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Comparative Politics and Government
Notes General Features: Since the party system of every country has some special features of its own, the
salient characteristics of the American party system may be enumerated as under:
1. America is known for having a bi-party system. The Democrats and the Republicans are the two
major parties and the power alternates between them. In a strict sense, America may be described
as having a multi-party system as there have been several ‘minor’ parties, though their value is
equal to nothing as they have never been able to make a tilt in the distribution of power.
2. The American parties lack the essential ingredient of what is meant by the ‘party’ in other
democratic countries of the world. The element of ideology is missing. The two parties differ on
issues as they are, not on the lines of ideological commitments.
3. The American parties may be described as federations of specific interests. The absence of the
ideological factor has made them like coalitions of interests. Leading American writers admit
that no political association can be more motley than their Democratic Party and the Republicans,
for all their sterner commitments to principle and respectability are very much less of an army
with a hundred different banners. Both parties are happily described as a vast enterprise in
‘group diplomacy’.
4. The structure of the American political parties is marked by decentralisation of authority and
consequent enfeebling of discipline to an exaggerated degree. Both parties may be regarded as
loose confederacies of States parties since the locus of power is not there at the Centre. Each
party has its units at the Centre and below, i.e., at the State and local levels where its unit looks
like an independent, self-sustaining, sovereign force in the balance of political forces.
5. The American party system not only exhibits the total absence of what is ill-named as ‘bossism’,
it also shows that both parties pick up candidates for the Presidency or important seats in the
Senate from amongst those who have never held their membership. That is, each party may go
for the rank ‘outsiders’ in matters of nominations for the top elective posts.
In fine, the American party system displays “more pluribus (plurality) than unuum (uniformity).” It
would not be wrong to say that the structure of each American party smacks of a peculiar brand of
feudalism “with few enforceable pledges of faith, feudalism in which the bonds of mutual support
are also loose that it often seems to border on anarchy, feudalism in which one party does not even
have a king.”
Absence of Ideology: The absence of ideology and its presence in a different sense in the American
party system is certainly a surprising feature having no comparison with its British counterpart. An
analysis of voting behaviour in the Congress reveals that there is hardly a single issue that brings
about a clear-cut division between the two parties and a sizable proportion of their members is
invariably found on each side of the controversy. Herman Finer goes to the extent of saying that in
America there is only one political party – Republican-cum-Democratic Party -divided into two nearly
equal halves by habits and the contest for office. In the earlier days of the Constitution the division
appeared more clear, but with the passage of time, it blurred so much so that Lord James Bryce in his
scholarly study could maintain that the great parties of America were like two bottles of liquor each
having a different label but no wine.
Much change in this regard has also occurred owing to quick progress of the country in the economic
sphere. Now the factors of economics and regionalism are so inextricably intermixed with each that
the basic elements of ’agriculture’ v. ‘industry’, or the menacing features of ’solid north’ v. ‘solid
south’ no longer figure prominently. Each party, as says Brogan, is basically traditional marked off
from its rival, not by any doctrine or class but by ancestry and geographical distribution of strength.
Leading American writers endorse that no party “ever enlisted the undivided support of any entire
economic interest or group or geographical section.” Laski has put his impression in these words that
the American party system “is more like a bloc of interests than a system of principles.” It may be
easily found that both parties “are interested in the votes of men, not in the principles, and they care
not at all whether the votes they father are bestowed with passion or with indifference – so long as
they are bestowed and counted. The task that they have uppermost in mind is the construction of a
victorious majority, and in a country as large and diverse as ours this calls for programmes and
candidates having as nearly universal an appeal as the imperatives of politics will permit.”
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