I am working on a few longer essays along with getting all the fun back to school diseases the kids are bringing home, so I wanted to put up a short comment on a topic that bugs me a lot and someone over at Arnold Kling’s blog reminded me of.
Within the two large US political parties there are a lot of different types, many of whom don’t get along well and don’t feel like the party leadership is actually representing their interests well. Often these sub-groups will argue for starting their own third party, which probably won’t win but will guarantee that their former party will lose. Those who disapprove of that move, citing that it means the hated enemy will win, usually refer to it as “taking your ball and going home.” Ralph Nader and Ross Perot spring to mind as third party candidates that split the vote and resulted in the other team winning at the presidential level, which is apparently the only level that matters for political scientists. Never mind the third party candidates that get elected to Congress…
Yea, that’s probably enough background… on with the copy pasta!
…I want to point out that the characterization of the dichotomy between “victory through unity” and “take one’s ball and go home” uses language that trivializes the problem faced. The coalitional problem faced when your best coalition option is only slightly better than the one you hope to avoid is a real issue, one of negotiation and when to opt out and stop supporting the least worst. It seems to only get resolved when a large portion of the coalition realizes they should opt out all at once, and the coalition leadership stops doing what it wants and [does] what it’s coalition does.
At some point it really is time to “take your ball and go home”, and I think that referring to it as such is a way for the leadership to make those complaining that they are not being represented look stupid and feel bad for asking for representation. “Who else are you going to vote for?” or “Vote for a third party? Go ahead, throw your vote away!” are really just ways to bully your constituents into submission. One does that because you either can’t figure out how to represent the interests of all your constituent groups, or you don’t care to. Take your pick on which of those two best represents the current leadership of our two dominant parties.
A question I would like to see someone address is why a given big party’s leadership can’t create a platform that addresses all the interests of its constituency. Maybe look at each party and describe the relevant constituencies and their interests, and contrast that to the behavior and incentives of the leadership. That would be some interesting descriptive work.