USA

Party organization is not hierarchically structured...

Unlike most European political parties, those in America do not have a hierarchically structured organization used by the party leader to maintain unity and discipline rebellious Senators and Representatives should they vote against the expressed withes of the party. The political scientist, Hugh Bone, summed it up when he said: "American parties are stratarchic entities in which autonomous decisions are made at each level of the party organization. Since those wanting to be elected to public office organize their own election campaigns, raise their own election budgets and determine their election strategy, party leaders are left with little means (support or non-support) to establish party discipline. Consequently, political parties in America tend to be very provincial in their outlook, since senators and members of Congress are tied to local organizations, whose political focus is very narrow.

Provincialism and fragmentation of the parties...

On top of this provincialism created by the federal system, the electoral system encourages the splintering of American parties. This can be attributed to the multi-cultural composition of the electorate responsible for electing the president, senators and representatives to Congress. The electoral college system used in presidential elections, for instance, serves in underlining the importance of politically unsafe states with large population density. The fact that all electoral college votes to which an individual state is entitled go to the presidential candidate achieving a majority of elector votes in that state (winner-takes-all principle), means that a situation has arisen in which presidential candidates concentrate their efforts on the 15 most highly populated states, which taken together have a majority of electoral college votes at their disposal. Since 1932 this has included the largest industrialized states in which a large number of workers and people with differing ethnic and racial backgrounds live. These groups have a great deal of sway in determining the outcome of a presidential election. These groups tend to support liberal and austere social policies and are successful in forcing these through at party conferences.

Electors and winner-take-all

Indeed, the electoral college system and the principle of winner-take-all have made these groups influential in determining the policies followed by the president. According to an assessment by political observers Irving Kristol and Paul Weaver it is questionable as to whether a modern presidency could have been created and maintained from 1932 to 1968 without the electoral college system and the principle of winner-take-all.

Representatives have more of a duty to their electoral district than they do to the party or the president...

If heavily populated, industrialized areas are key in electing the president, then much more heterogeneous areas are responsible for electing congressional and local parliament candidates. Sections of the electorate live in scarcely populated rural areas, small and medium-sized towns, while others live in densely populated areas such as the megalopolis, which stretches from Los Angeles in California to San Diego. The differing composition of the electorate means that the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives are all vying to promote differing economic, political and social interests. In addition to this, a six-year term in office for senators and staggered senatorial elections (a third of the Senate is reelected every two years) combined with a two-year term in office for representatives all conspire to reduce the influence of the president as the leader of the party. Having said this, members of Congress do respect the president's leadership role in years when Congressional elections coincide with presidential elections than they do for elections in between. Without the president at the top their party's list of candidates, fellow members of the party in Congress would tend to represent the interests and priorities of their local constituencies, states and individual regions over and above those of the president.

Weakening links to the parties...

The way in which American voting patterns have developed since the early sixties has resulted in a strengthening of the centrifugal tendencies in the party system. Firstly, there has been a continual increase in the number of independent voters that identify neither with the Democratic nor the Republican Party. A series of traumatic events including racial tension, unrest in the universities and the Vietnam War combined with the fact that neither party has managed to find lasting solutions for economic problems such as unemployment, inflation and poverty have all conspired to undermine the trust of the electorate in the party system. Consequently, there is an increasing tendency among voters to focus on the personality of the presidential candidate and current issues in making their decision - for example Vietnam 1968, Watergate 1976 and inflation and too much "state" in 1980.

Vote splitting... 

Another significant trend is the increase in vote splitting since 1960. In percentage terms, the number of voters casting their vote for one party at presidential elections and for the other party at congressional elections has increased from 40% in 1960 to 60% in 1980. Indeed, during the last federal election as many as 70% of independent voters split their votes between the two largest parties. Since the Second World War, differing parties have controlled the executive and legislative at the same time for a total of 14 years; this is a direct result of vote splitting.

The problem of deadlock...

Vote splitting has produced a Republican president opposing a Democratic Party controlled Congress on several occasions for presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Reagan. Indeed, the Democrats have been known to hold power in both chambers. With the clear exceptions of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, presidential candidates for the Democratic Party have repeatedly received less of the popular vote than Democratic members of Congress. To this end, Republican presidents often have to work with a opposition-controlled Congress that is dismissive of their policies. In contrast, Democratic presidents have difficulty in finding support for their policies, since fellow members of the party in Congress are mostly immune to the promises and threats coming from the White House. Vote splitting is one of the factors limiting the effectiveness of the president's role as party leader, undermining his/her chances of implementing party policy and creating deadlock and delay in the business of government.

If federalism, separation of powers and recent developments in voter patterns have conspired to fragment the party system, then the mass media has managed to reduce further the role of the party organization in influencing presidential policies by pushing presidential elections to the centre of national politics. Since the "fireside discussions" and press conferences on radio by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late thirties, the electronic media has become the focus of attention for both political parties during presidential elections. After the Second World War television radically changed the style and means of election campaigns. On top of increasing election costs, parties were having increasingly to employ large numbers of PR specialists, pollsters, speech writers, public affairs advisors, professional fund raisers and "advance troops" in order to use the media effectively. Several election campaigns have even been planned by advertising agencies, who took the candidates and issues and "packaged" them in the same way as would for the market launch of a new bar of soap. These media specialists have displaced the traditional party leaders who were once a part of the president's team in the White House. Since 1960, these PR and media experts have belonged to the president's closest advisors and keep him/her informed on the direction in which policy should take to optimize the chances of his/her reelection.