From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A
two-party system is a party system where two
major political parties dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the
legislature and is usually referred to as the
majority or
governing party while the other is the
minority or
opposition party. Around the world, the term has different senses. For example, in the
United States,
Jamaica, and
Malta, the sense of
two-party system describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to one of the only two major parties, and
third parties
rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements,
two-party systems are thought to result from various factors like
winner-takes-all election rules. In such systems, while chances for
third-party
candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is
possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one
or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties. In contrast, in
Canada, the
United Kingdom and
Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term
two-party system
is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties
dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties which do
win seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert
proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would
suggest.
Explanations for why a political system with free elections may
evolve into a two-party system have been debated. A leading theory,
referred to as
Duverger's law, states that two parties are a natural result of a
winner-take-all voting system.
Examples
Commonwealth countries
In countries such as
Britain,
two major parties emerge which have strong influence and tend to elect
most of the candidates, but a multitude of lesser parties exist with
varying degrees of influence, and sometimes these lesser parties are
able to elect officials who participate in the legislature. Political
systems based on the
Westminster system, which is a particular style of
parliamentary democracy based on the British model and found in many commonwealth countries, a majority party will form the
government and the minority party will form the
opposition, and coalitions of lesser parties are possible; in the rare circumstance in which neither party is the majority, a
hung parliament arises. Sometimes these systems are described as
two-party systems but they are usually referred to as
multi-party systems. There is not always a sharp boundary between a two-party system and a multi-party system.
Other parties in these countries may have seen candidates elected to
local or
subnational office, however.
In
Canada, there is a multiparty system at the federal level and in the largest provinces of
British Columbia,
Ontario,
Quebec,
Manitoba as well as the smaller
New Brunswick,
Newfoundland And Labrador,
Nova Scotia and
Yukon Territory.
However, many of the provinces have effectively become two-party
systems in which only two parties regularly get members elected.
Examples include
British Columbia (where the battles are between the
New Democratic Party and the
BC Liberals),
Alberta (between the
Alberta New Democratic Party and
United Conservative Party),
Saskatchewan (between the
Saskatchewan Party and
New Democratic Party),
New Brunswick (between the
Liberals and the
Progressive Conservatives) and
Prince Edward Island (between
Liberals and
Progressive Conservatives).
India
India has a multi-party system but also shows characteristics of a two party system with the
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
as the two main players. Both NDA and UPA are not two political parties
but alliances of several smaller parties. Other smaller parties not
aligned with either NDA or UPA exist, and overall command about 20% of the
2009 seats in the Lok Sabha and had further increased to 28% in the
2014 general election.
Latin America
Malta
Malta is somewhat unusual in that while the electoral system is
single transferable vote
(STV), traditionally associated with proportional representation, minor
parties have not had much success. Politics is dominated between the
centre-left
Labour Party and the centre-right
Nationalist Party, with no third parties winning seats in Parliament between
1962 and
2017.
United States
During the
Third Party System, the Republican Party was the dominant political faction, but the Democrats held a strong, loyal coalition in the
Solid South. During the
Fourth Party System, the Republicans remained the dominant Presidential party, although Democrats
Grover Cleveland and
Woodrow Wilson were both elected to two terms. In
1932, at the onset of the
Fifth Party System, Democrats took firm control of national politics with the landslide victories of
Franklin D. Roosevelt in four consecutive elections. Other than the two terms of Republican
Dwight Eisenhower
from 1953 to 1961, Democrats retained firm control of the Presidency
until the mid-1960s. Since the mid-1960s, despite a number of landslides
(such as
Richard Nixon carrying 49 states and 61% of the popular vote over
George McGovern in
1972;
Ronald Reagan carrying 49 states and 58% of the popular vote over
Walter Mondale in
1984),
Presidential elections have been competitive between the predominant
Republican and Democratic parties and no one party has been able to hold
the Presidency for more than three consecutive terms. In the election
of
2012, only 4% separated the popular vote between
Barack Obama (51%) and
Mitt Romney (47%), although Obama won the electoral vote (332–206).
