BobKKKindle$
21st May 2009, 14:15
“Account for the differences between US and UK parties”
The existence of parties, i.e. organizations that bring people who hold similar beliefs together in pursuit of state power, is a universal feature of all contemporary liberal democracies, and yet the nature of party systems can vary enormously. The potential for difference is most evident if we compare the United States and the United Kingdom. This essay will investigate the differences between the two countries, both in terms of the internal functioning of party organizations, and the composition of the assembly, as these two components of party politics are necessarily interlinked. The set of features that exist in Britain are by no means exceptional but exist in many democracies, and so this essay has focused heavily on the institutional, sociological, and historical factors that are specific to the United States. It should be emphasized that in each case the current state of the party system is the product of a long and complex process of development, such that the relative importance of different factors has changed with time, and on this basis it would be foolish to assume that either party system will remain the same forever, as even in the past decade new influences have become visible, many of which are connected with underlying economic and demographic shifts, such as declining membership of trade unions, and higher immigrant populations.
It is first necessary to examine what the key differences are before they can be explained. The first way in which the US party system differs from the UK is that it is a two-party system, whereas most other industrialized democracies, with the possible exception of New Zealand, have at least three parties that are able to maintain electoral support and gains seats in the assembly over several electoral cycles, and some, such as Israel, exhibit a large number of small or medium-sized parties. There have been suggestions from some commentators such as Ware that the UK is also a two-party system on the grounds that the Liberals have never been able to form a government, and neither of the larger parties have ever been forced to enter into a coalition with the Liberals, as well as the fact that, following the rise of the Labour Party in 1918, the Liberals have been a minor electoral force, with a precarious position in the House of Commons. However, as Webb points out, there has been an shift since the 1970s, with the two major parties receiving 74.8% of the vote during the period 1974-1997, compared to 90.3% during the immediate post-war period (although the nature of the British electoral system means that this changing distribution of votes has not always translated into a significant shift in the distribution of parliamentary seats) alongside an increase in support for electoral reform, and the emergence of a more complex political agenda. In addition, there have been several cases of a dominant party turning to the Liberals for support when they are faced with the threat of a major policy defeat, or being forced to step down from office, as in 1977 under Callaghan, whose minority government sustained itself through the parliamentary support of the Liberals in exchange for policy consultation, and, more recently, Tony Blair, who sought a coalition government with the Liberals before the 1997 election, and maintained links with the same party through the Joint Cabinet Committee, even once the scale of New Labour's parliamentary majority had become clear. On this basis it is clear that Ware is mistaken, and the UK can be seen as a genuine three-party system, as the Liberals form part of what Smith describes as the “party system core”, i.e. parties with actual relevance for party system dynamics and alignments. The US, on the other hand, is unambiguously a two-party system in the sense that it is extremely rare for members of the assembly to not belong to either the Democrats or the Republicans, despite the a recent trend of more voters registering themselves as independents instead of affiliates of either of the main parties. In addition, both of the parties that comprise the two-party system belong to the same political “famille”, as they are both drawn from the liberal tradition, despite the tendency of some Republicans to describe themselves as conservatives, and to see liberalism as synonymous with greater government intervention in the economy. This makes the US very different from other industrialized democracies, in that it lacks a mass labour party with entrenched ties to the trade union movement that can function as the political representative of the working class, a function that has historically been carried out by the SPD in Germany. The reasons for this will be explored during the course of the essay. Despite the accusation that the party system in the US amounts to a conflict between parties that are essentially the same in their political stances, expert evaluations derived through the Laver/Hunt method show that the parties are generally around five points apart from one another on a twenty-point scale, with an even greater differences for policy areas that are liable to excite political controversy, such as permissive social policy, and whether public services should be increased by means of greater taxation. When all is taken into account the “distance” between American parties is actually greater than that between the major parties in Germany, thereby indicating that belonging to the same ideological tradition does not necessarily entail political agreement on all or even most issues.
