Donald Trump is back and moving decisively to reshape American government. Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he aims to do nothing less than reset the terms of American democracy. Like Andrew Jackson, he has proven willing to do so by shattering norms that govern the balance of power between Congress and the president. The first branch is at a crossroads.

Congress faces this moment rife with contradictions. It is outwardly deeply partisan, but below the surface, still capable of a great deal of bipartisan legislation. Authority is highly centralized with party leaders, but new ideological formations and tight margins are making that power look brittle. One of Congress’ main constitutional purposes is to check presidential power, but its partisan logic is to do so selectively. These are tensions born of an age in which the parties are highly polarized but ideologies are in flux.

To imagine how Congress can navigate this turning point in the constitutional order, we must understand those internal tensions and how the first branch has navigated them so far. That is what this issue of Hypertext seeks to unpack.

As Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman argue in the agenda-setting essay that opens our forum, bipartisanship actually thrived during Trump’s first term. An important factor enabling that bipartisanship was the rise of omnibus lawmaking — a combo-meal approach in which multiple bills are assembled into a single package.

The focus now is on the Republican effort to pass a sweeping budget bill using a party-line reconciliation strategy, but there will be more legislating to do after that, and given the tight GOP majority, Democrats will have to be at the table. In fact, Volden and Wiseman — co-directors of the Center for Effective Lawmaking — show that bills with co-sponsors from both parties are more likely to become law than strictly partisan measures.

The combo-meal approach has become preferred because partisan polarization and media scrutiny have made the alternatives difficult, explains James Curry of the University of Utah: “Open committee and floor processes allow lawmakers to gum up the works, attack and embarrass their opponents, and advance partisan narratives.” Omnibus legislation has the benefit of “reducing opportunities for lawmakers to slow things down or muddy the waters with partisan strife.”

If that’s where the action is, Curry argues, Congress-watchers need to adapt — rethinking what makes a legislator effective, and spending less time focused on partisan messaging bills and more on the big, complicated packages where policy change happens.

But Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution warns that the system of bipartisan omnibus legislating may be in jeopardy. President Trump’s determination to unilaterally freeze congressional appropriations will make it harder for Democrats to trust that agreements reached on Capitol Hill will hold up in practice.

As Reynolds explains: “In a world where many of the accomplishments members are able to rack up come via attaching other items to an omnibus spending bill, a breakdown of the appropriations process—in this case, because the executive branch is overreaching its authority — threatens a key avenue for legislative achievement.”

Congress could push back on such overreach with more active oversight — a prospect that seems futile if you view oversight in the polarized era as a nakedly partisan exercise. But Matt Glassman of Georgetown University argues that more subtle dynamics have also prevented Congress from flexing its muscle: Polarization has empowered congressional leadership, and strong leadership has made for weaker committees. Feeble oversight, then, is not just a problem of motivation, but also capacity.

“Congress can harm its own standing in the separation of powers system merely by reorganizing its internal legislative processes and behaviors,” Glassman observes, and that reality “has much wider consequences than many appreciate.”

If the legislature’s trend towards internal centralization continues, it risks becoming a parliamentary-style body, “hollowed out and streamlined to become merely a conduit for the rubber-stamping of policy developed elsewhere.”

But “a parliamentary-style legislature bootstrapped onto our constitutional structure would be the worst of all worlds, destroying (the) transformative virtues of Congress, while creating a presidency less efficient and less accountable than the parliamentary executives.”

Jesse Crosson adds a missing piece to our picture of congressional adaptation: the shifting role of interest groups. The same partisan polarization that has pushed Congress toward omnibus legislating has also partisanized the “not‑so‑special interests” that once greased bipartisan dealmaking. Drawing on work with Alexander Furnas and Geoffrey Lorenz, Crosson shows how party leaders now demand sustained loyalty from groups, prodding them into “mission creep” beyond their core issues and turning them into quasi‑programmatic party actors.

The result is a Madisonian inversion: instead of fluid, strange‑bedfellow coalitions that help legislators gauge policy quality and political risk, members increasingly see the same partisan support constellations reappear, dulling the informational value of coalition diversity. Only when ideologically opposed groups line up together does a coalition now shout that a bill is both necessary and safe.

Many members of Congress cannot imagine a different way of doing business because they have never experienced it. The average length of service for Republican House members in the 119th Congress is six years, just about long enough to have figured out where to get good coffee on the Hill. But if members — and the staffers, reporters, activists, and donors who envelop them — do not understand how Congress has changed, they will not know how to navigate it successfully. They will miss opportunities to make better law — and to help restore the first branch to its constitutional role.

