U.S. Political Parties

7/1/24

Overview

Throughout the world, democracies govern nations through political parties that compete to represent the wishes of voters. Many countries go through elaborate coalition building efforts to create alliances that are strong enough to govern. The United States, however, has a long-standing history of a two-party system. Join Active Minds as we explore the reasons why political parties arose in the U.S., the issues that lead to the development of new political parties and why the two-party system appears so entrenched in American politics.

Key Lecture Points

  • The founders of the United States, in crafting the Constitution, specifically sought to create a nation of laws that offset the natural tendency of democracy to be overwhelmed by partisanship; as James Madison stated, “the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties.”   Nonetheless, groups of individuals who hold similar political perspectives and work in concert to achieve their desires have always been a part of American politics.
  • Historians have identified six distinct party systems in the history of American politics. A deeper dive into these six eras shows that the American political system has been impacted by the gradual extension of suffrage from what it was at the outset of the nation: voting for white male property owners only opened the electorate to populist movements that have repeatedly upended established party systems.  Additionally, the development of American parties hinged significantly on the question of whether the nation ought to support industrial or agricultural basis for economic power.  Perhaps the most lasting issue affecting the story if political parties, from Colonial debates over slavery to those over Civil Rights in the 20th and 21st Centuries, parties have had to take stands on the thorny issue of race.
  • A consideration of both the issues that the parties support and the geographic areas that support both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party reveals that both the political ideology and the geographic support for the parties has drastically changed from their origin points.
  • Perhaps unwittingly, the Electoral College system enshrined in the US Constitution maintains the US as primarily a two-party political system. The “winner-takes-all” system that most states employ for allotting their electoral votes means that more parties cannot gain sufficient national support to be considered viable party challengers for the office of President.  Furthermore, history has shown repeatedly that an emerging third party plays the role of splitting votes, resulting in the election of a candidate that a third-party member might not want elected.

Discussion Questions

  • Do you believe that we have entered a new political system in the last 12 years?
    Would you favor or oppose a change in our political system so that there are more political parties with a viable chance to win an election?
  • What for you was the most interesting geographic change in party systems that we discussed?
  • In the first political system what party would you have aligned yourself with?
  • Do you remember any particular elections from the 5th or 6th party system that stand out for you and why?

More to Explore

Books For Further Reading

  • Hofstadter, Richard, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840. University of California Press, 1970. 298 pages. This work traces the historical processes in thought by which American political leaders hesitantly began to embrace a party system.
  • Postel, Charles, The Populist Vision. Oxford University Press, 2009. 416 pages. This book rejects Hofstadter’s suggestion that American Populism was a backward rejection of modernity.
  • Schlozman, Daniel, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History. Princeton University Press, 2015. 288 pages. This book takes a look at events which influence political parties and the role that that plays in the shaping of the party's future.
  • Milkis, Sydney, M. Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy. University Press of Kansas, 2009.This book tracks progressive influences that start in the Republican Party and end up as a major part of first the Progressives and then the Democratic Party.