Furthermore, it is also clear that political parties in the US tend to demonstrate much greater internal variation, and it is at this point that the second fundamental difference between the two systems becomes clear – the importance of parties relative to individual candidates, and the control that the former can exert over the latter. The level of internal variation is such that two individuals who identify with different parties but inhabit the same geographic region may find that they have more in common politically than two individuals who support the same party but live a large distance from each other, especially in the case of the Democrats, who have historically been split between a social-liberal wing in the northeastern states, and a white-supremacist wing in the South, which exercised hegemonic control over that region in the form of the “Dixiecrats” until desegregation was enforced towards the end of the 1960s. This feature manifests itself in the behavior of legislators, as Congress exhibits surprisingly non-partisan behavior, as during the Ford and Nixon presidencies a majority of Democrats voted in opposition to the majority of Republicans on less than 35% of recorded roll calls, compared to 46% under Kennedy and Johnson, thereby indicating that partisanship has in fact become less common with time. The relative lack of partisanship stands in contrast to the UK, where, despite the existence of internal party factions, such as Militant Tendency in the case of the Labour Party during the 1980s, policy positions tend to be shared by almost all of the parliamentarians who belong to the same party, and the Whip can always put pressure on dissidents to obey the decisions of the party centre, such that defeats for the government tend to be taken much more seriously by observers than in other countries, especially prior to the 1970s, when a parliamentary defeat was interpreted as an obligation for the government to step down. In addition to the behavior of legislators, the weakness of US parties is also evident in the way candidates conduct themselves in terms of the policies and promises they issue to the electorate, as candidates generally campaign on the basis of manifestos that apply to their local state or electoral district, and are judged accordingly, whereas candidates in the UK are seen as being tied to party manifestos, which, unlike the vague and flexible manifestos that national party organizations tend to produce in the US, are politically significant. This is demonstrated by the weak relationship between public evaluations of parties and candidates, and the relationship has been getting weaker with each successive election cycle. In connection with the above, it is also the case that candidates tend to campaign as individuals and not as representatives of a party, and activists generally associate themselves with their chosen candidate instead of identifying as a member or supporter of a national organization, and it is partly for this reason that US parties are frequently seen as lacking an identifiable concept of membership, and have instead been described as decentralized networks, involving pressure groups such as churches, lobbyists, trade unions, and so on, even though both national parties also have well-funded bureaucracies. In this respect, US really are fundamentally different not only from parties in the UK but also every other liberal democracy.
There are manifold reasons for both of these differences, and each is also connected to the other, but the weakness of parties is an effective starting point. The first factor that allows us to explain this feature is the structure of the American system of government, and specifically the fact that the United States was the first country to employ a genuinely federal system whereby sovereignty was divided between federal level and the states, allowing the latter to exercise a range of executive and legislative functions, which, Epstein claims, have actually grown with time due an increase in the scope of government activity. The power given to states means that parties are likely to operate mainly at that level, relative from national organizations, and to base themselves in centers of population, i.e. cities and the most populous counties. This is an important factor but it is not in itself sufficient to explain the weakness of parties in the United States, as there are other countries that employ a federal or quasi-federal system but exhibit strong parties, such as Australia. A further important factor in the United States is a series of reforms that were implemented mainly by the Progressives in the 1910s, with the intention of reducing the role of parties and increasing the level of electoral competition. These reforms included the direct election of senators in 1913, whereas previously the senators had been elected by the legislature of each state, thereby making potential senators dependent on the way they were perceived by the legislators who belonged to the same party as them, and resulting in cases of legislatures not being able to fill senate positions due to deadlock between rival party blocs. Also of importance was the implementation of direct primary elections. This signified a break with the past because electoral candidates had previously been chosen through an election process that took place inside party organizations, thereby giving activists an incentive to participate in conventions, and allowing party “bosses” to exercise influence over who would be able to stand as a candidate, at least at a local level. The direct primary system means that voters now select candidates, and this system is now used to nominate candidates for some offices in all states, and for all offices in thirty eight states. This reform did not immediately destroy the role of parties as there have still been cases of candidates needing to gain the support of the national leadership in order to become the nominee for President and other key roles. In 1952, primaries were used as the method of delegate selection for the Democrat national convention in fifteen states, and thirteen of those primaries were won by Estes Kefauver. Despite this, the nomination eventually went to Adlai Stevenson, who received only 78,000 votes, compared to Kefauver's 3.1 million, as a direct result of opposition from the leadership. This has changed since 1968 as the proportion of convention delegates who are selected through primaries has rise to around 4/5s of the total compared to a previous figure 1/3, reducing the role of party elites. These developments have been further enhanced by changes in campaign technology such as television that now allow candidates to establish their own campaigns without support or interference from parties to a greater extent than ever before, as well as political issues that have cut across traditional lines of division between parties, such as involvement in the Vietnam War.
