June 20, 2025
Lee Drutman's The Case for More Parties essay was highlighted in a 50 years of Boston Review special.
Most people act politically because they want to get stuff done—roads built, families fed, the elderly, sick, and infirm taken care of. Like many of Boston Review’s essays, Lee Drutman’s “The Case for More Parties” reminds us that getting stuff done occurs within the structures of politics—and that political structures both enable and constrain the stuff that we can get done. Altering the existing structures of our politics is partly but only partly a matter of good government. It is also an instrument for advancing the real-world policies that we care about and whose achievement is impeded by those structures. In its careful treatment of these questions, Drutman’s essay exemplifies Boston Review’s valuable contributions to our democratic culture: it helps us figure out what structural changes would do the most to enhance democracy, and effective strategies for implementing them.
—Mark Tushnet, legal scholar