Jan. 21, 2024
Lee Drutman was quoted in Bloomberg on how moving towards proportional representation can break us out of a binary political system.
A Republican Party dominated by an authoritarian movement places enormous pressure on the political system. It also places enormous pressure on the Democratic Party. Each election, especially for president, heightens a rolling existential crisis in which the survival of democracy — along with a host of democratic commitments to Europe and the world — depends on Democratic victory. At some point, that faulty model of perpetual crisis and one-party dominance must break, as it did in 2016, with calamitous results for democracy, governance and rule of law.
Resolving that crisis depends on changing a party that is unified in resistance to change. “I don't think things change very much” after 2024, political scientist Lee Drutman said. “If Trump loses, he’s not going to lose in a landslide, right? And there’s going to be a lot of people who are convinced that he should have won, he could have won.”
“Or did win,” I noted.
“Yes,” Drutman agreed. “Republicans would just have to get clobbered completely for there to be any change.”
Drutman has been at the forefront of efforts to reform the electoral system to release the rising pressure. Negative partisanship, in which the glue of party loyalty is animosity toward the opposition, is driving electoral behavior, locking partisans into extended combat. “The Democratic Party is the only option for people who don't want the Republican Party to be in power,” Drutman said, “and the Republican Party is the only option for people who don't want the Democrats to be in power. And nobody is going to organize a third party because third parties are for lunatics and fringe actors.”
Proportional representation, in which parties gain a share of seats according to the portion of total votes they receive, is the most common form of democratic representation in the world. Drutman would like to see it, and other reforms, instituted in the US.