There are few things more fun than sitting back and watching economists fight. My good colleagues Drs. Wheeler and Haymond are in the midst of a tussle over the differences, or lack of differences, between our political parties. Their back and forth is worth a read.

In some ways, this is the argument between those who are engaged and those who are not, or those who are cynical and those who are not. I am not saying Dr. Wheeler’s pessimism is either cynical or disengaged, because I know they are not, but these are the kinds of debates that often divide those who are part of the political process and those who press their face against the glass from the outside.

I am not sure I agree with either Haymond or Wheeler. Here’s why. First, parties are too often confused for something they are not. They are not ideologies. They are not issue positions. They are, mostly, tools by which ambitious politicians garner enough support to win elections. They are the most convenient mechanism for both politicians and voters to aggregate what are really individual transactions. In this sense, they are so efficient that they appear to be a natural by-product of free societies.

This also means that our parties are identical in one crucial way. They are dominated by politicians who want to get elected to office. Those politicians will fashion the party so that the politician can squeeze maximum benefits from it. Both sets of partisans use their parties in this way, which translates, in our current reality, to high levels of spending and crony capitalism because those things are the safest path to re-election. In this way, I agree with Dr. Wheeler.

At the same time, I do think that the parties have to reflect some essential set of beliefs in order to induce voters to support them. Therefore, there are limits to what parties, and those who inhabit them, will or will not do. There is a range of possibility connected to each party once it is in power, and that range is real. For example, there is NO WAY the Republicans would have passed the Affordable Care Act into law. There is NO WAY the Democrats would have passed the ban against partial birth abortion. Once in power, parties do have people within them who have policy goals and those goals can matter. Of course, the primary goal for most politicians is to get re-elected, which brings us back to the reality above (crony capitalism, spending, etc…). In this sense, I agree with Dr. Haymond.

I think both Haymond and Wheeler deal with this in a sense, but let me make it even more explicit. Parties are pale imitations of the ideologies that undergird them. Progressives often despise the Democrats while Conservatives generally disdain the Republicans for the same reasons. The parties do not behave or govern in a way that corresponds to these ideologies because they cannot do so. Most voters are not ideologues. The same is true for economic philosophies. The parties do not accurately reflect their underlying economic theories for the same reason. One additional complication is that even if the parties sought to implement their ideologies and economic theories, doing so within a political context that includes other parties and a multitude of other political actors and factors is impossible and always a disappointment, even when attempted. Generally, autocratic governments can transmit ideas into reality more fully, but free ones struggle in doing so, except for in rare circumstances.

Finally, whether or not our parties are similar or different, they exist to win elections so that those within them can achieve their goals. Parties behave as they do in light of their context. If our parties are similar or different, they are that way because that is politically expedient for the parties and partisans. If we want parties that are different and distinctive, and ones that actually attempt to implement their rhetoric, they will do that only when it is politically expedient. Parties are, like the government they infest, reflections of the electorate in which they function. We have precisely the parties we deserve.