In the United States, the founders were dead set against parties. Indeed, in most countries, parties operate in a realm little regulated by statutory law. However, they are not part of the formal definition of democracy nor do the constitutions of most democracies dictate a role for parties. Political parties are endemic to democracy. RESEARCH ON POLITICAL PARTIES: WHAT ARE THE ISSUES? The Origins of Political Parties For a sampling of recent contributions, see Rohde 1991, Cox & McCubbins 1992, Schickler & Rich 1997, Krehbiel 1993 and JM Snyder & T Groseclose, unpublished manuscript. Space limitations force me to ignore some streams of research, in particular the burgeoning literature on the behavior of legislative parties. For discussions of parties in nondemocratic systems, see Duverger 1963, LaPalombara & Weiner 1966, Janda 1993. I restrict my discussion to political parties in democracies. In the first section I review prominent currents of research about political parties in postwar political science. I turn to that task in the second section. In this review, I outline the competing positions in this debate and suggest directions for empirical research that may help settle it, or at least move it to a fully normative plane. It will not be settled until some agreement is reached about the nature of parties-what their objectives are and how they are structured. The debate over political parties-are they an inevitable evil? Are they what makes democracy democratic?-remains unsettled. In addition to inducing governments to be responsive to citizens, parties are reputed to give order to legislative processes, reduce problems of multidimensionality of the issue space, and permit voters an object to hold to account. In one view, parties promote interests that are partial (note the common etymology) or extremist in the other, parties are the link between citizen interests and government actions. Perhaps because their normative world is ordered not around notions of the public good but around the effective representation of inevitably conflicting interests, positive democratic theorists are more likely to view parties not as a weed but as a necessary microbe lodged deep in the digestive tract-not pretty, but vital to keeping the body politic in good health. Early postwar political scientists in the United States yearned for a strengthening of parties that would allow “party government” their aspirations are echoed today by observers of new democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America who blame the shortfalls of these democracies on the absence or weakness of political parties. Later normative theorists, many of them no less skeptical than Madison or Jefferson of parties as promoters of the public good, seem to regard political parties as an unpleasant reality, a hardy weed that sprouts up in what would otherwise be the well-tended garden of democratic institutions.Īmong positive theorists and empirical students of democracy, regard for political parties is higher. 1The founders of the American republic tried to create institutions in which parties and “factions” would wither yet parties appeared when American democracy was still in its infancy, just as they have reappeared in every democracy on earth. Despite this achievement, Schattschneider complained, political theorists were at the founding, and remained a century and a half later, silent on parties. Schattschneider believed that political parties “created” American democracy out of a “small experiment in republicanism” ( 1942:3) by drawing the masses into political life. Political parties created democracy…modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.Į. I also review debates about the origins of parties, about the determinants of party-system size and characteristics, and about party competition.

I review competing theories of parties, sketch their testable implications, and note the empirical findings that may help adjudicate among these theories. I show that our view of the impact of parties on democratic responsiveness hinges on what parties are-their objectives and organization. The debate about parties and democracy takes on renewed importance as new democracies around the globe struggle with issues of representation and governability. Yet, according to others, parties give voice to extremists and reduce the responsiveness of governments to the citizenry.

Political parties organize politics in every modern democracy, and some observers claim that parties are what induce democracies to be responsive. ▪ AbstractA central claim of democratic theory is that democracy induces governments to be responsive to the preferences of the people.

Political party quiz 2020