One of the strangest features of the US electoral system to a newcomer is the lack of competition. The culture of the country in general has been strongly shaped by ideas of free market in goods and services, and its research universities and liberal art colleges have over many decades strongly supported the “marketplace of ideas”. The US has been a magnet for centuries for people with a desire to create a better life, often by working very hard and competing for resources. Why then is real political competition so difficult to find?

An obvious feature of the US political landscape is the dominance of just two parties. Even though in theory we could see candidates of parties other than the Democratic or Republican parties win seats in congress or in the US senate, this is very rare, and in presidential elections it is very unusual for a “third party” to win more than 5% of the popular vote even a single state in the Electoral College. More common, though still rare, is a candidate winning as an independent. It seems to be very hard for a new party to establish itself, and it seems that an existing party has to achieve severe dysfunction before it it is seriously challenged. The Republican Party, for example, was founded in 1854 after the collapse of the Whig Party over the issue of slavery. In recent years it has changed its policy outlook and “brand” dramatically, which in other countries might lead to a split or improved showing by another party, but so far we have not seen either of these happen.

My main point here is not to explore in detail the reasons for two-party dominance (the US ranks low among the major democracies in the effective number of parties). I strongly recommend the book A Different Democracy (by Taylor, Shugart, Lijphart and Grofman) for discussion of this and many other questions on why the US is so different from other countries. Briefly, some main reasons appear to be the plurality “first past the post” system of voting and the amount of resources needed to mount effective campaigns.

A related and unusual feature of  US politics is how hard it is for incumbents to be defeated. The reelection rate for the US House of Representatives is well over 90%, and that for the Senate  is not much less. Some reasons for this appear to be higher name recognition of incumbents, them having more campaign money, and partisan gerrymandering. The two-year term of members of the House of Representatives is unusually short, and leads to almost constant campaigning.

Simply, the barrier to entry to the US political marketplace seems to be too high. This has bad consequences, in that incumbents can be much less responsive to constituents’ wishes than is desirable in a democracy, but not receive enough corrective feedback at the ballot box. It is perhaps not surprising that public confidence in political institutions has declined substantially in recent years.

Increasing competitiveness in political campaigns seems to me a nonpartisan issue that could gain wide support among voters. The problem may be that politicians don’t want it. By definition, incumbents are at least fairly well optimized for the current system, and mostly would prefer no change. It will require substantial public pressure to achieve change. For example, when New Zealand changed its voting method from FPP to MMP (a form of proportional representation) in the 1990s, public pressure was needed even to get to the stage of a referendum, and there was a strong campaign against change (see this viewpoint of the process).

I have always found it strange that the current players of the game (the politicians) are allowed in many instances in the US to set the rules of the game. Perhaps the most egregious example is the partisan gerrymandering at state level, where in many states a legislature controlled by one party can set the boundaries to favor that party. In New Zealand, along with many US states, independent redistricting commissions do this job. Campaign finance laws are another way in which competition is promoted in many countries. However, in the US it has proved difficult to restrict total spending because of concerns about the First Amendment, although there has been a long history of attempts to reform campaign financing.

I will probably go further in future posts into specific issues raised in this post. For now, I just want to suggest that the idea of improving electoral competition, and using the analogy with commerce, may be helpful in gaining public support for reform of the electoral system. Antitrust lawsuits against large companies have been heavily used, because it is pretty well understood that unchecked mergers and acquisitions can lead to oligopoly and less consumer welfare overall. By analogy, we ought to be promoting easier market entry for good political ideas and parties. The details will be complicated: is it best to first tackle gerrymandering, campaign financing, the voting system, or something else entirely? But gaining wide agreement that more electoral competition is needed seems a necessary first step, and easier goal.