Breaking the Two-Party Doom LoopLee Drutman
Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop
by Lee Drutman · first published 2020
9mentions
5recommended by
5HN commenters
2021–2025first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Argues that US two-party politics stems from structural features like winner-take-all elections and a fixed House size, and makes the case for multiparty democracy. Useful for readers of electoral reform.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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This is a good point. You might enjoy Lee Drutman's book, "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop," where one of his key observations is that fixing the size of the House has distorted representation in Congress and contributed to hyper partisanship. He recommends increasing the size to 700 representatives…
on “The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisis Worse” ↗So far my favorite books of 2022 are: Political ----------- Why We're Polarized Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America I liked these two books together because they are two sides to the same coin and offers something I feel a lot of political books don't, a hope for a better…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books/courses of 2022? Why?” ↗Yes. And to paraphrase Lee Drutman's take in Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: far-right parties in the EU tend to get about 10% of the vote. And in a way that's bad (they get seats in parliament!). But in another way, it's good: they can't claim to be "the voice of the masses"…
on “A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define–Combine Procedure” ↗…incumbent when the small group of people voting in a primary are very biased, and then the people voting in the general election really don't want the candidate from the other party. I suggest reading "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America" by Lee Drutman. https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multipar...
on ““Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill” ↗…interested but highly skeptical. A genuine center party would help, but there are many structural reasons why it’s not likely, and those would have to be addressed. There’s a great book about this titled “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop.” I highly recommend it.
on “Andrew Yang to launch a third party” ↗There was a good (ish) book about this, called Breaking the two-party doom loop. * There's been an increased focus on federal (vs local) governing. People "over there" now need to adopt the solutions we have "over here". Since federal gov cannot possibly be in tune to all voters…
on “A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define–Combine Procedure” ↗…marijuana legalization in Massachusetts was by a ballot initiative.) That being said: 1: I think some aspect of randomly choosing legislative bodies helps avoid leaders who are power-seeking. 2: I think "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop" speaks a lot more about how to fix the issues with elections. https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop
on “Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections” ↗Lee Drutman talks a lot about this in his book, "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop." [0] Short version: there used to be much less "party discipline" in US politics. There were lots of sub-factions within the two big parties that would vote differently, depending on the issue. So,…
on “Seattle residents launch Approval Voting initiative for representative elections [pdf]” ↗With increased granularity of representation, you can have more parties. Breaking The Two Party Doom Loop discussed details. Our country has not increased the number of representatives sufficiently to allow local issues to reach national stage, so instead we all worry about national issues over local ones,…
on “US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU” ↗