INTRODUCTION

For democracy in a large republic to succeed, many believe that responsible party government is needed, with each party offering voters a clear alternative vision regarding how the polity should be governed and then, if it wins the election, exerting sufficient discipline over its elected members to implement its vision. America was once thought to have disciplined and responsible parties. Indeed, students of nineteenth-century American politics saw parties as the principal means by which a continental nation had been brought together: “There is a sense in which our parties may be said to have been our real body politic. Not the authority of Congress, not the leadership of the President, but the discipline and zest of parties has held us together, has made it possible for us to form and to carry out national programs.”

Since early in the twentieth century, however, critics of American politics have often argued that congressional parties are largely moribund.