America's Two-party Political System

America has developed a two-party political system, and the parties serve a number of important roles in the political and social structure of the nation. The Republicans and the Democrats have constituted the two parties for more than a century, though these were not the first political parties in the nation. They have also not had the national stage entirely to themselves, for third parties have come into being at times of dissatisfaction with the tenets or performance of the two primary parties. These third parties have either fallen by the wayside or continue as minor parties. There is much discussion today of the potential for a third party to develop, and one of the reasons for this is the perception that the Republicans and the Democrats are not that different and do not represent the interests of a large portion of the electorate. While it seems likely that the two-party system will persist, it also seems likely that third-party challenges to the system will also continue.

The Founding Fathers did not want political parties and so excluded them from the Constitution, but at the same time they knew that factions would develop. Madison wrote about the near-inevitability of factions in The Federalist Papers, and he said that the causes of faction are part of the nature of the human being. Political parties did indeed develop in the new country, and it appears that this was easily predicted given the tendency of the individual to seek others of like mind and to a

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their vital interests. Federalist leadership was mainly drawn from elites who had achieved positions of prominence before or during the Revolution. . . Republican leaders were more often ambitious newcomers, outsiders who had been excluded by dominant groups from positions of prestige and power (Goodman 78). Both the Federalists and the Republicans worked to build elaborate party mechanisms in the various states, but the Federalists were less successful, and the party could not sustain itself as a national party. The Federalists and the Republicans constituted the first American party structure, and by the election of 1824 that system had disintegrated. The political environment was different as the second party system started in that same year as states no longer chose electors by the legislature but instead by popular vote. This change gave a popular dimension to the presidential contest and added to the need for state party machinery (McCormick 26-29). The parties that now emerged were the Whigs and the Democrats. The second party system also saw a shift from the caucus to the convention as a way of choosing candidates (McCormick 329-347). After 1852, there was a push for the formation of new party structures, in part

Category: Government - A