DEMOCRACY & POLITICS

American Democracy &Political Parties



American Democracy &Political Parties

Introduction

When America's founders wrote the U.S. Constitution in 1787, they did not envision political parties playing a role in the government. Rather, they expected constitutional provisions such as separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism and indirect election of the president by an electoral college would deter the formation of parties. Despite these provisions, the United States in 1800 became the first nation to develop political parties organized on a national level and to transfer executive power from one party to another via an election. By the 1830s, political parties were an established part of the U.S. political environment. For the list of official elected (See Appendix)

Analysis

Today, the Republican and Democratic parties are the two main political parties in the United States. Most elected officials serving as president, congressional representative, state governor or state legislator are members of one of these parties. The Republicans and Democrats have dominated American politics since the 1860s, and every president since 1852 has been either a Republican or Democrat.

In the 110th Congress, which convened January 4, the House of Representatives has 233 Democrats and 202 Republicans. The Senate has 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and two independents, both of whom will meet to determine and implement policy (caucus) with the Democrats. In a November 2006 Gallup Poll (a leading barometer of public opinion operated by the Gallop Organization), approximately 59 percent of Americans identified themselves as either Republicans or Democrats. Those who say they are independents normally have partisan leanings and often are more loyal to one of these two political parties than to the other.

The most common method for electing national and state legislators in the United States is the "single-member" district system. This means that whoever receives a plurality of the vote (that is, the greatest number of votes in any given voting district) is elected. Unlike proportional systems, the single-member district arrangement permits only one party to win in any given district. The single-member system thus creates incentives to form two broadly based parties with sufficient popular appeal to win legislative district pluralities.

Support for American parties is multiclass and broadly based. With the exception of African-American voters -- about 88 percent of whom voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2004 presidential election -- both the Republican and Democratic parties draw significant levels of support from virtually every major U.S. socioeconomic and ethnic group.

Compared to political parties in other democratic nations, political parties in the United States tend to have relatively low internal unity and lack strict adherence to an ideology or set of policy goals. Generally, Republicans have tended to support limiting federal powers and protecting the authority of state and local governments, to take a conservative approach to taxation and spending, and to oppose government interference with free enterprise. In contrast, Democrats have tended to take a more expansive view of the powers of the federal government, to support raising and spending money to address social ills on a national basis, and ...