Is partisan politics good or bad?

Why Can Partisanship Be Good?

Political parties exist, in part, to bring together people with shared goals, nominate candidates, win elections, and influence government from within. Partisanship is what happens when people support those parties and candidates in pursuing those goals.

That competition can serve an important democratic purpose.

Voters need meaningful choices. In fact, political scientist Lilliana Mason explains that American political scientists in the 1950s were concerned about the opposite problem: Democrats and Republicans were so similar that voters did not always have clear alternatives. The American Political Science Association argued at the time that parties needed to become more distinct so voters could understand what each stood for.

Partisanship can therefore help organize political disagreement. One party might propose one approach to solving a problem while another proposes something different. Voters can compare those alternatives, choose representatives, and hold the governing party accountable.

Political disagreement isn't necessarily a flaw in democracy. It's part of how democracy works.

When Does Partisanship Become Bad?

The problem begins when supporting a party changes from "I think my side has better ideas" to "my side must win at all costs."

Lee Drutman describes this more extreme form as hyperpartisanship. America's two major parties compete closely for control of national institutions while increasingly representing different values and constituencies. According to Drutman, this can intensify the human tendency toward us-versus-them thinking and encourage no-compromise politics.

The distinction is similar to being a sports fan.

Imagine your uncle is a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting the Packers to win. Competition is the entire point of the game.

But imagine that his loyalty becomes so strong that he thinks every call benefiting the Packers is fair and every call against them is corrupt. He refuses to acknowledge when another team plays well. Eventually, winning matters more to him than whether the game itself is played fairly.

That's where the analogy becomes useful for politics.

Healthy partisan competition requires both sides to care not only about winning but also about maintaining the democratic system in which that competition occurs.

When Political Parties Become Part of Our Identity

Partisanship can become especially powerful because political affiliation isn't always just about policy.

Mason's research examines partisanship as a social identity. People can develop a psychological connection to fellow Democrats or Republicans, making the success or failure of their political group feel personally significant. In a two-party system, where one party's electoral victory necessarily means the other's defeat, elections can become competitions for the status of the group itself.

That can contribute to affective polarization, where people increasingly like members of their own political group and dislike members of the opposing group. Importantly, those feelings do not always correspond to the actual size of their policy disagreements.

Politics can then shift from debating ideas to judging people.

Instead of thinking, They're wrong, people can begin thinking, They're bad.

What Are the Dangers of Too Much Partisanship?

When partisan identity becomes extreme, it can affect how people govern and how they view their political opponents.

The Democracy Group's interviews highlight several potential consequences. Policymakers may focus more heavily on satisfying their political base rather than considering a broader range of solutions. Partisan incentives can influence processes such as redistricting. People may become less willing to compromise, and opposing groups can enter a cycle in which each views its own behavior as defensive and the other's as threatening.

At the most extreme end, Mason's research on radical partisanship examines attitudes involving vilification, dehumanization, and support for political violence. Strong psychological identification with a political party was one predictor associated with those attitudes in her research.

So, Is Partisan Politics Good or Bad?

Partisan politics can be healthy when it gives voters meaningful choices, organizes competing political ideas, and encourages participation. It becomes unhealthy when political identity and defeating the other side become more important than fair democratic competition, compromise, and recognizing political opponents as legitimate fellow citizens.

Democracy does not require everyone to agree. It actually depends on people being able to disagree.

The challenge is learning how to root for your team without deciding that the other team should no longer be allowed to play.