Walking to the train station yesterday morning, I was intrigued by this tweet from Bijan:

In this age of social media, real time networks and gov 2.0, I’m hoping we will have a viable third political party at some point.

which expresses his frustration with the existing two party system.   Now I grew up in Germany at a time when there were at first three national parties and later four (after 1983 when the Green party first gained seats at the national level).  Based on that experience, I am not sure that additional parties are really the best way forward.  Instead, my version of the tweet would be

In this age of social media, real time networks and gov 2.0, I’m hoping we will have more successful independent candidates.

The problem with parties is that they are a type of aggregation that seems rooted in information and coordination problems.  At a time when it was difficult to get enough information about a candidate’s positions out to the electorate, it made sense to join a party and have that convey the bulk of the information about what the candidate stands for.  It also made sense in that gathering funds was a difficult affair and a party could provide a machinery for that.

But over time it seems to me that parties have become too powerful relative to the individuals that make up the parties.  Now one way to put a check on the power of parties is to have more of them (as Bijan suggests), under the theory that competition will limit power (as it does in the marketplace).  My worry though is that a new party is most likely to emerge on the extremes of the political spectrum and then wield undue influence as they suddenly become necessary partners in a governing coalition (politics in Israel is an unfortunate illustration of that).

A better outcome, I believe, would be to have a number of strong, centrist independents in both the house and the house who would have their own direct (social network based) platform.  The hope then would be that these independents could be the source of legislation that does in fact get bi-partisan support (due to its “neutral” origin).