Do We Need to Party Better to Fix U.S. Democracy?
Photo by Tania Liu via Flickr | CC BY-ND 2.0
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that a unique aspect of democracy in America, and a pillar of its vitality, was our knack for forming what he called civil associations to solve social problems. (Today we call them nonprofits or community groups.) Tocqueville also suggested our political parties helped Americans learn “the art of association” by prompting like-minded people to join forces in order to build governing majorities. Political parties, especially at the local and state level, thus served as “vast free schools to which all citizens come to learn the general theory of associations.”
In our current polarized era, it may be a stretch to see political parties playing an edifying role in U.S. democracy and civil society. But could we reimagine and revitalize our parties so they could once again do so? Might the health of U.S. democracy depend on it?
I recently took up these questions with two scholars mining in the rich vein staked out by Tocqueville. Tabatha Abu El-Haj is Professor of Law at Drexel's Thomas R. Kline School of Law. Didi Kuo is a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Together they are the authors of an important new article in the Columbia Law Review, "Associational Party Building: A Path to Rebuilding Democracy." The following interview transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Daniel: Let’s start with a definition: What is an associational party, and how would it differ from the kind of parties we have now?
Tabatha: An associational party is one where the emphasis is on the party as an organization with a local presence that is interested, like a civic association, in organizing people year-round–and in listening to the people they want to serve, providing a two-way stream of communication. An associational party also emphasizes responsiveness and delivering of goods back to its supporters–not in a corrupt way, but through policies voters favor and other concrete forms of support. They are focused on the grassroots, and more tied in with the civic associations that exist at that level in our society.
Didi: It’s also a conception of the party that has a long history in politics and the law. But recently, the parties have become, at least conceptually, more elite, electoral organizations that exist simply to win votes and seats. Elite party organizations do their own in-house development of messages and agendas rather than developing them through ties to civic or local groups.
Tabatha: Both of us think parties will inevitably be elite, but the question is, how do those elites relate to ordinary folk and to constituents? Where do they recruit party leaders? Where do they recruit candidates? What's the primary criteria for becoming a candidate? If it is whether you went to Harvard Law School and how much money you can collect because of your networks, that would be very different than an associational party focused on cultivating candidates who have experiences in common with their constituents.
Daniel: Your description of political parties as being composed of local associations and organizations seems close to what we had for most of American history. Are you trying to recover that localism? Do we need to go back to the future?
Didi: We are careful not to romanticize the past. We don't think there was a golden age of parties that were truly inclusive or that mobilized all people in an equal democracy until recently. That said, we have a model of parties as mass membership organizations. Less so in the United States, more so in places like Western Europe–actual, card carrying membership, where being a member of a party conferred actual benefits and was something that, as Nancy Rosenblum has written, also created socialization into politics and a sense of pride in how democracy works. That is the spirit of what we would like to recover.
Tabatha: Our civic associations, when they are issue focused, tend to come and go. They don't have the ongoing infrastructure. What would be more helpful would be for social movements and people who care about responsive politics to bring life back into the existing structures of our parties rather than reinventing the political wheel outside of them.
Daniel: You face an uphill battle in suggesting that revitalized parties could help improve our democracy. There is something counterintuitive about your argument. What do you say to the anti-party skeptics?
Didi: Yes, there is a lot of an anti-party sentiment in the democracy reform community, despite the fact that everyone in it loves democracy. Parties are central to democracy. That is a key tenet of political science. But that message has not penetrated much outside of the academy. We need healthy parties for our democracy to function. They are an intermediary organization that is absolutely required when it comes to linking representation with governance. No other group is up to the task of doing that. No country has managed to have a functioning democracy without parties. This is just an empirical point. There is no magical form of moderation or technocratic governance that can do the same work as political parties.
Tabatha: But we can’t make the case for parties as some of the alternative proposals for strengthening parties do. They are just tone deaf to the anti-elitism and anti-partyism of this moment. They suggest we just need to trust these mostly older, wealthier white men, give them more money and more power, and things will get better. I don’t think that is resonating for a lot of people across the political spectrum.
Daniel: Tabatha, if I can interrupt briefly, I am presuming you are speaking here about self-identified political realists who, like you, want to revitalize parties, but they are seeking to do it by giving elites back more control over what happens within parties?
