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The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840
This work traces the historical processes in thought by which American political leaders slowly edged away from their complete philosophical rejection of a party and hesitantly began to embrace a party system. In the author's words, "The emergence of legitimate party opposition and of a theory of politics that accepted it was something new in the history of the world; it required a bold new act of understanding on the part of its contemporaries and it still requires study on our part." Professor Hofstadter's analysis of the idea of party and the development of legitimate opposition offers fresh insights into the political crisis of 1797-1801, on the thought of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, and other leading figures, and on the beginnings of modern democratic politics.
300 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Richard Hofstadter
85 books292 followersRichard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual, historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. In the course of his career, Hofstadter became the “iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus” whom twenty-first century scholars continue consulting, because his intellectually engaging books and essays continue to illuminate contemporary history.
His most important works are Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944); The American Political Tradition (1948); The Age of Reform (1955); Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), and the essays collected in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an unsentimental analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and in 1964 for the cultural history, Anti-intellectualism in American Life.
Richard Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a German American Lutheran mother and a Polish Jewish father, who died when he was ten. He attended the City Honors School, then studied philosophy and history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1933, under the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. As he matured, he culturally identified himself primarily as a Jew, rather than as a Protestant Christian, a stance that eventually may have cost him professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, because of the institutional antisemitism of the 1940s.
As a man of his time, Richard Hofstadter was a Communist, and a member of the Young Communist League at university, and later progressed to Communist Party membership. In 1936, he entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where Merle Curti was demonstrating how to synthesize intellectual, social, and political history based upon secondary sources rather than primary-source archival research. In 1938, he joined the Communist Party of the USA, yet realistically qualified his action: “I join without enthusiasm, but with a sense of obligation.... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking.... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now.” In late 1939, he ended the Communist stage of his life, because of the Soviet–Nazi alliance. He remained anti-capitalist: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.”
In 1942, he earned his doctorate in history and in 1944 published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, a pithy and commercially successful (200,000 copies) critique of late 19th century American capitalism and those who espoused its ruthless “dog-eat-dog” economic competition and justified themselves by invoking the doctrine of as Social Darwinism, identified with William Graham Sumner. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, however, disagree with this interpretation.
His most important works are Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944); The American Political Tradition (1948); The Age of Reform (1955); Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), and the essays collected in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an unsentimental analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and in 1964 for the cultural history, Anti-intellectualism in American Life.
Richard Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a German American Lutheran mother and a Polish Jewish father, who died when he was ten. He attended the City Honors School, then studied philosophy and history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1933, under the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. As he matured, he culturally identified himself primarily as a Jew, rather than as a Protestant Christian, a stance that eventually may have cost him professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, because of the institutional antisemitism of the 1940s.
As a man of his time, Richard Hofstadter was a Communist, and a member of the Young Communist League at university, and later progressed to Communist Party membership. In 1936, he entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where Merle Curti was demonstrating how to synthesize intellectual, social, and political history based upon secondary sources rather than primary-source archival research. In 1938, he joined the Communist Party of the USA, yet realistically qualified his action: “I join without enthusiasm, but with a sense of obligation.... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking.... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now.” In late 1939, he ended the Communist stage of his life, because of the Soviet–Nazi alliance. He remained anti-capitalist: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.”
In 1942, he earned his doctorate in history and in 1944 published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, a pithy and commercially successful (200,000 copies) critique of late 19th century American capitalism and those who espoused its ruthless “dog-eat-dog” economic competition and justified themselves by invoking the doctrine of as Social Darwinism, identified with William Graham Sumner. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, however, disagree with this interpretation.
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March 16, 2012
The notion of bipartisanship hovers balefully over the American political landscape. For some time, I’ve been struggling to conceptualize exactly why it’s such a bogus, indeed harmful, ‘ideal.’ I thought I might organize my thoughts by writing around a passage in Mill’s On Liberty that I find enraging. In a famous passage from chapter II, speaking of the importance of free speech, Mill writes “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” So far, so good. But later in the chapter, he adds to this that “it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.” His picture seems to be that the partisans of the two parties do their thing, each blinded by their partiality and prejudice, while the calm and disinterested citizen, what we now call the “independent” voter, watches them as she would a half-comic, half-serious wrestling match, and derives a benefit, a moderate amalgamation of the good bits of each of the partisan views, from the spectacle. This is enraging because it casts the partisan necessarily as a fool and elevates the disinterested spectator to the position of the only one capable of deriving benefit from the political culture in which she lives.
