Why Parties?

I'm borrowing the title of this post from a terrific book by Duke Political Science Professor John Aldrich.

It poses a good question, one that we cannot afford to lose sight of as we think about political reform on a grand scale in California.

Why Parties?

The answer is that our government would be unworkable without them.

Legislators use parties to coordinate their actions. The Founders decried the influence of faction but quickly found that groups that banded together in the legislature dominated those who didn't. Order trumps chaos.

And it turns out that this order is very useful. Voters employ party labels to evaluate the results of coordinated actions by members of their government. If these actions work as planned - to lower the unemployment rate for example - members of that party stay in office. If they don't, the party gets thrown out.

This is called accountability.* It's the cornerstone of any democratic system.

We tend to think about throwing out individual politicians. But individuals don't govern, parties do. Voting in a new majority party (or group of allied parties) is dramatically more impactful than voting in a new individual politician.

Now it is true the number of Californians claiming to be members of political party has fallen off precipitously in recent years. I wouldn't count on this trend keeping up, but it's fine if it does. To the extent that voters feel strongly attached to political parties and hence support them unthinkingly, this also undermines accountability in the system.

But when they are considering which politicians to support, voters rely on party affiliation as a "mental shortcut" to make their task easier. To the extent that those party labels are associated with specific policy agendas, these shortcuts are useful.

Whether we like it or not, voters will use shortcuts for making up their minds. And parties are a much more effective way of structuring political decision-making than, for example, voting for a candidate because he looks like you do ... or even because you like his stance on an individual issue.

Keep in mind, though, that we could choose to put in place a system, such as proportional voting, that is not as easily dominated by only two parties.

Perhaps if Californians had the choice of supporting one of many different political parties each with a major and ongoing role in the system, we wouldn't have to ask the question "Why Parties?" in the first place.

* For a fantastic articulation of the case for why the 2/3rds requirement also undermines accountability in our system, check out my colleague Joe Mathew's piece in Fox and Hounds Daily, Two Third:California Republicans and the Stockholm Syndrome.