Abstract
The history of the American party system is fascinating. It has been a complex process of trial and error; even today it is adapting. It was a process characterized by both contradictory, alternating patterns of support and rejection and continuous efforts at reform and revision. In America we have struggled to develop a system acceptable to both the public and the political elites. We have repeatedly questioned the need and function of parties, and we have periodically questioned our type of party system. At the beginning, before 1800, leaders moved only hesitantly toward a competitive party system, and many people warned against it. In the nineteenth century scholars and political leaders attacked parties, developed new ones when the old seemed ineffective, regulated them rigorously, and seriously questioned their value to our society. In the twentieth century, even while the two-party system was maturing and capturing the public’s support, we have attempted to rob parties of crucial functions, such as leadership recruitment, and questioned their superiority compared to interest groups. Throughout our history, therefore, we have wavered between two sentiments and two cultures: pro-party and anti-party. In the context of persisting ambivalence about parties, this chapter will review the origins of the early parties and then sketch their later developments.
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Notes
A valuable review of the arguments pro and con is presented in Ronald P. Formisano, “Deferential-Participants Politics: The Early Republic’s Political Culture, 1789–1840,” American Political Science Review 68 (June 1974): 473–87. Formisano argues that early events and activities “did not constitute purposive party building” (p. 476) and the evidence of activity in these early days was “incipient party-like behavior” which “Burnham correctly characterized … as ‘pre-party’ (p. 486).” Other scholars have been somewhat more inclined to see 1790–1800 as the formative party era.
Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). Franklin is quoted on p. 2.
Ibid., 1–2.
William Chambers, Political Parties in the New Nation: The American Experience 1776–1809 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 32.
See particularly Ibid., chs. 1–3, for a description of these developments. See also Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), and Hofstadter, Party System, chaps. 1–3.
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 412–20.
Gabriel Almond, “Comparative Political Systems” Journal of Politics 18 (1956): 391–409; Sidney Verba, “Comparative Political Culture,” in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 518.
Robert A. Dahl, ed., Political Opposition in Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 333, quoted in Hofstadter, Party System, 7–8.
William Chambers and Walter D. Burnham, The American Party Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). They also suggest there may be a “cyclic” characteristic to these party eras — that each lasts thirty years or so, each ends in a crisis of realignment, each period accomplishes certain goals, and then a new period seems to be necessary to meet the needs of American society. See pp. 29–30, 288–89 for a discussion of these patterns.
Seymore M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967), 26–50.
Leon D. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: Praeger, 1967), 19.
Ibid., 20–21.
Scholars differ somewhat in their dating of suffrage extensions. Perhaps the most careful analysis is in Stein Rokkan and Seymour M. Lipset, Citizens, Elections, Parties (New York: David McKay, and Oslo: Universitetsforlager, 1970), 84–85.
For an extremely lucid discussion on this argument, see Seymour M. Lipset, “Political Cleavages in ‘Developed’ and ‘Emerging’ Politics,” in Erick Allardt and Stein Rokkan, eds., Mass Politics (New York: Free Press, 1970), 23–44.
See, for example, Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Methuen, 1951), 204–5.
See Converse, “Partisan Stability,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (July 1969): 1142–45.
See Chambers and Burnham, Party Systems, for a discussion of this same problem, particularly p. 280; Morton Grodzins, to whom they refer, also saw this paradox, suggesting our parties are “antiparties,” in “American Political Parties and the American System,” Western Political Quarterly 13 (1960): 974–98.
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Eldersveld, S.J., Walton, H. (2000). The American Party System: Origins and Development. In: Political Parties in American Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-11290-3_3
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