Political parties are the organizing engine of modern democracy. They shape how citizens understand politics, how candidates are selected, how ideas become legislation, and how power is contested and transferred. Parties mobilize voters, translate broad values into policy agendas, and provide the structure through which most people participate in public life. In a functioning democracy, parties compete vigorously while accepting shared rules of the game—legitimacy of elections, peaceful transfers of power, and respect for pluralism. When parties perform these roles well, they create stability and accountability. When they fail, democracy itself becomes fragile.
In the United States, political parties were never meant to dominate the system, yet over time they have become its central gatekeepers. Today’s parties are undergoing profound strain. Polarization has hardened identities, weakened internal accountability, and turned competition into permanent conflict. Party institutions have hollowed out, leaving power increasingly concentrated in donor networks, activist media ecosystems, and charismatic individuals rather than broad-based coalitions. As parties become less effective at mediating social conflict, they risk amplifying division instead of channeling it into democratic compromise.
In this collection of podcasts, scholars, strategists, reformers, journalists, and former party insiders examine how American parties evolved—and where they are breaking down. You’ll hear how radical partisanship fuels distrust and political violence, why millions of voters reject party labels altogether, and how independents have become the largest—but least represented—segment of the electorate. These episodes explore efforts to reform or bypass party structures through ballot initiatives, the internal struggles redefining both major parties, and debates over whether parties can rebuild broader, more inclusive coalitions across race, class, and ideology. From critiques of party orthodoxy to visions of multiracial populism and pragmatic reform, these conversations illuminate the tensions reshaping American politics.
Together, these episodes underscore a central democratic challenge: political parties can either serve as bridges in a pluralistic society or become weapons in an endless zero-sum struggle. The future of democracy depends on whether parties can recover their role as institutions that organize disagreement without destroying trust. Understanding how parties function—and malfunction—is essential to understanding how power flows in a democracy, and whether it can still be governed by the people rather than divided against itself.
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Julia and Lee talk with Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman about the evolution of political parties in the United States. Rosenfeld is an is Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University and Scholzman is a Joseph and Bertha Bernstein Associate Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University. They are the authors of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Princeton University Press, 2024).
Why are parties locked in a polarized struggle for power? How did Biden’s nomination illustrate party hollowness? How has the political economy of parties shifted? These are some of the questions Lee and Julia ask in this week’s episode.
Listen to the full episode on Politics in Question: What is the role of parties?
Political violence is rising in the United States, with Republicans and Democrats divided along racial and ethnic lines that spurred massive bloodshed and democratic collapse earlier in the nation’s history. The January 6, 2021 insurrection and the partisan responses that ensued are a vivid illustration of how deep these currents run. How did American politics become so divided that we cannot agree on how to categorize an attack on our own Capitol?
In the new book Radical American Partisanship, Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe bring together four years of studying radicalism among ordinary American partisans. They draw on new evidence—as well as insights from history, psychology, and political science—to put our present partisan fractiousness in context and to explain broad patterns of political and social change.
Mason joins us this week to discuss the findings and the rocky path toward making the United States a fully-realized multiracial democracy She is an associate professor of political science at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.
Listen to the full episode on Democracy Works: The roots of radical partisanship
Independent voters make up well over 40 percent of the voting public. But you wouldn’t know that from media coverage, which focuses almost exclusively on red vs. blue. Independents are often overlooked and misunderstood by political professionals, journalists, and pundits.
In this podcast episode, we look at this group of voters and learn why they’re disillusioned with the two main political parties. The number of American voters who identify as independent is at a record high.
Our guests are Jackie Salit and John Opdycke. Jackie is the author of Independents Rising and president of Independent Voting, an organization dedicated to bringing respect, recognition, and reform to independent voters. John Opdycke is president of Open Primaries, which campaigns for primary elections in which every American can vote, not just Republicans or Democrats.
Listen to the full episode on Let's Find Common Ground: Independents: America’s Largest Voting Bloc with Jackie Salit and John Opdycke
By design, ballot initiatives require coalitions that cross party lines to secure the votes needed to win. Some campaign organizers view this rule as an opportunity to create new political coalitions and break through polarization.
The polarization that exists in U.S. politics has some voters questioning the integrity of our two-party system—whose interests are the politicians really representing? Ballot initiative organizers claim that they are building new coalitions that transcend party lines, and unite voters on their values, not their partisan affiliations. In doing so, they echo progressive reformers of the past, who created big changes and prompted observers to call their work part of an “invisible third party of reform.”
Ballot initiatives that are largely popular with everyday citizens, like Medicaid expansion and voting rights restoration, but that are seen by politicians as too progressive for bipartisan support, are finally reaching voters at the ballot box. In this episode, we examine how the current era of political reformers ushers in alternatives to stalled legislation by going beyond party lines and bringing the issues straight to voters, and asking the question, what do ballot initiatives say about the kind of political system we want in the U.S.?
Listen to the full episode on When the People Decide: The invisible third party of reform
Patrick Ruffini joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career as a Republican pollster and his book "Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP".
Listen to the full episode on The Great Battlefield: Party of the People (with Patrick Ruffini)
Mike talks with former Democratic activist Lisa Ekman, whose recently released book is titled Deprogramming Democrats & unEducating the Elites: How I Escaped the Progressive Cult.
Topics Mike & Lisa discuss include:
Listen to the full episode on The Politics Guys: Deprogramming Democrats: Why Insider Lisa Ekman Left the Party
How did one of our major political parties abandon its principles? And what do voters make of that shift?
Host Alex Lovit is joined by Sarah Longwell—a political strategist who broke from the Republican party when it acquiesced to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. She went on to cofound a media outlet (The Bulwark) and an advocacy organization (Defending Democracy Together) to advance pro-conservative causes. She’s also the host of The Focus Group podcast and a senior fellow at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
Listen to the full episode on The Context: Sarah Longwell: The Republican Party Has Abandoned Its Principles
Why aren’t Democrats doing much better in elections for Congress and also in state races? We explore several reasons. One is that Democrats have been losing the support of many black, white and hispanic working class voters. We heard a forceful argument about that in "How Do We Fix It?" episode #389 with Ruy Teixeira.
In this show we expand the argument and look at another group of voters often ignored by Democratic party leaders— Christians and especially Catholics who are among the largest group of swing voters.
This is a shared podcast with "Talkin' Politics and Religion Without Killin' Each Other". Their show and ours are members of the Democracy Group podcast network, Our guest is Lanae Erickson, Senior Vice President at Third Way, a center-left think tank that champions pragmatic liberal ideas. She spoke earlier this year with Talkin' Politics and Religion's host, Corey Nathan. Thank you, Corey, for giving us permission to share an edited version of a rich and thoughtful conversation.
We hear from Lanae about why she's a pragmatic progressive. She argues that the only way America can make lasting progress on major issues is to include different sides in a debate. We learn why so many elected officials and activists treat public policy as an all or nothing proposition.
"I would say we should try to get what we could done, and then do it again, do it again and do it again, instead of holding out and making the perfect the enemy of the good," she told Corey Nathan.
As Senior Vice President for Social Policy & Politics at Third Way, Lanae tackles hot-button issues like immigration, abortion, religious liberty, education and guns. Previously, Lanae served as a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Her commentary has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, Politico and PBS NewsHour. Lanae is also principal second violinist in Washington DC's Capital City Symphony.
Listen to the full episode on How Do We Fix It?: A Bigger Tent for Democrats: Lanae Erickson
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