Throughout every American party system, no third party has won a
Presidential election or majorities in either house of Congress. Despite
that, third parties and third party candidates have gained traction and
support. In the election of
1912,
Theodore Roosevelt won 27% of the popular vote and 88 electoral votes running as a
Progressive. In the
1992 Presidential election,
Ross Perot won 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes running as an Independent.
Modern
American politics, in particular the
electoral college system, has been described as duopolistic since the
Republican and
Democratic parties have dominated and framed
policy debate as well as the public discourse on matters of national concern for about a century and a half.
Third Parties have encountered various blocks in
getting onto ballots
at different levels of government as well as other electoral obstacles,
such as denial of access to general election debates. Since 1987, the
Commission on Presidential Debates, established by the Republican and Democratic parties themselves, supplanting debates run since 1920 by the
League of Women Voters.
The League withdrew its support in protest in 1988 over objections of
alleged stagecraft such as rules for camera placement, filling the
audience with supporters, approved moderators, predetermined question
selection, room temperature and others. The Commission maintains its own rules for admittance and has yet to admit a third party candidate to a televised debate.
Other examples
South Korea has a multi-party system that has sometimes been described as having characteristics of a two-party system.
Furthermore,
the Lebanese Parliament is mainly made up of two
bipartisan alliances. Although both alliances are made up of several political parties on both ends of the
political spectrum the two way political situation has mainly arisen due to strong ideological differences in the electorate. Once again this can mainly be attributed to the
winner takes all thesis.
Comparisons with other party systems
Two-party systems can be contrasted with:
- Multi-party systems. In these, the effective number of parties
is greater than two but usually fewer than five; in a two-party system,
the effective number of parties is two (according to one analysis, the
actual average number of parties varies between 1.7 and 2.1.)
The parties in a multi-party system can control government separately
or as a coalition; in a two-party system, however, coalition governments
rarely form. Examples of nations with multi-party systems include Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan.
- One-party systems or dominant-party systems
happen in nations where no more than one party is codified in law
and/or officially recognized, or where alternate parties are restricted
by the dominant party which wields power. Examples include rule by the Communist Party of China and Lao People's Revolutionary Party.
Causes
There are
several reasons why, in some systems, two major parties dominate the
political landscape. There has been speculation that a two-party system
arose in the
United States
from early political battling between the federalists and
anti-federalists in the first few decades after the ratification of the
Constitution, according to several views.
In addition, there has been more speculation that the winner-takes-all
electoral system as well as particular state and federal laws regarding
voting procedures helped to cause a two-party system.
In a two-party system, voters have mostly two options; in this sample ballot for an election in
Summit,
New Jersey, voters can choose between a Republican or Democrat, but there are no third party candidates.
Political scientists such as
Maurice Duverger and
William H. Riker claim that there are strong correlations between voting rules and type of party system.
Jeffrey D. Sachs agreed that there was a link between voting arrangements and the effective number of parties. Sachs explained how the
first-past-the-post voting arrangement tended to promote a two-party system:
The main reason for America's
majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress. Members of
Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the
"first-past-the-post" (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with
the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat. The
losing party or parties win no representation at all. The
first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major
parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections.
— Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011
Consider a system in which voters can vote for any candidate from any
one of many parties. Suppose further that if a party gets 15% of votes,
then that party will win 15% of the seats in the legislature. This is
termed proportional representation or more accurately as party-proportional representation.
Political scientists speculate that proportional representation leads
logically to multi-party systems, since it allows new parties to build a
niche in the legislature:
Because even a minor party may
still obtain at least a few seats in the legislature, smaller parties
have a greater incentive to organize under such electoral systems than
they do in the United States.
