political science article on political partiesSchattschneider believed that political parties “created” American democracy out of a “smallexperiment in republicanism” (1942:3) by drawing the masses into political life. Despite thisachievement, Schattschneider complained, political theorists were at the founding, and remaineda century and a half later, silent on parties.1The founders of the American republic tried to createinstitutions in which parties and “factions” would wither; yet parties appeared when Americandemocracy was still in its infancy, just as they have reappeared in every democracy on earth.Later normative theorists, many of them no less skeptical than Madison or Jefferson of parties aspromoters of the public good, seem to regard political parties as an unpleasant reality, a hardyweed that sprouts up in what would otherwise be the well-tended garden of democraticinstitutions.Among positive theorists and empirical students of democracy, regard for political parties is
