Yesterday I wrote about why fascism prevailed in Germany but not in America. The conclusion, to save suspense, is that mainstream political parties were the bulwark.
Parties have been growing weaker for decades. A political party still acts as a nexus of rules, funding vehicle, and electoral heuristic. But it exercises far less authority over policy coordination and candidate choice.
Associational party building: Parties should build permanent local offices, offer citizen services, and build local relations.
Two scholars call for “associational parties”, defined as “organizationally robust intermediaries that allow for meaningful interactions between elites and everyday members of the electorate” (the idea was picked up by a 2026 report). Concretely, they want parties to build year-round local offices, hold public meetings, partner with civic organizations, and create voter feedback channels. They briefly trace the “hollowing out” of political parties via TV/internet, democratized primaries, and Super PACs. An advantage of their proposal is that it does not require legislation. They hope to increase the influence of ordinary voters over activists and donors.
It’s an attractive picture—parties as embedded civic organizations, citizens who show up. At times, however, it feels like political nostalgia, colorized and imported to our time. Their all-too-brief treatment of history is sufficient to see the problem: the internet and direct primaries are here to stay. And parties are hardly the only declining local organization. I’m skeptical you can fundamentally change party organization without changing rules, since parties are probably ~rational players in the political economy.
But maybe I’m being cynical. It would be great if parties could cultivate more member social investment. And, if there is a revival of local society, parties should do everything to be a part of it.
Institutional veto: Parties should require candidates to obtain endorsements from party officials before entering the primary.
After the 2016 election, roughly 20,000 women, interested in running for office, reached out to EMILY’s List. That’s notable because it’s a lot of women—but also because an independent organization had become a portal into electoral politics.
Jonathan Rauch and Raymond La Raja trace how third-party groups gained influence in both parties: the rise of individual donations to candidates, accessibility of media to insurgents, decline of trust in parties. This has created a thriving market for subparty associations that recruit, train, fund, staff, and legitimize candidates (Club for Growth, Tea Party, Justice Democrats, Run for Something, Indivisible, etc). As subparty groups have become core organizational infrastructure, ideological groups and individuals have become primary funding vehicles. In 1990, business PACs provided 62 percent of all PAC funding in competitive primaries. By 2016 they provided just 22 percent, and individual contributions now dwarf PAC contributions in competitive primaries.
All of this, Rauch and La Raja argue, reinforces polarization. When the party—judged by its ability to win and govern—relinquishes control of primary candidates to subparty groups, whose aims tend towards ideology and activism, the result is predictable.
The authors suggest a number of possible interventions. One possibility is pre-primary party endorsements, which might then be printed on ballots. The stronger rule would be to require candidate approval of some number of party insiders before primaries.
The report was written a decade ago but could’ve been written yesterday. The story feels important and true, and since 2016, the DSA has grown especially powerful on the left. The right is more muddled. Trump might be the single best argument for stronger gatekeeping—but, paradoxically, that would enable the now-victorious Trump to cast a longer shadow over the party. And there’s the obvious objection: it’s not, in the traditional sense, very democratic.
Worth thinking about. Two additional thoughts:
First, a 2026 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center corroborates many of the findings. Parties avoid spending on safe seats, creating space for subparty groups to challenge incumbents. Party operatives report that candidate recruitment is shared with “funded interests”—subparty groups. Between elections, some state parties are essentially reduced to a bank account, while subparty groups continue engaging. Not one of 12 interviewed political operatives believed the party should act as an ideological gatekeeper.
Second, it’s become conventional wisdom that primaries polarize because primary voters are more extreme. But the empirical tests don’t support a strong conclusion (although there is some evidence). Maybe polarization is caused less by primary voters, than by the menu from which they choose. The menu, after all, is increasingly prefixed by organized activists.
Public financing: Provide public funding for political parties.
Most people agree large donors wield asymmetric political power. But small donors, often held as a solution, are equally extreme to large donors, and probably contribute to polarization. Fundraising messages tend to be toxic. Candidate-centered fundraising substitutes fundraising capacity for electoral capability.
Constitutional jurisprudence limits regulation of campaign finance. If we can’t limit donations, we can make them less important. Providing some public vehicles for political parties could help rebuild some of the capacity subparty organizations have taken over, and reduce their need to appeal to their base. There are a whole bunch of questions here—which parties qualify, how much do they get, etc. Lee Drutman proposes that every party that clears some threshold should receive funding proportional to its level of public support.
It would be a substantial public expenditure. Parties may continue to compete for funding. And it’s not clear how much the under-institutionalization of political parties is a money problem.