he American System as an Elitist System

. The American system as it has developed is an elitist system, based on an analysis of Congress, the bureaucracy, the domestic presidency, and the foreign affairs presidency. There are a number of non-elitist elements in American society which are promoted as the identifying characteristics of the system, among them a supposed classless social structure, egalitarian educational and legal institutions, and so on. However, the way the system operates serves the needs of a number of elites much more than the broader coalition, and in any case America does not have a completely classless society with a level laying field for all as often claimed. The political system indeed perpetuates a number of social, political, and economic inequalities between classes, racial groups, and other social and economic divisions.

Harrigan (1993) points out that American government and politics are not neutral and that any government action produces winners and losers, those who get benefits and those who pay most of the costs of those benefits: "Political processes inherently give more advantages to some people than to others" (Harrigan, 1993, 1). Harrigan further states, "The most persistent lines of conflict in American politics. . . occur around wealth and class" (Harrigan, 1993, 5). The ideal of the American system, as embodied in the Constitution, is to limit the separation between winners and losers and to see that no one group is always to be found in either category. This is an i

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so designed to restrain the presidency (Berman and Murphy, 1996, 178). The real issue, and the factor that contributes to the elitist nature of the system today, is that much of the government is influenced by individuals and groups not addressed directly by the Constitution, among them political parties, interest groups, unions, and so on. Political parties are something of a problem in any analysis of the American political system because in a way the parties have been grafted onto the underlying political structure. Political parties are not mentioned at all in the Constitution and may not have been intended at all by the Founding Fathers, but even before the Constitution was ratified there was a political division into factions not unlike political parties with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, each of which would indeed metamorphose into a political party within a short time. At the same time, there are constitutional constraints and institutional reforms that have produced a weak party system in the United States. Political parties are already subject to a form of direct democracy as candidates are hired and fired by the constituent and not by the national party. Yet, political parties have become a vital elem

Category: Government - H