Stifling Political Competition: How Government Has Rigged the System to Benefit Demopublicans and Exclude Third Parties

This work provides a much needed, long overdue, and extremely timely analysis of the current US two-party political system, relying on historical support and empirical evidence to drive home the main point: the lack of competition in the political market, just like any market, creates an environment full of inefficiencies, corruption, misallocation of resources, and no real choices. Bennett details how we arrived at our current two-party state by examining key regulations that favor the status quo, i.e., the Democrats and Republicans. These regulations have created a political market where the Democrats and Republicans act as a duopoly, limiting competition, enriching themselves via subsidies and imposing real costs on the public. The analysis rests at an intersection between key insights from political science, economics, history and political economy making the work accessible to many disciplines and others interested in learning about (the lack of) political competition and the resulting political outcomes.

Find the article online at JSTOR.