Development of the two-party system in the United States
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Since the 1790s the country has been run by two major parties. Since the Civil War, they have been the Republican and Democratic parties. Many minor or third political parties appear from time to time. They tend to serve a means to advocate policies that eventually are adopted by the two major political parties, e.g.parties such as the Socialist Party, the Farmer Labor Party and the Populist Party for a few years had considerable local strength, then faded away.
Most officials in America are elected from single-member districts and win office by beating out their opponents in a system for determining winners called first-past-the-post — the one who gets theplurality wins, (which is not the same thing as actually getting a majority of votes). This encourages thetwo-party system; see Duverger's law.
Another critical factor has been ballot access law. Originally voters went to the polls and publicly stated which candidate they supported. Later on, this developed into a process whereby each political party would create its own ballot and thus the voter would put the party's ballot into the voting box. In the late nineteenth century, states began to adopt the Australian Secret Ballot Method and it eventually became the national standard. The secret ballot method ensured that the privacy of voters would be protected (hence government jobs could no longer be awarded to loyal voters) and each state would be responsible for creating one official ballot. The fact that state legislatures were dominated by Democrats and Republicans provided these parties an opportunity to pass discriminatory laws against minor political parties, yet such laws did not start to arise until the first Red Scare that hit America after World War I. State legislatures began to enact tough laws that made it harder for minor political parties to run candidates for office by requiring a high number of petition signatures from citizens and decreasing the length of time that such a petition could legally be circulated.
Another factor is the parliamentary system. Third parties thrive under the parliamentary system in which governing coalitions are formed after elections. The United States is not a parliamentary system, and indeed, in the United States, it could be said that coalitions are formed before elections under the umbrella of party organizations.
It should also be noted that while the overwhelming majority of elected officials do identify with a political party, the political parties of the United States are much more individualistic than in other political systems (i.e. in a parliamentary system). More often than not, party members will "toe the line" and support their party's policies, but it is important to note that they are free to vote against their own party and vote with the opposition ("cross the aisle") if a particular policy is counter to the priorities and interests of their constituents. Recent examples of this can be seen in such highly controversial matters as Social Security reform, the federal budget, and some environmental policies.
"In America the same political labels — Democratic and Republican — cover virtually all public officeholders, and therefore most voters are everywhere mobilized in the name of these two parties," says Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science, in the book New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution. "Yet Democrats and Republicans are not everywhere the same. Variations — sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant — in the 50 political cultures of the states yield considerable differences overall in what it means to be, or to vote, Democratic or Republican. These differences suggest that one may be justified in referring to the American two-party system as masking something more like a hundred-party system." Pei Kei.
