Presidential Elections in the American Political System

1971 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Robert D. Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Party System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
American Party

The founders of the American republic did not, by and large, like political parties. Their whole political tradition taught them to identify “faction” and “party” with the irrational and disruptive tendencies in human life, with “passion” and “interest.” Against this they set constitutions, first the British Constitution, then the written American Constitution of 1787 as rational artifices or constructions designed to thwart “the spirit of party and faction.” Yet the very men who left their political testaments against party were also the creators of the first American party system, the heroes whose rites the parties celebrate down to the present.

Types of Primary and Party Responsibility

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Ralph Telford
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Government School ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Party Members ◽  
American Party ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Responsible Party

A chief criticism of the American party system is the lack of party responsibility. In the view of some students, one characteristic of our political system that contributes to this irresponsibility is the practice in some states of allowing individuals to vote in primaries without regard to their partisan allegiances. In such an open primary Republicans may, if they wish, vote in the Democratic primary, and vice versa. The contrasting, and more common, practice is the closed primary, in which participation is restricted to party “members.” Some political scientists think that the closed primary, by subjecting legislators to the presumed discipline of periodic scrutiny by their party's members, induces a greater measure of party regularity than the open primary, in which the official has to satisfy a more motley clientele. This position was taken in the best-known statement of the “party government” school, the 1950 report of the APS A Committee on Political Parties:The closed primary deserves preference because it is more readily compatible with the development of a responsible party system…. on the other hand, the open primary tends to destroy the concept of membership as the basis of party organization.Other political scientists have expressed doubts about this presumed relationship between primaries and party responsibility, but there has been no systematic empirical evidence on the point. This paper will examine the relationship between primaries and party responsibility by comparing the party regularity of senators from open primary and closed primary states.

scholarly journals Policy Preferences Of Political Party Leaders And The Mass Public: A Southern Perspective

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mark C. Ellickson
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Vital Functions ◽  
American Party

In recent years there has been a steady stream of literature proclaiming the decline of the American party system (Burnham, 1976; Kirkpatrick, 1978; Ladd, 1982; Crotty, 1984, 1985; Konda and Sigelman, 1987). It is argued that the parties have been losing their “ relevance,” their critical capacity in responding to social needs and problems (Eldersveld, 1982; Miller and Wattenberg, 1983). This allegation entails serious ramifications as political parties have long been viewed as performing many vital functions in the American political system (Leiserson, 1958; Sorauf, 1984).

New Perspectives on British Local Government

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Howard A. Scarrow
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Pressure Group ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
American Party

It is both humbling and encouraging to recall notions that Americans once entertained of the British political system. Critics of F.D.R. looked enviously at the British Parliament for its reputed ability to hold the executive firmly accountable for its actions. Somewhat later, observers on both sides of the Atlantic supposed that Britain was blessed with an absence of pressure groups. Would-be reformers of the American party system further implied that British voters cast their ballots according to the content of party programs, and that party cohesion was the result of discipline imposed by a centralized party organization able to deny renomination to recalcitrant M.P.'s. Careful analyses of intra-party workings, pressure-group activity, and voting behavior have now dispelled these and other mistaken impressions, and it seems likely that the contours of our understanding of these subjects have now been established. However, additional frontiers of knowledge of the British political system remain to be charted; one of these is government at the local level.

Party Realignment in the United States and Britain

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Party Realignment ◽  
History Of

Realignment theory is a recent but flourishing sub-branch of the study of American political parties. Over the last thirty years, the original suggestions of its inventor, V. O. Key, have been elaborated and refined in several directions and through several phases, gradually being modified to take variations in historical circumstances more carefully into account. Problems of the same kind often occur, and are likely to prove even less manageable, when efforts are made to apply the theory to another political system and culture as authors from both countries (and from neither) have in recent years tried, more or less explicitly, to use it to explain developments in the British party system. Some techniques travel quite well, and some useful insights can be obtained by looking afresh at familiar patterns in the light of similar experiences elsewhere. But the differences between the two nations and states preclude any rigorous attempt to apply a theory derived from the history of one country with a view to explaining the experiences of the other.

