Thursday, December 10, 2009

Why do we have 2 parties?

Answer here.
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4 comments:

Mona Khemici said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
December 12, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Mona Khemici said...

It's ironic how contradictory things turned out to be. The founding fathers were completely against the establishment of more political parties. Saying in his farwell speech, George Washington warned,"
All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests. "

December 12, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Sabrina said...

of the four reasons given for our two-party system, i feel that the fourth one (about how the two parties make rules that disadvantage any other parties) is the most powerful current reason for there being only two parties.

one thing that i did not really understand in that article was the "party discipline" mentioned in the very last paragraph. can somebody explain what the author means by party discipline?

December 12, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Unknown said...

I think that "party discipline" refers to the cohesiveness of a political party.

I'll address the cohesiveness of the party in government, or the elected officials, because I'm guessing that Yglesias is primarily referring to party discipline in Congress. Strong party discipline means that the party members all have the same general views and policy goals, and work together effectively to reach these goals. Leadership positions, such as the whips in both houses, speaker of the house, and senate majority and minority leaders are tasked with maintaining this discipline or cohesiveness (especially the whips). We saw this with Newt Gingrich in the movie we watched in class - by aiding freshmen Republican representatives in their campaigns, he gained their loyalty to his Republican policy agenda (at first at least), which greatly strengthened the party discipline.

Weak party discipline, as Yglesias is describing, involves a lack of cohesiveness. For example, the Blue Dog Democrats are known to deviate from the views of many other Democrats for their fiscally conservative opinions. But, as Yglesias says, "Since US politics features weak discipline, it’s easier to stay within a party coalition and then form an intra-party factional organization."

I hope this helps!

-Julia B.

December 15, 2009 at 5:32 PM

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