Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2012
Podium Presentation
Flaws of a Two-Party System
Michael Quigley
Faculty Mentor: Jonathan Day
Political Science
My paper is about the pros and cons of the current two-party political system. I
discussed how I find it to be detrimental to the political process that Washington is full of
gridlock and very little progress gets accomplished. I take the stance in my paper the
that two-party system is detrimental to progress and instead of working together for a
better system, often people develop a "us against them" mentality, where you're rooting
for your "team" to win, instead of caring whether the policy they are trying to pass is any
good. The current system encourages gridlock and discourages anyone from
compromising, for fear that their "team" may be hurt by them working with the other
"team". I then propose that a new form of voting based on ranking a list of candidates is
a great way to allow more than the two current parties into office, which would
encourage a more coalition form of government, where parties would have to work
together and compromise in order to pass any legislation.