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In George Washington's "Farewell Address", the first President specifically warns about the dangers of political parties. He admits that people tend to naturally align in groups, but also warns that political parties and bias can weaken the government and the unity of the Republic (look where we are today in our national unity: not so great).

He warns that parties can lead to alternating domination over each other and to efforts to exact revenge upon one another, causing each side to commit atrocities against the other. He believed that ultimately political parties tend to push the people to seek security in an individual rather than the collective whole of the Republic (Candidate X being the "answer" rather than "the people as a whole"). This in turn can lead to despotism.

Even today, if you look around you can see each party trying to dominate over the other, and making major moves to keep that domination (gerrymandering district lines to keep power, calling for multiple recounts when they don't win in contested states/districts, skewing polls to discourage voters, using the free press as a propaganda tool, using external organizations (PACs) to out-raise each other financially as a legal loophole to campaign finance laws, need I go on).

So the question is: why wasn't a safeguard put into place to ensure parties could NOT exist in the federal government of the USA? To keep ALL government elected officials independent and only accountable to their local constituents for representation rather than their party?

Thunderforge
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MissouriSpartan
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  • Also He believed that ultimately political parties tend to push the people to seek security in an individual rather than the collective whole of the Republic I fail to see the link to political parties. Certainly an independent can tell the voters that s/he has the magic formula for fixing the world and the country, too. In fact, countries without political parties (i.e., some dictatorships) go in this direction way more than democracies with political parties do. – SJuan76 Aug 27 '18 at 15:12
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    I recommend doing some research on first-past-the-post voting. It's a voting system that makes intuitive sense, but has counter-intuitive effects toward consolidation of political factions. – Dan Bryant Aug 27 '18 at 17:36
  • I think the main reason was so that the President (person who got the most votes) and Vice-President (the person who got the 2nd most votes) wouldn't be so much at odds with each other. The party system allows people to vote for a President/Vice President combination instead of voting for each position individually. –  Aug 27 '18 at 18:30
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    @Giter, "... people understand they're more powerful when working towards a common interest as a group": s/understand/supposed/. The problem being that a party machine has its own interests and works to unobtrusively replace its larval founding group's goals with its own. – agc Aug 27 '18 at 18:39
  • Re "...calling for multiple recounts when they don't win in contested states/districts...": Please elaborate as to whether this is a general condemnation of all recounts, or a condemnation of a particular kind of recount. – agc Aug 27 '18 at 18:42
  • I'm talking in the context of "our candidate didn't win, so we're going to ask for a recount just to be sure, because we don't want to accept the results initially". I can understand a recount if an error were discovered (clerical issue comes up, counting security is compromised, corrupt elections officials, etc.). But a party just flat out demanding a recount because "our candidate didn't win so we're going to demand a full recount of this whole state's votes" forcing voters to wait that much longer for results. That's what I condemn. I'm talking all parties, period, no particular bias. – MissouriSpartan Aug 27 '18 at 18:49
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    It should be noted that the US has the weakest political parties among modern democracies - that is, US politician are way more independent from their parties than their counterparts abroad (in Europe or elsewhere). Therefore, the founding fathers did succeed in part in preventing political parties. – Pere Aug 27 '18 at 20:27
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    Political parties are inevitable in any system. People want to be a part of a group. However, the fact that all the power rests with just two political parties, despite such a wide range of beliefs across such a broad spectrum of peoples, is basically entirely due to our voting system (as mentioned by @DanBryant) – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Aug 28 '18 at 00:25
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    @Pere Citation needed. In the absolute, certainly wrong, but maybe I could be convinced the US is among some of the democracies with weaker parties. – Nobody Aug 28 '18 at 17:51
  • @MissouriSpartan Well, w/r/t your comments about recounts, I would point out that when counting millions of votes, a few hundred errors could be enough to change an election. That's why many states have absolute and relative thresholds for automatic recounts. – Azor Ahai -him- Aug 28 '18 at 20:00
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    @Pere: that's a ridiculous assertion. The US only has two main parties and they have consolidated their stranglehold on federal funding and locked out third parties. Given that there are only two of them, there's not much diversity of voter choice in most elections. In what quantifiable way do you say US politicians are independent from their parties? – smci Aug 28 '18 at 23:54
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    @smci For example, in most European parliaments, members vote always with their parties, but in the US congress every member decides their vote and usually some members cross the party lines. US parties are a very loose group of people compared with their European (and other) counterparts. – Pere Aug 29 '18 at 09:48
  • See Federalist #10. – Alex Feb 18 '24 at 23:03