This, I think, is the view that today lauds, in equal measure, bipartisanship and the independent voter. When the parties are not acting in concert with each other, the picture goes, necessarily they act as partisan fools. The only benefit they have to offer is by ‘finding common ground’ and appealing to the independent voter, who becomes the only one whose role in the spectacle counts. (There’s something I’m not getting quite right here. Do they find common ground to appeal to the independent voter, or does the independent voter find the moderate position by seeing them fight without finding common ground? I’m mixing these up, but I don’t see how to disentangle this yet.) This model does apply, of course, to the legal system. The adversarial jury trial is exactly this: a staged contest between contestants who are acknowledged to be partisan, each presenting a case, from which the jury, the agents who ultimately matter, are supposed to derive a balanced view of the truth. But it seems a great mistake to apply this to the political system, as Mill does and as the common wisdom about the virtues of bipartisanship seems to do.
In order to get a better handle on these matters, I turned to Richard Hofstadter’s The Idea of a Party System, which charts the emergence of political parties, and the theory of political parties, from 1780 to 1840. The Founding Fathers emerge from an 18th century tradition of great hostility to parties. (Of the century’s important thinkers, only Burke saw the virtues and importance of parties.) But with the new republic that they fashioned, they found themselves forced to confront the existence of parties and the need to separate organized opposition to the government from sedition and treason. (Struggling with these issues led to some missteps, like the notorious Aliens and Sedition Act of 1798 by which the Federalists attempted to crush the opposition rather than live with it.)
Unfortunately for me, either these early Americans didn’t discuss the concept of bipartisanship, or if they did, Hofstadter did not feel it of interest to report their thoughts on it. I’m pretty sure it was the former. After all, what opposed partisanship, for them, was non-partisanship, not bipartisanship. But some of the 18th century anti-party ideas are certainly mixed up with the Millian justification of parties I described above. When Obama discusses bipartisanship, he seems to use it not as the emergence of a wise moderation from the foolish extremes, but as a stepping stone to a position, for him, above the party fray. He is not (in his own estimation, I guess) the independent voter learning from the spectacle, but Bolingbroke’s ‘Patriot King’: “a monarch of surpassing virtue, competence, and political dexterity, a king so benign that opposition would no longer exist” (Hofstadter, p. 20). The Patriot King can “defeat the designs, and break the spirit of faction, instead of partaking in one and assuming the other…. [He can] render [the union of his subjects] so general as to answer all the ends of good government, private security, public tranquility, wealth, power, and fame” (Bolingbroke).
I can’t say I have ended up, having read this book, with a clear sense of how this all works. A lot depends on what you take a party to be, something which is discussed throughout by Hofstadter but to which he does not give direct attention. Sometimes a party is a faction, a clique, an interest group. Sometimes it embodies a political principle or ideology. And sometimes parties differ over “measures and men” though not over principles. (I should say, Hofstadter is not at all confused; rather the authors he discusses have very different opinions, and the course of opinion develops through the period he deals with. What I miss in his book is a sense of how the justifications for the party system work better or worse depending on which conception of party is held.) But the book is invaluable for providing rich source material for thought on this subject. If and when I do try to write about this, I shall certainly do it better for having read this book.
This, I think, is the view that today lauds, in equal measure, bipartisanship and the independent voter. When the parties are not acting in concert with each other, the picture goes, necessarily they act as partisan fools. The only benefit they have to offer is by ‘finding common ground’ and appealing to the independent voter, who becomes the only one whose role in the spectacle counts. (There’s something I’m not getting quite right here. Do they find common ground to appeal to the independent voter, or does the independent voter find the moderate position by seeing them fight without finding common ground? I’m mixing these up, but I don’t see how to disentangle this yet.) This model does apply, of course, to the legal system. The adversarial jury trial is exactly this: a staged contest between contestants who are acknowledged to be partisan, each presenting a case, from which the jury, the agents who ultimately matter, are supposed to derive a balanced view of the truth. But it seems a great mistake to apply this to the political system, as Mill does and as the common wisdom about the virtues of bipartisanship seems to do.
