Perspectives on Political Parties

Classic Readings

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Perspectives on Political Parties

Classic Readings

Edited by Susan E. Scarrow

PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL PARTIES

Copyright © Susan E. Scarrow, 2002.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any mannerwhatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotationsembodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPerspectives on political parties : classic readings / editor, Susan E. Scarrow.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Political parties—History. 2. Comparative government. I. Scarrow, Susan E.

JF2011.P42 2002324.2—dc21

2002024191

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre, Inc.

First edition: September 200210 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Softcover reprint of the hardco ver 1st edition 2002 978-0-312-29485-4

ISBN 978-0-312-29523-3 ISBN 978-0-230-10740-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9780230107403

Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Coming to Terms with Parties in the Nineteenth Century 1

PART 1.EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ANTECEDENTS

1. The Patriot King and Parties 29Henry Saint-John, Viscount Bolingbroke. 1738.

2. Of Parties in General 33David Hume. 1742.

3. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 37Edmund Burke. 1770.

4. Farewell Address to Congress 45George Washington. 1796.

PART 2.THE PLACE OF PARTIES IN HEALTHY POLITICAL SYSTEMS

5. Remarks on Party 51Henry Peter, Lord Brougham. 1839.

6. Parties—the Office they Fulfill in a Republic 57Frederick Grimke. 1848.

7. The Party Organism 67Gustave Struve. 1848.

8. Elements of Society in France 71François Guizot. 1849.

9. What Is a Political Party? 75Johan Caspar Bluntschli. 1869.

10. Parties in the State 83Robert von Mohl. 1872.

11. The Place of Party in the Political System 91Anson D. Morse. 1891.

12. Party Government 99Charles Richardson. 1892.

13. The Evils of Party 103Nathan Cree. 1892.

14. What Is a Party? 107Anson D. Morse. 1896.

PART 3.PARTIES AND LEGISLATURES

15. On Opposition Parties in Germany and Elsewhere 121Wilhelm Traugott Krug. 1836.

16. Evils and Dangers of Parliamentary Government 127Henry George, Earl Grey. 1858.

17. A Plea for the Constitution 135John Austin. 1859.

18. Parties and the House of Commons 141Walter Bagehot. 1867.

19. The Parliamentary Regime and Parties in Italy 147Émile de Laveleye. 1871.

20. Parties and Party Groups (I) 157Heinrich von Treitschke. 1871.

21. Responsible Party Government 163Woodrow Wilson. 1885.

22. The Price of Party Government 169William S. Lilly. 1900.

PART 4.PARTY TYPES AND PARTY SYSTEMS

23. Parties in the United States 177Alexis de Tocqueville. 1839.

24. The Four Parties 183Friedrich Rohmer. 1844.

25. Parties in the Life of the State 193Gottlieb Christian Abt. 1848.

26. Parties and Party Groups (II) 199Heinrich von Treitschke. 1871.

27. Parties and Party Government 205Henry Sidgwick. 1891.

28. Governments and Parties in Continental Europe 213Abbot Lawrence Lowell. 1896.

PART 5.PARTY ORGANIZATION AND CANDIDATE SELECTION

29. Tendencies and Evils of Political Platforms 223Ezra Seaman. 1863.

30. Party Organizations and Their Nominations to Public Office in New York City 227

A. C. Bernheim. 1888.31. Party Organizations 233

James Bryce. 1891.32. Political Organizations in the United States and England 239

James Bryce. 1893.33. Party Organization 245

Henry Jones Ford. 1898.34. Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties 251

Mosei Ostrogorski. 1902.

Index 263

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Preface

Political parties have become so central to the practice of modern pol-itics that it is often hard to remember that partisan politics is a rela-tively recent invention. And like many other successful inventions,

