America's party system has a great many distinguishing features. In addition to the unusually loose internal structures of parties (see "characteristics") and the continuity of the two-party system, attention is also often called to the specific role performed by parties in America's political system. The reasons for this role can be found in the historical development of American democracy in general (see "background" section) and the the development of parties since the 18th century in particular (see "development"). The text on this page attempts to work out a comparison of these features.

The dominance of the electoral function

a) Objective-finding function: Parties have ideologies and political programs. They try their hand at developing trend-setting strategies and point out to citizens that alternative courses of action exist.

b) The function of articulating and aggregating the interests of society: They present (»articulate« like interest groups) interests, but, unlike interest groups, aggregate them in such a way as to have a direct influence on the way in which a political will is formed through the central ruling bodies.

c) The function of mobilizing and socializing citizens: They want to urge citizens to participate and to become politically active and create models for long-term political attitudes (they are increasingly having to share this role with a media which is becoming increasingly influential).

d) Function of candidate recruitment and forming a government: They make political leadership, government and administrative potential available. Moreover: They monopolize today the selection of personnel for almost all public office posts.

If we compare the way in which American and Western European parties understand their roles set against this ideal catalogue of political functions above, we are once again faced with major differences both at a historical and contemporary perspective.

With his attributes constituent and responsible, Theodore J. Lowi hit the differences squarely on the head. The "constructive" party primarily influences the structure, composition and workings of the political system, while the "responsive" party feels itself committed to the electorate through its political program, which steers the party's political actions and allows it to develop a coherent problem-solving model with a commitment to make it law should the party gain a legislative majority after an election. According to Lowi, parties in the US have never presented themselves primarily as program innovators and have, thus, neglected their objective-finding function. Indeed, they have always presented themselves much more as instruments for organizing government and state rule, for recruiting political leaders, for organizing elections and for merging disparate interests into active units; they primarily performed an election and candidate recruitment function for public office (at all levels of the political system with a decreasing tendency from the bottom up).

(...) At the end of the day, American parties have always been faced with the task of guaranteeing the efficiency and legitimacy of the political system, that is, preserving society's belief in the effectiveness and in the existence of a optimal sense of state institutions. In an American power structure featuring strictly separated institutions and that is more interested in power blocks than efficiency, a great deal of importance and in the widest possible sense was attached to the "function of forming a government" according to the American social scientist (Edward C. Banfield et al.): Parties functioned as transmission belts, created ties between the executive and legislative bodies (presidency and Congress) which were separated from each other at both a personnel level and institutional level, and made a contribution to breaking down deadlocks in the processes of forming a political will and decision making. While they were not able to prevent these deadlocks completely, they were able to manage them with a certain degree of success.

[Taken from: Hartmut Wasser: Politische Parteien in den USA; in: W.P. Adams u.a. (Hg.), Länderbericht USA I, Bonn BpB 1990]

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