Political Parties

In this course we will seek to understand why parties exist, why they take the forms that they do and how they matter in American politics. We will examine the causes and consequences of the American "two-party system" as well as the experience of government without parties in the U.S. Our focus is the U.S, but we will make some comparisons with party systems in other countries. We will survey the many forms parties have taken throughout U.S. history and the trends in normative views about them. We will also examine the relationship between parties and interest groups/ social movements and discuss the debate among scholars regarding "party decline" and "party revival."