Why Doesn't the U.S. Have a Multi-Party Political System? | Sean Wilentz | Big Think

The two party system is inevitable in America. The framers designed a constitution that they thought would be without political parties. They didn't like political parties. They thought political parties were divisive. They thought political parties would ruin the commonwealth as they saw it. They didn't like them, and yet they designed a system in which parties very quickly arose and we're never going to go away.

And the reason is simple: that in a country as large, as diverse with so many clashing interests as the United States, it's going to become necessary to find a focus, to find a focus for your political actions. Parties have become that focus. They very quickly became that focus.

Now, the question is: why don't we have a multiparty system? Why aren't we more like Italy, say, or even France or a European parliamentary system? Well, that's the answer is that we're not a parliamentary system. Because we have a system that we do and because it's based on the idea of first past the post, in other words, the person who gets the most amount of votes will win the election, they're not going to have proportional representation.

If you get ten percent of the votes, you're not going to get ten percent of the power, you're going to get nothing. On that account then, the pressure is very, very strong for there to be eventually a two party system. Third parties can come in and they can have a tremendous amount of influence in shaping the major parties, but as a great historian once said, third parties are like bees, they sting and then they die.

So they make their sting, but because a third party will always almost inevitably help the party they're most unlike, as you saw with say the Nader campaign in 2000 who got elected, they have their effect but then they very quickly disappear.

So I think the two parties, it's not so much that I have some metaphysical or ontological love for two parties as a thing, it's rather that's the way the American constitutional system works. Now, if you change the constitutional system, of course, that would change as well, but it's embedded in the way that our government was set up in 1787/'88 and it continues that way to this day...