In the "This Old Democracy" episode featuring political scientist Daniel Schlozman, host Micah Sifry dives into the structural weaknesses plaguing American politics, a central theme in The Hollow Parties, which Schlozman co-authored with Sam Rosenfeld. The core argument they make is that modern political parties are "hollow shells"—top-heavy, poorly rooted, and disconnected from the everyday lives of citizens, leading to a profound crisis of democracy.

The conversation starts out with Schlozman and Sifry exploring the concept of movement anchors for political parties, and how that historically has worked for both major parties, albeit with different movement partners. For a long time, the Republican Party maintained a powerful alliance with the Christian Right and the Democratic Party had a robust anchor in organized labor. But Schlozman asserts that both movement anchors are much weaker now.

Amid this vacuum, Schlozman says that, "what Trump has done more effectively than Democrats is to take advantage of exactly the disorganization of civil society and figure out how to appeal to people who are not embedded in the same kinds of thick organizations, whereas Democrats have not done that."

Sifry underlines Schlozman's conclusion saying, Trump " has intuited how to be what I think Henry Timms referred to in his book on new power versus old power as the platform strongman."

The conversation ultimately steers toward solutions, directly addressing the push for systemic change. While Schlozman expresses skepticism that a multi-party system (like the kind advocated by Lee Drutman) is a silver bullet—citing the transnational nature of anti-establishment populism and hollow parties all over the world—he is more optimistic about institutional reform at the state and local levels. He sees these "laboratories of democracy" as fertile ground for experimenting with alternatives, which could include reforms like proportional representation or fusion voting, that might foster more responsive and civically-rooted parties.

The episode leaves listeners with a double-sided coin: Schlozman, who is first and foremost a political historian, argues that understanding history confirms that political actors can enact grand change for the better, but also that things can change for the worse. Ultimately, finding hope, he says, requires looking beyond the national "deep structural gloom" and embracing the hard, useful work of reforming our system from the ground up.

Give it a listen to hear some smart thinking and some healthy skepticism from one of America's most important scholars of contemporary and comparative politics.