4 Answers4

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A safeguard WAS put into place. We call it the Electoral College (although it is not named as such in the Constitution). It failed miserably at that goal.

The original vision when the Electoral College system was devised had three aims:

  1. To prevent political parties from dominating politics.
  2. To prevent a populist from getting elected to office.
  3. To "handicap" larger states so smaller states could still have a voice.

To prevent political parties, the original text of the Constitution required each member of the Electoral College to cast two votes for President (one of which could not be for someone from that elector's home state (to prevent the "favorite son" problem). The top vote-getter would be the President, and the 2nd-place vote-getter would be the Vice President.

The idea here is that the President and Vice President would likely be from different parties, since nobody runs for 2nd place. Constitutionally, the Vice President is the head of the Senate, so the thinking was that the differing political ideologies between them would force them to work together to achieve some compromise or consensus to get things done. This plan went sour very, very quickly with the elections of 1796 and 1800 respectively.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political enemies. In 1796 with Adams as President, Jefferson leveraged his position as Vice President to attack Adams' policies, and the Adams administration turned out to be a very dysfunctional government.

The election of 1800 was even worse. Both parties attempted to gerrymander their electoral districts to sway the vote, and the shenanigans resulted in a tie. If nobody gets a majority in the Electoral College, the Constitution says that the House of Representatives then votes to appoint the President. Both parties tried to collude with other factions within the House with endless ties as the end result. It took 36 ballots to finally break the tie, with Jefferson and Adams swapping their President and Vice President seats.

Because the two back-to-back election cycles were such a colossal disaster, the 12th Amendment was passed, subtly but fundamentally changing how the Electoral voting system worked. Under the 12th Amendment, electors still cast two ballots, but they are marked specifically one for President and one for Vice President. This change basically abandoned the idea that the runner-up would be from the opposing party, and the President and Vice President have run together strategically on the same party ticket ever since.

The idea that we could have a truly bipartisan government is a great idea in theory, but history has shown us that it was completely unworkable in practice (at least, with the system they tried anyway).

In my personal opinion, politics always devolves into the worst form of tribalism no matter how great or small the stakes. In a naive, idealized form of democracy, elected representatives carry forward the values of their constituents in national policymaking. In reality, however, most elections are not about voting for your own values; they're about voting against the other guy's values, because those values will destroy the country. Political parties are the inevitable result of people banding together to prevent the other side from "winning", rather than a mechanism for carrying forward one's own ideals. This was as true in the 18th century as it is today.

This isn't just an American thing; you see this in every democratic country in the world. Politics being what it is, political parties -- no matter how much we might wish it weren't so -- are an inseparable property of a representative government.

