Preface
Liberty, Order, and Justice represents a new and unique approach to the
study of American government. It is based on the premise that in order
to understand the dynamics of the American political system, the inquiring reader must first become familiar with the constitutional framework
that shapes and controls the political process. In other words, the student
of politics cannot fully understand what we call ‘‘the game of politics’’
unless that student first knows the rules of the game. This book, then,
deals with the enduring principles and characteristics of the American
political system, which serve as a guide for studying and understanding
both the development of the American regime and its current operations.
The structure and behavior of our political parties provide a case in
point. ‘‘Probably the most striking single characteristic of the Democratic
and Republican parties,’’ observed Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall
in their classic work on Democracy and the American Party System (1956), ‘‘is
their decentralization.’’ This is what renders the American party system
unique and distinguishes it from most parliamentary party organizations in the Western democracies. Except when they come together in a
national convention every four years to nominate candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, neither the Democrat nor the Republican Party is in any meaningful way a national party. Each is really
a coalition of State parties, and each State party is actually a confederation of semi-autonomous county and municipal parties, all having their
own leadership, workers, and supporters. National conventions have little or no power, formal or actual, over State and local parties; and the numerous committees, caucuses, and officers that provide the formal structure of the Democrat and Republican parties are not, either in theory or
practice, organized in a hierarchical or pyramidal arrangement with centripetal power flowing downward. No president or presidential candidate or central authority of any kind dictates policy or determines the
makeup of the party’s leadership in the American political system.
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