Whipped Into Shape: The Weakening of Democratic Integrity Under Strict Party Loyalty

Part I: The Democratic Costs of Political Parties

1. Introduction

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously declared the end of history. He claimed that the ideological development of political systems had reached an endpoint—liberal democracies no longer had any scalable competition.^[1] Fast-forward to 2024: Fukuyama publishes an article in the Financial Times titled “It’s not too late to reverse America’s political decay.”^[2] Nowadays, history certainly seems far from over.

Filled with regret about the persistent signs of democratic backsliding in the United States, Fukuyama protests in the article about unrepresentative electoral laws, obstructive constitutional design, and increasing polarization and misinformation amongst the electorate. It is not difficult to recognize such problems in most other liberal democracies. However, while these factors are certainly important, addressing them seems implausible when political parties (the actors in charge of addressing them) operate according to a completely unrelated set of incentives.

According to the widely accepted and foundational cleavage theory posited by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, parties organize themselves along the socio-economic and political cleavages that their electorate represents.^[3] Initially, this seems fairly common-sensical and even conducive of basic democratic principles. Nevertheless, a closer look at the implications this model has on intra-party dynamics, particularly on inner party discipline, may actually reveal fundamental flaws about political parties as democratic institutions. While democratic backsliding cannot be explained away with such a narrow scope, any proposal intending to structurally safeguard democracy must confront internal party structures with the same rigor as any other elementary democratic institution.

2. Theoretical Background

If Lipset and Rokkan’s hypothesis that parties originate as a result of the socio-economic and political cleavages of their time holds true, then political parties must be consistently and cohesively structured to effectively represent a given side of a cleavage. After all, parties would not be useful without their ability to express and bargain on behalf of a coherent set of interests for them to gain practical political relevance. This implies that parties must be capable of enforcing this consistency internally, especially if they wish to maintain their natural share of the electorate loyal. Therefore, parties will often set up disciplinary incentives (both reward and punishment) to keep their individual representatives in line and establish an efficiently organized political unity. There is an indispensable amount of inner party discipline for this model to hold true.

However, while party discipline is not inherently negative—it can very reasonably serve the purposes already outlined—there is a fine line between political cohesion and coercion. Hierarchical structures, which are intrinsic to parties, often create incentives that tip this balance toward coercion.^[4] This risk was first identified by sociologist Robert Michels in 1911, as famously formulated in the iron law of oligarchy. Through his research of party systems and organizations such as unions, he found that all forms of hierarchical organization tend to develop oligarchic leadership structures, posing an existential dilemma for the role of party systems in democratic regimes.^[5]

Echoing this view in an interview conducted for this collaboration, the academic director of the political science program at IE University, Professor Oscar Martínez, says that “if you run an organization, like a political party, eventually, there is an inertia towards dictatorship, eliminating competition and voices.” Indeed, when power within parties concentrates in elite leadership, lower-ranking legislators become mere instruments of that central authority; their duty as democratic representatives is essentially revoked. This poses very serious questions for fundamental democratic principles such as separation of powers. Take the case of an electoral result in which the governing party also has an absolute majority in the legislative body. Can the claim be made that there is an effective separation of powers between the executive and the legislative?

Overall, the tendency of parties to become oligarchic structures is revealing of a deep internal contradiction of modern democracies which propels its backsliding. Such centralized power intrinsically lacks any form of direct accountability, meaning that the oligarchy will only serve its own interests; it is only effectively limited by competition from other oligarchies and entrenched constitutional and legal norms. In turn, parties fail to faithfully represent their voters, who are relegated to simple means for the survivorship of the party oligarchy. A robustly established oligarchy has no incentive to structurally protect democracy from erosion (much less internally) unless it is a relevant factor for its reelection. Under such circumstances, Joseph Schumpeter’s rather cynical definition of democracy can be well understood: “that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote.”^[6]

3. Discipline & Oligarchy

A pragmatic account of the mechanisms behind the iron law of oligarchy in modern party systems can be found through A.C. Grayling’s account of party discipline and whips. Within a whipping system, and any other comparable non-formalized method for party discipline, Grayling finds three particular practices used by whips that cross the line from cohesion into coercion.

First, bribery, where promotions and list placements are used as incentives to comply with orders by the head of the party. Bribery rewards those who are supportive of the central authority and brings them closer to power; it can be a tool to determine trustworthy internal allies.

Second, blackmail, threatening use of incriminating or politically damaging personal information if such orders are not abided by. Through blackmailing, relevant political figures in a party that are not immediately electorally disposable can be kept obedient, maintaining their high political value while diminishing their internal influence.