In order to get a better handle on these matters, I turned to Richard Hofstadter’s The Idea of a Party System, which charts the emergence of political parties, and the theory of political parties, from 1780 to 1840. The Founding Fathers emerge from an 18th century tradition of great hostility to parties. (Of the century’s important thinkers, only Burke saw the virtues and importance of parties.) But with the new republic that they fashioned, they found themselves forced to confront the existence of parties and the need to separate organized opposition to the government from sedition and treason. (Struggling with these issues led to some missteps, like the notorious Aliens and Sedition Act of 1798 by which the Federalists attempted to crush the opposition rather than live with it.)
Unfortunately for me, either these early Americans didn’t discuss the concept of bipartisanship, or if they did, Hofstadter did not feel it of interest to report their thoughts on it. I’m pretty sure it was the former. After all, what opposed partisanship, for them, was non-partisanship, not bipartisanship. But some of the 18th century anti-party ideas are certainly mixed up with the Millian justification of parties I described above. When Obama discusses bipartisanship, he seems to use it not as the emergence of a wise moderation from the foolish extremes, but as a stepping stone to a position, for him, above the party fray. He is not (in his own estimation, I guess) the independent voter learning from the spectacle, but Bolingbroke’s ‘Patriot King’: “a monarch of surpassing virtue, competence, and political dexterity, a king so benign that opposition would no longer exist” (Hofstadter, p. 20). The Patriot King can “defeat the designs, and break the spirit of faction, instead of partaking in one and assuming the other…. [He can] render [the union of his subjects] so general as to answer all the ends of good government, private security, public tranquility, wealth, power, and fame” (Bolingbroke).
I can’t say I have ended up, having read this book, with a clear sense of how this all works. A lot depends on what you take a party to be, something which is discussed throughout by Hofstadter but to which he does not give direct attention. Sometimes a party is a faction, a clique, an interest group. Sometimes it embodies a political principle or ideology. And sometimes parties differ over “measures and men” though not over principles. (I should say, Hofstadter is not at all confused; rather the authors he discusses have very different opinions, and the course of opinion develops through the period he deals with. What I miss in his book is a sense of how the justifications for the party system work better or worse depending on which conception of party is held.) But the book is invaluable for providing rich source material for thought on this subject. If and when I do try to write about this, I shall certainly do it better for having read this book.
March 22, 2011
This is a fine historical work on the rise of political parties as legitimate actors after the Revolutionary War. There is nice discussion of the historical antecedents. Then, assessment of party from 1780 until 1840. Early on, political parties were not considered legitimate. "The bane of faction" was a phrase sometimes used to describe party. However, over time, party opposition became seen as legitimate and by 1840, professional party organizations were accepted actors.
A very nice historical rendering of the evolution of party in the United States by an esteemed historian.
A very nice historical rendering of the evolution of party in the United States by an esteemed historian.
December 21, 2024
The book begins with a discussion of different models of how parties should exist, finding parallels in England and the US.
Bolingbroke in the UK and Washington and Monroe in the US supported a model of a single party that would provide for everyone (but without the government preventing other parties).
Hume in the UK and Madison in the US supported the idea of qualified support for parties. Parties as a necessary evil.
Jefferson tended to be with Madison early on, but veered toward the Monrovian attitude later.
The third view is from Burke in the UK and (not yet stated in the book) probably from Van Buren in the US, that parties, beyond being a necessary evil, are actually a necessary good. A loyal opposition keeps the government honest and permits synthetic policy arriving out of differing views.
Suggests that the American Revolution was special because of the relative lack of internal violence and infighting. Here this 1970 book is a little out of date. More recently, colonial revolutions are construed as differing in basic nature from those that are internal to a nation, such as French and Russian examples.
