{"id":88,"date":"2025-07-09T15:33:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.routledgelearning.com\/americangovernment\/?p=88"},"modified":"2025-08-14T21:48:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T21:48:57","slug":"chapter-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.routledgelearning.com\/americangovernment\/chapter-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Political Parties: Winning the Right to Govern<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This chapter covered the political party as an organization, which, unlike interest groups or social movements, actually seeks to control the apparatuses of government by competing in elections with candidates under a single party label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After discussing the history of the American two-party systems from its pre-party beginnings to the present- day conditions of the era of divided government, the chapter then moved into the presentation of the parties through their roles as party in the electorate, party organization, and the party in government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The party in the electorate was detailed in two ways, first as a tri-partite group of partisans and independents and then as a bifurcated re-balanced partisanship that included most independents as closeted partisans. The party organization was divided amongst local, state, and national parties that operate largely independently of one another. The heyday of the local organizations was during the time of patronage\u2019s spoils system. State parties are run by the state central committee and engage in many in-kind services for candidates and incumbents during election cycles. The national parties are run by national committees and have resurged in American electoral politics in recent years because they have become candidate service organizations, especially regarding fund raising and dissemination. Trends were identified relative to the basic constituencies of interest associated with each of the major parties, particularly since the time of the New Deal. These constituencies are differentiated along racial, ethnic, gender, religious, and class lines, with the Republicans seen as the party of the \u201chaves\u201d and the Democrats as the party of the \u201chave-nots.\u201d Lastly, the institutional blocks keeping minor parties out of the \u201cgame of electoral politics\u201d were discussed in some detail, especially regarding the determinative role of our \u201cfirst-past-the-post\u201d electoral system in serving as a decisive bulwark to the two-party system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Quizzes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n