And lastly, bullying, referring to a direct reprisal through the use of peer pressure or criticism and isolation. Bullying can be used to strike down more harshly on less relevant party members that behave against their central government, purging internal dissidence and acting as a deterrent for others.

The combined total of these practices, known as the ‘Three Bs’, is a clear coercive strategy within parties that shifts the focus away from issue-based voting; self preservation within the oligarchic structure becomes the legislator’s new objective.^[7]

In other words, dissenters can be either driven out or made irrelevant in their internal affairs, while those who obey become more powerful, reinforcing the oligarchic tendency in an almost Darwinian manner. For example, when speaking of parties such as Podemos in Spain, Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, or Syriza in Greece, which intended to brand themselves as internally democratic, Professor Martínez said that “that very same democracy probably diminishes the likelihood of those political parties actually reaching power.”

Parties cease to be democratic as control becomes more important than internal deliberation.^[8] In this regard, Grayling points to the United Kingdom’s 2017 parliamentary voting to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) to proceed with Brexit. Many Members of Parliament had expressly stated that they were against such a decision yet voted in favour of it anyway due to the threat of their party’s disciplinary measures.^[9] Here, the trade-off between control and democratic principles is clearly visible. Ultimately, voters inevitably pay the price. According to Professor Martínez, “the fact that political parties are tremendously leadership dependent erodes the capacity of implementing good, medium and long-run policies that will actually favour the people.”

As previously outlined, another issue is the real possibility of a fusion between executive and legislative powers, where individual legislators’ decision making power becomes merely symbolic. Naturally, the resulting effects of these changes are not only relevant to the internal dynamic of parties, but also to the electorate, who have no easy way of responding. Wherever a closed list system is in place, people are already voting for preemptive party decisions by the time they get to the ballots; one cannot choose specific legislators that might represent them best. Consequently, instead of obtaining relevance through the political value that they may provide citizens, legislators can only do so by climbing the ladder of their party ranks according to the rules set out by its central powers. This leaves little to no room for democratic competition and inner party democracy. As Professor Martinez points out, this contributes towards a feeling of distance between parties and citizens, who “struggle to understand how these organizations that are supposed to be promoting democracy are so not democratic.” Ultimately, popular sovereignty is undermined in favour of the outcomes that central party authorities impose, clearly affecting a core pillar of democratic quality.

Overall, the encouragement of executive dominance through the ‘Three Bs’ can rapidly turn into a negative feedback loop that creates incentives for such inner party dynamics to remain in place.^[10]

4. Iron Law or Rectifiable Tendency? - Policy Recommendations

Despite the fact that this paper has painted a rather bleak picture for the democratic integrity of party systems, it is unclear whether Michels’ iron law can sustain the weight of its own claim. Instead of observing an inevitable move towards oligarchy, it seems more plausible to attribute this undeniably strong tendency to fixable institutional design flaws. After all, there is a clear variance in degree of party discipline and oligarchic structures amongst different party systems. For this reason, it seems like the iron law is more so a rectifiable tendency that can be circumvented when the right rules are in place.

In particular, the democratic design of Switzerland might be taken as an example of a party system that is largely free from such tendencies.^[11] While it would be unfeasible to put forth a generalized policy recommendation to import the Swiss direct democracy model due to the heterogeneity of different systems and the magnitude of the reform, there are several specific institutional design pillars in the Swiss system which may help avoid leadership domination in most party systems.

When it comes to constitutional design, if the problem of oligarchic structures is excessive centralized control, diffusing the power of party leadership through regional decentralization will necessarily pose a structural obstacle to the iron law of oligarchy. By allowing smaller administrative regions within a country to have more political and legislative power, parties at those lower levels will be forced to be better suited to the precise needs of their region. In this regard, the power balance between the party leadership and its lower levels is significantly evened out due to the electoral pressure to act in accordance with tight-knit regional needs. If their further proximity to the electorate allows parties to be held accountable more rigorously in a country where regions can compete with each other, as Swiss cantons do, it is only natural that MPs and regional governments will favour being more representative of those regional interests over centralized commands that do not respond to immediate electoral pressures.^[12] While this may cause less harmonization at the federal level, it is precisely such discord that fosters genuine internal deliberation instead of the oligarchic puppeteering that follows from centralized decision making.