"Washington apparently hoped at first that the unanimity shown in his election would be echoed in at least a near-unanimity on basic ideas. He was bitterly disappointed at the early show of sharp opposition, and in good time, without ever giving up his conception of himself as a man above party, he became a strong partisan of the Hamiltonian Federalists. So far as he was concerned, the onus for strife, which at first he distributed almost with impartiality, was in the end placed entirely upon the opposition. When the Jay Treaty was at stake, he angrily charged that the opposition to it was the work of a party, without seeming to realize that its supporters also constituted a party."
Very interesting regarding Jefferson and the spoils system. Jefferson began his administration with the following idea regarding officeholders: "Malconduct is a just ground for removal; mere difference of political opinion is not". He expected to replace Federalists with Republicans when the former died or retired. But as time went on, not many Federalists did. Even worse, Jefferson practiced frugal government so he was not adding positions. Pressure to appoint party loyalists grew. So he adopted a new policy. The most politically partisan Federalists would also be removed. "In his eight years Jefferson removed 109 out of 433 men who held office by presidential appointment; and, of these, 40 were in a special category, the "midnight appointments" of the Adams administration, whose validity he never conceded."
After Monroe was elected, he received a letter from Andrew Jackson urging him to appoint a Federalist (!), General William Drayton Secretary of War, due to his loyal service during the War of 1812. Others also requested that the Cabinet include at least one Federalist. But Monroe felt this would be too indulgent to the party of the Hartford Convention and refused. Monroe's strategy was not to give the opposition jobs, but to give them ceremonial events to make them feel included, such as his 1817 trip to the North, which proved astonishingly successful.
Ah, so it is Van Buren the book was leading up to, and also Thurlow Weed.
Hofstadter was advocating the value of party differentiation in the late 60s and early 70s, a time of relative similarity between the parties. He got his wish, and then some more. One wonders what he would say today amid the numerous complaints of too much polarization.
Bolingbroke in the UK and Washington and Monroe in the US supported a model of a single party that would provide for everyone (but without the government preventing other parties).
Hume in the UK and Madison in the US supported the idea of qualified support for parties. Parties as a necessary evil.
Jefferson tended to be with Madison early on, but veered toward the Monrovian attitude later.
The third view is from Burke in the UK and (not yet stated in the book) probably from Van Buren in the US, that parties, beyond being a necessary evil, are actually a necessary good. A loyal opposition keeps the government honest and permits synthetic policy arriving out of differing views.
Suggests that the American Revolution was special because of the relative lack of internal violence and infighting. Here this 1970 book is a little out of date. More recently, colonial revolutions are construed as differing in basic nature from those that are internal to a nation, such as French and Russian examples.
"Washington apparently hoped at first that the unanimity shown in his election would be echoed in at least a near-unanimity on basic ideas. He was bitterly disappointed at the early show of sharp opposition, and in good time, without ever giving up his conception of himself as a man above party, he became a strong partisan of the Hamiltonian Federalists. So far as he was concerned, the onus for strife, which at first he distributed almost with impartiality, was in the end placed entirely upon the opposition. When the Jay Treaty was at stake, he angrily charged that the opposition to it was the work of a party, without seeming to realize that its supporters also constituted a party."
Very interesting regarding Jefferson and the spoils system. Jefferson began his administration with the following idea regarding officeholders: "Malconduct is a just ground for removal; mere difference of political opinion is not". He expected to replace Federalists with Republicans when the former died or retired. But as time went on, not many Federalists did. Even worse, Jefferson practiced frugal government so he was not adding positions. Pressure to appoint party loyalists grew. So he adopted a new policy. The most politically partisan Federalists would also be removed. "In his eight years Jefferson removed 109 out of 433 men who held office by presidential appointment; and, of these, 40 were in a special category, the "midnight appointments" of the Adams administration, whose validity he never conceded."
