2 - Subtleties of Partisan Division

Summary

In 1946, the American Political Science Association (APSA) established the Committee on Political Parties, to be led by political scientist E. E. Schattschneider. Four years later, this committee would produce a report with a series of recommendations for American political parties – a report that, in 2020 America, seems, at best, quaint. American parties, the report suggested, needed to do more to distinguish their policy positions and do so with a greater sense of party loyalty. Now, the parties need not go overboard: “It is here not suggested, of course, that the parties should disagree about everything. Parties do not, and need not, take a position on all questions that allow for controversy” (APSA Report 1950, 20). Rather, the parties should offer what the report termed “policy alternatives on matters likely to be of interest to the whole country” (20).