Vacation from facts, 2

  My last post finished by asking why ideological politics has grown in the United States, in contrast to almost all other countries.  A distinctive feature of American political institutions is the dominance of two parties.  There have only been a handful of members of Congress who belonged to other parties; some third-party candidates for President have received a significant share of the vote, but none of those parties have lasted.

In a two-party system, ideological competition drives parties to the center, as Anthony Downs argued.  But there's another way to compete:  if you convince people that the other side is totally unacceptable, then they have no choice but to vote for you.  It seems to be easier to motivate people by fear rather than by a positive vision, so focusing on the negative may be a more attractive strategy than moving to the center.*  I have mentioned in several posts that negative feelings about both parties have grown.  In 2016, many people who weren't enthusiastic about Donald Trump voted for him anyway because they couldn't bear the idea of Hillary Clinton as President.  Some never-Trumpers voted for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin or wrote someone in.  Others voted for Clinton but didn't publicly support her.   In contrast, if the British Conservatives chose someone like Trump as a leader, party members who were unhappy could turn to the Liberal Democrats.  Those votes wouldn't be wasted--by winning a small number of seats, they could produce a hung parliament, which has happened several times.  So people who strongly objected to the leader would not just vote for the Liberal Democrats, but publicly advocate voting for them, further strengthening the movement away from the Conservatives.

So my suggestion is that a pure two-party system promotes ideological politics.  If true, that raises the question of why the ideological differences between the American parties were small until about 50 years ago.  I will consider that in my next post.

*Why not do both--move to the center and promote negative feelings about the other party?  For example, you could try to convince people that they are incompetent or corrupt.  However, it seems to be easier to create strong negative feelings when the charges have some ideological content--the other party will take us down the slippery slope to a Soviet-style planned economy, or a Handmaid's Tale society.  In order to make those kind of charges seem sincere, you have to stake out an extreme position yourself--no compromise on X.