We Need More Parties

by Lee Drutman

American democracy is broken, but partisanship alone is not to blame. Political scientist Lee Drutman places our two-party system instead at the center of the American democratic crisis. Of course, partisan conflict plays a role, forcing voters to choose between a party that they might dislike and another that is far worse. But the two party system creates this corrosive dynamic. And the results of this system are dire: more partisan division, low political legitimacy, and high citizen disaffection.

This is how democracies crumble. The way to save democracy, Drutman argues, is to create more and better political parties through electoral reform and fusion voting.

We Need More Parties features responses to Drutman from Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell, political scientists Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld, political theorist and former candidate for Massachusetts governor Danielle Allen, and others.

The issue also includes essays on American democracy and the question of political legitimacy: Project 2025 and abuses of executive power, the anointing of J. D. Vance and the liberal embrace of "reasonable conservatives”, the politics of grief in rural America, and more.

Contributors: Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Danielle Allen, Deepak Bhargava, Elizabeth Catte, Kevin Donovan, Lee Drutman, James Goodwin, Arianna Jiménez, Josh Lerner, Cerin Lindgrensavage, Bob Master, Maurice Mitchell, Joel Rogers, Sam Rosenfeld, Daniel Schlozman, Doran Schrantz, Ian Shapiro, Honora Spicer, Sunaura Taylor, Grant Tudor, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, and David Walsh

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2024

About the author

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying (Oxford University Press, 2015) and winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association's Robert A. Dahl Award, given for "scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy." In addition, he writes regularly for Polyarchy, a Vox blog. Drutman also teaches in the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.