American Political System
Two dominant parties exist in American politics, that is, the Republican and Democratic parties. In fact, apart from one presidential election in the U.S., the first or second positions have been taken by either Democratic or Republican party candidates since 1852 (Blake, 2016). Thus, it is clearly evident that America cannot have more than the two main political parties.
According to Maurice Duverger, a sociologist from France, American politics best suits a two-party system as the other third parties have no chance of winning in the elections. The third parties not being able to win, for example, 16% or even 25% of the vote, has less support from voters as they are more willing to vote for candidates who are likely to win (Blake, 2016).
Even though a multi-party system presents a variety of issues, this does not favor the legislature as far as making and amending of laws are concerned. This is because each party in the system of 2 parties has a position on every issue as opposed to a multi-party system whereby particular issues are not recognized by most of the parties. The resultant effect of this would be disunity in the two houses of legislature leading to a lack of capability to have most of the laws go into effect (Blake, 2016). Moreover, third parties, as has been seen in the past, have not been capable of addressing a good number of issues affecting the common citizen in general and instead have their focus on specific items like Dixiecrats, Green Party, and Communist parties that focused on sectionalism, environment, and ideology respectively.
As can be seen from the above arguments, America, unlike other countries, has a political system that cannot favor the existence of more than two dominant parties.
References
Blake, A. (2016, April 27). The Washington Post. Why are there only two parties in American …