The factors mentioned above are important. However, by the far most important factor behind the structure of American parties is the absence of a labour party, as it was the emergence of this type of party in other democracies that forced older and less radical parties to develop strong organizational structures and mobilize activists so that they would not suffer a loss or support, and would be able to engage with the mass electorate in a dynamic way. It is for this reason that American parties are “cadre” organizations without large numbers of members who participate in party activities on a regular basis, as activists associate themselves with candidates, as noted above. This raises the question of exactly why the US has never developed a labour party, and so to explain the functioning of parties, we need to look at the party system.
The most common explanation for the liberal orientation of both parties is that the initial population of what would later become the United States was not a cross-section of the societies from which this population was derived, otherwise known as the “fragment” hypothesis. It was comprised mainly of those who had been pressured to flee from their original countries due to a lack of religious tolerance, as well as a sizable number of “adventurers” who saw life in the Americas as an opportunity to break away from the restrictive social and economic conditions of Europe. This, according to the hypothesis, generated a culture of resistance to government encroachment on religious freedom as well as other activities that were seen as part of the private sphere, and it is this culture that has resulted in the party system that exists today. The hypothesis also states that the society founded by the colonists did not include a landed aristocracy, which allegedly formed the basis of Conservative values in Britain, and of those who continued to sympathize with the British system of government, many chose to migrate to what was to become the Canadian province of Ontario. This argument is confused for the simple reason that it conflates the present and the past by assuming that a set of factors that were present when a political system came into being can obstruct the development of that system to the extent that it is unable to evolve in any significant way, despite underlying economic and political shifts that one would normally expect to generate changes to the party system as well as other spheres of political activity, such as industrialization, which, in the context of the United States, created the world's most developed economy, and a large proletariat. The sheer fallacy of the argument is demonstrated most clear by the fate of the Tories in Britain, as the party now draws its support not only from the small number of remaining aristocrats, but also from the business community, as well as a significant proportion of the proletariat, thereby demonstrating that parties and party systems do evolve and adjust themselves to chancing circumstances whatever the initial conditions that led to their formation might have been. If this hypothesis is accepted as false then the instinctive way to explain the persistent lack of a socialist alternative is to assert that the American proletariat is inherently anti-communist, and fond of private property. This is also misguided. The fact of the matter is that there has always been a proud tradition of militant class struggle in the United States, and the absence of a labour party is ultimately the result of government repression, and persistent attempts by the ruling class to divide the proletariat along ethnic lines, indicating that the much-celebrated freedom afforded under the Constitution is not as universal as we like to think. The potential success of socialism is demonstrated by Eugene V. Debs, who was able to gain 3.4% of the national vote in the 1920 election as a Socialist Party candidate, shortly after a series of major strikes in Seattle and other cities, despite being in prison at the time. This victory was heralded by Lenin as the first step towards the creation of a revolutionary movement, and in the year of the election, the party had 100,000 dues-paying members. However, in the year following this impressive performance, there was an attack on the left in the form of the Red Scare, under the terms of the Sedition Act of 1918, which led to the imprisonment of around 6,000 suspected radicals, often without the support of a lawyer, and the expulsion of 200 activists who were not American citizens, such that after these attacks the left was never able to recover, despite an inspiring strike wave during the 1930s.
