Political Parties and American Democracy Mini-Conference III: Constitutions, Counter-Majoritarianism, and American Democracy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

• Political Parties and American Democracy Mini-Conference III

Session Description

Institutions can make or break a democracy. Having observed the transgressions of European monarchs, as well as the failures of the Continental Congress, America’s founders sought to construct a constitution that simultaneously limited and enabled government. The separation of powers system that they devised, with its intricate web of checks and balances established across the three branches of government, was crafted explicitly to tame the societal impulse towards parties, or “factions” as Madison called them. More than two hundred years later, there is growing concern that the solution, which had once appeared to work so brilliantly, has itself become part of the problem. Criticisms of the U.S. Constitution are neither new, nor confined to scholars of American politics. The escalating polarization of America’s two-party system, however, has led to renewed attention to the downsides of separation of powers systems, as well as ushered in a wave of calls for various institutional reforms. This panel brings together novel empirical and theoretical perspectives to understand the apparent “mismatch” between contemporary political parties and the U.S. Constitution. As well, the papers on the panel offer new insights into the potential trade-offs of various institutional reforms.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• Intermittent Majorities: A Dynamic Theory of Democratic Inertia - John Duggan, University of Rochester; Gretchen Helmke, University of Rochester

• Expressive Politics: Animus, Cognitive Dissonance, and Electoral Extremism - William G. Howell, University of Chicago; Mattias K. Polborn, Vanderbilt University; Stefan Krasa, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Tyranny of the Minority - Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; Daniel F. Ziblatt, Harvard University

Chair

• Gretchen Helmke University of Rochester

Discussants

• Anne Meng University of Virginia

• Jack Paine Emory University