Do We Really Need Political Parties?

Hans Noel (0:00)

Thomas Jefferson somewhat famously said that if he could go to heaven, but only with a party, he'd rather not do it at all. Washington's Fair Rule Address was about how parties were a threat and a problem.

But interestingly, all of those politicians, once they started doing politics, very quickly started to create what became political parties.

Bob Crawford (0:22)

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Hey there, American History Hotline. It's Bob Crawford here on the road, joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline. The show where you ask the questions, and to get us a question, just go to our website, americanhistoryhotline.gmail.com, and record yourself on a voice memo or a video would be great, and send us your question, and we will get someone to answer it for you.

Okay, today's question comes from JR He writes, have political parties proven to be a necessary organizing tool for democracy or have they evolved into self-preserving power structures that increasingly work against the civic and constitutional principles many of the founders hope to preserve? JR, that is an excellent, excellent question, and I think we've got the perfect guest to help us answer it today. Joining me now is Hans Noel, a professor of government at Georgetown, and the author of the book, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America. Hans, thanks for being on the show today.

Hans Noel (1:42)

Thanks for having me.

Bob Crawford (1:44)

Okay, Hans, where in the Constitution does it establish political parties?

Hans Noel (1:51)

Well, some political parties are not established anywhere in the Constitution. They are a creation of politicians responding to the environment that the Constitution created. And so they are entirely on the actor's side, not in the Constitution at all.

Bob Crawford (2:07)

So anybody who knows anything about the Constitution would say that was a flipping question for me. But I guess the question is, how did our founding fathers view political parties or factions?

Hans Noel (2:23)

So the founders were not keen on political parties at all. They didn't really know, I think, what we understand a party to be. Parties, modern political parties, are a development that has happened in democracies around the world more recently. So when they were against them, they didn't exactly know what they were against, what they were going to become. But they didn't like the idea of factions, they didn't like the idea of different groups opposing each other. Thomas Jefferson somewhat famously said that if he could go to heaven, but only with a party, he'd rather not do it at all.

Madison has a whole discussion about how factions are a problem in the Federalist Papers. Washington's Fair Rule Address was about how parties were a threat and a problem.

But interestingly, all of those politicians, once they started doing politics, very quickly started to create what became political parties. So while they were opposed to them, they were at least a little bit hypocritical about it because they themselves then started building what eventually became the modern Republican and Democratic parties.

Bob Crawford (3:24)

So are parties necessary in a democracy? I mean, is it like a necessary evil?

Hans Noel (3:34)

I don't know that I would even say necessary evil, but I would say they're necessary. And most political scientists would agree. I mean, there's sort of a famous passage from a political scientist writing in the 1950s. It says that political parties created modern democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable, save in terms of the parties.

And what he means by that is that without parties, voters don't have any kind of guidance about what they're voting on and who they're voting for. They just have the personalities. And just voting for personalities is not going to get you the policies you want. You have a really charming person who is a nice one, someone you'd like to have a beer with, but the policies that they would advance are not the ones that you would like. Or if they're not good at working with other people who do want the things that you want, well, then it's a mistake to vote for them. And so you really need the organizing principle that is behind parties. And it's one of the reasons why not just in the United States, but around the world, democracy just doesn't flourish without political parties.

Bob Crawford (4:29)

When I think about party organizing, I think about Martin Van Buren.

And I think about his time period. And I think a lot of the listeners of this program are aware that he was 1820s, 1830s, and his goal was to, in his words, reestablish the Jeffersonian coalition of the slaveholders, the plantation owners, and the Northern Republicans who were okay with slavery. That was a coalition of ideology. Talk about how important ideology is to political parties and how coalitions form around ideologies.