There were also a series of other factors, in addition to the repression described above, that allowed the two-party system to remain in place once it had been established. In comparison to other democracies, universal male suffrage was introduced relatively early in the 1830s and it was this that generated what has since been described as the “golden age of party” whereby party organizations reached the height of their significance, particularly at a local level, where party officials were able to distribute patronage in the form of key roles in state bureaucracies, and large numbers of activists where involved with parties on a regular basis, leading to a certain degree of interpenetration between parties and society. A further impact of this early change was that it was harder from that point on for new parties to capture a significant proportion of the electorate, as the parties that had already existed before the introduction of male suffrage were able to establish themselves throughout the country. In addition, the use of plurality voting systems in elections to Congress has obstructed the entry of new parties in much the same way that the same system in the UK discriminates against parties which receive votes throughout the country but do not have sufficient electoral support concentrated in a single constituency, as this system means that parties do not obtain any representation whatsoever as long as they do not obtain a relative majority, regardless of whether their level of support is negligible or significant. In this respect, it could be argued that, despite the differences, British and American parties are similar insofar as they are established parties, and it is unlikely that the party system in either country will become unstable as long as the current electoral system is in place. The entrenched position of the main parties in both countries was demonstrated by the rapid decline of the SDP after its formation as a breakaway faction from the Labour Party in 1981, and the similar experience of the States' Rights Democratic Party in the United States following the 1948 election.
In conclusion, it has been shown that there are two primary differences between British and American parties – the latter has a two-party system and weak party organizations, whereas the former has a three-party system, and highly centralized parties. This has been explained with reference to influence of federalism, political reforms that were launched by the progressives, as well as the intimate connection between the functioning of parties and the party system, in particular the lack of a labour party, which derives not from American history, nor from any inherent hatred of anti-capitalism on the part of American workers, but from a legacy of state repression. Thus, this essay has taken what might be seen neo-institutional view by examining not only the nature of political institutions but also the way in which they interact with society. A comparative analysis of American and British parties is exciting terrain for political scientists, as it demonstrates that two countries with cultural similarities and a historical relationship can develop in radically different ways.
Bibliography:
Davis, M., 'Why the US Working Class is Different', New Left Review, 123, 1980
Epstein, Leon, Political Parties in the American Mold, 1986
Ware, Alan, Political Parties and Party Systems, 1996
Wattenberg, Martin, The Decline of American Political Parties 1952-1996, 1998
Webb, Paul, The Modern British Party System, 2000
Webb, P.,'Are British Political Parties in Decline?', Party Politics, 1:3, 1995
The existence of parties, i.e. organizations that bring people who hold similar beliefs together in pursuit of state power, is a universal feature of all contemporary liberal democracies, and yet the nature of party systems can vary enormously. The potential for difference is most evident if we compare the United States and the United Kingdom. This essay will investigate the differences between the two countries, both in terms of the internal functioning of party organizations, and the composition of the assembly, as these two components of party politics are necessarily interlinked. The set of features that exist in Britain are by no means exceptional but exist in many democracies, and so this essay has focused heavily on the institutional, sociological, and historical factors that are specific to the United States. It should be emphasized that in each case the current state of the party system is the product of a long and complex process of development, such that the relative importance of different factors has changed with time, and on this basis it would be foolish to assume that either party system will remain the same forever, as even in the past decade new influences have become visible, many of which are connected with underlying economic and demographic shifts, such as declining membership of trade unions, and higher immigrant populations.
