Podcast Episode 7 — Seth Masket Has Dared To Say The Unsayable

This episode, an interview with the chair of the political science department at the University of Denver, Seth Masket, is the fourth conversation about the role of political parties, building on previous interviews with Jonathan Rauch, Elaine Kamarck and Norm Ornstein.

Seth is the author of two books. His most recent is “The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and how they Weaken Democracy.”

Seth argues against the common view that parties are inherently corrupt, studies the history of changes to the party system, and zooms in on reform efforts in a handful of states to report on the evidence we have about what these reforms have provided. His conclusion is to ask reformers to stop reforming. Despite their best intentions, he says, attempts to reduce the role of money and to weaken parties have made the system less transparent and less democratic.

Seth has dared to say what few will: that for party primaries and maybe all of American politics to be more productive and functional, they might need to be a little less democratic. He and fellow academic Julia Azari wrote a New York Times op-ed in December titled: “Is the Democratic Party Becoming Too Democratic?”

They wrote:

The concept of democracy within a political party is tricky. As with many other institutions, parties have become more democratically run over time. Important decisions like nominations and platform stances used to be made by bosses and convention delegates; now they’re largely determined by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses. The logic of running things more democratically is that people tend to have more faith in the resulting decisions — those choices are more legitimate. Like just about any other institution, a party requires legitimacy to operate. … Part of the problem for parties is our insistence that they be run democratically. That turns out not to be a very realistic concept. Yes, we can hold elections within parties, but party leaders will always have vastly more information about candidates — their strengths and flaws, their ability to govern and work with Congress, their backing among various interest groups and coalitions — than voters and caucusgoers do. That information is useful, even vital, to the task of picking a good nominee. As the political scientist E. E. Schattschneider once said, democracy is to be found between the parties, not within them.

I was carrying Seth’s book around with me recently, and one day I got in an Uber, and started talking about politics with the driver. The driver made a comment at one point about how parties were the problem with our politics. “That’s interesting,” I said, “because I have a book in my bag that argues the exact opposite, that the problem with our politics is that we’ve made parties too weak.” I handed the guy the book, and he went straight home to read it.

I think one of the more interesting parts of my conversation with Seth is about halfway through when we explain why it was more shocking that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination than it was that he won the presidency. Why? Seth explains how most voters in a general election go by party label — even self-identified Independents — and so that means once anyone gets the nomination of a major party for president, they have a fifty-fifty shot at the presidency. That’s why the party primary process is so important.

To me, that validates the focus of this podcast, which is the party primary system and the role of parties in our democracy.

SHOW NOTES

Seth’s bio is here.

Here are Seth’s two books:

• No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures, by Seth Masket
• The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How They Weaken Democracy, by Seth Masket

“How to Improve the Primary Process? Make It Less Democratic,” by Seth Masket, Pacific Standard Magazine, August 11, 2017

“Is the Democratic Party Becoming Too Democratic?” by Julia Azari and Seth Masket, The New York Times, December 11, 2017

“Here’s How a Responsible GOP Might Behave,” by Seth Masket, Pacific Standard Magazine, February 28, 2017

Seth referenced this paper: The Losing Parties Out-Party National Committees, 1956–1993, by Philip A. Klinkner

We talked about the big idea in this book, and how the 2016 election did not adhere to this theory: “The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform,” by Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel

“Weak parties and strong partisanship are a bad combination,” by Julia Azari, Vox, November 3, 2016

I wrote this at the 2016 Republican convention: “The Cleveland convention is ratifying the GOP’s loss of party power.”

My piece on The Centrist Project from April 2017 is here.

Seth wrote about The Centrist Project in June 2017. That piece is here.

My more recent piece on Unite America, the new name of what used to be The Centrist Project, is here.

MUSIC:

• Intro: “Handshake Drugs” by Wilco
• Transition: “St Tom’s Lullaby” by The Welcome Wagon
• Outro: “For the Sake of the Song,” by Townes Van Zandt