After Monroe was elected, he received a letter from Andrew Jackson urging him to appoint a Federalist (!), General William Drayton Secretary of War, due to his loyal service during the War of 1812. Others also requested that the Cabinet include at least one Federalist. But Monroe felt this would be too indulgent to the party of the Hartford Convention and refused. Monroe's strategy was not to give the opposition jobs, but to give them ceremonial events to make them feel included, such as his 1817 trip to the North, which proved astonishingly successful.
Ah, so it is Van Buren the book was leading up to, and also Thurlow Weed.
Hofstadter was advocating the value of party differentiation in the late 60s and early 70s, a time of relative similarity between the parties. He got his wish, and then some more. One wonders what he would say today amid the numerous complaints of too much polarization.
January 17, 2019
Richard Hofstadter seeks to explain the development and the acceptance of oppositional party politics in the early American republic. Despite entrenched intellectual opposition to the idea of parties in the eighteenth century, Hofstadter argues that political parties became a practical necessity in American political practice. There needed to be institutional mechanism whereby politicians could coherently form as well as implement policy: “In a country which was always to be in need of the cohesive force of institutions, the national parties, for all their faults, were to become at an early hour primary and necessary parts of the machinery of government, essential vehicles to convey men’s loyalties to the State under a central government that often seemed rather distant and abstract.” (70-71)
Hofstadter claims that the formation of parties came about through opposition to existing policies. For example, to Jeffersonian democrats, the Sedition Act threatened to effectively end the possibilities of conducting and voicing legal opposition, which they thought would inevitably lead to the end of free government. The attempts of the Federalists to police opinion, in the name of harmony and the national good, was an attempt to stifle and eliminate what Federalists saw as the corrosive effects of a developing party system. In response to such measures, Jeffersonians launched what Hofstadter refers to as a nascent political campaign, which was bent on replacing the legal oppression set in motion to enforce the Sedition Act. The Jeffersonians’ success hereof, did not, however, lead to theoretical acceptance of the idea of institutional parties as a positive good. On the contrary, when Jefferson came to office in 1800, he considered the Federalists “a small faction creeping into the heart of government under the mantle of Washington and the perverse guidance of Hamilton, addicted to false principles in politics, animated by a foreign loyalty, and given to conspiratorial schemes aiming at the consolidation of government and the return of monarchy.” (127) Such a faction was inimical to the very idea of republican government and must be eliminated -- not by oppressive and tyrannical violations of inalienable rights, but by more conciliatory methods of persuasion and absorption into his more principled majority party. In other words, Jefferson’s strategy aimed at the creation of “a party to end all parties” -- “a quest for unanimity.” (150-151)
Yet despite an enduring theoretical opposition to the idea of parties, Jeffersonian democrats, paradoxically, laid the framework for effective constituted political machinery, which eventually led to the acceptance of the idea of legitimate party opposition by America’s second generation of political leaders. In particular, Hofstadter looks at the men of the Albany Regency “as archetypes of the new advocates of party.” (213) As leader of the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren developed a coherent ideology that championed partisan politics. Van Buren considered parties not only inevitable, as Madison, Adams, and Jefferson so too thought, but also as an essential component to democracy, and a positive good. The institutionalization of strife could function as a valuable impetus of national cohesion. Unlike his predecessors, Van Buren did not try to annihilate or absorb dissent; he welcomed the idea of permanent opposition as fulfilling the ideals of the Revolution. (219-226) The negotiation and management of opinion through parties was a better form of leadership than traditional notions of deference. A party system would lead to a more democratic political structure. (239-252)
Reviewers almost unanimously agreed upon the quality of "The Idea of a Party System." William Nisbet Chambers praises Hofstadter for treating “one question after another sensitively, in a prose style that is always clear and felicitous.” Additionally, Chambers hopes that Hofstadter’s work might have a “salutary corrective effect” upon negative contemporary notions of party politics as divisive and unnecessary. I believe that this work is truly valuable insofar as it holds a mirror up to Americans, inviting them to reflect upon the current state of their organized political structures/parties. Hofstadter candidly prefaces his work by confessing an admiration for the party system: “the full development of the liberal democratic state in the West required that political criticism and opposition be incarnated in one or more opposition parties . . . . the gradual acceptance of parties and of the system of a recognized partisan opposition . . . marked a net gain in the sophistication of political thought and practice over the anti-party thought and unlegitimated or quasi-legitimated opposition that had prevailed in the Anglo-American tradition in the eighteenth century and earlier.” (xii) Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude, Hofstadter celebrates the gradual acceptance of party politics in American political thought. Yet the question of whether or not America’s current two-party system translates into salutary, informed, and deliberative civic discourse about the general welfare of the nation deserves a fresh look. Hofstadter is correct to assert that oppositional/reform-minded thought needs some organizational/institutional apparatus whereby to implement changes in existing policy. But can effective opposition only exist within a divisive two-party system? Does America’s current party system secure the existence of legitimate opposition? Or has leadership and representation deteriorated into nothing but parroting party slogans, campaign fundraising, and bizarre circus-like commercialized “debates,” which scarcely deserve the appellation “deliberative” ? Has America’s current party system taken the shape that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, or even Van Buren, intended?
