{"id":5756,"date":"2021-08-06T19:03:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T19:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5756"},"modified":"2021-08-06T19:03:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T19:03:36","slug":"why-the-two-party-system-is-effing-up-u-s-democracy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5756","title":{"rendered":"Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;in the U.S., one party has become a major illiberal outlier: The Republican Party. Scholars at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.v-dem.net\/en\/about\/about-v-dem\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">V-Dem Institute<\/a>&nbsp;at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have been monitoring and evaluating political parties around the world. And one big area of study for them is liberalism and illiberalism, or a party\u2019s commitment (or lack thereof) to democratic norms prior to elections. And as the chart below shows, of conservative, right-leaning parties across the globe, the Republican Party has more in common with the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/0002716218818782\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dangerously authoritarian parties<\/a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/0002716218813895\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hungary<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/0002716218818056\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Turkey<\/a>&nbsp;than it does with conservative parties in the U.K. or Germany.&#8221;<br>&#8230;<br>&#8220;People in countries with majoritarian(ish) democracies, or two very dominant parties dominating its politics like in the U.S. \u2014 think Canada, Britain, Australia \u2014 have displayed more unfavorable feelings toward the political opposition.&#8221;<br>&#8230;<br>&#8220;another team of scholars, Noam Gidron, James Adams and Will Horne, shows that citizens in majoritarian democracies with less proportional representation dislike&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ces.fas.harvard.edu\/uploads\/files\/events\/GAH-Affective-Polarization-in-Democratic-Polities.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">both their own parties and opposing<\/a>&nbsp;parties more than citizens in multiparty democracies with more proportional representation.<a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/why-the-two-party-system-is-wrecking-american-democracy\/#fn-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a>&#8220;<br>&#8230;<br>&#8220;This pattern may have something to do with the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/preprints.apsanet.org\/engage\/apsa\/article-details\/5e3c2a3659fb750019f8583a\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">shifting politics of coalition formation<\/a>&nbsp;in proportional democracies, where few political enemies are ever permanent (e.g., the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/middle-east\/whos-who-israels-new-patchwork-coalition-government-2021-06-13\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">unlikely new governing coalition<\/a>&nbsp;in Israel). This also echoes something social psychologists have found in running experiments on group behavior: Breaking people into&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1002\/ejsp.2420250205\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">three groups instead of two<\/a>&nbsp;leads to less animosity. Something, in other words, appears to be unique about the binary condition, or in this case, the two-party system, that triggers the kind of good-vs-evil, dark-vs-light, us-against-them thinking that is particularly pronounced in the U.S.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-fivethirtyeight\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"OYhub6bKEU\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/why-the-two-party-system-is-wrecking-american-democracy\/\">Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy&#8221; &#8212; FiveThirtyEight\" src=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/why-the-two-party-system-is-wrecking-american-democracy\/embed\/#?secret=hau54LH8bi#?secret=OYhub6bKEU\" data-secret=\"OYhub6bKEU\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;in the U.S., one party has become a major illiberal outlier: The Republican Party. Scholars at the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have been monitoring and evaluating political parties around the world. And one big area of study for them is liberalism and illiberalism, or a party\u2019s commitment (or lack thereof) to democratic norms prior to elections. And as the chart below shows, of conservative, right-leaning parties across the globe, the Republican Party has more in common with the dangerously authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey than it does with conservative parties in the U.K. or Germany.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People in countries with majoritarian(ish) democracies, or two very dominant parties dominating its politics like in the U.S. \u2014 think Canada, Britain, Australia \u2014 have displayed more unfavorable feelings toward the political opposition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;another team of scholars, Noam Gidron, James Adams and Will Horne, shows that citizens in majoritarian democracies with less proportional representation dislike both their own parties and opposing parties more than citizens in multiparty democracies with more proportional representation.1&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This pattern may have something to do with the shifting politics of coalition formation in proportional democracies, where few political enemies are ever permanent (e.g., the unlikely new governing coalition in Israel). This also echoes something social psychologists have found in running experiments on group behavior: Breaking people into three groups instead of two leads to less animosity. Something, in other words, appears to be unique about the binary condition, or in this case, the two-party system, that triggers the kind of good-vs-evil, dark-vs-light, us-against-them thinking that is particularly pronounced in the U.S.&#8221;  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[431,1268,968,619],"class_list":["post-5756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-democracy","tag-political-parties","tag-republican-party","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5757,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756\/revisions\/5757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}