Oligarchic Kleptocracy Forever?

On C-SPAN today (Thursday, September 19), Lee Drutman regarding his book, Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop. Where he was interesting and his book would be worth reading. He makes a point that while the founding fathers were intensely suspicious of political parties the negative effects were mitigated by our having, in effect, a four party system until recent decades. The point being that there were liberal Republicans, conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats, and conservative Democrats. Now the parties are rigid and bitter bipolar opposites. We are now a truly two party system, and it’s failing the nation.

His presentation is much more complex than this simplistic summary, so I think it will be well worth anyone interested to purchase his book.

But I found most interesting was a quote from the Authoritarian Warning Survey (a group which self describes it self as “Authoritarian Warning Survey polls democracy experts on threats to democracy from American political leaders in 2017-18. Respondents are academic scholars who study democratic decline, political institutions, American politics, or countries that have recently experienced democratic erosion.”).

The quote reads, “In the August/September 2018 Authoritarian Warning Survey, 747 democracy experts collectively gave the United States a one six chance of a democratic breakdown in the next four years, and were nearly unanimous (97.1%) in their assessment American democracy had declined the last decade.“

I am unfamiliar with this organization although it certainly makes itself sound reliable. I do know that I completely agree with this assessment. I have been arguing that America had been turned in Into an oligarchic kleptocracy for at least a decade — more like two or three decades.

So should we despair? Considering that a great many Americans agree that the government no longer represents them, I think there is real basis for hope. As the author pointed out during the interview, there are many ways that without any change to our constitution we can make room for multiple parties. The author presented a number of alternative and entirely constitutional systems which can be adopted by individual states to promote diversity among our political parties and the choices a voter can make.


I was raised to revere the Constitution as an nearly perfect document. As I’ve matured I have realized it is profoundly flawed. And yet, we can work within it to correct the profound flaw of “winner take all”.

https://qz.com/1711965/most-americans-think-the-powerful-act-unethically-with-impunity/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/25/voters_rate_political_corruption_as_americas_biggest_crisis_140156.html