Wes Sayeed
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    Saying that the idea was that the President and Vice President would "be from different parties" in a system you also say was designed "to prevent parties dominating" seems not entirely congruous. There's also a lot of hidden implications about how the Presidency connects to broader party dynamics there and everywhere else in the post; the inability to just call an election at any time to replace a dysfunctional one is also pertinent. That's probably better addressed with some other question (or probably several); just a warning to the reader. – zibadawa timmy Aug 27 '18 at 21:33
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    @zibadawatimmy; There's a lot that I didn't cover for the sake of brevity. The VP is the head of the Senate, but the Constitution doesn't say what that means. The gist was that the President would have a coalition in the House, the VP would have one in the Senate, and both are required to pass laws. Apart from the 12th Amendment, the head of Senate has been relegated to a worthless position over the years (unlike the House Speaker, which is very powerful but also not well defined in the Constitution). There is much that didn't work out the way the Framers thought it would. – Wes Sayeed Aug 27 '18 at 21:48
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    Re: "Politics always devolves..." ...hey, that certainly feels true, but remember that politics-as-they-are (in the US) is better than other known forms of government! – elliot svensson Aug 27 '18 at 22:23
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    Re: "The electoral college is a safeguard against [problems of] party-dominated politics...[paraphrased]" ...Also, the Electoral College is better than straight popular vote because it prevents typos, errors, and fraudulent counting by other US states to unequally win elections. First (through the census) we determine how powerful each state will be. Only then do we decide (through the general election) whom to put into office. – elliot svensson Aug 27 '18 at 22:27
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    Was it such a disaster, I wonder, or did it function as intended? If two people were such bitter enemies, and yet both enjoyed tremendous popularity individually, would it not be better to have a dysfunctional government for the duration of that term than to have one faction win total supremacy? Food for thought. – Wildcard Aug 28 '18 at 01:33
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    While this does happen in other democracies, my observation has been that the effect is more pronounced in democracies which are designed such that they devolve into a 2-party system. Multi-party democracies exist, and function quite well. – Roland Heath Aug 28 '18 at 03:19
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    As @RolandHeath commented, the "against someone" works in a 2-party system. It doesn't work in a multi-party system, because if you rally against any party, the people affected will spread out to other parties instead of (only) joining your party. You can't just rally against all other parties, because the other parties are also opposed to each other, which means you'd have to be against people that are also against the same people you are against, which limits the effect. The main problem is FPTP/winner takes all, which leads to 2 parties, which leads to extreme tribalism and this effect. –  Aug 28 '18 at 06:41
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    @Wildcard, I do think your point is valid. I submit to you that congress fulfills that role, where one side may have a slim majority over the other through most of history. This makes allowances for people to react emotionally (which is why congress has low approval ratings), and then only really important things can get through all the obstacles which require cold thought. As a Trump supporter I can honestly say that a big reason for all the hatred from the opposition is that he does not allow the emotion-rollercoaster to end – Frank Cedeno Aug 28 '18 at 15:47
  • "a truly bipartisan government" (third paragraph from end) did you mean to write "a truly non-partisan government" ? – James K Aug 28 '18 at 19:53
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    First two are correct, third is ... er... what we tell schoolkids so we don't have to talk to them about slavery. We have records of the Constitutional Conv. deliberations, and it was the large southern plantation states that insisted against popular vote, not "small states" like Connecticut and Rhode Island. The EC was a hack to allow the 3/5th compromise (where states got to inflate their political power in proportion to their slaves who they'd never allow to actually vote) to apply to Presidential selection as well. – T.E.D. Aug 28 '18 at 20:03
  • Regarding your last two paragraphs, you might want to look at the political system in place in Switzerland. – ChrisR Aug 28 '18 at 20:50
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    @T.E.D., the Electoral College is not a hack. The hack was the 3/5 compromise... the Electoral College prevents miscounting, weather events, and dishonesty by other states from turning our elections into a dimpled and pregnant quagmire every time we dare to put up somebody with a close margin. – elliot svensson Aug 28 '18 at 22:47
  • @T.E.D., indeed, the Electoral College is a splendid defense against hacking (in the modern sense) since the men and women we send to Washington D.C. after an election use their judgment to cast their votes for the state... if they believe that something went wrong with the counting, then the country will not end up with the wrong Commander-in-Chief for a few months until the recounts and lawsuits end... the Commander-in-Chief will be the right one as soon as Inauguration is complete. – elliot svensson Aug 28 '18 at 22:49
