Centralized, active-membership parties in the USA

[big-click]

As I've seen noted many times on this site, the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States are unusual, globally speaking.

- First, they are extremely broad-tent organizations with little central control over state or local branches, and efforts to adhere to a nationwide platform are limp at best. People can win primary elections and run as partisan candidates while being actively opposed by the party leadership. Expulsions from parties are unheard of.

- Second, in most states, party membership consists of ticking a box on a form, involves no dues, and conveys no exclusive benefits or responsibilities other than the ability to vote in primary elections - and in jurisdictions with open primaries, not even that.

What would it take to make being, say, a Democrat more like being a member of a European party? That is to say, you'd have to pay dues to the DNC, face expulsion for campaigning for another party's candidate, and agree to abide by a Democratic manifesto if you were to run for office.

There are some obvious answers, like having a strong labor party introduce the concept of disciplined and active party membership into the mainstream as happened in other countries. The ever popular "Woodrow Wilson leads some electoral reform" concept might work here, too, since Wilson believed that political parties needed to be ideologically rather than regionally based. But can y'all think of any less obvious ways to achieve this challenge?

 

[Tales Weaver]

Ross perot winning 1992 election could do the job as well.

 

[Keeganc2020]

Ok Hillary ... still pissed off that your party is over you

 

[big-click]

Ross perot winning 1992 election could do the job as well.

I don't know about that. The Reform Party was just as broad-tent as the big two, with protectionism being its only real unifying plank. Donald Trump famously said that he left Reform because he didn't want to be rubbing shoulders with fascists on one side and communists on the other, right?

Ok Hillary ... still pissed off that your party is over you

Ha! For the record, I don't think the development of disciplined parties would necessarily be a good or bad thing, just an interesting change from OTL. (In fact, one advantage it might have is to foster the development of third parties, since it would be more difficult to be a "maverick" within one of the existing parties.) Clinton's view of Sanders as a disloyal interloper probably would jive better with this type of party structure, though, you're right.

 

[Wendell]

I think one issue is that the founders of the country opposed the factionalism that entrenched parties produce.

 

[Politibrit]

I think one issue is that the founders of the country opposed the factionalism that entrenched parties produce.

That hasn't prevented US politics becoming extremely factional in other ways. Not to mention the concept of a political party along non American lines was some way off being invented when the founding fathers were about.

The points about a party of organised labour are probably correct, but I think the main issue derives from the political structure of the US itself. Having an entire country operating under the same two party system is going to result in both sides occupying an ideological space that covers vast amount of ground. A blue dog from the deep south can't be expected to correspond much ideologically with a New England progressive, and so to enforce them to abide by the same nationwide platform would make little sense, and would probably do considerable damage to the Democrat's chances in a lot of states.

Maybe you could have that sort of party operate independently at state level, and only be affiliated to an umbrella party at national level, which would have no membership or anything like that, but would nominate Presidential candidates each four years. Sort of like the super parties of the European Parliament, but all members of affiliated parties get to vote on the Presidential nominee.

 

[wilcoxchar]

You'd have to have a massive shift in the stance of the Supreme Court on party activities, and/or the stance of the Supreme Court on how the First Amendment relates to freedom of association.

While this essay on the Supreme Court's attitude toward party activities focuses on more recent cases and primarily on nomination and delegate selection rather than more basic association such as party membership, it does bring up a lot of relevant cases, especially in the footnotes regarding earlier precedents.

The two major cases the paper cites as earlier precedent re membership and freedom of association are Terry v. Adams (1953) and Smith v. Allwright (1944), but these cases go as far back as Nixon v. Herndon (1927). Almost all of these relevant cases are regarding the enfranchisement of blacks, and desegregation of partisan activities and freedom of association with parties.

For United States parties to have the ability to for example charge dues to members or revoking the membership of a political party, you would need the Court to massively reverse its direction regarding the enfranchisement of blacks as far back as the 1920s and maintain that reversed stance up to the present. Allowing parties to revoke membership would be tantamount to the broad disenfranchisement of the African-American population in many Southern states, which it would be very hard to argue against it being a violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Even charging party membership dues would be easily compared with the poll taxes or literacy tests and declared unconstitutional under the same grounds.

 

[big-click]

You'd have to have a massive shift in the stance of the Supreme Court on party activities, and/or the stance of the Supreme Court on how the First Amendment relates to freedom of association.

