Why No Parties?: Investigating the Disappearance of Democrat-Whig Divisions in the Confederacy

Abstract

The impact of political parties on political life in the United States has long been a subject of much interest to political scientists and other scholars.Works, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1881), comprise a good many political science classics. Below I will refer to James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1983); Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); John H. Aldrich, Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and Sarah A. Binder, Minority Rights, Majority Rule: Partisanship and the Development of Congress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). In pursuit of a general theory of political parties, some scholars have focused on the origins of parties, believing that to understand their goals and actions, one must first understand why parties form. In particular, the rational-choice view of party formation has been the most prevalent view in recent years.John F. Hoadley, “The Emergence of Political Parties in Congress,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 757–79; John F. Hoadley, Origins of American Political Parties, 1789–1803 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986); Joseph A. Schlesinger, Political Parties and the Winning of Office (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991); Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838–1893 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); John H. Aldrich and Ruth W. Grant, “The Antifederalists, the First Congress, and the First Parties,” Journal of Politics 55 (1993): 295–326; Aldrich, Why Parties?. To rational-choice scholars, parties are “endogenous” institutions, extralegal instruments created by political office seekers to further their goals and ambitions by solving various collective-action and social-choice problems.Thomas Schwartz, The Logic of Collective Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Thomas Schwartz, “Why Parties?,” Research Memorandum, Department of Political Science, University of California at Los Angeles, 1989; Cox and McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan; Aldrich, Why Parties?. Stated another way, parties are a rational response by politicians to the complexities they face in the political world.