This document summarizes the history and role of political parties in the United States. It discusses how parties have become weaker over time in their ability to elect candidates, organize the government, and influence voters. Parties have less control over nominating candidates compared to Europe. Federalism and laws regulating parties have decentralized them. Voters also do not strongly identify with parties. The founders disliked parties but they emerged in the 1790s between Federalists and Republicans and became important to elections by 1800, though parties later declined.
This document summarizes the history and role of political parties in the United States. It discusses how parties have become weaker over time in their ability to elect candidates, organize the government, and influence voters. Parties have less control over nominating candidates compared to Europe. Federalism and laws regulating parties have decentralized them. Voters also do not strongly identify with parties. The founders disliked parties but they emerged in the 1790s between Federalists and Republicans and became important to elections by 1800, though parties later declined.
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This document summarizes the history and role of political parties in the United States. It discusses how parties have become weaker over time in their ability to elect candidates, organize the government, and influence voters. Parties have less control over nominating candidates compared to Europe. Federalism and laws regulating parties have decentralized them. Voters also do not strongly identify with parties. The founders disliked parties but they emerged in the 1790s between Federalists and Republicans and became important to elections by 1800, though parties later declined.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
I. A political party is a group that seeks to elect candidates to public office by supplying them with a label by which they are known to the electorate. A. This definition suggests that three political arenas within which parties may be found. B. A party exists as a label in the minds of the voters, as an organization that recruits and campaigns for candidates, and as a set of leaders who try to organize and control the legislative and executive branches of government. C. A powerful party is one whose label has a strong appeal for the voters, who organization can decide who will be candidates and how their campaign will be managed, and whose leaders can dominate all or one branches of government. II. American parties have become weaker in all three arenas. As a set of leaders who organize government, especially Congress, political parties remain somewhat strong. As organizations that nominate and elect candidates, parties have become dramatically weaker since the 1960s. A. In most states parties have very little control over who gets nominated to office. III. In Europe, almost the only way a person can become a candidate for elective office is to be nominated by party leaders. Campaigns are run by the party using party funds. Once in office the elected officials are expected to act and vote together with the other members of their party. IV. The federal government in the US decentralizes political authority and thus decentralizes political party organizations. A. Federalism meant that political parties would acquire jobs and money from local sources fighting local contests. This, in turn, meant that the national political parties would be coalitions of local parties and the national party leaders rarely had as much power as the local ones. V. Political authority in the US has of late come to be far more centralized: the federal government now makes decisions affecting almost all aspects of our lives. Yet the political parties have not become more centralized as a result. A. One reason for this paradox is that in the US political parties are closely regulated by state and federal laws, and these regulations have the effect of weakening the power of parties substantially. VI. In the great majority of states, the party leaders do not select people to run for office, these people are chosen by voters in the primary election. A. Though sometimes the party can influence who will win a primary contest, in general people running for state or national office owe little to party leaders. VII. If an American political party wins control of Congress it does not also win the right to select the chief executive of the government, as is the case in Europe. A. The president chooses his subordinates from among the persons out of Congress. Should he pick a representative or senator for his cabinet, the Constitution requires that person to resign from Congress in order to accept the job. Thus an opportunity to be a cabinet member is not an important reward for members of Congress, and so the president cannot use the prospect of that reward as a way of controlling congressional action. B. This weakens the significance and power of parties in terms of organizing the government and conducting its business. Political Culture I. The attitudes and traditions of American voters reinforce the institutional and legal factors that make American parties relatively weak. A. Political parties have rarely played a part in the life of the average citizen. The Rise and Decline of the Political Party The Founding I. The Founders disliked parties, thinking of them as “factions” motivated by ambition and self- interest. A. The hostility towards parties was understandable: the legitimacy and success of the newly created federal government was still very much a doubt. B. Before political parties could become legitimate, it was necessary for people to be able to separate in their minds quarrels over policies and from disputes over the legitimacy of the new government. II. The first organized political party was made up of the followers of Jefferson, who, beginning in the 1790s, called themselves Republicans. The followers of Hamilton kept the label Federalist. A. These parties were loose caucuses of political notables in various localities, with New England being strongly Federalist and much of the South Republican. B. In 1800 Adams’s bid to succeed himself intensified party activity even more. III. So successful were the Republicans that the Federalists virtually ceased to exist as a party. Political parties seemingly disappeared.