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The Two-Party System and One-Party Dominance in the Liberal Democratic State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Donald V. Smiley
Donald V. Smiley*
Affiliation:
Regina
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Extract

Most serious students of modern politics in the English-speaking democracies have regarded the two-party system as the norm of the liberal-democratic polity. The arguments for the superiority of such a pattern proceed along the following lines: (a) stability is encouraged when the powers of the political executive are at all times monopolized by members of a single party who are united by mutual adherence to common leaders, traditions, and policies and whose past and future fate at the polls is to a significant degree interdependent; (b) effective accountability of government to electorate is encouraged when power is not shared among parties and when a ruling party is therefore completely responsible for the use of such power; and (c) constructive opposition is encouraged when the party out of office is constantly faced with the challenge of justifying itself to the electorate as an effective alternative to the party in power.

Professor Leslie Lipson has defined the two-party system as one in which: “1. Not more than two parties at any given time have a genuine chance to gain power. 2. One of these is able to win the requisite majority and stay in office without any help from a third party. 3. Over a number of decades two parties alternate in power.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , August 1958 , pp. 312 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 The only modern writer I have found who gives a forthright dissent from this point of view is ProfessorMuir, Ramsay. In his How Britain is Governed (Boston, New York, 1935), chap, ivGoogle Scholar, he argues for the “naturalness” of a three-party pattern on Right-Centre-Left lines.

2 “The Two-Party System in British Politics,” American Political Science Review, XLVII, 06, 1953, 338.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Koch, A. and Pedon, W. (Modern Library ed.), 715.Google Scholar

4 History of England (5th ed., 1913), 88.Google Scholar For a brilliant exposition of Macaulay's theory see Wilfrid Laurier's famous speech in political liberalism given at Quebec in 1877, quoted in Wilfrid Laurier on the Platform, compiled by Barthe, Ulric (Quebec, 1890), 51–80.Google Scholar

5 Modern Democracies (New York, 1921), I, 473.Google Scholar

6 The Lonely Crowd (Anchor, Doubleday ed. ), 257.Google Scholar

7 Public Opinion in War and Peace (Cambridge, Mass., 1923), 207.Google Scholar

8 Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties, tr. Barbara, and North, Robert (London, 1954), 215.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 231–4.

10 For one of the ablest explanations on these terms see Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York, 1942), chap. IV.Google Scholar See also Duverger, Maurice, “The Influence of the Electoral System on Political Life,” International Social Science Bulletin, summer, 1951, 314–52.Google Scholar

11 After the election of 1921 the Progressives were the second largest party in the Commons. However, for reasons that cannot be discussed here, they refused the role of official Opposition.

12 Government and Parties in Continental Europe (Boston, 1896), I, 71–2.Google Scholar

13 Gosnell, Harold F., Democracy (New York, 1948), 282.Google Scholar

14 To quote one of many possible examples that might be cited, Carter, Byrum E. in an otherwise careful and well-documented work, The Office of the Prime Minister (Princeton, 1956), 273–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analyses the threat of dissolution as a sanction for party discipline with no evidence that it is so.

15 There have been only three elections since 1945 in which provincial administrations were displaced.

16 “The American Party Systems,” American Political Science Review, XLVIII, 1954, 477–85.Google Scholar

17 Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

18 A Two-Party South (Chapel Hill, 1952).Google Scholar

19 The Office of Governor in the United States (Alabama, 1956), chap. II.Google Scholar

20 “United States: The Functional Approach to Party Government” in Neumann, Sigmund, ed., Modern Political Parties (Chicago, 1956), 201–6.Google Scholar

21 American Politics in a Revolutionary World (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), chap. I.Google Scholar

22 The Future of American Politics (2nd rev. ed., New York, 1956), chap. X.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 212.

24 “Liberal and Bureaucrat,” Queen's Quarterly, summer, 1955, 176–83.Google Scholar