things.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:36:00 – 00:36:09]
 Yeah, and that goes back, you could say to the original constitutional design, and in some ways you could say it was designed to be against political parties.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:36:09 – 00:36:37]
 Mm-hmm. In that sense, the check on government power was to come from the separation of powers system that would force people to compromise. Mm-hmm. And arrive at some kind of broad consensus that is the separate institutions sharing powers mm-hmm. Of the. The Madisonian system would force this kind of pretty broad societal consensus, or at least among the political establishment in order for major legislation to occur.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:36:37 – 00:36:54]
 So as you mentioned, there's a lot of political science research, you know, in the modern era. Demonstrating this point. Going back to classic books by a Yale political scientist named David Mayhew, and you mentioned Francis Lee's more recent work that kind of extends Mayhew’s original finding that it was, it had a great title.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:36:54 – 00:37:11]
 It was called Divided We Govern, which showed that even in situations of divided government where one party controlled, say the presidency and the other controlled Congress or one chamber of Congress. Just as much in Mayhew was finding just as much major legislation, stuff that was going to have a major policy impact.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:37:11 – 00:37:30]
 It was gonna be durable, had all these other qualities, was as likely to occur under divided government as under unified government. And in some ways it showed that you still needed this big consensus for things. That doesn't mean there aren't some major laws that are totally partisan laws, say Obamacare.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:37:30 – 00:37:49]
 Right. Would be in one example from the Democratic side in recent years, uh, or the Trump tax cuts in 2017 fully only voted for it by the Republicans, totally opposed by the Democrats. And in our current polarized environment, we do see a slight uptick in the number of big important laws passed on a partisan basis.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:37:49 – 00:37:59]
 Mm-hmm. But lots of big legislation is still going through that's bipartisan. Even some of the things under President Biden had pretty big and substantial Republican support.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:38:00 – 00:38:13]
 Mm-hmm. And certainly something like immigration reform or, uh, some of the other large objectives that folks would like to see. Yeah. That the public certainly seems to be in a mood to see is gonna require that kind of, that kind of consensus building.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:38:13]
 Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:38:14 – 00:38:31]
 So it sounds like in our description of the way that political parties are functioning in the American constitutional system, political parties are always sort of straining against separation of powers, checks and balances, sort of our constitutional structures, because the party system is built to win the game.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:38:31 – 00:38:52]
 Yeah, no. It assembles all the pieces and tries to assemble a winning coalition so that it can win the game. And all of these divisions built into the separation of powers. All these strong institutions that are sitting around and whose help you need to get these kinds of policy outcomes are sort of standing in the way of this kind of unified, decisive action.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:38:52 – 00:39:13]
 That political parties really aim at getting, so maybe in conclusion you could help us understand, so how did we, and maybe you've got a way of capturing this move from parties being inimical to constitutional government, maybe the, you know, posing a sort of threat to being such an indispensable part of the way that things work.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:39:13 – 00:39:32]
 I mean, after all, there is no example of a liberal democracy that doesn't have a party system. It can be structured differently. They've all got them. So maybe help us out. What's the best encapsulation of the rationale for what political parties do in American politics now?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:39:32 – 00:39:40]
 Yeah. I think this goes back to one of the, uh, initial quotes that we started with from this famous political scientist I Schattschneider.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:39:40 – 00:39:59]
 And the argument here is that in our system, Schnider had a great phrase for it. He said, the people are semi sovereign. They're not fully sovereign. They don't vote directly on laws. They vote for people, uh, representatives who are gonna then. Decide, make those decisions, vote on laws and govern.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:39:59 – 00:40:19]
 And the argument here is that. The mass of the people need some way of doing some of the things we've been talking about. Winnowing down the number of candidates, developing a platform, a set of policy alternatives. The government should pursue that. Then give at least a patina of responsibility of, of democratic accountability.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:40:19 – 00:40:52]
 We sent you to Congress to pursue X and did you do that or not? And we can try to hold you accountable for that. And it's parties that really create those. Two-way forms of communications that can do that. Now, are they always performing some of these functions well? Well, maybe not. And you could say that this friction with our constitutional system, which is in some ways hostile to political parties, sometimes pushes the parties to become too weak, to govern effectively and to do, you could say the things that.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:40:52 – 00:41:14]
 We just described selecting candidates in a way that facilitates democratic deliberation, or does it just encourage tribal passions? Right, so the constitution can act negatively on the parties, which can make the political system not, may perhaps not work as well, or the parties can become themselves perhaps too powerful and try and override the constitutional strictures, right?

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:41:14 – 00:41:38]
 The constitution's trying to divide and disperse power and the parties are trying to assemble it and, and pull it together so that they can. As you suggested, act more decisively. So maybe the parties themselves then push against the Constitution. So there's constant back and forth in our system between one side getting the better of the other, too much, and you know, balance between the two would be ideal, but that's hard to strike.

Matthew Brogdon
 [00:41:38]
 Well, thank you for joining us, and I appreciate all the insight into the way that political parties work in our system. Thanks for visiting the center.

Daniel DiSalvo
 [00:41:57]
 It's my pleasure.

Outro
 [00:42:00]
 The Constitution is more than parchment under glass at the National Archives. It's a blueprint for American self-government that shapes every part of our civic life from the rights we cherish to the laws we live under. We explore the ongoing battle over the meaning and relevance of America's founding document. This Constitution will equip you to engage the most pressing political questions of our time. Join us every two weeks as we hash out constitutional questions together. This podcast is ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah's civic thought and leadership initiative.