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    Criticize the electoral college all you want but that means you ignore that it is the reason the USA came to be as successful as it is. Without it, a coalition of states at the Constitutional Convention would not have joined the USA, they would have formed there own country or set of countries. Without it, many later states would not have joined the USA because who wants the populous states telling them what to do if there's no safeguards to prevent it? Essentially, without the Electoral College North America would have looked like the other continents. A collection of random countries. – Dunk Aug 28 '18 at 23:54
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    @Dunk no, criticising something does not mean ignoring that it may have had a historical importance. But what was a necessity in the past may not necessarily continue to make sense in the present. – leftaroundabout Aug 29 '18 at 12:32
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    @elliotsvensson - That's nothing but post facto rationalizations. We know why it was created because some of the people involved were journaling about it at the time. If you think it has some positive side effects, that's a totally different (and off-topic) issue. – T.E.D. Aug 29 '18 at 13:42
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    @T.E.D., the strange thing about compromises in US history is that they satisfy two opposing parties, and therefore it is impossible to form a good conception of their purpose by learning the rationale of any one participant. – elliot svensson Aug 29 '18 at 13:51
  • @T.E.D., lame to call my rebuttal to the insults against the constitution "off topic" – elliot svensson Aug 29 '18 at 13:53
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    @elliotsvensson - The recorded facts are not "insults", and this is not a debate forum. If you want to post material about the positive aspects of the Electoral College, I'm quite sure there are questions about that somewhere here where it would be on topic (and heck, I might even agree with you). – T.E.D. Aug 29 '18 at 13:56
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    @elliotsvensson Modern electors do not use their good judgment at all, as most of them are required by their state's laws to cast their votes in accordance with the certified election results, making it a punishable crime to use their judgment. Many of them are also selected by the convention of the party that wins the state, making it incredibly unlikely that they would "defect": they already have a personal interest in giving their side the victory. – zibadawa timmy Aug 29 '18 at 20:38
  • @zibadawatimmy, the electors stand between the certification process for election results and the actual transition-of-power entailed by an election. If these people were convinced that the certification of the results was suspect for good reasons, then they would stop the works and force the system to give them a good version of the results. Or, as an alternate, they would elect somebody anyway--- and that person would have Constitutional authority to govern. Better than the person "sort of having" the Constitutional authority to govern... chaos! – elliot svensson Aug 29 '18 at 22:54
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    @elliotsvensson Electors have no such power. They can't go "we think you guys screwed up or something; do it again." They are obligated by law to conduct and finish their business on particular days. There are neither legal nor constitutional procedures for invalidating a (presidential) election, other than faithless electors, which are extremely rare especially in modern times for the reasons I mentioned. There are no do-overs, or recalls, or snap elections until 4 years later. – zibadawa timmy Aug 30 '18 at 11:19
  • @zibadawatimmy, my entire point is that even if every elector was completely faithless and elected Joe the Plumber instead of Barack Obama, then Constitutionally we would have exactly one president: Joe the Plumber. Joe would have the authority to govern, and there would not be an armed civil war the next day: Joe it is. Of course the electors would be jailed, and Joe would resign, and things would progress toward Obama being president (as we all voted). But without the Electoral College, there would be a few months there when nobody knows who is in charge and that's when the coup would come – elliot svensson Aug 30 '18 at 23:06
  • @zibadawatimmy, ...and if between November 4 and the electoral college voting day we all learned that the certified election results were marred by some specific hack, then we could all reasonably agree not to jail the electors for voting the truth (when the certified results were bad) and we would end up with exactly one president with all the authority to govern (instead of months and months of "who's in charge?" and the weakness that would entail... not to mention the let's-face-it vulnerability to a real attack like Pearl Harbor at that moment). – elliot svensson Aug 30 '18 at 23:08
  • Minor correction: the tie in 1800 was between Jefferson and Burr, not Jefferson and Adams. – Alex Feb 18 '24 at 22:58
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The first two parties of the United States were the Federalists and their aptly named opposition, the Anti-Federalists. The former believed in a strong centralized federal government over the state governments and businesses and banks, with some wanting to increase friendly relations following the Revolutionary War. The Anti-Federalists obviously disagreed and believed that the Constitution was not restrictive enough (they were the reason for the Bill of Rights amendments) and favored limited central government and more power for the states and the people. They feared the Presidency might devolve into a Monarch, and were generally opposed to the business and banking interests.

