American Political Parties: Why They Formed, How They Function, and Where They're Headed

by John Kenneth White, Matthew R. Kerbel

American Political Parties is a core textbook on political parties in the United States that places the US party system into a framework designed around the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. White and Kerbel argue that the two-party system in the United States began with a common agreement on the key values of freedom, individual rights, and equality of opportunity but that Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed—often vehemently—over how to translate these ideals into an acceptable form of governance. This text develops a unique historical perspective of US party development using the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson as a framework for analysis.

While Hamilton wanted to marry freedom to a strong, active federal government with an energetic president who would act on behalf of all citizens, Jefferson believed that freedom should be allied to local civic virtue, with governmental responsibilities placed primarily at the local level. Today, Hamiltonian nationalism finds its home in the Democratic Party, while Republicans have espoused Jeffersonian localism since 1964. Using this historical framework, American Political Parties examines a range of topics including marketing and social media, campaign finance, reforms in the presidential nominating process, political demography, and third parties. In this new edition (previously published as Party On!), the authors describe four possible futures in the wake of the 2020 election and why Americans believed it was “the most important” election in their lifetimes.

The unique history of US political parties as set forth by the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson is at an inflection point. Republicans have become an insurgent party fully under the control of Donald Trump while Democrats have an opportunity to create a new majority coalition. This juncture poses unique challenges to our democracy and constitutional framework, and the book describes four possible outcomes, postulating where American political parties are headed in this decade.

Genres: Political Science, Nonfiction, History

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 25, 2022

Reviews

[Russell Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid and fairly comprehensive update to White's long-reliable textbook on political parties in America--their history, their internal mechanics, and their place in our still-evolving electoral system. The "Hamiltonian nationalism vs. Jeffersonian localism" framework which they maintain throughout the text doesn't always work, I think, especially since political parties, first with the rise of electronic media and second with the centralization of political power and political information in Washington DC, have been structurally nationalist for a long while now, which means the authors' propping up of the supposedly localist aspect for party formation becomes more a matter of ideology than practice. Still, a helpful textbook, with some really good writing in it.

[Jen Wehr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry but interesting.

[Reko Wenell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly interesting. The biggest single take-away was the the Hamiltonian-Jeffersonian divide, but there was a ton of new stuff for me.

[Mike Kanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an instructor of a university course on political parties, I have reviewed several textbooks on parties. In fact, I read this as a possible textbook for an upcoming class. I found a well-written history of American political parties that was absent much of the ideological bias that is par for many political science texts.

The authors frame their discussion as a competition between Hamilton and Jefferson's view of the national government, factions (as Madison defined in The Federalist Papers), and the relationship between Congress and the president. I particularly enjoyed how they showed that many of the criticisms of today's politics (partisanship, ideological media) have always been part of American politics. They also have the best discussion of why third parties face both institutional and cultural obstacles I have ever read.

I highly recommend this to anyone interested in understanding American politics.