Political Parties

12 Pages 3068 Words

6 has been either a Republican or Democrat, and in the post-World-War-II era the major parties' share of the popular vote for president has averaged 95.4 percent.
After the 1994 elections, there was one lone representative in Congress who was elected as an independent, while only 0.2 percent of the over 7,300 state legislators were elected as other than Republicans or Democrats. The two-party system does organize the government at both the national and state levels.
Although American parties tend to be less ideologically cohesive and programmatic than parties in many democracies, they do play a major role in shaping public policy. Indeed, since the 1994 elections, both the congressional Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated sharp policy differences and an unusually high level of intraparty unity. This has created a super-heated atmosphere of partisan conflict, especially in the House of Representatives. In an era of divided party control of the government, partisan conflict has been unremitting between Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress. In the run-up to the 1996 election, both sides have engaged in a heavy barrage of media advertising seeking to portray the other negatively on such issues as health care for the elderly, taxes and achieving a balanced federal budget. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is Republicans and Democrats who make the crucial decisions about who pays and who receives.
Salient Features of the American Party System
Two-party electoral competition stands out as one of the political system's most salient and enduring features. Since the 1860s, the Republicans and Democrats have dominated electoral politics. This unrivaled record of the same two parties continuously monopolizing a nation's electoral politics reflects both structural aspects of the political system as well as special features of American parties.
The standard American arrangement for electing ...