The Federalist Party quickly lost favor and became the Whig Party, with moderates moving over to the Anti-Federalists which devolved into the the Democrat-Republican party, which further divided into the Modern Democratic party, and eventually the Modern Republicans (the core opposition to the Democratic Party were those that were opposed to slavery that was supported by the agriculture base of the early Democrats, in the form of several parties that were issue-specific. The Republicans generally picked up support over time as these various parties rose and fell apart). Interestingly enough, both modern Parties see Thomas Jefferson as their spiritual ancestor... the Democrats also add Andrew Jackson, who was a big proponent of opening more positions in government (notably judges) to voting and brought more suffrage to Americans... though that would be white male Americans without land that benefited.

While the arguments have changed over time, and issues are supported over different times by different parties, the evolution of parties in the United States was largely a result of the ongoing debate on where the limits of the central federal powers should be vs. the States and individuals and what does the Federal Government have a right to do vs. what does it have no right to do.

T.E.D.
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hszmv
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  • Got any references to the Republican party claiming spiritual ancestry from Jefferson? I don't doubt you at all. Its just that I can think of several arguments that might work for that, but I'd like to see what ones they are actually using. – T.E.D. Aug 29 '18 at 18:58
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States) Well, the party took its name in honor of Jefferson's Defunct Democrat-Republican Party, which is the historical name to distinguish it from the Modern Party. At the time, they just called themselves the Republican Party (and can also be called the Jefferson Republican Party). The type of small government federal democracy the party tends to advocate for recently is similarly termed Jeffersonian Democracy and the "Republican" name was used to denote favoring the type of government described in the constitution, a Republic. – hszmv Aug 30 '18 at 15:05
  • @T.E.D.: It's important to note that the term "Republic" in America is generally understood to be a Representative Democracy, in addition to a Government with out Monarchal rule. – hszmv Aug 30 '18 at 15:06
  • Um, that's a super big WP article. Can you give me a section link? – T.E.D. Aug 30 '18 at 15:09
  • Section History, subsection 19th century, first paragraph. Also the Name and Symbols section goes a bit more in-depth in origin. – hszmv Aug 30 '18 at 15:12
  • It looks like you were referring to this section. Its only talking about the (rather generic really) name, and the reference for the claim is a dead link. I tried looking in the specific WP page for the History of the Republican Party, and found 0 references to Jefferson. (Obviously, the man's name is all over the same page for the Democratic Party) – T.E.D. Aug 30 '18 at 15:18
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – T.E.D. Aug 30 '18 at 15:22
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Because there's no real way to prevent a party from forming. Parties are independent organizations that seek to maximize their members' political power by voting as a bloc. They arise naturally and organically in any representative democratic organization, first as informal organizations and later as more formalized organizations. The only ways to reduce them is to have no democracy or full democracy (where eligible voter votes on everything).

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/origins-and-functions-political-parties/