Hofstadter claims that the formation of parties came about through opposition to existing policies. For example, to Jeffersonian democrats, the Sedition Act threatened to effectively end the possibilities of conducting and voicing legal opposition, which they thought would inevitably lead to the end of free government. The attempts of the Federalists to police opinion, in the name of harmony and the national good, was an attempt to stifle and eliminate what Federalists saw as the corrosive effects of a developing party system. In response to such measures, Jeffersonians launched what Hofstadter refers to as a nascent political campaign, which was bent on replacing the legal oppression set in motion to enforce the Sedition Act. The Jeffersonians’ success hereof, did not, however, lead to theoretical acceptance of the idea of institutional parties as a positive good. On the contrary, when Jefferson came to office in 1800, he considered the Federalists “a small faction creeping into the heart of government under the mantle of Washington and the perverse guidance of Hamilton, addicted to false principles in politics, animated by a foreign loyalty, and given to conspiratorial schemes aiming at the consolidation of government and the return of monarchy.” (127) Such a faction was inimical to the very idea of republican government and must be eliminated -- not by oppressive and tyrannical violations of inalienable rights, but by more conciliatory methods of persuasion and absorption into his more principled majority party. In other words, Jefferson’s strategy aimed at the creation of “a party to end all parties” -- “a quest for unanimity.” (150-151)
Yet despite an enduring theoretical opposition to the idea of parties, Jeffersonian democrats, paradoxically, laid the framework for effective constituted political machinery, which eventually led to the acceptance of the idea of legitimate party opposition by America’s second generation of political leaders. In particular, Hofstadter looks at the men of the Albany Regency “as archetypes of the new advocates of party.” (213) As leader of the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren developed a coherent ideology that championed partisan politics. Van Buren considered parties not only inevitable, as Madison, Adams, and Jefferson so too thought, but also as an essential component to democracy, and a positive good. The institutionalization of strife could function as a valuable impetus of national cohesion. Unlike his predecessors, Van Buren did not try to annihilate or absorb dissent; he welcomed the idea of permanent opposition as fulfilling the ideals of the Revolution. (219-226) The negotiation and management of opinion through parties was a better form of leadership than traditional notions of deference. A party system would lead to a more democratic political structure. (239-252)
Reviewers almost unanimously agreed upon the quality of "The Idea of a Party System." William Nisbet Chambers praises Hofstadter for treating “one question after another sensitively, in a prose style that is always clear and felicitous.” Additionally, Chambers hopes that Hofstadter’s work might have a “salutary corrective effect” upon negative contemporary notions of party politics as divisive and unnecessary. I believe that this work is truly valuable insofar as it holds a mirror up to Americans, inviting them to reflect upon the current state of their organized political structures/parties. Hofstadter candidly prefaces his work by confessing an admiration for the party system: “the full development of the liberal democratic state in the West required that political criticism and opposition be incarnated in one or more opposition parties . . . . the gradual acceptance of parties and of the system of a recognized partisan opposition . . . marked a net gain in the sophistication of political thought and practice over the anti-party thought and unlegitimated or quasi-legitimated opposition that had prevailed in the Anglo-American tradition in the eighteenth century and earlier.” (xii) Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude, Hofstadter celebrates the gradual acceptance of party politics in American political thought. Yet the question of whether or not America’s current two-party system translates into salutary, informed, and deliberative civic discourse about the general welfare of the nation deserves a fresh look. Hofstadter is correct to assert that oppositional/reform-minded thought needs some organizational/institutional apparatus whereby to implement changes in existing policy. But can effective opposition only exist within a divisive two-party system? Does America’s current party system secure the existence of legitimate opposition? Or has leadership and representation deteriorated into nothing but parroting party slogans, campaign fundraising, and bizarre circus-like commercialized “debates,” which scarcely deserve the appellation “deliberative” ? Has America’s current party system taken the shape that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, or even Van Buren, intended?