— Schmidt, Shelley, Bardes (2008)
In contrast, a voting system that allows only a single winner for each possible legislative seat is sometimes termed a
plurality voting system or
single-winner voting system and is usually described under the heading of a
winner-takes-all
arrangement. Each voter can cast a single vote for any candidate within
any given legislative district, but the candidate with the most votes
wins the seat, although variants, such as requiring a majority, are
sometimes used. What happens is that in a general election, a party that
consistently comes in third in every district is unlikely to win any
legislative seats even if there is a significant proportion of the
electorate favoring its positions. This arrangement strongly favors
large and well–organized political parties that are able to appeal to
voters in many districts and hence win many seats, and discourages
smaller or regional parties. Politically oriented people consider their
only realistic way to capture political power is to run under the
auspices of the two dominant parties.
In the U.S., forty-eight states have a standard
winner-takes-all electoral system for amassing presidential votes in the
Electoral College system. The
winner-takes-all principle applies in presidential elections, since if a presidential candidate gets the most votes in any particular state,
all of the
electoral votes from that state are awarded. In all but two states,
Maine and
Nebraska, the presidential candidate winning a plurality of votes wins all of the electoral votes, a practice called the
unit rule.
Duverger concluded that "plurality election single-ballot
procedures are likely to produce two-party systems, whereas proportional
representation and runoff designs encourage multipartyism." He suggested there were two reasons why
winner-takes-all systems leads to a two-party system. First, the weaker parties are pressured to form an alliance, sometimes called a
fusion,
to try to become big enough to challenge a large dominant party and, in
so doing, gain political clout in the legislature. Second, voters
learn, over time, not to vote for candidates outside of one of the two
large parties since their votes for third party candidates are usually
ineffectual.
As a result, weaker parties are eliminated by voters over time.
Duverger pointed to statistics and tactics to suggest that voters tended
to gravitate towards one of the two main parties, a phenomenon which he
called
polarization, and tend to shun third parties. For example, some analysts suggest that the
Electoral College system in the
United States, by favoring a system of winner-takes-all in presidential elections, is a structural choice favoring only two major parties.
Gary Cox suggested that America's two-party system was highly related with economic prosperity in the country:
The bounty of the American economy,
the fluidity of American society, the remarkable unity of the American
people, and, most important, the success of the American experiment have
all mitigated against the emergence of large dissenting groups that
would seek satisfaction of their special needs through the formation of
political parties.
— Cox, according to George Edwards
An effort in 2012 by centrist groups to promote
ballot access by Third Party candidates called
Americans Elect spent $15 million to get ballot access but failed to elect any candidates. The lack of choice in a two-party model in politics has often been compared to the variety of choices in the marketplace.
Politics has lagged our social and
business evolution ... There are 30 brands of Pringles in our local
grocery store. How is it that Americans have so much selection for
potato chips and only two brands – and not very good ones – for
political parties?
— Scott Ehredt of the Centrist Alliance
Third parties
According
to one view, the winner-takes-all system discourages voters from
choosing third party or independent candidates, and over time the
process becomes entrenched so that only two major parties become viable.
Third parties, meaning a party other than one of the two dominant
parties, are possible in two-party systems, but they are often unlikely
to exert much influence by gaining control of legislatures or by winning
elections.
While there are occasional opinions in the media expressed about the
possibility of third parties emerging in the United States, for example,
political insiders such as the 1980 presidential candidate John
Anderson think the chances of one appearing in the early twenty-first
century is remote. A report in
The Guardian suggested that American politics has been "stuck in a two-way fight between
Republicans and
Democrats" since the
Civil War, and that third-party runs had little meaningful success.
Third parties in a two-party system can be:
- Built around a particular ideology or interest group
- Split off from one of the major parties or
- Focused on a charismatic individual.
When third parties are built around an ideology which is at odds with
the majority mindset, many members belong to such a party not for the
purpose of expecting electoral success but rather for personal or
psychological reasons. In the U.S., third parties include older ones such as the
Libertarian Party and the
Green Party and newer ones such as the
Pirate Party.
