54 Parties: How and why did they form?
Learning Objectives
- Describe political parties and what they do
- Explain how U.S. political parties formed
Collective action is common in societies, as groups and entire societies try to solve problems or distribute resources. There are many interest groups, all with opinions about what should be done and a desire to influence policy. Essentially, political parties are groups of people with similar interests who work together to create and implement policies, to further an agenda, and to gain control of government and the policy-making process. They gain control over the government by winning elections. Party platforms often guide members of Congress in drafting, supporting, and voting for legislation. Parties guide proposed laws through Congress and inform party members how they should vote on important issues. Political parties also nominate candidates to run for state government, Congress, and the presidency. Finally, they coordinate political campaigns and mobilize voters.
In Federalist No. 10, written in the late eighteenth century, James Madison noted that the formation of self-interested groups, which he called factions, was inevitable in any society, as individuals started to work together to protect themselves from the government. Interest groups and political parties are two of the most easily identified forms of factions in the United States. These groups are similar in that they are both mediating institutions responsible for communicating public preferences to the government. They are points of access/linkage institutions available to the public, though they are not themselves government institutions in a formal sense. Neither is directly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution nor do they have any real, legal authority to influence policy. Where interest groups often work indirectly to influence our leaders, political parties are organizations that try to directly influence public policy through members who seek to win and hold public office. Parties accomplish this by identifying and aligning sets of issues that are important to voters in the hopes of gaining support during elections; their positions on these critical issues are often presented in documents known as a party platform, which is adopted at each party’s presidential nominating convention every four years. If successful, a party can create a large enough electoral coalition to gain control of the government. Once in power, the party is then able to deliver, to its voters and elites, the policy preferences they choose by electing its partisans to the government. In this respect, parties provide choices to the electorate, something they are doing that is in such sharp contrast to their opposition.
You can read the full platform of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party at their respective websites.
Winning elections and implementing policy would be hard enough in simple political systems, but in a country as complex as the Unite