Reply To: Two Party (one party) system origin?

#15999

Of course, both of those explainations just get into the electoral dynamics and do not even begin to touch the ways in which the parties collude together when in power.

Which then comes to your point about why the deck is stacked in their favor: each party is full of people who belong to the Party of Incumbency, over time they form, in essence, a cartel, and are able to use the fact that they write the laws and they enforce them (as executives) and their appointees (judges) rule on them to stack the deck even further in their favor and against potential competitors; they set up campaign finance laws that finance each other, ballot access laws that restrict potential “outsiders” from gaining a toehold, and so on.

plus of course since each Party is basically pushed towards being near identical under this system, they end up drawing from similar donor groups; big donors give to the parties not so much on the basis of ideas (though some do that as well), but to have and maintain “access” no matter who wins (or loses), so the same influential people end up having disproportionate influence no matter which side wins (think Goldman Sachs executives who end up in the Treasury or wherever; no matter which Party wins, there is always some Goldman guy. And so on).