November 12, 2010
Detailed history of the first few presidents and party leaders in the United States... how Washington and others thought parties were "evil," and the subsequent changes to "necessary evil" and finally the idea of parties as a positive form of checks and balances in a liberal republic. Brilliant writing, although the end drags on a bit.
The last sentence, after 270 pages of this, kind of makes the whole book moot: "In the twentieth century the characteristic criticism of the eighteenth has been all but reversed, since the party system is now most typically criticized not for divisiveness but for offering a superficial and false conflict to the voters, for failing to pose the "real" issues with clarity and responsibility, and for blocking out dissent - in effect, for protecting the unity and harmony of civil society all too completely, for blunting and minimizing conflict at too high a cost." Amen!
The last sentence, after 270 pages of this, kind of makes the whole book moot: "In the twentieth century the characteristic criticism of the eighteenth has been all but reversed, since the party system is now most typically criticized not for divisiveness but for offering a superficial and false conflict to the voters, for failing to pose the "real" issues with clarity and responsibility, and for blocking out dissent - in effect, for protecting the unity and harmony of civil society all too completely, for blunting and minimizing conflict at too high a cost." Amen!
July 2, 2016
Richard Hofstadter's work has always been thought-provoking, and is definitely intended for those who want to delve deeper into what we've come to call "political science." So, the writing is a bit dry. But his analysis ( a set of lectures, really) sets out how two American party systems came to be. Its one of those books that inspires a serious reader to learn more about Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Van Buren. And, the question still remains-- are the main divisions between parties for the rich and well born and those for the farmer and working classes still evident and explainable? In an age of instant Twitter feeds and social media, can "legitimate opposition" be any less than silly? Still, an interesting set of essays with fascinating reminders of the present political season.
January 23, 2018
Hofstadter portrays the debate over American relations with Britain and France as the site of the most volatile partisan conflict of the Early Republic. Firmly grounded in an 18th century Anglo-Saxon heritage characterized by suspicion of political parties, the Republicans and Federalists each viewed themselves as the one true expositor of the national interest and the other as essentially illegitimate, indeed as subversive. The same animosities which marked the Federalist-Republican conflict over the Genet affair during Washington's presidency crystallized during Adams' presidency around the XYZ affair.
High Federalists, a radical faction lead by Alexander Hamilton, agitated for war with France over the XYZ affair as a way of destroying the traitorous Francophile Republican party. Their efforts to prepare for war were stymied by the public,
"which cried out against the new taxes levied in 1798, resented or suspected efforts at partisan suppression [embodied in the Alien and Sedition Acts], and refused to provide the recruits for the army the Hamiltonians proposed" (p. 120).
Moderate Federalists, under the leadership of John Adams, had both the support of Jeffersonian Republicans in the opposition and the general public in their resolve to avoid war with France. It is Hofstadter's contention that the political center held during the Quasi War with France because a viable opposition existed in the party of Jeffersonian Republicans.
This constellation of partisan and public opposition to war collapsed during the two Jefferson administrations, making war with a European power possible. European peace negotiations began in the month of Jefferson's inauguration. Jefferson set out to use this lull in European conflict to coopt the Federalist opposition in order to destroy it. By maintaining moderate Federalists in their government positions, Jefferson isolated the High Federalists and made them politically ineffectual as an opposition faction.
