American Political Parties as a Conservative Force

• DOI: 10.1177/106591295701000210
• Author: Murray S. Stedman
• Date: 01 June 1957
• Published date: 01 June 1957
• Subject Matter: Articles

AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AS A
CONSERVATIVE FORCE
MURRAY S. STEDMAN, JR.
Swarthmore College
N
CLASSICAL democratic theory political parties, when mentioned at
all, were treated as one-way transmission belts between the electorate
and those persons voted into office. The role of the parties was seen
in extraordinarily passive terms. The parties were considered, at least
ideally, to be essentially mechanisms through which the will of the citizenry
could be canalized and turned into positive law.
Today, in contrast to the view held half-a-century or more ago, parties
are also viewed as social groups. To some extent, persons who identify
themselves with parties share some common expectations, or values, or
goals. As the Survey Research Center has shown, it is a ticklish business
to pin down the exact ingredients of identification and to measure precisely
the factors in voter motivation.’- Yet enough insight has been gained so that
it may be stated categorically that parties are social groups or, to put it
differently, that they have lives of their own. They are to some degree an
independent variable in the total political process.
Foreign observers of the American political scene -
the names of Laski,
Brogan, Siegfried, and Duverger come readily to mind - have often com-
mented upon the conservative nature of American politics. Without em-
barking on a safari into cultural anthropology, the thesis can be defended
that the parties themselves are partly the cause of the conservatism so
frequently noted in our political life. For purposes of the discussion, it is not
necessary to give a technical definition of &dquo;conservative&dquo;; the term is used
in its ordinary common-sense meaning, as will become apparent. It will
also be assumed that there is general agreement on a few basic propositions,
e.g., that the national parties are rather decentralized, that constitutional
factors have strongly shaped the development of the parties, etc., so that
there will be no need to quibble over the obvious.
Each of the ways in which the parties are believed to contribute to con-
servatism is summarized below, and the evidence tending to substantiate
the proposition is dealt with briefly. While the reader familiar with the
literature on parties might have chosen different illustrations, it is hoped
that those which are given are sufficiently representative to carry conviction.
1. The weakness of the parties makes it difficult for majorities to govern.
Many explanations have been offered, of course, for the relative lack of
cohesion and the high degree of decentralization of the American parties,
1
Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides (Evanston:
Row, Peterson, 1954).
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though it may be doubted that any one has ever stated the matter more
clearly than Professor Schattschneider.2 Be that as it may, the very inability
of the parties to govern as parties clearly makes majority rule difficult or
impossible, and thus plays into the hands of any minorities opposing change.
2. Because the parties cannot govern, the role o
permanent nonpartisan
interest groups is strengthened. In Schattschneider’s analysis, the weakness
of the parties adds to the importance of the interest groups. Even if the
relationship is less causal than here stated, the significance of interest groups
in American politics would...