The Future of the American Party System

1982 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-50
Author(s):  
C. Edwin Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
American Party ◽  
Personal Assessment ◽  
Future Status

A central theme of contemporary literature on American political parties—a theme with a broad consensus that is uncommon in the discipline—is that the party system of the United States is in transition due to significant changes within the past two decades that distinguish the operation of today's party system from what it was before 1960. However, consensus is lacking as to the implications of these changes for the future status of the American party system. This paper has four broad objectives: 1. to review briefly the phenomenon of party re-alignment in American history as a useful perspective on the present party era; 2. to identify and discuss significant alterations in the party system since 1960 ; 3. to note various scenarios in the literature concerning the future of the parly system in ‘the United States and 4. to hazard a personal assessment of the scenarios as to their plausibility and probability.

The Labor Party in Ulster: Opposition by Cartel

1967 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard F. Rutan
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Political Beliefs

Almost thirty years ago Nicholas Mansergh concluded that the political parties in Northern Ireland did not fulfill the needs of the political system: that (to put his statement in more contemporary terms) the input functions, particularly that of political socialization, were enfeebled to the extent that one party constituted a permanent government while the other became an equally permanent opposition. What is more, underlying the party system and within the political society itself there existed no consensus on fundamentals: “There is no residue of political beliefs—as in Great Britain and the Free State—acceptable to both parties.”

Voting, or a Price System in a Competitive Market Structure

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Shubik
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Competitive Equilibrium ◽  
Price System ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Manner ◽  
Background Material

In this brief note it is demonstrated that if all the conditions for the existence of a competitive equilibrium are satisfied, then simple majority voting to determine the distribution of goods may be less efficient than a price system.The argument here may be somewhat cryptic for those not familiar with the work of Anthony Downs. A considerably more discursive presentation of the background material is given in “A Two Party System, General Equilibrium and the Voters' Paradox.” The tax and public goods aspect of the voting problem have been discussed elsewhere in “Notes on the Taxonomy of Problems Concerning Public Goods.” The result presented here, nevertheless, stands by itself, hence is presented in this brief form.The political system is modeled at its simplest. We assume the existence of two players called “political parties.” The goal of each player is to win an election by as large a vote as possible. A strategy for each player is to name a policy that it will carry out if it is elected. A policy is any point in the set of feasible distributions of final product. It follows immediately that, although any policy may be considered as a strategy, any non-Pareto optimal policies are dominated by some policy that is optimal. A discussion of the reasons for modeling a party in this simple manner is given in detail elsewhere. It is assumed that all voters are passive or “mechanistic,” i.e., they do not form groups but merely vote individually, selecting optimally between the two policies offered.

The Dynamics of Structural Realignment

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 775-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Elaine Macdonald ◽  
George Rabinowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Congressional Behavior ◽  
The U.S

Governments render decisions on how resources and values are allocated in a society. In the United States, Congress is the institution in which most of the key allocating decisions are made. To the extent the U.S. political system is integrated, the coalitions that form around the issues debated in Congress should be reflected in the coalitions that support presidential candidates and those that support the major political parties. We formulate a spatial theory of political change in which new ideological cleavages appear in congressional behavior and presidential elections and gradually reorganize the mass party base. The theory leads us explicitly to consider the question of dealignment and to specify conditions under which the parties will lose support from voters.

Governance and the Transition to Democracy: Political Parties and the Party System in Mali

1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Vengroff
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Ruling Party

Although many African countries have had to address pressures for democratisation and are undergoing some form of transition, Mali is an especially interesting case which could provide useful insights into the durability of democracy on the continent and elsewhere. Mali has experienced extraordinary changes in the past two years leading to the almost total transformation of the political system from a highly authoritarian régime to one which has all the trappings of a liberal democracy. Unlike most other nations, Mali was fortunate in being able to write a new constitution and hold elections without the burden of continued participation in the process by a ruling party and head of state. Therefore, the more open procedures offer a better indication of the degree to which, given the opportunity, a modern democratic system can take root in the African milieu.

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