America's Two-Party System: For Better or for Worse

My students often ask me why we have only two parties in America. I quickly correct them; there aren't only two parties in America--there are many parties. Their real question, of course, is why only people from two parties ever win elections--i.e., why does America have a two-party system as opposed to virtually every other country, which have a multi-party systems. There are four big reasons:

(1) History It's not a very satisfying answer, but it's the way we've always done it. From the very moment this country began, the division was between the Federalists, who wanted a strong national government, and the Anti-Federalists, who wanted the states to have more power.

That division has not gone away, and it is one of the main things that divides the two main parties today: the Democrats like a strong national government; Republicans want a federal government that has less power. Between that division, there is hardly a medium ground for any minor party to advocate a different federalism structure.

(2) No Party Based on Class Very few things will divide people more than their status in society. Take a look at your circle of friends; they are likely similar to you in terms of socioeconomic status. Politically speaking, however, that is not true. There are poor Democrats and rich Democrats. There are poor Republicans and rich Republicans. There is no party, like in many countries, that speaks for the "working class" or some disaffected segment of society.

(3) No Proportional Representation In Europe, you register with a political party and you cast a vote for that political party. That party's representation in the legislature depends on what percentage of the vote it obtained. For instance, if the Social Democratic Party in Germany got 45% of the vote, that party would have 45% of the seats in the Germany legislature. The parties determine who will fill those seats.

Here in the U.S., we don't have proportional representation; it's all or nothing. The Democrats, for instance, could get 49% of the total vote in Congress, but unless each individual Democrat wins his/her respective race, the Democratic Party gets no representation.

(4) Both Parties Adapt Well History shows that the major parties are pretty good at courting voters who might feel like the party doesn't speak for them. This is usually the way it works: a minor party will create a stir and even win quite a few votes in a presidential election. The next time around, one of the two major parties has courted those voters, and the minor party fades away. Such was the case with the progressive Republicans (Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party) and George Wallace's American Independent Party. In both cases, the Republican Party was able to successfully court enough of those minor-party supporters, so many in fact that the minor party was never a threat again.

I am speaking nothing to the notion of whether the two-party system is a good system, I'm only speaking to the reasons for its existence. That said, the two parties are very entrenched in American political life and have done a great job at creating a system that disfavors minor parties. The end result: I can't imagine anytime in the near future where a minor party makes a lot of noise, so much so that they send a handful of people to Congress or send a candidate to the White House.