It is first necessary to examine what the key differences are before they can be explained. The first way in which the US party system differs from the UK is that it is a two-party system, whereas most other industrialized democracies, with the possible exception of New Zealand, have at least three parties that are able to maintain electoral support and gains seats in the assembly over several electoral cycles, and some, such as Israel, exhibit a large number of small or medium-sized parties. There have been suggestions from some commentators such as Ware that the UK is also a two-party system on the grounds that the Liberals have never been able to form a government, and neither of the larger parties have ever been forced to enter into a coalition with the Liberals, as well as the fact that, following the rise of the Labour Party in 1918, the Liberals have been a minor electoral force, with a precarious position in the House of Commons. However, as Webb points out, there has been an shift since the 1970s, with the two major parties receiving 74.8% of the vote during the period 1974-1997, compared to 90.3% during the immediate post-war period (although the nature of the British electoral system means that this changing distribution of votes has not always translated into a significant shift in the distribution of parliamentary seats) alongside an increase in support for electoral reform, and the emergence of a more complex political agenda. In addition, there have been several cases of a dominant party turning to the Liberals for support when they are faced with the threat of a major policy defeat, or being forced to step down from office, as in 1977 under Callaghan, whose minority government sustained itself through the parliamentary support of the Liberals in exchange for policy consultation, and, more recently, Tony Blair, who sought a coalition government with the Liberals before the 1997 election, and maintained links with the same party through the Joint Cabinet Committee, even once the scale of New Labour's parliamentary majority had become clear. On this basis it is clear that Ware is mistaken, and the UK can be seen as a genuine three-party system, as the Liberals form part of what Smith describes as the “party system core”, i.e. parties with actual relevance for party system dynamics and alignments. The US, on the other hand, is unambiguously a two-party system in the sense that it is extremely rare for members of the assembly to not belong to either the Democrats or the Republicans, despite the a recent trend of more voters registering themselves as independents instead of affiliates of either of the main parties. In addition, both of the parties that comprise the two-party system belong to the same political “famille”, as they are both drawn from the liberal tradition, despite the tendency of some Republicans to describe themselves as conservatives, and to see liberalism as synonymous with greater government intervention in the economy. This makes the US very different from other industrialized democracies, in that it lacks a mass labour party with entrenched ties to the trade union movement that can function as the political representative of the working class, a function that has historically been carried out by the SPD in Germany. The reasons for this will be explored during the course of the essay. Despite the accusation that the party system in the US amounts to a conflict between parties that are essentially the same in their political stances, expert evaluations derived through the Laver/Hunt method show that the parties are generally around five points apart from one another on a twenty-point scale, with an even greater differences for policy areas that are liable to excite political controversy, such as permissive social policy, and whether public services should be increased by means of greater taxation. When all is taken into account the “distance” between American parties is actually greater than that between the major parties in Germany, thereby indicating that belonging to the same ideological tradition does not necessarily entail political agreement on all or even most issues.
Furthermore, it is also clear that political parties in the US tend to demonstrate much greater internal variation, and it is at this point that the second fundamental difference between the two systems becomes clear – the importance of parties relative to individual candidates, and the control that the former can exert over the latter. The level of internal variation is such that two individuals who identify with different parties but inhabit the same geographic region may find that they have more in common politically than two individuals who support the same party but live a large distance from each other, especially in the case of the Democrats, who have historically been split between a social-liberal wing in the northeastern states, and a white-supremacist wing in the South, which exercised hegemonic control over that region in the form of the “Dixiecrats” until desegregation was enforced towards the end of the 1960s. This feature manifests itself in the behavior of legislators, as Congress exhibits surprisingly non-partisan behavior, as during the Ford and Nixon presidencies a majority of Democrats voted in opposition to the majority of Republicans on less than 35% of recorded roll calls, compared to 46% under Kennedy and Johnson, thereby indicating that partisanship has in fact become less common with time. The relative lack of partisanship stands in contrast to the UK, where, despite the existence of internal party factions, such as Militant Tendency in the case of the Labour Party during the 1980s, policy positions tend to be shared by almost all of the parliamentarians who belong to the same party, and the Whip can always put pressure on dissidents to obey the decisions of the party centre, such that defeats for the government tend to be taken much more seriously by observers than in other countries, especially prior to the 1970s, when a parliamentary defeat was interpreted as an obligation for the government to step down. In addition to the behavior of legislators, the weakness of US parties is also evident in the way candidates conduct themselves in terms of the policies and promises they issue to the electorate, as candidates generally campaign on the basis of manifestos that apply to their local state or electoral district, and are judged accordingly, whereas candidates in the UK are seen as being tied to party manifestos, which, unlike the vague and flexible manifestos that national party organizations tend to produce in the US, are politically significant. This is demonstrated by the weak relationship between public evaluations of parties and candidates, and the relationship has been getting weaker with each successive election cycle. In connection with the above, it is also the case that candidates tend to campaign as individuals and not as representatives of a party, and activists generally associate themselves with their chosen candidate instead of identifying as a member or supporter of a national organization, and it is partly for this reason that US parties are frequently seen as lacking an identifiable concept of membership, and have instead been described as decentralized networks, involving pressure groups such as churches, lobbyists, trade unions, and so on, even though both national parties also have well-funded bureaucracies. In this respect, US really are fundamentally different not only from parties in the UK but also every other liberal democracy.