Interesting stuff, thanks for the essay link. On the one hand, all of those court cases deal specifically with party clauses banning all non-white voters from membership, which is rather obviously a Fourteenth Amendment violation; wouldn't the exclusion of individuals rather than the exclusion of groups be easier to defend? After all, a private club can exclude individuals as long as it isn't doing so in a discriminatory pattern. But if the legal consensus in the early 20th century really was that "party activities such as nomination were seen as 'state action' because they performed the 'public function' of selecting candidates for office," as the article claims, I guess they wouldn't buy that argument either.

I'm ignorant about jurisprudence and I don't think I've ever seen a scenario that used a different judicial interpretation as a PoD. Do you have any idea how the Supreme Court's stance could have been different?

 

[SpookyBoy]

Donald Trump famously said that he left Reform because he didn't want to be rubbing shoulders with fascists on one side and communists on the other, right?

Funny how that one turned out....

 

[Wendell]

Would more party systems like New York's help?

 

[big-click]

Would more party systems like New York's help?

How so? Does fusion cause NY have more active partisan membership than the rest of the country?

 

[Wendell]

How so? Does fusion cause NY have more active partisan membership than the rest of the country?

I'm not sure, actually, but it does allow some vibrancy for smaller parties and has impacted elections.

 

[Malkenny]

I'm not sure, actually, but it does allow some vibrancy for smaller parties and has impacted elections.

Electoral Fusion would probably help 'unify' some blocs,for instance Greens endorsing say a Democratic Party that nominated Bernie or the Constitution Party endorsing the GOP Candidate and having them on their respective tickets.

Though ultimately,I don't think that'd help centralize membership in one party per say.

 

[Captain Jack]

The Nonpartisan League of Arthur Townley is essentially exactly this. It was founded in North Dakota in 1915 and quickly spread through the Great Plains states until it was crushed after WW1. It was a very rigidly disciplined organization that had due paying members, marshalled its membership to follow the party line, and in my view had a distinctly militant and radical outlook that differs from the standard radical labor organizations of the time in very interesting ways. The League's basic strategy was to use its disciplined membership to infiltrate and take over the established parties by flooding their primaries and then used the co-opted political machinery to seize control of the state government. It worked for them quite successfully in North Dakota. A fascinating organization all around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_League

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

The US party system is very different from the systems of parliamentary states, i.e. Europe, Israel, India, Japan, Australia, Canada.

But is it that different from the party systems in other president/congress systems, i.e. Latin America, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia?

I suspect that it also matters that the US is a federal state, containing semi-sovereign polities with their own organizations.

 

[big-click]

I'm not sure, actually, but it does allow some vibrancy for smaller parties and has impacted elections.

True, but from what I know about fusion, it makes parties even looser since candidates will try to get the nomination of multiple parties and run on whichever ticket they can get. Jacob Javits running as a Liberal in 1980 after losing the GOP primary is one example. So is the upcoming mayoral election; Sal Albanese ran for the Democratic and Reform nominations but only won the latter and will face de Blasio as a Reform candidate in November. Fusion makes parties into labels that candidates can apply for - almost the opposite of making them more disciplined.

The Nonpartisan League of Arthur Townley is essentially exactly this. It was founded in North Dakota in 1915 and quickly spread through the Great Plains states until it was crushed after WW1. It was a very rigidly disciplined organization that had due paying members, marshalled its membership to follow the party line, and in my view had a distinctly militant and radical outlook that differs from the standard radical labor organizations of the time in very interesting ways. The League's basic strategy was to use its disciplined membership to infiltrate and take over the established parties by flooding their primaries and then used the co-opted political machinery to seize control of the state government. It worked for them quite successfully in North Dakota. A fascinating organization all around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_League

Good call. The NPL probably had more potential for nationwide growth than other disciplined left-wing parties like the Communists. As with many scenarios, averting WWI and the First Red Scare changes a lot.

The US party system is very different from the systems of parliamentary{/i] states, i.e. Europe, Israel, India, Japan, Australia, Canada.

But is it that different from the party systems in other president/congress systems, i.e. Latin America, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia?

I suspect that it also matters that the US is a federal state, containing semi-sovereign polities with their own organizations.

That's a good point. Since most of my knowledge about electoral politics has to do with Europe and the Commonwealth I can't answer that question, but it's worth considering. Can anybody else weigh in?

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Have the Socialist Party become one of the two major parties in the US.

The USA has essentially an eighteenth century or at best nineteenth century party system. Early political parties were essentially clubs to get politicians elected. Socialist, Labour, and Social Democratic parties changed this because they were more programatic and had to have tighter party discipline to compete with the bourgeois parties, who then evolved in response. That dynamic didn't happen in the US since the Socialists were crushed.