The WashPost runs an Op-Ed piece byPradeep Chhibber and Ken Kollman, claiming that the failure of third parties to do well in the US is due, not to plurality voting or other institutional factors but to excessive political centralisation. The claim is that since third parties
once competed successfully in congressional elections, winning significant portions of the popular vote and often gaining seats in Congress. This was true for most of the 19th century and even the early part of the 20th
the cause of their subsequent failure must be something new – political centralisation[1].
Chhibber and Kollman seem to be well-regarded political scientists. But their argument here is riddled with errors, or at least large logical gaps.
First, they present hardly any data, and don’t answer the obvious empirical objections. Their claim that third parties do less well now than in the past runs into some obvious problems. Two of the last three presidential elections have been decided (or at least greatly affected) by third-party candidates, Perot in 92 and Nader in 2000. The Reform party also elected a governor, Jesse Ventura in 1998, and there’s one socialist member in Congress. That’s not much of challenge to two-party dominance, but did the parties cited by Chhibber and Kollman (Prohibition, Socialist, Populist, Greenback, Farmer-Labor) do notably better? We’re not told, but I’m pretty sure the answer is “No”. There’s also no evidence (beyond the single data point of Canada) that centralism is favorable to two-party systems.
The logical problems are even more striking. Granting, for the sake of argument, that third parties have declined since the 1930s, and that centralisation has increased at the same time, haven’t these guys ever heard that “correlation does not imply causation”. Leaving aside the possibility of purely spurious correlation, there are plenty of possible “joint cause” arguments. For example, it might be that the rise of mass media has both reduced regional diversity (which implies less reason to oppose centralisation of political decisions) and also given advantages to large parties.
But, there’s still a more significant error. Let’s suppose we’re satisfied that third parties were once strong and that their decline was caused by political centralisation. It’s still obviously true that such parties are disadvantaged by plurality voting and other features of the electoral system. If you want to encourage third parties, you can either fundamentally change the relationship between Federal and State governments, reversing 100 years of history, or you can change the voting system. Changing voting systems isn’t easy, but it’s been done in many places, and can be done on a state-by-state basis .
fn1. Looking on the web, I found this book chapter by Chhibber and Kollman, which seems to date the rise of the current two-party system, more plausibly in my view, to 1860. It is certainly true that the Republican Party of that time, devoted as it was to the containment and ultimate destruction of a regional “peculiar institution”, did a great deal to enhance the power of the central government.
John Quiggin 
Yes you only have to look at the Senate to see how multiple parties could be voted into the House of Reps. The Majors of course prefer the current winner takes all approach.
Proportional representation will give you two plus n parties, irrespective of the degree of political centralisation.
The obvious refutation of the centralisation = political duopoly theory is in places like France, Japan or Germany, which are more centralised than the US and which host sucessful third parties (nationl front, communists, Greens).
Ethnic diversity also creates third parties, as can be seen in Canada and Spain.
Australia is more centralised now than it was in Federation. Yet there is more partisan diversity now, given the rise of the Greens and “feral Browns” than there was then, when Nationals and Labor were the only game in town.
These guys seem to be head in the clouds academics or ideologues. They should get get out more or get blogs.
John, some of those parties did do better. The Populists in particular were a major force in the 1890s in the South, constructing interesting electoral alliances between poor white farmers and middle class blacks, which led the Democrats to introduce the full gamut of Jim Crow laws. The Socialists held power in many municipalities, and had a rising Presidential vote until the first big wash of red-baiting in 1919. The Farmer-Labor Party governed Minnesota for many years – the official name of the Democrats there is still Democrat-Farmer-Labor – the two parties amalgamated in the 50s. What is common about all these parties is that they were:
(1) regionally based;
(2) had much more of an impact at local and state than federal level;
(3) were all grounded in a definable and organised social bloc.
At the national level, the most successful third party movement was Theodore Roosevelt’s bolt from the Republicans and run on the Bull Moose (Progressive Party) ticket for the Presidency in 1912, which denied Taft re-election and threw the election to Wilson (whose percentage of the popular vote was very similar to Clintons – in the low forties). The Progressive Party elected Senators in states with a radical tradition such as Wisconsin and the broader progressive movement within the Republican Party meant that many mid-Western progressive Republicans in the Senate were in violent opposition to Hoover, and supportive of more collectivist economic policy than Roosevelt.
That article didnt address some of the barriers of entry to the US ballot that were put up during the 1950’s to stop unpopular parties (communists) from getting on the ballot. Things like collecting large numbers of signatures before the States will allow that candidate on the ballot. Nader is having all sorts of issues getting on the ballot in some states.
There are other issues such as having to get 5% of the vote to get public funds and others. The Republicans and Democrats get those funds automatically. Since there is a duopoly at the State level as well as federal, they are free to legislate their own monopoly on sharing power between each other and can add all sorts of barriers to other parties and independants.
The Australian system is overly centrist to the federal government as well, the Canadians rejuvenated their constituion about twenty years ago (1982), so the natural entropy of power collapsing to the centre isnt overriding yet. But the Canadian federal government gives federal tax money to the provinces, so it is only a matter of time.
I think the real reason for federal centrism is the federal government gets to tax first, and tax income first. In all federal cases they get first bite of the cherry, and can tax heavily enough that it becomes political suicide for the states to tax to any sustainable level.
In Australia we have the absurd notion of the federal government leveraging the GST on the population purely to raise taxes for the states. Governments are supposed to only tax to support themselves and nothing more. The last budget bragged about how the GST was raising more money for the states than before! A federal government taxing for other governments is centrism gone wild.
I used to think it was the Westminster system that was weak in combatting entropy toward the federal government, as it comes from the almost entirely centrist British system. I think more now, that power will be centered with whichever government raises the most tax revenues and can protect that revenue from other governments (federal or state).
This is essentially the situation we find ourselves in now with the Australian federal government. Consequently, we find politicians like Howard talking about dissolving the states. Basically federal government has such a control over state revenues and responsibilities that it feels confident enough to start political debate on dissolving the whole intent of Federalism and the diffusing of power between a minimal federal government and its supporting states.
Cameron Riley
Observa: Australia has multiple member constituencies: each State’s senate representation. Each State has 12. So does the US (2 each). But here’s the catch – only half each batch go for election at any one time. So in the US, you get to choose one Senator on a given date. In the Australia, 6 are chosen. Because of proportional representation, a few crumbs are thrown to the minor porties. In the US, it’s almost always going to be a Republican or a Democrat.
Each U.S. state has a lot more latitude for deciding their electoral laws – even for Federal elections. There are a lot of minuses: decentralization causes all of the irregularities in ballots in 2000. But it has one plus: if any up-and-coming minor party could grab control of the state legistaltures first, it’s just a hop and a skip to congress. (I’m thinking of Brian’s piece now.) Few parties now would have the discipline to do this – it would take a couple of years, and many of your best and brightest would be absorbed into the Big Tents.
I think the weakness of third party’s in the US is mainly due to how decentralised the two major parties are. To a large extent candidates really have to win their seats themselves, at least compared to Australia. They have to raise their own money, build their own organisations etc. So when they come to power, they can be fairly independant without facing too many repercussions from the party. Almost any bill in the US House will have Republicans and Democrats voting on both sides. Unthinkable in Australia.
Because of this independance, it almost always makes more sense for people who would like to create an independent party to simply stay within their current political party and essentially hijack it. If you have to fundraise and organise anyway, why not stay within the party?
Case in point is what happened with Howard Dean.