Responsible Party Government, 1885

Abstract

Looking at government from a practical and business-like rather than from a theoretical and abstractly-ethical point of view,—treating the business of government as a business,—it seems to be unquestionably and in a high degree desirable that all legislation should distinctly represent the action of parties as parties. I know that it has been proposed by enthusiastic, but not too practical, reformers to do away with parties by some legerdemain of governmental reconstruction, accompanied and supplemented by some rehabilitation, devoutly to be wished, of the virtues least commonly controlling in fallen human nature; but it seems to me that it would be more difficult and less desirable than these amiable persons suppose to conduct a government of the many by means of any other device than party organization, and that the great need is, not to get rid of parties, but to find and use some expedient by which they can be managed and made amenable from day to day to public opinion.

Future U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) wrote the study of congressional government from which this is taken as his doctoral thesis for Johns Hopkins University. Wilson’s interest in British politics is clearly evident in the book’s prescription to improve American politics by changing relations between the President and Congress. Though political parties are only a secondary topic of concern for Wilson in this book, he does endorse the idea of what came to be known as the doctrine of responsible parties, the notion that voters should be able to use elections to choose between parties that stand for differing principles and policies. The first excerpt below comes from a chapter on the House of Representatives, the second from a chapter on the federal executive.

Woodrow Wilson. 1885. Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Pp. 97–102; 267–269.