party-organized politics has so fundamentally reshaped some aspects of theways we organize society that it seems hard to imagine how some funda-mental tasks could be conducted without their aid. Indeed, as early as 1921the British diplomat and scholar James Bryce sweepingly declared that what-ever the “mischiefs wrought by party spirit, . . . parties are inevitable. No freelarge country has been without them. No one has shown how representativegovernment could work without them” (Bryce 1921: 119). Yet in much of thecentury before Bryce offered this judgement, many political analysts gaveconsiderable thought to whether the newly emerging parties should or couldbe confined to a minor role in politics. Competing parties often were viewedwith suspicion as destroyers of national political unity and as self-servingthreats to national welfare. Although such attitudes tended to be coupledwith a broader distrust of representative democracy in general, and of masssuffrage in particular, in the nineteenth century even many avowed democ-rats were not favorably disposed toward the evolving realities of organizedparties. Political parties took root despite all such reservations and flourishedto such an extent that the twentieth century has been dubbed the “centuryof party democracy” (Mair 1995: 41; italics in original). But even as organizedpartisan divisions seemed to become inextricably linked with electoraldemocracy, questions about parties lingered. Toward the end of the twenti-eth century concern about party-dominated politics once again crested inmany established democracies, generating new support for electoral and ad-ministrative procedures that might allow citizens more opportunities to in-fluence politics independently of parties.

It is this tension between the recurring suspicion of partisan divisions andthe seeming inevitability of partisan organization that initially drew me tothis project. While writing about late-twentieth-century antiparty reactionsI became increasingly intrigued by the way that political analysts had reactedto the initial emergence of parties, long before their centrality came to be

x

seen as unavoidable. I was particularly interested in the extent to whichtoday’s criticisms and defenses echo the earliest assessments of partisan pol-itics, and in the way that early analysts sought to incorporate parties into the-ories of governance that did not anticipate or welcome such organizeddivisions.

Because partisan politics is a relatively recent phenomenon, we do notneed to go back very far to see how scholars and practitioners explained theorigins of these new mechanisms for practical politics, or to trace the evolu-tion of the categories they developed to distinguish between various types ofparties. Many of these first analytic endeavors have indirectly shaped con-temporary understandings of party politics. Some of them constitute thebasis for later writings on such now-familiar topics as the relationship be-tween electoral systems and party systems, the conditions for party govern-ment, and the benefits of responsible party government. Others documenthow hard it was for the idea of party-based politics to win widespread accep-tance. Because these texts reveal the slow and half-hearted development oftheoretical justifications for party politics, they help to show why politicaltheory has provided only a weak protection against subsequent criticism ofparties.

Important as they are, these and other nineteenth century writings tendto get neglected in the discipline of political science, in which most of thefrequently-cited “classics” are no more than 50 years old. A principal aim ofthis book is to rectify this undeserved neglect by making scholars and stu-dents more aware of analysts’ long-standing fascination with political par-ties. Another is to show the deep roots of party scholarship as an empiricaland cross-national endeavor, in which writers have long used observationsabout political life in various countries to support generalizations about howthe political world does or should work.

Many colleagues have given me help and advice as I searched out relevanttexts from four countries and worked to put them in historical context.Among those deserving special thanks are Sarah Fishman Boyd, Peter CarlCaldwell, Susan Collins, Eduardo Garcia-Novelli, Donald Lutz, HelenMann, Timothy Nokken, Laura Scalia, John Scott, Miles Smith, RebekahSmith-Lueb, Jonathan Sperber, and Carolyn Warner. Michael Bruter pro-vided research help and advice on the French translations, and Richard Arm-strong provided the Latin translations. Of course, responsibility for anymistakes or omissions remains solely my own. Thanks also to Hans-DieterKlingemann and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, who generously pro-vided me with a convenient and congenial place to work while I was locat-ing many of the German texts. This research was supported in part by a grantfrom the University of Houston.

PREFACE

xi

Perhaps the best way to end this preface is with advice from Anson Morse,a late-nineteenth-century American political scientist who urged all who areinterested in politics and in good governance to pay more attention to polit-ical parties:

But despite its conceded importance in practical politics, very few have asyet turned their attention to the philosophy of party. As a rule even the bestof the formal treatises on political science give it little or no considera-tion. . . . [W]hatever may be the excuse for past neglect, there can be nogood ground for its continuance. We live to-day under party government.We want good government; and the first step towards securing this is to ac-quaint ourselves with the nature, the capacity and the limitation of our newruler (Morse 1891: 301).

Sources

Bryce, James. 1921. Modern Democracies. New York: The Macmillan Company.Mair, Peter. 1995. “Political Parties, Popular Legitimacy and Public Privilege.” West

European Politics 18:40–57.Morse, Anson. 1891. “The Place of Party in the Political System.” Annals of the Ameri-

can Academy 2: 300–8.

PREFACE

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