A science-backed New Year's resolution to help fix American politics

[Commentary] Political polarization and the ills of the contemporary campaign finance system are two of the most vexing political conundrums of our time. A recently published book by political scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst posits that these vexing phenomena are not unrelated. The authors cleverly leverage the widely differing set of campaign finance laws in the 50 American states to show that our current set of restrictive campaign finance laws exacerbates political polarization. They think of the campaign finance world as being divided into two groups: "pragmatists" and "purists." The pragmatists primarily want to win elections. Period. The purists are ideologically motivated. They seek to make an impact on policy, sometimes with respect to specific issues. Campaign finance laws directly affect the relative balance between pragmatists and purists in the parties.

It might be difficult to convince America that parties are good, but that's exactly the case. To all those Americans out there screaming for some mechanism that will help them to gain political power, represent their interests, and take government head on, we already have such organizations — they're called parties. Parties, as the research shows, are a moderating force in politics, when the formal parts of them are strong and empowered. If you want to make a meaningful New Year's resolution that will help the country and not just you, then vow only to donate to the formal parties and not give a single dime this election season to individual candidates. At the national level for Democrats that would be these: DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and for Republicans, these: RNC, RNCC, NRSC.

[Jennifer Victor is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Mason University]