Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images
The House of Representatives holds a vote for Speaker, October 17, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is not going to be the next Speaker of the House. After three failed votes in which his rank-and-file GOP-base supporters made many death threats against Republican representatives who wouldn’t support him, Jordan lost an internal caucus vote for Speaker and is now out of the running. It is unclear who if anyone could obtain majority support at this point; acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC) may end up serving as caretaker through January.
Over the years, advocates of democracy have levied numerous criticisms of America’s basic constitutional structure. The Senate, for instance, is grotesquely unfair, granting Wyoming residents something like 67 times more representation over national policy than Californians. The Electoral College allows a presidential candidate to lose the popular vote by roughly 4-1 and still win—and vote losers have indeed won the White House twice in this century—while confining virtually all presidential campaign attention to a handful of states that randomly happen to have an even partisan balance.
Yet there are other basic logistical features of a parliamentary system that have gotten less attention from critics, the lack of which has become extremely evident over the last weeks. These are the formal multiparty coalition and the snap election.
The United States is unique among self-proclaimed democracies not only in having no serious third parties, but also being a formal two-party state. Even nations with first-past-the-post districts, which tends to create two dominant parties through the famous Duverger’s Law, like the U.K. and Canada, have nationally competitive third parties. The reason for the American anomaly is that in the U.S., the Republicans and Democrats are part of the government (hence things like state-run party primaries, or party balance requirements in various agencies) and serious third parties are effectively legally prohibited. Though the Green Party and Libertarians do exist, they face such enormous requirements and constant legal harassment that simply getting on the ballot all but exhausts their resources.
The two-party duopoly doesn’t erase the kind of ideological differences that create multiple parties in other countries, of course. Instead, it means that both American parties are unwieldy coalitions. The Democrats have a centrist coalition that is in bed with business (see: Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia), a center-left wing prioritizing stability and modest welfare state expansions (Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado), a progressive wing (Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts), and a socialist wing (Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont). The Republicans, meanwhile, have a conservative wing that is in bed with the worst businesses, and a far-right wing that is frankly fascist.
The wheeling and dealing of parliamentary negotiation can be quite grubby, but it also tends to create a less polarized political culture.
A parliamentary system makes it much easier for a coalition government to operate, because formal policy agreements can be made before taking power, and if the coalition breaks apart, new elections can be called. In Finland, for instance, the conservative coalition (unfortunately) won the last election. Before taking office, the parties sat down and hammered out a policy agenda and Cabinet membership roughly commensurate with their share of votes. They are now attempting to put those policies—union-busting, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and austerity—into place. Should the coalition come apart (perhaps because of strikes inspired by its policies), then the figurehead president can dissolve parliament and schedule new elections to produce a new government.
In the U.S. House, by contrast, the actual membership of the Republican sub-parties is not formalized, so it’s impossible to say exactly which sub-party deserves what share of policy. Worse, legislative power is divided with the Senate, and executive power is held by the president, so one party seldom has full control of government. Even if the House Republicans could agree among themselves on what they wanted to do, it wouldn’t mean much because they couldn’t get it passed by the Senate or President Biden. That likely helps explain why back in January, the far right insisted on procedural changes within the House rules, like any one representative being able to call a vote to oust the Speaker.
Even with unified government, this is a problem. When Democrats won the 2020 election, giving them control of both Congress and the presidency, they did not sit down and hammer out a formal agreement between the sub-parties. Instead, negotiations happened after the new Congress was seated, and the most conservative members of the party, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), decided they got veto power over every single aspect of the party agenda. Sure enough, most of it ended up in the trash.
This kind of behavior illustrates the importance of the snap election mechanism. It’s useful not only if the governing coalition collapses, but also to discipline party coalition members. If some small party pushes its luck, or reneges on a prior agreement, the leadership can resort to calling new elections. The holdout party might lose votes, or the coalition might lose the election outright, in which case their chance for getting anything at all vanishes. This mechanism pushes coalition members to accept half a loaf rather than risk holding out for extreme demands.
In Congress, by contrast, where elections are rigidly scheduled and party control can’t change (absent defections, deaths, or special-election losses), sub-party members on the fringe have every incentive to demand everything they want.
Now, parliaments are not immune to tiny extremist parties trying to exercise leverage far out of proportion by playing kingmaker (one reason why many countries have a requirement that a party must reach 5 percent of votes to actually get any seats). But parliaments also provide the possibility of strange bedfellows or caretaker coalitions. If the conservative coalition wins but a hard-right member party is being sufficiently irritating, for example, the center-right party might seek a coalition with a center-left party through mutual concessions—we get tax cuts for business, you get a new high-speed rail line, that sort of thing.
Finally, there is a more nebulous factor to consider. The wheeling and dealing of parliamentary negotiation can be quite grubby, but it also tends to create a less polarized political culture. Even small parties learn that if they play their cards right, they can get a chance to get at least a little of what they want. The ossified, sclerotic American system, by contrast, makes ordinary legislation—or even just regular-order budgeting—all but impossible much of the time. That discredits traditional politics, and lends credence to people like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who argue that the way to get what you want is with threats and extortion.
The manifold advantages of parliamentary-style governments have been obvious on both moral and logistical grounds for well over a century. Frankly, it’s rather surprising that the rickety American system has lasted as long as it has. If Gaetz and company have any say in the matter, it might not be long for the world.