There are manifold reasons for both of these differences, and each is also connected to the other, but the weakness of parties is an effective starting point. The first factor that allows us to explain this feature is the structure of the American system of government, and specifically the fact that the United States was the first country to employ a genuinely federal system whereby sovereignty was divided between federal level and the states, allowing the latter to exercise a range of executive and legislative functions, which, Epstein claims, have actually grown with time due an increase in the scope of government activity. The power given to states means that parties are likely to operate mainly at that level, relative from national organizations, and to base themselves in centers of population, i.e. cities and the most populous counties. This is an important factor but it is not in itself sufficient to explain the weakness of parties in the United States, as there are other countries that employ a federal or quasi-federal system but exhibit strong parties, such as Australia. A further important factor in the United States is a series of reforms that were implemented mainly by the Progressives in the 1910s, with the intention of reducing the role of parties and increasing the level of electoral competition. These reforms included the direct election of senators in 1913, whereas previously the senators had been elected by the legislature of each state, thereby making potential senators dependent on the way they were perceived by the legislators who belonged to the same party as them, and resulting in cases of legislatures not being able to fill senate positions due to deadlock between rival party blocs. Also of importance was the implementation of direct primary elections. This signified a break with the past because electoral candidates had previously been chosen through an election process that took place inside party organizations, thereby giving activists an incentive to participate in conventions, and allowing party “bosses” to exercise influence over who would be able to stand as a candidate, at least at a local level. The direct primary system means that voters now select candidates, and this system is now used to nominate candidates for some offices in all states, and for all offices in thirty eight states. This reform did not immediately destroy the role of parties as there have still been cases of candidates needing to gain the support of the national leadership in order to become the nominee for President and other key roles. In 1952, primaries were used as the method of delegate selection for the Democrat national convention in fifteen states, and thirteen of those primaries were won by Estes Kefauver. Despite this, the nomination eventually went to Adlai Stevenson, who received only 78,000 votes, compared to Kefauver's 3.1 million, as a direct result of opposition from the leadership. This has changed since 1968 as the proportion of convention delegates who are selected through primaries has rise to around 4/5s of the total compared to a previous figure 1/3, reducing the role of party elites. These developments have been further enhanced by changes in campaign technology such as television that now allow candidates to establish their own campaigns without support or interference from parties to a greater extent than ever before, as well as political issues that have cut across traditional lines of division between parties, such as involvement in the Vietnam War.
The factors mentioned above are important. However, by the far most important factor behind the structure of American parties is the absence of a labour party, as it was the emergence of this type of party in other democracies that forced older and less radical parties to develop strong organizational structures and mobilize activists so that they would not suffer a loss or support, and would be able to engage with the mass electorate in a dynamic way. It is for this reason that American parties are “cadre” organizations without large numbers of members who participate in party activities on a regular basis, as activists associate themselves with candidates, as noted above. This raises the question of exactly why the US has never developed a labour party, and so to explain the functioning of parties, we need to look at the party system.