Many believe that third parties don't affect American politics by
winning elections, but they can act as "spoilers" by taking votes from
one of the two major parties. They act like barometers of change in the political mood since they push the major parties to consider their demands. An analysis in
New York Magazine
by Ryan Lizza in 2006 suggested that third parties arose from time to
time in the nineteenth century around single-issue movements such as
abolition, women's suffrage, and the direct election of senators, but
were less prominent in the twentieth century.
A so-called
third party in the
United Kingdom are the
Liberal Democrats. In the
2010 election, the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes but only 9% of the seats in the
House of Commons.
While electoral results do not necessarily translate into legislative
seats, the Liberal Democrats can exert influence if there is a situation
such as a
hung parliament. In this instance, neither of the two main parties (at present, the
Conservative Party and the
Labour Party)
have sufficient authority to run the government. Accordingly, the
Liberal Democrats can in theory exert tremendous influence in such a
situation since they can ally with one of the two main parties to form a
coalition. This happened in the
Coalition government of 2010. Yet in that more than 13% of the seats in the
British House of Commons
are held in 2011 by representatives of political parties other than the
two leading political parties of that nation, contemporary Britain is
considered by some to be a
multi-party system, and not a two-party system.
The two party system in the United Kingdom allows for other parties to
exist, although the main two parties tend to dominate politics; in this
arrangement, other parties are not excluded and can win seats in
Parliament. In contrast, the two party system in the United States has
been described as a duopoly or an enforced two-party system, such that
politics is almost entirely dominated by either the
Republicans or
Democrats, and third parties rarely win seats in
Congress.
Advantages
Some
historians have suggested that two-party systems promote centrism and
encourage political parties to find common positions which appeal to
wide swaths of the electorate. It can lead to political stability which leads, in turn, to economic growth. Historian
Patrick Allitt of the
Teaching Company
suggested that it is difficult to overestimate the long-term economic
benefits of political stability. Sometimes two-party systems have been
seen as preferable to multi-party systems because they are simpler to
govern, with less fractiousness and greater harmony, since it
discourages radical minor parties, while multi-party systems can sometimes lead to
hung parliaments.
Italy,
with a multi-party system, has had years of divisive politics since
2000, although analyst Silvia Aloisi suggested in 2008 that the nation
may be moving closer to a two-party arrangement. The two-party has been identified as simpler since there are fewer voting choices.
Disadvantages
Two-party systems have been criticized for downplaying alternative views, being less competitive, encouraging voter apathy since there is a perception of fewer choices, and putting a damper on debate
[5]
within a nation. In a proportional representation system, lesser
parties can moderate policy since they are not usually eliminated from
government. One analyst suggested the two-party approach may not promote inter-party compromise but may encourage partisanship. In
The Tyranny of the Two-party system,
Lisa Jane Disch criticizes two-party systems for failing to provide
enough options since only two choices are permitted on the ballot. She
wrote:
Herein lies the central tension of the two–party doctrine. It identifies popular sovereignty
with choice, and then limits choice to one party or the other. If there
is any truth to Schattschneider's analogy between elections and
markets, America's faith in the two–party system begs the following
question: Why do voters accept as the ultimate in political freedom a
binary option they would surely protest as consumers? ... This is the
tyranny of the two–party system, the construct that persuades United States citizens to accept two–party contests as a condition of electoral democracy.
— Lisa Jane Disch, 2002
There have been arguments that the winner-take-all mechanism
discourages independent or third-party candidates from running for
office or promulgating their views.
Ross Perot's
former campaign manager wrote that the problem with having only two
parties is that the nation loses "the ability for things to bubble up
from the body politic and give voice to things that aren't being voiced
by the major parties."
One analyst suggested that parliamentary systems, which typically are
multi-party in nature, lead to a better "centralization of policy
expertise" in government.
