  | Book Details Title: Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America |
Book DescriptionReview “Lee Drutman is one of our most perceptive political thinkers, and this book is the type of fresh, clear-thinking we need to learn how to live with our age of partisan polarization, rather than simply to complain while it destroys us.” –Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large and Co-Founder, Vox Media”American democracy is badly broken, but the enormity of fixing it so often seems impossible. Lee Drutman offers an accessible, lively, and deeply compelling antidote to despair, giving us a new way to think about American political history and to understand what is possible. This is a book of refreshingly big ideas that also provides a pragmatic path forward to a multi-party democracy that works.” –Anne Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America”Lee Drutman’s Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop is a lucid account of how our broken party system has undermined our constitutional order, and how rising ethnic and class antagonisms threaten to make matters worse in the decades to come. Drawing on cutting-edge social science and the wisdom of the founding generation, he offers a series of bold, unconventional reforms designed to foster a healthier, more durable American democracy, and that merit close attention.” –Reihan Salam, President, Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of The Atlantic“Drutman, a political scientist and senior fellow at New America, writes that moving to a multiparty democracy can create fair representation, reduce partisan gridlock, lead to more positive incremental change, and increase both voter turnout and voter satisfaction. And through concrete reforms, like implementing ranked-choice voting and expanding the size of the House of Representatives, Drutman lays out the path forward.” — Washington Monthly“The force of his argument, rigorous and limpidly expressed, is almost irresistible. He emerges as one of the keenest observers of America’s political pathologies-if only because he questions what others take for granted. Tracing the arc of the doom loop, he also spies a way out.” —The Economist“Lee Drutman has quickly established himself as a first-rate scholar and public intellectual: deeply learned and with an ambition and capacity to speak to both academics and broader publics. He is at the very top of his cohort in thinking creatively and writing gracefully about the problems of American democracy. His new book is a brilliant analysis of our toxic partisanship and a transformational agenda of electoral reform for breaking out of it.” –Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings, and Resident Scholar, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley”Whatever your politics, Lee Drutman’s profound and important new book will leave you thinking differently about our polarized moment and the possible paths to recovery.” -Yuval Levin, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, and Editor of National Affairs“Lee Drutman is one of the most shrewd and most creative new voices in political science and an engaged citizen deeply worried about our democracy. Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop is a welcomed recess from gloomy political punditry and offers an evidenced-based solution to challenges we face. I continue to see advantages to two-party systems, but Drutman has offered a rigorous and brilliantly argued case that scrapping it is a national imperative.” -E J Dionne, Professor of the Foundations of Democracy and Culture, McCourt School of Public Policy and Government Department, Georgetown University”Lee Drutman is one of the foremost students of American politics today. His new book will bring his formidable research to bear on the central issue affecting American democracy, namely, our intense polarization and the possibility that our democracy could break down altogether if it continues to intensify. He goes against conventional wisdom that says parties and partisanship are to blame, but points to the need to open up space beyond our current two-party system.” -Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director, Stanford University”No one has written in a more penetrating or insightful way about the state of our politics than Lee Drutman. He is able to combine real insights with compelling data and do so in a fashion that professionals appreciate and the lay reader can understand. I have no doubt his book will have broad resonance for a wide range of readers.” –Norm Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute Read more About the Author Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying (Oxford University Press, 2015) and winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association’s Robert A. Dahl Award, given for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy.” In addition, he writes regularly for Polyarchy, a Vox blog. Drutman also teaches in the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Read more Customers Review: Last night I finished Lee Drutman’s book on the need to break America’s two-party duopoly.I certainly agree with him on that. As a die-hard libertarian, I long for the day that our small numbers are actively courted by larger parties to help form winning coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis.I also have long been in favor of the main mechanism he proposes for accomplishing that task, which is ranked-choice voting, a.k.a instant run-off voting. 100% in favor. Bring it on.His second major proposal is multi-member congressional districts. E.g., North Carolina, instead of having 13 one-member districts, might have one five-member district and two four-member districts. The voter could pick and choose ordered preferences from the entire list of candidates from any of the parties, or just choose one party, and his votes would be registered in the order of preference that the party had submitted in advance. This is how Australia has done things for decades.I had heard of proposals for multi-member congressional districts before; maybe it was in 2017 when a proposal to allow them (they’re currently forbidden by federal law) was introduced in Congress. (It went nowhere.) I dismissed the idea as silly. Now I believe that the law prohibiting them should be repealed, and states be allowed to experiment with them–as long as it’s coupled with ranked-choice voting, to prevent a slim majority from capturing all the seats in a district. (Until reading this book, I had not known that the United States used to have some multi-member congressional districts, though they were banned by Congress in the 1840s.)He further proposes eliminating primary elections for congressional seats. He wants political parties to have more power than they do now, including choosing candidates by a closed process rather than open voting. I think I’m OK with that idea. It might have a moderating effect, whereas primary elections tend to select for polarized candidates.He suggests expanding the size of the House of Representatives to around 700, from the current 435. I see his point. First, the US is an extreme outlier among western democracies in the number of citizens represented by each member. Furthermore, expanding the number of seats would allow closer proportionality between votes and seats (i.e., smaller parties are more likely to be able to snag at least one seat when more are up for grabs). I kind of hate the idea of nearly doubling the number of congresscritters, and the amount of office space and staff and budget they’ll want. But I reluctantly think that he might be right anyway.He also suggests increasing the number of senators to 5 for each state, all 5 elected at once. That would not run afoul of the Constitution’s requirement that all states be equally represented. But it would, again, allow minor parties a chance at claiming some seats. I think this might be OK. (It would require a constitutional amendment, so it’s a long shot.)Other reforms he wants I’m dead-set against: popular vote for president, public financing of campaigns, etc. Hard no. (I’ll spare you the reasons for my opposition.)I think it’s clear that RCV will have to expand in state elections (only Maine and a few cities use it now) for a while before it becomes popular enough that Congress will be compelled to consider the idea seriously.In fact, if there’s a weakness in the book, it’s that he doesn’t provide a clear road map of how we can get from here to there. All of the proposals will reduce the power of the two major parties. They will no more want to do that than Coke and Pepsi are generous about letting competitors have space in grocery stores and vending machines. Drutman just gives some stories–interesting ones–about how electoral reforms have been birthed around the world, and expresses his optimism that the same sort of thing can happen here. The “how” is left pretty vague, with references to popular pressure and politicians becoming convinced that it’s in their own best interest.But the real strength of the book is the myriad persuasive ways he explains how radically different the current situation is from our entire past history, how dangerous and unsustainable it is, and how it simply cannot be changed by replacing “bad” guys with “good” guys (whoever you think merits those labels). It’s a structural problem of our political institutions, combined with a structural problem of our majority/plurality “first-past-the-post” voting. On that, I conclude that he is indisputably correct. Major structural reforms are absolutely necessary. I had sort of vague leanings this way before, but Drutman has succeeded in cementing my thoughts.Overall, it’s one of the best-written, most thought-provoking political books I’ve ever read. | |
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