American Political Parties Decline And Resurgance Essay

, Research Paper

American Political Parties decline and resurganceFew elements of the American political process have changed as much inrecent years as the major political parties. For most Americans, politicalparties are essentially the government office-holders or aspiringoffice-holders who carry the party label at elections. Parties were notmentioned in the Constitution nor were they anticipated by its framers backin 1787. However two major parties – The Democrats and The Republicans -did come to the fore and it is my intention to prove that, after a centuryof rapid social and economic change, they continue to be an integral partof the political process and are still of meaning to most Americans.In assessing party strengths and weaknesses and their decline we mustrecognize that parties have to operate in diverse social circumstances,within the doctrine of separation of powers and a Federalist system ofgovernment. Parties tend, therefore, to be broadly based coalitions ofinterests; organized in a decentralized way as opposed to the ratherdisciplined hierarchical structure of many of their European counterparts. Parties are seen as manifold entities, attempting to select candidates forofficial positions, promote certain objectives and policies and strive togain government power (Epstein, 1986). Successfully operating within theAmerican system are two major political parties, the Democratic Party andthe Republican Party, and as we shall see the labels Democratic andRepublican continue to mean something to most Americans. In this essay Ishall examine some of the characteristics and functions of American partiesand focus upon the rise of candidate-centered campaigns and, wherepossible, show whether or not the party has declined. Party renewal will bediscussed in the latter part of this essay.Party decline primarily refers to a reduction in the importance of party asa determinant of voters’ decisions. In the U.S. a voter in any givenPresidential election year may have to cast a ballot for the Presidency, aU.S. Senator, a Member of the House, State Legislature, Local and Countyofficials. Coupled with this ballot complexity, complications associatedwith demographic diversity have, since the 1960s led towards electoralfracture. This fracture has manifested itself in three main ways vis- -visparty decline: the Party in the electorate, the Party in organization andthe Party in Government. The growth in the number of independents tends toconvey the sense that voters are alienated from the major parties and thatthey believe that they need to look elsewhere to gain meaningfulrepresentation. The electorate are now less inclined to identify witheither of the two major parties; with the percentage of people identifyingwith the two major parties dropping from 80% in the 1950s to 70% in the1980s – indeed one third of the electorate are now classified asindependent (Epstein, 1986). As a result of weakened party identificationthere has been a decline in straight ticket voting (this is voting for acandidate from the same party for all the offices on the ballot). Ticketsplitting between Presidential and House candidates increased from 12% to34% in the period 1952-1980 and had been on an upward trend until the 1980swhen it leveled off at around 20% for both kinds of ticket splitters. Congressional split election results have become more common in theAmerican voting pattern, that is, in seats where one party won thePresidential race but lost the Congressional race (Wattenberg, 1994).The problem for party leaders is that they are expected to promote anddevelop party unity, but are given few reasons to do so. In most Westerndemocracies the ability of party leaders to control the legislative processis predicated upon the support of a unified political party where partycohesion is strong, but, in the U.S. this has not been the case.In 1903-4 for example, 90% of the Republicans voted against 90% ofDemocrats on 64% of the total roll calls in the 58th Congress (Epstein,1986). Today there is an apparent lack of party unity in the United Stateswhich is in sharp contrast to the British system. A possible explanationfor this is that in The House of Commons the party leadership can imposesanctions on errant members, such sanctions are not available to leaders inthe American Congress. Therefore, it is difficult to hold together thevarious stages of the legislative process, or to promote a rigid partyline, which reduces substantially the chances of sustained periods oflegislative activism and legislative success. The consequence of suchdeadlock is that the political system has divided control at both theFederal and the State level .It has been argued that ticket splitting makes it more difficult for eitherparty to impose its will and assert itself on its own party values and onpolicies pursued. It is this peeling away of a collective responsibilitytowards the pursuit of individual legislation that is most evident in thevoters’ behavior and complements the tendency for ticket splitting by thevoter. This leads to disenchantment, and this has grown into cynicism aboutgetting acceptable government from either party.Electoral fracture has impinged on the importance of incumbency of the socalled personal vote. The incumbency re-election votes have hovered between90-94% for the House, 90% for the State legislature, and 65% (1976) to 93%(1982) in Senate elections. This would seem to indicate that the weaker theparty ties, the g