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119 Colum. L. Rev. Online 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/sidbarc119 and id is 1 raw text is: COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW ONLINE VOL. 119 JANUARY 30, 2019 PAGES 1-17 THE PROBLEM OF IRRESPONSIBLE PARTY GOVERNMENT Michael S. Kang* INTRODUCTION American party politics may be as nationally competitive as they have ever been, but at the same time they are perhaps as unresponsive to aver- age citizens as they have been in a long time. It is this paradox that Professor Tabatha Abu El-Haj creatively interrogates in her essay, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights and the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government. Of course, the major political parties are the subject of constant aca- demic criticism these days, but Professor Abu El-Haj's critique of today's parties is distinctive. Contemporary criticism of the parties largely targets what most see as the excessive partisanship running rampant in American politics. This hyperpartisanship spills off many ugly byprod- ucts, including legislative gridlock, democratic unresponsiveness, and toxic antipathy among partisans.2 Professor Abu El-Haj recognizes all these symptoms of hyperpartisanship, but unlike most critics she identi- fies and focuses on the parties' withdrawal from traditional associational politics as the most noteworthy cause.4 The parties, as Professor Abu El- Haj describes, have increasingly become elite-directed, campaign finance- focused vehicles driven overwhelmingly by ideological missions. What have gradually faded from party politics are thick social networks that once undergirded the major parties, in which volunteers, rather than donors, take the lead.' The consequence, in Professor Abu El-Haj's view, has been that the parties spun off toward the ideological extremes, * William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Many thanks to Christine Thomas and Ella Vacca for outstanding research assistance. 1. Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights and the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 1225 (2018). 2. See Michael S. Kang, Gerrymandering and the Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship, 116 Mich. L. Rev. 351, 411-18 (describing hyperpartisanship's negative consequences). 3. See Abu El-Haj, supra note 1, at 1226-27 (listing the ways the United States is failing to live up to its intended democratic function). 4. See id. at 1231 (arguing that reforming political parties as associations is the way to solve the current political crisis). 5. See id. at 1230 (To the extent there is accountability today, it is almost entirely to party donors and ideological groups.). 6. Id. at 1269. 1

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