PARTY SYSTEMS IN THE US
The First Party System is the term political scientists
and historians give to the political system existing in
the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It
featured two national parties that competed for control
of the Presidency, Congress, and the States: the
Federalist Party (created by Alexander Hamilton) and
the Republican party (created by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison; historians later called it the
Democratic-Republican Party). Partisan politics
virtually ended during the Era of Good Feelings (18161824), as the Federalists shrank to a few isolated
strongholds.
The Second Party System is the term that historians and
political scientists give to the political system
existing in the United States from about 1837 to 1852.
It replaced the First Party System, and was followed by
the Third Party System. The system was characterized by
rapidly rising levels of voter interest starting in
1828, as shown in election day turnout, rallies,
partisan newspapers, and a high degree of personal
loyalty to party. The major parties were the Democratic
Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, a
coalition of National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and
other opponents of Jackson, led by Henry Clay. Minor
parties included the Anti-Masonic Party, which was an
important innovator from 1827–34, the Liberty Party in
1840, the Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852, and the
Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s. The Second Party
System reflected and shaped the political, social,
economic and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era.
The Third Party System is a term generally used by
historians and political scientists to cover a period
in American political history from about 1854 to the
mid 1890s (see Second Party System, Fourth Party
System), with major developments revolving around the
issues of nationalism, modernization, and race. It was
dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed
success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery,
enfranchising the freedmen, and adopting as well many
of the Whiggish modernization programs such as national
banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads and aid to
land grant colleges. While most elections from 1874
through 1892 were extremely close, the main opposition
party, the Democrats won only the 1856, 1884 and 1892
presidential elections, though from 1874 to 1892 it
usually controlled the House of Representatives. The
northern and western states were largely Republican,
save for closely balanced New York and Indiana. After
1874 the Democrats took control of the "Solid South."
The Fourth Party System or Progressive Era is the
period in American political history from about 1896 to
1932 that was dominated by the Republican party, except
when it split in 1912 and allowed the Democrats in for
eight years. The period saw a transformation from the
issues and alignments of the Third Party System, which
focused on Civil War, Reconstruction, race and money.
The era began in the severe depression of 1893 and the
extraordinarily intense election of 1896. It included
the Progressive Era, World War I, and the start of the
Great Depression.
The Fifth Party System, also called the New Deal Party
System, refers to the era of United States national
politics that began with the New Deal in 1933. It
followed the Fourth Party System, usually called the
Progressive Era. Experts debate whether it ended in the
mid-1960s or the mid-1990s, or continues to the
present. The System was heavily Democratic through 1964
and mostly Republican at the presidential level since
1968, with the Senate switching back and forth after
1980. The Democrats usually controlled the House except
that the Republicans won in 1946, 1952, and 1994
through 2004 elections. Both Houses went Democratic in
2006. Of the nineteen presidential elections since
1932, the Democrats won 7 of the first 9 (through
1964), with Democratic control of Congress as the norm;
while the GOP won 7 of the 10 since 1968, with divided
government as the norm.
With Republican promises of prosperity discredited by
the Great Depression, the four consecutive elections,
1932-36-40-44 of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt gave
the Democrats dominance, though in domestic issues the
Conservative coalition generally controlled Congress
from 1938 to 1964. The activist New Deal promoted
American liberalism, anchored in a New Deal Coalition
of specific liberal groups, especially ethno-religious
minorities (Catholics, Jews, African Americans), white
Southerners, well-organized labor unions, big city
machines, intellectuals, and liberal farm groups.
Opposition Republicans were split between a
conservative wing, led by Senator Robert A. Taft, and a
more successful moderate wing led by President Dwight
D. Eisenhower.
The period climaxed with Lyndon B. Johnson's smashing
electoral defeat of conservative Republican
presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964; in no
other election since 1944 has the Democratic party
received more than 50.1% of the popular vote for
President.[1] The Democratic coalition divided in 1948
and 1968, in the latter election allowing the
Republican candidate Richard Nixon to take the White
House. Democrats kept control of the House until the
1994 election. For the next twelve years the GOP was in
control with small majorities, until the Democrats
recaptured the chamber with 2006 election and the 110th
Congress. The Democrats held the Senate until 1980;
since then the two parties have traded control of the
Senate back and forth with small majorities.
Sixth Party System?
The party system model dates to the late 20th century.
The numbering of the systems was introduced in 1967[2].
Much of the work published on the subject has been
political scientists explaining the events of their own
time as the imminent breakup of the Fifth Party System,
and the installation of a new one; some papers argue
that it broke up at some time long before
publication.[3] However, no decisive electoral event,
shifting both Presidential and Congressional control,
has occurred since 1932. This idea was particularly
popular in the 1970s, specifying dates as early as
1960; it became popular again in the first decade of
the twenty-first century.
Other current writing on the Fifth Party System
expresses admiration of its longevity: the first four
systems lasted about 30 to 40 years each, which would
have implied that the early twenty-first century should
see a Seventh Party System [4]. It is also possible, as
argued in (Jensen 1981) and elsewhere, that the party
system has given way, not to a new party system, but to
a period of dis-alignment in politics.