Within electoral law, a good way of ensuring that elected legislators represent the people who elected them, rather than the whims of their party leads, is by establishing an open lists system; allowing people to choose the specific legislator within a party that they want elected.^[13] This idea should not be troublesome for anyone wishing to secure a party system with democratic integrity—you simply give voters the option (not the obligation) to be more specific in their vote. In the case of Switzerland, one may cross-out specific candidates they do not like, give a candidate more than one vote, or even add candidates from other parties to their list.^[14] Such an easily implementable mechanism, which merely reinforces democratic ideals by giving people more power over who they can vote for and may foster competition not only between parties, but within them. As a result, the way for legislators to gain relevance shifts from appeasing the head of their party to representing voters with fidelity.^[15]

Finally, the ways in which political parties are financed can be consequential in determining inner party incentives. If parties are publicly financed, financial resources will be distributed in a top-down manner that essentially makes local branches (and individual candidates within those branches) dependent on their higher-ups.^[16] Furthermore, when the survivorship of parties is dependent on past electoral performance through stable publicly sourced finances, parties lose their reliance on members and grassroots mobilizations. This creates the professionalization of political careers that bring about party cartelization.^[17] A system like Switzerland’s largely avoids these dynamics by relying on private party financing, member contributions, and volunteer-based campaigning.^[18] In this regard, leadership control over money is limited and legislators are not prompted to see politics as a personal professional endeavour (most Swiss MPs have other jobs), but as a means to upkeep genuine democratic representation.^[19]

From a legislative perspective, some of these policy recommendations may be easier to implement than others. However, when it comes to their political feasibility, the incentives that parties have to pursue these legal reforms comes back into play, further complicating their implementation. As aforementioned, insofar as parties are oligarchic, they will act in their own interest. Consequently, it is not to be expected that such oligarchies will dissolve themselves of their own volition, even if it looks good on a Freedom House report. Instead, their willingness to adopt these measures will depend on whether it is a competitive strategy in the struggle for the people’s vote. Of course, whether this matter ever gains sufficient relevance amongst voters will also largely depend on how (and if) parties compete, meaning that party systems with already deeply entrenched parties or high levels of party cartelization are less likely to see progress—emphasizing the negative feedback loop present in these dynamics. Regardless, the possibility (although unlikely) of these ideas spreading bottom-up remains open, highlighting the importance of also protecting democracy at the cultural level.

5. Conclusion

The persistence of democratic backsliding in liberal democracies cannot be adequately understood without turning attention toward the internal functioning of political parties themselves. Contemporary debates often emphasize constitutional design, electoral rules, or the informational environment in which citizens make political choices. While these factors are undeniably relevant, they presuppose that parties—the primary agents through which democratic competition is organized—are capable of translating popular will into political action. This paper has argued that such an assumption is increasingly difficult to sustain. The internal incentives, power structures, and disciplinary mechanisms that define parties frequently distort representation and weaken accountability, producing outcomes that can be incompatible with democratic principles.

Nevertheless, the tendency toward oligarchy need not be interpreted as an immutable law. As the comparative example of Switzerland suggests, institutional design can meaningfully constrain leadership domination by redistributing power through decentralization, increasing electoral accountability through open lists, and weakening hierarchical dependence within parties with alternative financing structures and rules. These policies recalibrate incentives in ways that make legislators’ focus be the voters, not party elites. In doing so, they restore space for internal deliberation and reduce the coercive role of discipline that currently defines many party systems.

Ultimately, the endurance of democratic quality depends not only on formal institutions, but on whether parties can be reshaped to serve as genuine intermediaries between citizens and power. As long as party survival and leadership control outweigh representational fidelity, democratic erosion will remain a rational outcome of political competition. Confronting this reality requires abandoning the assumption that parties are inherently democratic and instead treating them as institutions in need of the same scrutiny as any other pillar of democracy.

Part II: A Flourishing of Factionalism: American Party Loyalty in the Age of Identity Politics and Trumpist Populism

Unlike today, early Americans were discouraged from showing loyalty to political parties—a reflection of the Founders’ deep suspicion that factions could threaten the republic as a whole. This stemmed largely from the Founders’ dissatisfaction with party systems in general, given their antidemocratic potential to produce a tyranny of the majority. James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, described how a majority faction can arise in a republican system as a “form of popular government,” yet also presents an alarming danger of “sacrific[ing] to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens”.^[20] The risk of this tyranny arising, he argued, diminishes if factions are made smaller, their agenda narrowed, and their popular adherence ultimately diminished.^[21] The Founders, then, sought to cultivate not party loyalty, but loyalty to democracy itself.

Madison’s optimism, however, did not transpire as he intended. On the popular level, this failure largely occurred through the spoils system, in which government jobs were awarded to political supporters. Andrew Jackson, a key proponent of patronage, justified the practice by arguing that “any government that aspires truly to serve the people will appoint and rotate its staff rather than create a permanent bureaucracy in which civil servants view their positions as property”.^[22] Rather than viewing party loyalty and democracy as opposites, the Jacksonian Democrats mixed the two together by proclaiming that the former helps develop the latter.