Multi-party governments permit wider and more diverse viewpoints in
government, and encourage dominant parties to make deals with weaker
parties to form winning coalitions. Analyst Chris Weigant of
the Huffington Post
wrote that "the parliamentary system is inherently much more open to
minority parties getting much better representation than third parties
do in the American system". After an election in which the party changes, there can be a "polar shift in policy-making" when voters react to changes.
Political analyst A. G. Roderick, writing in his book
Two Tyrants,
argued that the two American parties, the Republicans and Democrats,
are highly unpopular in 2015, and are not part of the political
framework of state governments, and do not represent 47% of the
electorate who identify themselves as "independents". He makes a case that the
American president should be elected on a non-partisan basis, and asserts that both political parties are "cut from the same cloth of corruption and corporate influence."
History
Beginnings of parties in Britain
Equestrian portrait of William III by
Jan Wyck, commemorating the landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688
The two-party system, in the sense of the looser definition, where
two parties dominate politics but in which third parties can elect
members and gain some representation in the legislature, can be traced
to the development of political parties in the
United Kingdom. There was a division in
English politics at the time of the
Civil War and
Glorious Revolution in the late 17th century. The
Whigs supported
Protestant constitutional monarchy against
absolute rule and the
Tories, originating in the
Royalist (or "
Cavalier") faction of the
English Civil War, were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the
republican tendencies of
Parliament. In the following century, the Whig party's support base widened to include emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants.
Vigorous struggle between the two factions characterised the period from the
Glorious Revolution to the 1715
Hanoverian succession, over the legacy of the overthrow of the
Stuart dynasty
and the nature of the new constitutional state. This proto two-party
system fell into relative abeyance after the accession to the throne of
George I and the consequent period of
Whig supremacy under
Robert Walpole,
during which the Tories were systematically purged from high positions
in government. However, although the Tories were dismissed from office
for half a century, they still retained a measure of party cohesion
under
William Wyndham
and acted as a united, though unavailing, opposition to Whig corruption
and scandals. At times they cooperated with the "Opposition Whigs",
Whigs who were in opposition to the Whig government; however, the
ideological gap between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs prevented
them from coalescing as a single party.
Emergence of the two-party system in Britain
The old Whig leadership dissolved in the 1760s into a decade of factional chaos with distinct "
Grenvillite", "
Bedfordite", "
Rockinghamite", and "
Chathamite"
factions successively in power, and all referring to themselves as
"Whigs". Out of this chaos, the first distinctive parties emerged. The
first such party was the
Rockingham Whigs under the leadership of
Charles Watson-Wentworth and the intellectual guidance of the
political philosopher Edmund Burke.
Burke laid out a philosophy that described the basic framework of the
political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint
endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in
which they are all agreed". As opposed to the instability of the earlier
factions, which were often tied to a particular leader and could
disintegrate if removed from power, the two party system was centred on a
set of core principles held by both sides and that allowed the party
out of power to remain as the
Loyal Opposition to the governing party.
In
A Block for the Wigs (1783),
James Gillray caricatured Fox's return to power in a coalition with
North. George III is the blockhead in the center.
The two party system matured in the early 19th century
era of political reform,
when the franchise was widened and politics entered into the basic
divide between conservatism and liberalism that has fundamentally
endured up to the present. The modern
Conservative Party was created out of the
"Pittite" Tories by
Robert Peel, who issued the
Tamworth Manifesto in 1834 which set out the basic principles of
Conservatism
– the necessity in specific cases of reform in order to survive, but an
opposition to unnecessary change, that could lead to "a perpetual
vortex of agitation". Meanwhile, the Whigs, along with
free trade Tory followers of
Robert Peel, and independent
Radicals, formed the
Liberal Party under
Lord Palmerston in 1859, and transformed into a party of the growing urban middle-class, under the long leadership of
William Ewart Gladstone. The two party system had come of age at the time of Gladstone and his Conservative rival
Benjamin Disraeli after the
1867 Reform Act.
History of American political parties
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