Republican national ascendancy had the curious effect of forcing Jefferson to abandon much of his own republican principles. Hofstadter notes that even the core Republican agrarian constituency required government intervention to defend commerce and forward westward expansion. This in turn would require the instrumentalities of a strong central government. Hofstadter summarizes the internal contradiction as follows:
"Their constituents wanted certain goals - free navigation of the Mississippi, the right of deposit at New Orleans, expansion into Florida, an end to impressment, trading privileges, the integrity of their cargoes - which had to be won with the conventional means of national self-assertion. But the aggressive pursuit of these goals demanded certain unwelcome instrumentalities - a navy, an army, taxation, a national bank, an effective central government - and it involved a high risk of war." (p. 180)
Ironically, the embargo invoked to end British depredations on the high seas was highly unpopular at home because it violated republican liberties and an absolute failure abroad because it didn't go far enough in violating those liberties to provide for the military base which would make it effective. The sum total of Jefferson's two administrations, in Hofstadter's view, was the movement of the U.S. closer to war with England without the adequate military preparation needed for such a war. He argues that this was possible because there was no Congressional opposition to reign in Jefferson's "bizarre and aventuresome" notions in military and foreign policy (p. 175).
High Federalists, a radical faction lead by Alexander Hamilton, agitated for war with France over the XYZ affair as a way of destroying the traitorous Francophile Republican party. Their efforts to prepare for war were stymied by the public,
"which cried out against the new taxes levied in 1798, resented or suspected efforts at partisan suppression [embodied in the Alien and Sedition Acts], and refused to provide the recruits for the army the Hamiltonians proposed" (p. 120).
Moderate Federalists, under the leadership of John Adams, had both the support of Jeffersonian Republicans in the opposition and the general public in their resolve to avoid war with France. It is Hofstadter's contention that the political center held during the Quasi War with France because a viable opposition existed in the party of Jeffersonian Republicans.
This constellation of partisan and public opposition to war collapsed during the two Jefferson administrations, making war with a European power possible. European peace negotiations began in the month of Jefferson's inauguration. Jefferson set out to use this lull in European conflict to coopt the Federalist opposition in order to destroy it. By maintaining moderate Federalists in their government positions, Jefferson isolated the High Federalists and made them politically ineffectual as an opposition faction.
Republican national ascendancy had the curious effect of forcing Jefferson to abandon much of his own republican principles. Hofstadter notes that even the core Republican agrarian constituency required government intervention to defend commerce and forward westward expansion. This in turn would require the instrumentalities of a strong central government. Hofstadter summarizes the internal contradiction as follows:
"Their constituents wanted certain goals - free navigation of the Mississippi, the right of deposit at New Orleans, expansion into Florida, an end to impressment, trading privileges, the integrity of their cargoes - which had to be won with the conventional means of national self-assertion. But the aggressive pursuit of these goals demanded certain unwelcome instrumentalities - a navy, an army, taxation, a national bank, an effective central government - and it involved a high risk of war." (p. 180)
Ironically, the embargo invoked to end British depredations on the high seas was highly unpopular at home because it violated republican liberties and an absolute failure abroad because it didn't go far enough in violating those liberties to provide for the military base which would make it effective. The sum total of Jefferson's two administrations, in Hofstadter's view, was the movement of the U.S. closer to war with England without the adequate military preparation needed for such a war. He argues that this was possible because there was no Congressional opposition to reign in Jefferson's "bizarre and aventuresome" notions in military and foreign policy (p. 175).
November 9, 2020
4.5 stars. First published in 1969.
August 24, 2024
You can't do better than this volume. It's appreciation is enhanced by a fairly solid background in US history during the period mentioned in the title.
February 14, 2017
Foundational book on American political party formation
March 4, 2008
Hofstadter is fair in his assessment of the origin of party system, stressing the british literary and political traditions by which the participants were influenced, as well as the social and political influences of the day. A must read for anyone interested in the origin and development of party sentiment.
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July 29, 2011Not a bard burner and it gets weak toward the end and the origin of partys in the time of Jackson and Van Buren.
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