Is Duopoly More Resistant to Fascism?

[cfrank]

This might be kind of anathema to our movement… but I think it’s a really important question to ask. While a duopoly exploits voters, it also establishes a pre-assembled, entrenched, large opposition faction to fascism, which might be diluted in a multi-party government.

I think this is something to investigate in terms of historical evidence, and also something to keep in mind during reform efforts. I wonder whether, theoretically, it would be better to keep a duopolistic structure of government in the House and Senate, but also enable a third house with multi-party deliberations. This is obviously just day-dreaming.

I used to consider that multiparty democracy would dilute authoritarian movements from the bottom, but right now the answer isn’t clear to me. I guess we’re seeing one “case study” play out in real time…

Any thoughts welcome. Thanks!

FOLLOW UP:

Based on my research, important factors for resisting fascism external to the style of democracy are horizontal and vertical separations of power (ex: checks and balances and federalism), the strength of democratic norms, and possibly also the priming of democratic resistance by salient failures of other states.

Commonly, authoritarians will do away with multiparty consensus structures and replace them with majoritarian systems (which are more efficient, especially when they’re only for show). In terms of fascism, the main route in majoritarian democracies with duopolistic structure is capture of one major party by a radical faction (as we see in the U.S. now), and while the opposition faction is likely to be large and organized, there’s also the concerning fact that there is essentially no other horizontal obstacle to the fascist movement. When this resistance fails, what remains is vertical opposition, e.g. federalism, or external opposition (other states).

The issue with multiparty consensus democracies is that they can be too fluid and fail to offer resistance to organized radicals unless coalitions are primed and strong, and can be less efficient than majoritarian governments (which don’t have to deliberate as much).

I think a “dual-phase” system would be most resilient if set up properly, because strong, fast, pre-existing opposition could be paired with a more slowly deliberating but broader coalition—basically, the large opposition party can act as a stopper to give time while a more overwhelming consensus forms.

[SaraWolk]

@cfrank I have been thinking about the same questions. I think that the safeguard to fascism is ensuring checks against polarizing factions taking control.

In FPTP two party domination, the center-squeeze effect ensures that over time the two opposing factions become more and more polarized and this gives the illusion of majoritarianism, but as we know, the electability bias from voters having to vote for the frontrunner on their side can wildly inflate the perceived popularity of those frontrunners. In practice the moderate and third party voices are silenced and we see super polarizing candidates like Donald Trump (who initially only had some 25% of the vote in the 2016 primary) winning decisive control of their party. His own party has little they can do if they don't like his leadership, and the opposing party also has no leverage whatsoever if they can't beat him head to head. This last presidential election we saw both parties put forward candidates with record low approval ratings, but nobody else had a chance of challenging them at the same time. This is textbook polarized entrenched two party domination.

Meanwhile, I'm not convinced that a multi-party system on it's own will address any of that and it could make it worse. Just as choose one ballots can create a center-squeeze in FPTP, they can do the same in PR, resulting in a donut of polarized factions represented and little to no representation for the middle. In an election where the quota to win is 10% for example, a candidate could theoretically be strongly opposed by 90% of the electorate. Meanwhile, other factions could win with their standard-bearer also preferred by 10% of the electorate, but also strongly supported by many more and only strongly opposed by a slim minority.

When some winners are hyper-polarizing and others are not, it not only allows for the rise of dangerous factions who are more likely to bring about civil war, it also creates a lopsided and unstable winner-set. That's not the idealized definition of proportionality we're aiming for even though it would technically pass PR criteria. Theoretically, we should be able to do better.

The magic of a more expressive ballot or especially a 5 star ballot is that voters can show not only who their favorites are, but how much they like and dislike candidates from other factions. In an ideal system, this data could then be used to:
a) ensure that factions who deserve a seat at the table get one, and
b) ensure that candidates or factions that are seen as dangerous and harmful by others are not platformed when better alternatives exist.

In single-winner STAR, voters who are in the minority who are not going to get their favorites elected still have a strong vote against their worst case-scenario in the runoff. This is a massive check on authoritarianism and fascism. This is amazing and we don't need to switch to PR to get this windfall.

And, in a top shelf 5 STAR-PR system, theoretically we could do the same, using scores to identify which candidates and factions meet quota rules, while using scores and runoffs or preference data to identify the most polarizing and most opposed candidates.

At best, PR systems boast that legislatures where all perspectives are represented at the table. These legislatures are more likely to put forward more broadly acceptable legislation, but at their worst, they can give extremist factions massive leverage to cause stagnation or tear the system apart from the inside. For example, a super polarizing candidate like Israel's Ben Gvir who was elected with only 3.5% of the vote has the power to make or break the majority coalition and call a new election with a vote of no confidence if Netanyahu defies him. At worst, PR systems can give small polarizing factions extremely disproportionate leverage. Some of this can only be reformed with governmental system reforms such as higher quotas, but some of it can be fixed with the voting method itself.

Again, I think with a more expressive ballot and a hybrid ordinal and cardinal (STAR) approach we can do better.

[cfrank]

@SaraWolk I agree with you. When I say majoritarian, I only mean in the sense of Lijphart’s ontology, because you’re right that ultimately it isn’t even actually majoritarian but largely an illusion of it.

I’m curious about examples of this: “the center-squeeze effect ensures that over time the two opposing factions become more and more polarized.” I feel you know more than I do in this area, but it seems possible to me that there could be a stable polarization that doesn’t necessarily explode. In principle, as long as there is a large enough population of centrists, if one party leans too far in one direction, naively I would imagine the other could gain more power by appealing to those centrists than by appealing to the fringes.

Naivety aside, I think you’re probably right. The problem is that even if there is a population of centrists, if the representatives aren’t held accountable to them, then the parties themselves seem to have no good reason not to polarize once they’ve duopolized the political market. I’m really just curious about what causes that—is polarization actually steadily preferred? Or is it just a matter of time and drift before one party tips over the edge? It seems like the opposite of Hotelling’s law.

I also don’t think multiparty systems or PR for instance alone would solve the problem, there are examples of both systems falling to authoritarianism, and resistance depends on many contingent factors that ultimately bring about your main point, which is preventing extremists from gaining leverage or control.

Hopefully we can get some technical voting reform and see whether things change. Approval would be great.