David Dagan (@daviddagan.bsky.social) is director of editorial and academic affairs at the Niskanen Center.

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The summer of 2024 will be remembered for many reasons, but in the future, it may just be known as “the summer of parties.”

The Democrats demonstrated their resolve by removing a sitting president during the peak of his reelection campaign, showing a capacity to execute judgments about fitness for office that many Republicans will secretly admire. This summer may have reminded politicians that political parties, when united and purposeful, can wield influence for the good of their members. 

This shift occurred amid a backdrop of growing intellectual ferment in favor of revitalizing the parties. Political scientists have long recognized, as E.E. Schattschneider famously noted, that “democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties.” Parties are essential for structuring conflicts in ways that enable voters to make informed choices, connecting citizens with the machinery of government, and fostering an ethos of forbearance. However, simply having entities labeled as “parties” doesn’t guarantee they will actually do all we ask of them, let alone reconcile the tensions among their multiple tasks. So, why are our parties failing?

The pithy diagnosis that is increasingly gaining traction is that we are trapped in a partisan paradox — a phenomenon political scientist Julia Azari describes as a condition of “weak parties with strong partisanship.” Labels like “Democrat” and “Republican” have become potent markers of personal identity for millions of Americans — telling them, at least, what they oppose. However, these identities are not cultivated by cohesive organizations that identify dependable leaders, communicate policy ideas, and transform campaign promises into effective governance. Instead, they are stoked by a nationalized media that thrives on conflict and by entrepreneurial candidates who rely on their own donors and consultants to directly court voters.

Political scientists Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld tackle this issue in their new book The Hollow Parties, which has sparked significant interest throughout the summer (including on Niskanen’s two fantastic podcasts, The Vital Center and The Science of Politics). Schlozman and Rosenfeld offer some prescriptions about a path forward, but many questions remain unresolved. A recent forum in the Boston Review centers on how reforms to the electoral process might strengthen parties, adding to the buzz generated from a major report on parties that the American Political Science Association and Protect Democracy released last year. That report, a follow-up to a much-maligned 1950 report that advocated for more ideologically distinctive parties, shifts the focus to restoring the parties as functional intermediaries. Yet despite widespread agreement among scholars on the problem, there is little consensus on solutions, and the “hollow parties” framing has yet to become widespread among political practitioners.

In other words, this conversation is just getting started, and this volume of Hypertext aims to drive it further with insights from leading political scientists. While many reformers take an engineering approach to party reform — like focusing on adjusting primary rules — these essays take a more evolutionary approach. Our contributors explore how parties have responded to broader societal changes and how they might adapt in healthier ways moving forward.

In this issue of Hypertext:

• Danny Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld elaborate on their new book, arguing that moderate politics requires an investment not just in technocratic policy but in grassroots civic life. 

• Seth Masket revisits the “party decides” thesis of presidential selection in light of the Democratic ejection of Joe Biden and the Republican embrace of Donald Trump.

• Ray LaRaja says political professionals and donors have dangerously neglected the longtime anchors of the American party system — the state-level parties — and made them vulnerable to the kinds of takeovers that a healthy political organization should be able to fend off.

• Daniel DiSalvo argues that modern communications unmade the strong, hierarchical parties of the past but that sharper factional identities can restore some of what’s been lost.

• Julia Azari explores how race has the potential to structure political conflict not just between the parties but within them in an era when old alignments may be starting to shift.

• Heath Brown examines a remaining arena of relative party strength — the presidential transition.

• Jennifer Dresden urges electoral reformers to focus on changes that would strengthen the parties rather than trying to run around them.

In addition to these illuminating pieces, more essays on the topic are in the pipeline, so please be sure to keep an eye out for them. I also strongly recommend you tune in to Danny and Sam’s interviews on Niskanen’s podcasts, The Vital Center with Geoff Kabaservice and The Science of Politics with Matt Grossmann.

We hope you find this volume of Hypertext a fitting extension of our last edition, where we debated whether moderate Democrats should consciously try to build an “abundance faction” within the party. Please share these pieces widely and keep in mind we are happy to publish response essays. If you have thoughts to share, please pitch your idea to me at ddagan@niskanencenter.org. 

David Dagan is director of editorial and academic affairs at the Niskanen Center. You can find him @daviddagan or @daviddagan.bsky.social.

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