Even so, the moral promise of a stable republic began to erode. The spoils system encouraged partisanship through personal profit, leading to ideological adherence at the expense of the system’s democratic foundations. Even after its abolition through the Pendleton Act of 1883 and the adoption of a merit-based system nationwide, party loyalty still prevailed at the local level through political machines, in which the local political leader—the ‘boss’—“dominated government and politics by building a community of supporters”.^[23] Money and power, evidently, assisted in normalizing popular factionalism.

Among elected officials, party loyalty became more consequential through the establishment of House and Senate whips, who facilitate communication between party leadership and lower-ranked officials by tallying and rallying party members during votes. The role emerged from the need to track voting positions during a narrow Republican margin, cementing the whip’s role as an enforcer of a united party agenda. While this boosted partisan efficiency, it also affirmed some of Madison’s worst fears.

The prioritization of party over country, whether enforced through financial incentives or top-down loyalty, turned partisan shifts into a test of American democracy itself. This dynamic intensified with rising polarization since the 1970s, largely driven by a turn towards identity-based politics following the social movements of the prior decade. Civil rights legislation championed by President Lyndon Johnson’s liberal Democrats prompted many Southern Democrats to flock to the Republican Party. From this point on, the complex economic disputes that had once split the two-party system became simplified into an equation of conservatism with Republicans and liberalism with Democrats, a dichotomy that Gideon Rose argues led to “the basis of political identification shift[ing] from policy to identity”.^[24]

This change arguably made party loyalty more personalized. What once had to be supplied externally—through incentives or coercion—could now be found in internal psychologies that “triggers basic human instincts, [...] increases the perceived stakes of the game and reduces the possibilities of compromise across the divide”.^[25] In simpler terms, voting behavior became less dependent on how Americans think, but on who they are. Political attacks no longer discuss certain principles, so much as they target one’s character.

American voters, after the mid-20th century, now “see the costs of the other party's success as unacceptable” since “many different actors across institutions see their interests as dependent on the success of their party”.^[26] This grants leaders great leverage to advance their own agenda.

Over time, this trend has resulted in affective polarization: voters consistently praising their own party while increasingly disliking their opponents beyond their political differences. According to Alan Abramowitz, between 1968 and 2008, percentage approval of the opposing party had declined from the mid- to high-40s down to the low 30s, while support for one’s own party remained steady at around 60 percent.^[27] Thus, whereas “defection rates generally ranged between 15-20% between 1952 and 1980, they have been consistently below 10% since 2000”.^[28] Identity politics has thus made it more difficult for voters to envision voting for a different party, as doing so increasingly felt like self-betrayal. As a result, common ground between parties became increasingly difficult to envision.

This adhesion to party loyalty grew markedly during the rise of populism in the 2010s, but in a new form. Whereas party loyalty had previously developed from the bottom-up, as voters personally identified with one party or another, the rise of Donald Trump fueled a top-down loyalty centered on an individual and his ideology. Among Republicans, this process began after their landslide loss in the 2008 election and the party’s fervent opposition to Barack Obama. With Democrats controlling both the executive branch and a “79-seat advantage in the House”, Republicans believed they “saw a path out of the political wilderness” if they remained unified and fought Obama on everything.^[29] This led to their portraying Obama “not just as a president from the opposing party but an extreme threat to the American way of life”, fueling concerted opposition to policies like Obamacare and promoting conspiracy theories such as birtherism.^[30] The result of this was a nearly 10-degree drop in opposite-party approval in the 2012 elections and a sudden heightening of the electoral divide (Abramowitz).

When Trump won in 2016 by “embodying [the] anti-Obama playbook so convincingly that he managed to seize the Republican Party from loyal Republicans,” party loyalty began transitioning to personal allegiance.^[31] As the leader of a populist faction within the party, Trump was able to exert control through vehement criticism of both the common enemy, Obama, and those judged insufficiently aggressive against him. His rhetorical boldness guaranteed his nomination and was legitimized through his victory in the general election.

During his first term, Trump’s approach to party control was unprecedented in its fusion of public and political loyalty through social media. His direct criticism of officials online created the impression that he was holding politicians directly accountable to the American people, while allowing him to disseminate his agenda more forcefully to his supporters. Over time, Trump’s direct messages to the American people came to be seen by many on the right as fresh and unprecedented, an improvement upon the more bureaucratic Republican party before 2015. Disloyalty or conciliation with the Democrats was framed as bureaucratic inefficiency, making moderation less tenable. Any attempt at conciliation was punished by public shame on social media, including being labeled a ‘RINO’ (Republican in Name Only). The growing use of this acronym reveals the diminishing importance of the term ‘Republican’ in favor of genuine loyalty to the figure of Trump.

