Thank you for joining us, Professor Kuo, and congratulations on your new book The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t. I want to start by asking you about the functions that parties fulfill. You mention three: integrative, representative, and responsive. Could you explain what these are? Through what means did political parties in the past play these roles?
Thanks so much. While most of the commentary about parties these days concerns elections and candidates, the book argues that parties have fulfilled a much wider set of functions in the history of democracy. One is integrative: political parties are responsible for socializing people into politics. Historically, parties achieved this by recruiting and engaging citizens locally, organizing elections and providing campaign information, and working through civic associations and community groups to engage voters. Another function is representative: parties act on behalf of group interests. They understand the many disparate and heterogeneous demands in the citizenry as problems and offer solutions. As a result, parties are the primary linkage institution that connects people to their government. Finally, parties are responsive: they develop programmatic governing agendas that improve the welfare of the people they serve. This requires more than just policy ideas—it also requires elected officials to provide public goods, build up administrative capacity, and protect institutions from self-interested corruption. The book argues that parties may not be able to fulfill all these functions simultaneously, but that we should be attentive to when and how parties develop (and lose) their capabilities.
While most of the commentary about parties these days concerns elections and candidates, parties have fulfilled a much wider set of functions in the history of democracy.
Throughout the book, you argue that political parties have become weaker and less able to act as intermediaries between the people and the state. One process contributing to this that you mention a few times is what you call the “nationalization of political parties.” What is this process, and how has it changed the dynamics and norms of American politics?
The nationalization of parties refers to a significant shift in the organizational priorities and resource allocation of political parties. Since the 1970s, parties have moved from decentralized, local, and state-level operations towards more centralized, professional, and nationally-focused organizations that are focused squarely on campaigns. There’s good empirical work showing that nationalization of politics has a few consequences—for example, non-national elections may be dominated by national issues and candidates, and nationalization may deepen polarization between the parties.
The consequence of this, you argue, is that “state and local parties are no longer a locus of any significant party activity.” Yet, local and state-level politics have recently become a source of political excitement, as seen in the flurry of ambitious policy victories achieved by midwestern Democratic governors over the last few years, as well as the current mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York. Are these just examples of particularly effective candidates compensating for otherwise weak party infrastructures, or could local politics potentially offer an opportunity for revitalizing parties?
Local politics is where parties can generate actual excitement and engagement.
State and local politics didn’t cease to exist—but the presence and support of state and local parties have waned. In our work on associational party-building, Tabatha Abu El-Haj and I argue that parties should be investing more in local organizations precisely because that’s where party revitalization is likely to happen. Right now, state and local races receive attention when they are at odds with the national party: the media seizes on party infighting as a sign that something is amiss. But I agree with you that local politics is where parties can generate actual excitement and engagement: it’s where candidates can hone their messages and policy priorities, it’s where communities are most active and mobilized, and it’s where successful party factions can claim victories. Parties should seize on this excitement by offering more sustained engagement between elections. While effective candidates can compensate for weak party infrastructure in the short term, they can’t replace it entirely. As we’re seeing in the Republican party, a party that is simply built around loyalty or excitement of a single individual will only hollow out a party further.
I want to ask your opinion on the growing political science literature that argues that populist far-right parties increasingly resemble older mass parties. Of course, this trend is partial: as you note, Trump’s campaigns had negligible ground games; personalist leaders like Geert Wilders eschew party infrastructure almost altogether. However, many now build large memberships and try to inculcate community bonds. Do you think far-right movements are really building new types of parties? Is there anything mainstream parties can learn from this?
One of the hardest questions I get is about what the future of party-building looks like. Long gone are the days when ward bosses patrolled their districts on foot, or when people volunteered their time for party meetings. My students find the idea of old-fashioned party engagement dated and unrealistic. That said, no party can expect to win in the future if it doesn’t do some sort of organizational investment today. Messages and candidates may generate excitement, but traditional mobilization and adapting in response to what parties hear from voters will help any party (including far-right parties) that hopes to be electorally competitive. By all means, mainstream parties should learn from this and offer more sustained engagement or more responsive programs.
Your book ends on a bit of a sad note! You offer a list of interesting proposals that could help reverse the weakening of political parties, but then you write, “parties with power are reluctant to give it up, and any change to the system might generate new winners and losers.” What kind of reforms do you think advocates of party democracy in the US should prioritize in the new, hostile environment of Trump’s second term? Have the Trump administration’s actions further weakened the capacities of the major parties?
The second Trump administration requires a much more urgent response from parties (or any political group that seeks power, including factions or advocacy organizations): to work together now to preserve democratic rules, processes, and values. The Trump administration is weakening the two parties in distinct ways: it’s personalizing and corrupting the Republican party, while it’s attacking, demonizing, and punishing any opponents (Democrats, of course, but really anybody who has voiced opposition—including Republicans, libertarians, progressives, businesses, law firms, universities, philanthropies). Without an engaged and concerted pro-democracy defense from a broad coalition, parties will face an uphill battle even trying to win elections as the rules of the game are rewritten.
The second Trump administration requires an urgent response from parties: to work together now to preserve democratic rules, processes, and values.
We always end with a question about illiberalism. You write that “parties are not inherently democratic,” but you are adamant that they are necessary for democracy. Given this, how has the weakening of parties strengthened the popularity of illiberal politics? Do you think illiberalism is a useful term for analyzing the evolution and current state of political parties in the United States?
In the book, I argue that weak mainstream parties—as evidenced by high levels of distrust, fraying connections, and unresponsive policies—weaken support for democracy itself. Drawing on examples from other parts of the world, including Latin America and Western Europe, I point to evidence that when the parties seem too elite or unresponsive, voters are more likely to choose extremist alternatives to the mainstream parties. Illiberalism is a useful frame in at least two ways. First, many insurgent candidates claim they speak on behalf of “the people,” and they stand in opposition to liberal values of individual rights and protection of freedoms (speech, protest, assembly, religion). Second, illiberalism is now an explicit political project, articulated by Viktor Orbán, to allow space for non-democratic leaders to exist in a seemingly democratic ecosystem (with elections, courts, and some semblance of competition). Securing democracy will require not just safeguarding institutions, but also rearticulating individual rights against the state.
Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave – and Why They Don’t (forthcoming, Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: The Rise of Programmatic Politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press 2018). She oversees the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