The most common explanation for the liberal orientation of both parties is that the initial population of what would later become the United States was not a cross-section of the societies from which this population was derived, otherwise known as the “fragment” hypothesis. It was comprised mainly of those who had been pressured to flee from their original countries due to a lack of religious tolerance, as well as a sizable number of “adventurers” who saw life in the Americas as an opportunity to break away from the restrictive social and economic conditions of Europe. This, according to the hypothesis, generated a culture of resistance to government encroachment on religious freedom as well as other activities that were seen as part of the private sphere, and it is this culture that has resulted in the party system that exists today. The hypothesis also states that the society founded by the colonists did not include a landed aristocracy, which allegedly formed the basis of Conservative values in Britain, and of those who continued to sympathize with the British system of government, many chose to migrate to what was to become the Canadian province of Ontario. This argument is confused for the simple reason that it conflates the present and the past by assuming that a set of factors that were present when a political system came into being can obstruct the development of that system to the extent that it is unable to evolve in any significant way, despite underlying economic and political shifts that one would normally expect to generate changes to the party system as well as other spheres of political activity, such as industrialization, which, in the context of the United States, created the world's most developed economy, and a large proletariat. The sheer fallacy of the argument is demonstrated most clear by the fate of the Tories in Britain, as the party now draws its support not only from the small number of remaining aristocrats, but also from the business community, as well as a significant proportion of the proletariat, thereby demonstrating that parties and party systems do evolve and adjust themselves to chancing circumstances whatever the initial conditions that led to their formation might have been. If this hypothesis is accepted as false then the instinctive way to explain the persistent lack of a socialist alternative is to assert that the American proletariat is inherently anti-communist, and fond of private property. This is also misguided. The fact of the matter is that there has always been a proud tradition of militant class struggle in the United States, and the absence of a labour party is ultimately the result of government repression, and persistent attempts by the ruling class to divide the proletariat along ethnic lines, indicating that the much-celebrated freedom afforded under the Constitution is not as universal as we like to think. The potential success of socialism is demonstrated by Eugene V. Debs, who was able to gain 3.4% of the national vote in the 1920 election as a Socialist Party candidate, shortly after a series of major strikes in Seattle and other cities, despite being in prison at the time. This victory was heralded by Lenin as the first step towards the creation of a revolutionary movement, and in the year of the election, the party had 100,000 dues-paying members. However, in the year following this impressive performance, there was an attack on the left in the form of the Red Scare, under the terms of the Sedition Act of 1918, which led to the imprisonment of around 6,000 suspected radicals, often without the support of a lawyer, and the expulsion of 200 activists who were not American citizens, such that after these attacks the left was never able to recover, despite an inspiring strike wave during the 1930s.
There were also a series of other factors, in addition to the repression described above, that allowed the two-party system to remain in place once it had been established. In comparison to other democracies, universal male suffrage was introduced relatively early in the 1830s and it was this that generated what has since been described as the “golden age of party” whereby party organizations reached the height of their significance, particularly at a local level, where party officials were able to distribute patronage in the form of key roles in state bureaucracies, and large numbers of activists where involved with parties on a regular basis, leading to a certain degree of interpenetration between parties and society. A further impact of this early change was that it was harder from that point on for new parties to capture a significant proportion of the electorate, as the parties that had already existed before the introduction of male suffrage were able to establish themselves throughout the country. In addition, the use of plurality voting systems in elections to Congress has obstructed the entry of new parties in much the same way that the same system in the UK discriminates against parties which receive votes throughout the country but do not have sufficient electoral support concentrated in a single constituency, as this system means that parties do not obtain any representation whatsoever as long as they do not obtain a relative majority, regardless of whether their level of support is negligible or significant. In this respect, it could be argued that, despite the differences, British and American parties are similar insofar as they are established parties, and it is unlikely that the party system in either country will become unstable as long as the current electoral system is in place. The entrenched position of the main parties in both countries was demonstrated by the rapid decline of the SDP after its formation as a breakaway faction from the Labour Party in 1981, and the similar experience of the States' Rights Democratic Party in the United States following the 1948 election.
In conclusion, it has been shown that there are two primary differences between British and American parties – the latter has a two-party system and weak party organizations, whereas the former has a three-party system, and highly centralized parties. This has been explained with reference to influence of federalism, political reforms that were launched by the progressives, as well as the intimate connection between the functioning of parties and the party system, in particular the lack of a labour party, which derives not from American history, nor from any inherent hatred of anti-capitalism on the part of American workers, but from a legacy of state repression. Thus, this essay has taken what might be seen neo-institutional view by examining not only the nature of political institutions but also the way in which they interact with society. A comparative analysis of American and British parties is exciting terrain for political scientists, as it demonstrates that two countries with cultural similarities and a historical relationship can develop in radically different ways.
Bibliography:
Davis, M., 'Why the US Working Class is Different', New Left Review, 123, 1980
Epstein, Leon, Political Parties in the American Mold, 1986
Ware, Alan, Political Parties and Party Systems, 1996
Wattenberg, Martin, The Decline of American Political Parties 1952-1996, 1998
Webb, Paul, The Modern British Party System, 2000
Webb, P.,'Are British Political Parties in Decline?', Party Politics, 1:3, 1995