Indeed, Trump’s aggressive command of social media and his disregard for the norms of political politeness online made resistance incredibly challenging. Those who embraced Trumpism after initial hesitation are often described through monarchical rhetoric as having “kissed the ring” of the populist ideology.^[32]

Name-calling further enables Trump supporters to associate their opponents with a negative adjective that simplifies the complexity of that individual’s political scandals. For instance, “Crooked Hillary” encompassed multiple scandals—such as misuse of her private email, as well as her mismanagement of the Benghazi crisis—while also trivializing them. The use of first names personalized the attacks, while also reducing his opponents to one-dimensional caricatures for the general public. Ultimately, when these simple yet effective taunts are repeated incessantly, the president’s ad hominem attacks become normalized.

Opponents have shown little leniency toward Democrats, whose support during the Trump era has largely been characterized as a reaction against the Republican narrative rather than by independent ideas. A look at the Democratic Party platforms from 2016 and 2020 reveal a growing focus on opposing Trumpist policies In 2016, Trump is not mentioned in the preamble and appears only 32 times in the entire document; by 2020, he is referenced eight times in the preamble and 120 times throughout the platform.^[33]

What’s more, the language of the Democrats’ accusations grew increasingly pessimistic throughout Trump’s first term. In 2016, the Democrats argued that they “will not stand for the divisive and derogatory language of Donald Trump” and that “this kind of rhetoric must be rejected”, while accusing Trump of having “denigrated virtually every segment of American society—and in so doing, [having] insulted the very idea of America itself”.^[34] This, rather than an impulse intrinsic to the party history, explains why the 2020 Democrats “believe in bringing the American people together, not stoking division and distrust”.^[35] In many ways, the party has shifted from being the faction of Obama to the faction against Trump, with persistent Republican attacks leaving little space for original, non-reactionary ideas, or any sort of unique leadership.

Polarization over loyalty—or disloyalty—to Trump fuels democratic backsliding in America. Leaders’ growing refusal to communicate has pushed both parties away from the political center, turning them into echo chambers. This effect is amplified by the sequential nature of party action, stemming from a growing inability to cooperate simultaneously: Trumpist Republicans move first, and anti-Trump Democrats responding in reaction.

This notably occurred last year when some of Trump’s followers in Texas pursued redistricting efforts “mid-decade rather than after a census,” as is typically the norm.^[36] As a result, California Democrats campaigned for the passage of Proposition 50, or the “Election Rigging Response Act”, which replicated the same questionable act that the Texans promoted to offset Republican gains, abandoning the state’s independent redistricting commission in the process.^[37]

Each side justified its actions as serving the voters—that is to say, their own voters—while they undermine the integrity of census-based maps and weaken the democratic principle of independent redistricting. The Republicans’ outright support for gerrymandering in Texas “to try to add five Republican congressional seats that will be won in the 2026 congressional election” further underscores their disregard for American electoral integrity.^[38] Meanwhile, the Democratic approach of ‘fighting-populism-with-populism’ celebrates a desirable outcome —nullifying the Texas gerrymandering—while simultaneously normalizing the very tactics they publicly condemn.

Democratic backsliding has been further magnified by the erosion of truth, especially through developments in artificial intelligence. This problem has been largely one-sided: just two days into Trump’s first term, Republicans sowed doubt by promoting vague ‘alternate facts’, claiming that Trump’s 2017 inauguration drew a larger crowd than Obama’s in 2009.^[39] The rejection of fact-checkers and journalists, the questioning of election legitimacy, and the frequent walk-backs by President Trump on certain policies such as tariffs have led to great uncertainty about the Republican agenda and the state of American politics.

When coupled with generative AI’s ability to produce deepfakes and misinformation, the public increasingly lacks a trusted source of objective information. Nowadays, many follow cues from party loyalists rather than independently evaluating claims. In a sense, allegiance to the party line now outweighs the objectivity of the information the party provides.

Ultimately, party loyalty in the Trump era represents a reversal of its historical function. ; What was once determined by the diversity of the voters has now transformed into a system of partisan, and often personal, allegiance. Democratic institutions cannot function without the public’s willingness to stand up for democratic principles over their party leaders and to recognize that what benefits the party does not always benefit the nation. .

The Founders were right to recognize the potential for a tyranny of the majority in the United States, but their warning assumed that the factions could still communicate with one another. If the parties now perceive each other as the enemy, and consequently disregard the preferences of nearly half the country, can this truly be called ‘rule by the people’—or democracy—at all?