Seth Masket has written The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How they Weaken Democracy (Oxford UP, 2016). Masket is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Denver. In a political season filled with candidate promises to challenge established party players, most have been focused squarely on national politics. The Inevitable Party shifts attention back to the states. Masket shows that state experiments with democratic reforms have often failed. From the nonpartisan legislature to strict campaign finance reform, rarely are the lofty objectives of reformers met in practice. Polarization has gone up in Nebraska’s nonpartisan legislature and enormous sums of money influenced elections after Colorado tightened restrictions on political money.
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