Tabatha: Yes, there are two variants of the realist argument. One group wants to get rid of the party primary system, and another is saying we should deregulate campaign finance rules as they apply to parties. The notion that people would give up their vote in the primary? I don’t see that as a feasible political option. The only solution it seems to me is to get more people to vote in primaries. Similarly with the idea that we should enable wealthy people to direct more of their money to the parties–that is not going to make the parties more credible or appealing.
Daniel: Are there one or two harbingers or examples of the associational party building you are calling for? What does this look like in practice?
Didi: Yes. Take for example the Florida Republicans and Nevada Democrats. They have both done more than simply broadcasting a party message to make it resonate with voters. Instead, they have sought to be in the community, to organize activities within communities–fun activities!–and listening sessions to hear from voters.
Tabatha: We know less about Florida than Nevada because it is a more recent development, but in Florida the Republicans have invested in community centers targeting Latinos and African Americans. They have also been cultivating home-grown candidates from those communities. The Nevada Republican Party is doing some of this year-round organizing too, not all of it on a partisan basis. Traditionally the Republican Party hasn’t had to build up associational ties in local communities because they have been able to rely on their connections with evangelical churches and the NRA. But my take is that Republicans will need to do more of this, because younger Americans are increasingly alienated from them, not going to church, and they may be less apt to join the NRA.
It is really a burden on the Democrats to do this associational work, because its membership base has traditionally been unions, and they have atrophied greatly in recent decades, forcing the party to rethink how it operates. Nevada is interesting and we wrote about this because there the Democrats, led by Senator Harry Reid, who was more of an old-school party boss, joined forces with the Culinary Workers Union. That has been very effective. Women do most of the organizing for that union, and they have real concerns that are material in nature, like wages.
Daniel: What about Georgia and the work that Stacy Abrams and her team have done there? Is that an example of what you are talking about?
Tabatha. Party building takes time. But sooner or later associational parties need to get into power. Stacy Abrams and the Democrats have done a great job of registering and mobilizing voters, but they have not been able to win a majority in the state legislature, so there is a limit to what you can see as a result with respect to achievements. The platform has changed, and the candidates they are running have changed. They have made a concerted effort to really listen to people in Georgia, which has led to much higher turnout, because people are invested. But they have not yet been able to win power. Eventually they will need to.
Daniel: Last question: the polarization of our politics has coincided with the nationalization of our politics, such that national issues predominate even in local and state races. Is there a denationalizing agenda to associational party building that seeks to re-elevate the salience of local and state issues in our political life?
Didi: We do not draw this out explicitly in our paper, but the nationalization in our politics has also coincided with growing elitism in our politics. A lot of the calls now coming from within the two parties, when you look at certain Democratic and Republican factions, amount to denationalization in our politics, to wresting power from elites and bringing their parties back to focus on the concerns of specific constituencies. Usually those are local. They may not be specific to a particular place but have to do rather with people’s everyday, quotidian interests. These factions think that, to restore the public’s faith in their parties, they need to be more responsive at a local level.
Tabatha: Let me say something before we wrap about our agenda. We want people, including elites who are trying to mobilize voters, like Stacy Abrams and Fair Fight, and the Texas Organizing Project, to notice two things. First, they are part of a partisan alliance. I met the Executive Director of [a prominent state organizing project] and she said, “We are not part of the Democratic Party.” That is the anti-partisanship coming out! Legally, yes, they are not formally part of the Democratic Party. But in fact they are part of the party. Until people in her position recognize and are willing to embrace that they are working with the party, there will be a limitation to what we are talking about. The unions in contrast have always understood that the Democratic Party is their meal ticket to helping workers. The social movements, identity politics movements, and economic movements need to recognize that the parties are their tickets also.
Second, elites, not necessarily in the party, but in the chattering classes, especially on the left, have to recognize that pragmatically, right now, if you want to restore faith in democracy, you cannot do it nationally, through Congress. It is so dysfunctional. We need, whatever our partisan affiliation, to work productively at the state and local level, because people need to have faith in government. If democratic government does not produce the goods people want, they will move toward authoritarianism. Why wouldn’t they?
Daniel: Fair enough. That is a good if sobering place to wrap up. Congratulations on writing such an insightful article. Thank you both for this conversation.
