The Institution of the Duopoly

In a post at TPMDC, Eric Kleefield considers whether the GOP should still be considered a national party. Summing up an interviewee's take on the question, he writes: "technically the GOP is still a national party -- but this is simply because the legal structures in this country have institutionalized the two-party system" (emphasis added). This is a perfect example of duopolist ideology at work, in which agency is obfuscated and the results of political antagonism are framed as if they simply materialized out of thin air. Of themselves, the country's "legal structures" have institutionalized nothing. Rather, the legal structures under consideration are themselves the institionalization of the two-party system, and they were institutionalized by duopolist politicians seeking the advantage of their mode of political hegemony.