Chapter 27: Development of the Party System
CLEP American Government, Chapter 27
Development of the Party System
One election produces a landslide, but four years later many voters return to their previous choices. Another election begins a decades-long transformation: regions change party loyalty, new social groups enter a coalition, issues are reorganized, and repeated elections confirm a new pattern. Both elections may look dramatic on election night. Only the second supplies strong evidence of realignment.
First Party System
The Constitution created offices and election procedures but did not design political parties. Many founders associated parties with faction, self-interest, and instability. Governing nevertheless required repeated choices about public policy and leadership. Officials who voted together discovered that they could act more effectively by coordinating future candidates and supporters. Their opponents faced the same incentive. The First Party System names the first durable pattern of national competition that grew from this process during the 1790s and early 1800s.
Federalists and Democratic-Republicans
The first national party rivalry grew from decisions the new government had to make. Federalists read national power broadly enough to support Hamilton's program of public credit, federal assumption of state debts, and a national bank. They tended to draw strength from commercial centers and voters who valued energetic national administration. Democratic-Republicans feared concentrated financial and executive power, defended a more agrarian vision, and favored a narrower reading of federal authority. Disputes over Britain, revolutionary France, and the Alien and Sedition Acts turned policy coalitions into organized electoral opposition.
Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs
The Second Party System paired Jacksonian Democrats with Whigs from the 1830s into the 1850s. During the early nineteenth century, many states removed property requirements for most white male voters, expanding the eligible electorate through changes that began before Jackson and proceeded unevenly across states. Democrats celebrated and mobilized that broader white male participation, opposed institutions they described as privileged, and attacked the national bank. Whigs formed partly in resistance to Andrew Jackson's forceful use of presidential power. They favored legislative leadership, economic development, and programs such as transportation improvements, protective tariffs, and support for commerce. Each party built a cross-sectional coalition, meaning that it competed in both North and South even though slavery divided many of its members.
Emergence of the Republican Party
The Republican Party emerged when the conflict over slavery's expansion broke apart older coalitions. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed territorial settlers to decide the slavery question and effectively reopened territory that the Missouri Compromise had treated as closed to slavery. Antislavery Whigs, Free Soilers, former Democrats, and other opponents of expansion began coordinating under a new label. They shared resistance to extending slavery even though they did not initially agree on abolition, federal power, or full racial equality.
New Deal coalition
After the Civil War, Republicans drew strength from Union loyalty, northern industry, Union veterans, and many farmers, while Democrats retained much of the white South and built support in many urban immigrant communities. Late-nineteenth-century contests were often close, and conflict over tariffs, currency, industrialization, patronage, and agrarian distress kept the coalitions active. Populists pressed railroad regulation, currency expansion, and political reform. In 1896, William Jennings Bryan's free-silver campaign absorbed much Populist support, but Republican William McKinley won behind the gold standard, protective tariffs, and an industrial-growth program. His victory helped establish a Republican-centered advantage that survived interruptions. Progressivism later crossed party lines, and Republican division aided Woodrow Wilson in 1912, but Republican presidential dominance returned in the 1920s. The economic collapse beginning in 1929 discredited that order for many voters and opened the way for Franklin Roosevelt's promise of national relief, recovery, and reform.
Party realignment
A party realignment is a durable reorganization of party coalitions, issue divisions, geographic support, or governing dominance. It can occur rapidly around a crisis or accumulate across decades. The defining feature is not drama but persistence. Researchers look for groups that change recurring party loyalty, issues that reorganize platforms, regions that shift over several contests, and governing programs that continue after one candidate leaves office.
Critical elections
A critical election is the focal contest associated with unusually consequential restructuring of party competition. It may concentrate an emerging conflict, reveal movement by important groups, or give a new coalition governing control. Realignment names the durable transformation; the critical-election label identifies an election around which analysts organize the historical explanation. Scholars often discuss 1860, 1896, and 1932 because the coalitions and conflicts visible in those contests shaped later elections.
Dealignment
Dealignment is a weakening of attachment to political parties without a necessary transfer of loyalty to the opposing party. Evidence may include fewer people using a major-party label, more independent identification, weaker habitual voting, or more candidate-centered choice. Dealignment should not be inferred from one defection. A partisan who supports one unusual candidate may retain the same long-term attachment.
Divided government
Divided government exists when one party controls the presidency and another controls at least one chamber of Congress. The concept describes institutional control at a particular time. It does not tell us how far apart the parties are ideologically, whether voters are abandoning party labels, or whether a historic realignment has occurred. Split-ticket voting, midterm losses, different electoral constituencies, and staggered election cycles can all produce divided control.
Party polarization
Party polarization is increasing ideological or policy distance between the parties together with reduced overlap. Among elected officials, it can appear in separated voting records, more party-line votes, fewer cross-party coalitions, and greater disagreement over agenda and procedure. Among citizens, it concerns the distribution of policy views and partisan identities. Elite and mass polarization should be measured separately because officeholders can become sharply divided while many citizens retain mixed or moderate positions.
Regional party change
Party coalitions do not change at the same speed in every place or office. Regional party change is a sustained geographic shift in partisan support, organization, or officeholding. Researchers compare presidential, congressional, state, and local elections because a region may change first at the top of the ticket while familiar incumbents and organizations preserve older patterns farther down the ballot.
Third parties and minor parties
A third party or minor party competes outside the two leading national coalitions. Minor parties may organize around one neglected issue, a broader ideology, regional interests, or dissatisfaction with major-party nominees. Most win few federal offices, but officeholding is not the only measure of influence. A campaign can identify unmet demands, train leaders, mobilize otherwise disengaged voters, and force major parties to respond.
Barriers to third-party success
Minor parties face both institutional and strategic barriers. The central institutional barrier is the single-member plurality district: one candidate wins the seat, and finishing second yields no representation. A party can receive a meaningful share of votes spread across many districts while winning none. Presidential competition also awards one office and usually requires geographically broad support, creating a severe challenge for a small national coalition.
Two-party system and electoral rules
Duverger's law is the political-science name for the tendency of single-member plurality elections to sustain two viable parties. The mechanical effect concerns conversion of votes into seats: only the top finisher wins the one available seat, so a smaller party can earn substantial votes yet no representation. The psychological effect concerns expectations and behavior: voters, donors, activists, and candidates anticipate the mechanical penalty and coordinate around the strongest broad coalitions rather than divide similar supporters. "Psychological" here means a strategic response to expected viability, not an emotion or personality trait.
Party sorting, negative partisanship, and affective polarization
Party sorting occurs when political ideology and other important identities align more consistently with party. If liberals increasingly identify as Democrats and conservatives as Republicans, the number of cross-pressured liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats declines. Sorting can make parties appear farther apart even when many individuals did not move to more extreme policy positions; they may simply have chosen the label that better matches views they already held.
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