{"id":2477,"date":"2018-04-22T16:46:57","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T20:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/?p=2477"},"modified":"2018-04-22T16:46:57","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T20:46:57","slug":"are-divides-within-political-parties-effecting-popular-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/2018\/04\/22\/are-divides-within-political-parties-effecting-popular-sovereignty\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Divides Within Political Parties Effecting Popular Sovereignty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When reading chapter 9 regarding political parties I found myself caught up in the consequences that arise from divisions within political parties.\u00a0 Though America is a strong, two party system, the divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties have actually been increasing over time.\u00a0 When reading further I was not only intrigued by the lines that divided the groups within their own parties, but also by the consequences that come from these increasing divisions within party lines.\u00a0 In a time when our government\u2019s political parties are exceedingly polarized from one another, what does it say about the fact that the parties themselves are becoming more divided?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile differences between Democrats and Republicans have become more pronounced, and while ideological and policy cohesion within the parties has been increasing, especially in the GOP, important disagreements within each party remain\u2026 parties are not perfectly unified.\u201d (Greenberg and Page). Though as a country party polarization has increased, party unity<\/em> has decreased.\u00a0 The graph below from \u2018The Pew Research Center\u2019 depicts how over time, party polarizing has increased.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Though it is apparent that since 1994 through 2015 there has been a pretty steady polarization of political views\u2014meaning that Democrats take more liberal views and Republicans take more conservative ones, it is not enough to simply take that information at face-value.\u00a0 When looking at this graph, I would assume that because both parties are moving towards stronger liberal\/conservative views, that that would reflect the political attitudes of each unified party, however, I found the opposite.<\/p>\n

When looking specifically at the Republican Party, for example, one can see that fissures have existed for some time.\u00a0 These fissures, from a broad perspective, mainly arise from what Dan Balz and Jon Cohen from the Washington Post <\/em>call the five types of Republicans.\u00a0 \u201cThe Post-Kaiser analysis reveals five distinct types of Republicans\u2026Four are familiar elements of the GOP coalition: \u201cTea Party Movement Republicans,\u201d \u201cOld-School Republicans,\u201d \u201cReligious Values Voters\u201d and \u201cPro-Government Republicans\u2026\u201d The fifth, a group we label \u201cWindow Shoppers,\u201d are self-identified Republicans who in many respects seem out of place in an increasingly conservative party\u201d (Balz and Cohen).\u00a0 With so many divisions within one party, it is hard to see how there are solely two main political parties within our government today.<\/p>\n

When looking specifically at the Democratic Party, there are also divisions, however, they are less pronounced.\u00a0 According to Balz and Cohen, there exists four types of Democrats (all of whom are mainly divided on the issue of Gay marriage).\u00a0 \u201cUrban Liberals \u2014 the most traditionally liberal of the groups \u2014 are nearly three-quarters white and by far the most educated and highest income earners among Democrats\u2026The God and Government contingent is two-thirds nonwhite and far more apt than two of the five Republican groups to go to religious services at least once a week\u201d (Balz and Cohen).\u00a0 There also exists \u201cAgnostic Left\u201d (who seldom go to church and believe there should be a high degree of separation from church and state) and the \u201cDIY Democrats\u201d (who advocate for a stronger federal government).\u00a0 We can see how these separations apply today when looking at the Democratic primary between \u201ccentrist\u201d Hillary Clinton, and the incredibly liberal Bernie Sanders.\u00a0 Many scholars think that Clinton\u2019s centrist Democratic stance may have lost her enthusiasm for the 2016 general election campaign (Greenberg and Page).<\/p>\n

When looking at these divides within each party, it is interesting to see how our government is still so set upon its two- party system.\u00a0 With so many opposing views, even within party lines, does that not portray that our country may need to rethink its two-party system?\u00a0 Political parties are \u201cmeant to carry out a number of functions that make popular sovereignty and political equality possible,\u201d however, when both the Democrats and the Republicans have major splits within each party respectively, how can their party really promote popular sovereignty when there is no true majority with the increase of fissures within parties?<\/p>\n

Citations:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Balz, Dan, and Jon Cohen. \u201cBig Gulf between Parties, Divisions Within.\u201d\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>, WP Company, 18 Aug. 2012, www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/big-gulf-between-parties-divisions-within\/2012\/08\/18\/f5ee15d4-e31a-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.91b776036b55.<\/p>\n

Drutman, Lee. \u201cPolitical Divisions in 2016 and Beyond.\u201d\u00a0Democracy Fund Voter Study Group<\/em>, 30 Jan. 2018, www.voterstudygroup.org\/publications\/2016-elections\/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond.<\/p>\n

Greenberg, Edward S., and Benjamin I. Page.\u00a0The Struggle for Democracy<\/em>. Pearson, 2018.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When reading chapter 9 regarding political parties I found myself caught up in the consequences that arise from divisions within political parties.\u00a0 Though America is a strong, two party system, the divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties have actually been increasing over time.\u00a0 When reading further I was not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40541,40540,68425],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9am-section","category-culture-war","category-spring-2018","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}