Political Parties & Interest Groups

Duverger's Law states that single-member, plurality-winner electoral systems (where only one candidate wins per district by getting the most votes) tend to produce TWO-PARTY systems over time. In contrast, proportional representation systems tend to produce multi-party systems.

Mechanism: When only one winner exists per district, voters who support a third party recognize that voting for them is likely to "waste" their vote — or worse, divide their preferred coalition and elect their LEAST-preferred candidate. Strategic voters therefore consolidate around the two most viable parties, even if neither perfectly matches their preferences. Politicians similarly join one of the two major parties to be electorally viable.

Application to the U.S.:

• Single-member House districts.
• Senate (essentially single-member at the state level).
• Electoral College winner-take-all (in 48 states).
• Plurality presidential primaries.
• Restrictive ballot access for third parties.

Result: The Republican-Democratic duopoly has persisted since the 1850s. Third parties (Bull Moose, Reform, Green, Libertarian) have at most influenced major-party platforms or spoiled a single election (Perot 1992, Nader 2000) but have never won the presidency or significant House caucuses.

Duverger's Law also predicts that REPLACING our system with proportional representation (in any form) would likely produce more parties.

1. Lobbying. Direct contact with legislators and their staff to advocate positions, supply technical information, and draft proposed amendments. Lobbyists provide overworked staff with research, model legislation, and political intelligence about constituents and other groups' positions. Example: The American Medical Association (AMA) lobbies on Medicare reimbursement rates and physician scope-of-practice rules; pharmaceutical companies lobby the FDA on drug-approval timelines.

2. Strategic litigation. Bringing or supporting court cases designed to advance the group's policy goals. The interest group identifies a sympathetic plaintiff, recruits skilled lawyers, and pursues litigation that produces favorable precedent. Example: The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund spent decades building a case against school segregation that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has litigated First Amendment cases for over a century. The Pacific Legal Foundation challenges environmental regulations on property-rights grounds.

(Other valid examples: grassroots mobilization — encouraging members to call/write Congress; producing technical research that shapes the policy debate; organizing protests and public demonstrations; running issue-advertising campaigns; coalition-building with other groups.)

Holding: The Supreme Court (5–4, Kennedy) held that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to make INDEPENDENT political expenditures — money spent advocating for or against a candidate WITHOUT coordinating with the candidate's campaign. The Court reasoned that political speech is at the core of the First Amendment, and the identity of the speaker (individual, corporation, union, or association) cannot justify suppressing it. Congress retained the power to require disclosure of expenditures and to ban DIRECT contributions to candidates (which remain capped).

Principal consequence — the rise of Super PACs and dark money:

1. Super PACs can raise and spend UNLIMITED amounts of money on independent expenditures (ads, mailers, organizing) so long as they do not coordinate with candidates. They have become the dominant vehicle for large political spending.
2. 501(c)(4) "social welfare" organizations can engage in political spending without disclosing their donors — "dark money" — as long as politics is not their primary purpose.
3. Spending has exploded. Total outside spending in federal elections rose from ~$140 million in 2008 to over $2 billion in 2020.
4. Donor concentration. A small number of mega-donors (the Koch network, George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, Tom Steyer) account for a disproportionate share of independent expenditures, raising concerns about disproportionate influence by the wealthy.

Critics argue Citizens United has corrupted democracy by amplifying wealthy voices and undermining political equality. Defenders argue that independent expenditures are speech, that disclosure remains a check on corruption, and that critics overstate the responsiveness of voters to spending. Subsequent cases (McCutcheon v. FEC, 2014) have further loosened campaign-finance limits.

Reform proposals include constitutional amendments to overrule Citizens United, mandatory disclosure of dark-money donors (DISCLOSE Act), and public financing of elections — but face political and constitutional obstacles.

Pluralism holds that government policy reflects the COMPETING demands of many organized groups, none of which dominates. As different issues mobilize different coalitions, no single elite controls the policy process; the result is a rough representation of broader social interests through interest-group competition.

Elite theory holds that policy is dominated by a small number of WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS AND CORPORATE INTERESTS, with ordinary citizens and the public interest having little independent influence. Empirical work by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (2014) found that average citizens' preferences had near-zero influence on policy outcomes once economic-elite preferences were controlled for, supporting an elite (oligarchic) view.

Pluralism fits better — civil rights and same-sex marriage: The expansion of civil rights for racial minorities (1950s–60s) and the recognition of same-sex marriage (Obergefell, 2015) involved organized advocacy by the NAACP, ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Human Rights Campaign confronting opposition from Southern segregationists, social conservatives, and religious organizations. These outcomes responded to grassroots organizing, mass mobilization, and broad shifts in public opinion — not to the preferences of economic elites (many of whom were initially indifferent or opposed).

Elite theory fits better — financial deregulation and tax policy: The deregulation of finance (Gramm-Leach-Bliley, 1999; commodity-derivatives deregulation, 2000) and major tax cuts favoring high-income earners (Bush 2001/2003, Trump 2017) tracked closely with the preferences of business leaders, financial executives, and wealthy donors — and were unpopular or inert in mass opinion. Even after the 2008 financial crisis, financial-industry preferences shaped Dodd-Frank's implementation. Lobbying spending by financial firms dwarfed counter-mobilization by consumer or labor groups.

Synthesis: The empirical truth lies between the extremes and varies by issue.

• Salient cultural issues (civil rights, marriage, abortion) often follow mass opinion or organized social movements — pluralism better describes them.
• Technical regulatory issues (banking, antitrust, drug pricing, tax policy) often track elite preferences more closely — elite theory better describes them.
• Issue salience matters: when broad public attention is high, mass opinion has more influence; when attention is low, organized economic interests dominate.

This explains why public-interest reformers often try to RAISE the salience of technical issues (e.g., Elizabeth Warren's consumer-finance advocacy) — to shift the politics from elite-dominated to more pluralistic.