David Rice
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  • "The only ways to reduce them is to have no democracy or full democracy" There are also various possibilities between representative and "full"/direct democracies, where parties have less power. For example I don't think anyone claims Switzerland is a "full"/direct democracy, yet our referendum and initiative system and our representative government (as opposed to first past the post governments of parties or coalitions) significantly weakens political parties. – Nobody Aug 28 '18 at 18:03
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    @Nobody There may be weaker political parties, but they're still there, and there are really only 3-5 major, relevant parties. – David Rice Aug 28 '18 at 18:16
  • They are there and have power, I don't debate that. But their diminished power is significant (not only in the statistical sense). For example if using a 5% cutoff we have 5 relevant parties here, but there are also party-independent interest groups which can easily have more (direct, skipping the parties entirely) power over their subject of interest than one of the 5 major parties. – Nobody Aug 28 '18 at 19:00
  • @Nobody as in actual legal authority, to pass regulations and enforce them? – David Rice Aug 28 '18 at 19:33
  • A group is called "referendumsfähig" and "initiativfähig" if it can veto a law change that is passed respectively propose a new one (both by collecting valid signatures). Plenty of non-party groups are either or both of that, sometimes groups even form spontaneously to veto something. That's not directly legal authority, but in practice it's enough to make representatives compromise with established groups to prevent their intervention, more so than with a 5% party. Because if such a group intervenes the law ends up on the ballots 4 times a year with a hefty delay. – Nobody Aug 28 '18 at 20:32
  • Even an absolute majority coalition of parties cannot dismiss that because they might not have that majority on every single issue and the delay by itself already bad. A very slow and stable system. – Nobody Aug 28 '18 at 20:33
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You seemed to ask 3 related questions:

Q1: (Title) Why did political parties form in the US?

Political parties form in a democracy when the people are divided and the sides want more power and there's no communication system that allows them to handle it another way.

In America, a division happened very early between the Federalists and Anti-federalists in Congress, and this schism then spread. Since it was about a philosophical issue and impacted many practical issues, it went on for a long time. Communication was very primitive, so parties formed and persisted.

After parties exist for a while, they tend to take on lives of their own, plus they attract extremists and corruption, so all kinds of stuff happens. But you just asked about why they formed.

Another way of looking at it is that representatives can't get power from the people unless they have a way to communicate well with them. This was missing, so they were on their own. Instead of representing people, they merely tried to do the right thing. They had to form groups to create power.

Q2: Why did America's founders not ensure parties would not form in the US?

Because they didn't know why parties formed. So they just hoped they wouldn't form. The Federalist Papers had a bit of reasoning why they would probably not form for a while, but it was based on ignorance. They didn't know what we know about individual and group psychology. And they didn't analyze existing systems well, like the British parties that existed at the time.

I rewrote the 2nd question in the first paragraph:

Q3: Why didn't America's founders ensure that elected officials were only accountable to their local constituents for representation rather than a party?

There's nothing in the Federalist Papers about accountability. The founders ASSUMED that voting would make representatives representative. We now have tons of evidence that it's not true. Even in America- where we vote for people, not parties- politicians represent wealthy donors and parties much more than they represent voters.

Probably, the founder didn't understand accountability, just as most Americans don't. I've asked nearly 1,000 people - two had accurate definitions of accountability.

So I did some searching, including in old books that are online. There were some decent definitions, but no good ones. And when I looked up "political accountability," the definitions were either inaccurate or were a watered-down version of accountability. Why? I'm guessing because there's so little, so they wanted to use the term for what exists in democracy. (In the last decade, better definitions have surfaced.)

So I defined it rigorously, and then functionally.

Accountability occurs when someone must answer honestly about their responsibilities. By "must", I mean there's compelling pressure.

Don't think just accountability, think: accountability to whom and for what. Often the entity to whom one is accountable defines what one is accountable for.

Political accountability in a democracy is a relationship between an elected official and their constituents where the voters together assert the pressure. For representatives, their job includes carrying out the wishes of voters as well as obeying laws, so there must be an accessible way for voters to state their wishes. To assert pressure, voters need to know what they all want, so they can know what the rep should be doing. Better, voters should also know what all voters want in order to know what they should be able to expect from a rep.

I began figuring all this out a bit over a decade ago. I've designed a political communication system to accomplish this, and have begun a website PeopleCount.org. There's no app there yet, and there's nothing to sell, just the page and my blog. I have no support so it'll take a while. The design will allow voters to work together to manage their representatives so that reps are fully accountable to voters. It will free representatives from needing to be accountable to either the parties or large donors. It will be rewarding to use for both politicians and voters.

Randy Strauss
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