the democratic party has fuzzy boundaries. he calls himself an independent but caucuses with the democrats and participates in their primary elections. 1/

US parties are blobby, indeterminate things is the point of the original post this comments on. 2/

but despite there are people perceived to be disproportionately influential within those vague coalitions. donors, the Obamas, the Clintons, people like Jim Clyburn at a state level. 3/

a lot of Sanders supporters perceive those “insiders” as having been opposed to Sanders’ success in the Democratic primary process, exercising that disproportionate influence to ensure his loss. /fin

fair enough! i’m not really interested in litigating Jeremy Corbyn. from a US leftish perspective I think that “discipline” leaves a bad taste, but that could well be projecting our Bernie Sanders experience on the UK. 1/

the point is that exercises of discipline by leadership in a two party system can leave factions effectively disenfranchised. 2/

there are only two choices, two sets of insiders (most organizations however notionally democratic have entrenched insiders) fully control them, the dissatisfied have nowhere else to go. /fin

in many multiparty democracies executive power does emanate from legislative power, do they function much better? “the perils of presidentialism” argument is now somewhat disputed by more recent experience in the Latin America from which it arose. 1/

the most common indictment of too-many-parties democracy is Israel, where splinter parties often become kingmakers, but many multiparty democracies are designed (sometimes elegantly, sometimes less) to favor 4-8ish parties, and disfavor very small parties. 2/

(my own tentative views are that parliamentary systems are probably cleaner than presidential systems, but presidential systems can work if the electoral system favors less partisan, less ideological presidents, and that voting systems should be built to favor 4-8 not-tiny parties.) /fin

the US’ weird prohibition of parties deciding their own candidates by their own rules is better than the alternative while we have structurally a two-party system. much better would be a multiparty system with free entry in which political parties are free to organize and discipline as they like.

(the UK is a case in point. yes, the Labor Party was free to lock out Corbyn. but was that great? Britain also is structurally a two-party system — more than here there are 3rd parties, Duverger’s is a tendency not a law — but its FPTP elections make 3rd parties spoilers and create a strong bias…

in favor of big incumbent parties. under those circumstances, I don’t think it’s a plainly better situation when party insiders and leadership can lock out a popular former leader. it’s not plainly worse, either. there are tradeoffs. but the better solution is free entry + cohesive parties.)