Why Two Parties? Ambition, Policy, and the Presidency

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Aldrich ◽  
Daniel J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
New Parties ◽  
The Us ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
National Electorate

Duverger’s Law suggests that two parties will dominate under first-past-the-post (FPTP) within an electoral district, but the law does not necessarily establish two-party competition at the national level. United States is unique among FPTP countries in having the only durable and nearly pure, two-party system. Following this observation, we answer two questions. First, what contributes to the same two parties competing in districts all across the country and at different levels of office? Second, why is the US two-party system so durable over time, dominated by the same two parties? That is, “Why two parties?” As an answer, we propose the APP: ambition, the presidency, and policy. The presidency with its national electorate and electoral rules that favor two-party competition establishes two national major parties, which frames the opportunity structure that influences party affiliation decisions of ambitious politicians running for lower offices. Control over the policy agenda helps reinforce the continuation of a particular two-party system in equilibrium by blocking third parties through divergence on the main issue dimension and the suppression of latent issue dimensions that could benefit new parties. The confluence of the three factors explains why the United States is so uniquely a durable two-party system.

scholarly journals Foreign lobbying as an instrument of defense cooperation between Poland and the United States

Baltic Region ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-22
Author(s):  
V. N Konyshev ◽  
E. M. Skvortsova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Party System ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
European Security ◽  
Additional Advantage ◽  
The Us ◽  
Defence Cooperation ◽  
The Baltic

Defence cooperation between Poland and the United States significantly affects the security agenda of Russia, the Baltic region, and Europe as a whole. On the one hand, Poland intends to become a key partner of the US in ensuring European security. On the other hand, it has ambitions to take the leading position in the security area among the Baltic States. The Polish leadership sees an additional advantage in expanding military cooperation with the United States, regarding it as a jumping board to accelerating its economic and technological development. This article examines a mechanism underlying defence cooperation between the US and Poland, i.e. lobbying Poland’s interests in another state. This allows Warsaw to actively promote its interests in the US. The research methodology employed includes the periodisation of Polish lobbying activities in the US and an empirical study of lobbying based on analysis of original documents, many of which have been analysed for the first time. It is shown that, under the existing party system, Poland will not abandon strategic partnership with the United States, primarily in security and defence. Over the study period, Poland quickly gained experience in promoting its interests in the US through direct lobbying, showing flexibility in negotiations, relying on the two-party support in the US Congress, successfully coordinating the activities of its governing bodies and various corporations which are submitted to tight state control.

scholarly journals Bicycling, Birding and #BLM across America in a Summer of Chaos

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Edwards
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Rural America ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
White Violence

From 6 June to 20 August, 2020, I undertook a 76-day, ~3800 mile bicycle trip across the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In this talk I will share with you some of the amazing people, landscapes and birds I encountered, mostly in rural towns and along blue highways. The gradually changing birdscape, both in sight and sound, underscored the sensitive ecological gradients to which birds respond, as well as the ability of some species to thrive in agricultural monocultures. Rivers large and small regularly benchmarked my progress, as well as the western journey of Lewis & Clark over 200 years ago. The recent incidents in the US involving African Americans as targets of white violence inexorably caused me to festoon my bicycle with #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) signs and share my experiences on social media. I encountered a variety of reactions, often positive and occasionally sharply negative, in a sea of generosity and extraordinary kindness as I wheeled my way through towns on the brink of collapse, vast private ranches and the occasional city. Rural America exhibits an abundance of loyalty and empathy for local communities, yet it is sometimes hard for Americans – myself included – to empathize with people they have never met in person. Two imperatives I took away, with ramifications for both biodiversity and political stability, were the need to somehow bring divergent communities together and to encourage empathy at the national level, among communities that otherwise experience each other only on TV.

