Discussion of the Significance of Parties in Politics

Discussion of the Significance of Parties in Politics

Some, such as political commentator David Broder in his book The

Party’s Over: The Failure of Politics in America, would argue that

parties certainly don’t matter any more in American politics. Many of

the parties’ traditional roles or functions have been assumed by

pressure groups or the mass media, and clear party loyalties are less

apparent now than fifty years ago. However, others would argue that

the decline of parties has been vastly exaggerated and that parties

still have an important and significant role in American politics.

This essay will consider these two arguments and in doing so,

establish whether parties really do matter anymore.

One aspect of American politics where it could certainly be argued

that parties do not matter any more is in elections. The rise of

primaries and caucuses, in the aftermath of the publication of the

Commission on Party Structure and Delegate’s report – Mandate for

Change(1970), has put the power or selection in the hands of the

people, and not in the hands of the party, thereby reducing the

significance of the parties. Moreover, they have led to

candidate-centred, rather than party-centred, forms of politics,

because those who are electorally victorious owe their success to the

campaign organisations that they established during the primaries

rather than to the party apparatus. In 1992 for example, Bill

Clinton’s election campaign was directed from Little Rock in Arkansas,

not from the Democratic National Committee’s head-quarters in

Washington. Parties are also said to be losing their role as

fundraisers. Presidential candidates are ...

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...dership in

Congress is unable to offer any significant promotion because the

executive and legislative branches are not fused, and so, legislators

are under less pressure to toe the party line, and thus more receptive

to outside influence.

Although the general trend has seen the traditional roles of the

parties farmed out to other organisations, to say that parties do not

mater anymore would a vast oversimplification. Parties do still matter

in American politics, and many would argue that the extent to which

they matter has somewhat increased over the past twenty years.

What is perhaps a more accurate conclusion is that parties, because of

regionalism, federalism and the separation of powers, always have, and

probably always will be somewhat insignificant, particularly in

comparison with their UK counterparts.