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1076-1077
Author(s):  
Radhika Desai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
National Party ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Governmental Institutions

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States, Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ken Kollman, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvi, 276.Mining electoral data to arrive at theories about the relationship between political party performance and party system determination and electoral and governmental institutions forms the main stream of political science. And one of its most enduring puzzles is the explanation of the patterns and diversities of party systems. With the famous “Duverger's Law” about single-member plurality systems and two-party political systems forming its point of departure, political scientists have attempted to substantiate their discipline's status as a “science” by producing theories about relationships between measurable political variables.

scholarly journals Why the current Peak in Populism in the US and Europe? Populism as a Deviation in the Median Voter Theorem

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filipa Figueira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Spectrum

The current surge of populism in Europe and the United States calls for further analysis using public choice tools. In this article, populism is modelled as a deviation from the normal state of the median voter theorem. This study adds to the public choice literature by proposing a model of populism which is suited, not only to left-wing populism, but also to other forms of populism prevalent in Europe and the United States today. It is argued that, due to changes in the assumptions underpinning the median voter theorem, the operation of the model can be modified, and as a result surges of populism occur. Those assumptions concern: the political spectrum; the distribution of ideological preferences; sociological, psychological and historical factors; political party competition; and extreme political preferences. It is shown that the current peak of populism in Europe and the United States can be explained through a simultaneous change in all of these aspects, leading to a “perfect storm” of populism. 

Electoral and Party Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-78
Author(s):  
André Blais ◽  
Shaun Bowler ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The U.S

Electoral laws are often regarded as the key factors structuring party competition. Yet, despite having very similar electoral systems, reflecting a shared colonial legacy, the United States (U.S.) and Canada have had very different party systems. For the past 100 years, the U.S. is perhaps the most consistently two-party system among the world’s major democracies, but during this same period Canada has experienced considerable variation in the number of parties represented in Parliament at the national level. This chapter addresses both the causes and consequences of this puzzling divergence in party systems in the two countries. We also compare a number of other features of the two nation’s electoral institutions, including campaign finance rules, rules for constituency boundary drawing, bicameralism, and the mechanism for the selection of the executive, with particular attention to the U.S. Electoral College and its alleged link with two-partyism. We also examine the policy consequences of the divergence in party systems and look at the way in which party competition in the two countries may affect voter turnout.

scholarly journals The third alternative: Latino immigration from the United States to Canada, 1980 to 2009

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Edward S. Shihadeh ◽  
Frank Trovato ◽  
Raymond E. Barranco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Legislation ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Latino Immigration ◽  
Economic Recessions ◽  
The Us

Using a 30-year time series of national-level data, this study examines the determinants of immigration from the United States to Canada among those whose mother tongue is Spanish. Our results reveal that over the last three decades, Spanish mother-tongue immigrants to Canada increasingly originate from the United States. The trend exhibits two basic patterns. Over the long term, there is a rise in Spanish mother-tongue immigrants coming to Canada from the US, which, in a multivariate context, appears to be linked to the rise in the proportion of Latinos in the US population, as well as to the rise in anti-immigration sentiment in the United States. In the short term, such immigration appears to rise in response to economic recessions and to anti-immigration legislation in the United States. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The Recent Unpleasantness

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Jack M. Balkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Party System ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Difficult Transition

American politics appears dysfunctional because the country is going through a very difficult transition. Understanding politics in terms of recurring cycles can offer some hope in troubled times. There are three cycles at work: a cycle of the rise and fall of political regimes; a cycle of polarization and depolarization; and a cycle of constitutional rot and renewal. The United States is facing similar challenges as other constitutional democracies, but the US party system, institutional history, and constitutional structures affect the way that our politics processes these challenges. Hence there is reason for a guarded optimism. We are at the end of our Second Gilded Age, which will give way to a Second Progressive Era. Even in our bitterly polarized world, we can already see signs of how American politics will eventually depolarize, creating new opportunities for cross-party collaboration.

scholarly journals Brooklyn Gentrification and the Act of Settling in Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Carl White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
The Us ◽  
New Nation

Contemporary Brooklyn fictions, as a genre, are centrally concerned with gentrification and authenticity. This article situates literary Brooklyn and these concerns in relation to the United States at the national level. Thinking about Brooklyn’s gentrification demands one to be necessarily cognizant of the borough as a social, cultural, economic, and psychological space within the context of the US as a colonial nation-state. I argue that Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles (2016), whose titular characters are enactors of both Brooklyn gentrification and a romanticized act of settlement in a fictional new nation-state, exemplifies this link between gentrification at the local level and a search for authenticity at the national level. Through a reading of the novel, I argue that Brooklyn gentrification is intimately bound with US settler colonialism, which in The Mandibles is sustained by the novel’s representations of finance and the whiteness of its narrative focalization.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

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