Gorbachev’spolicy ofglasnostopened the prospect of an alternative version
ofdemocracyto the people of the Soviet Union, and when a group of
‘hardliners’ attempted to reimpose the traditions of democratic centralism in
August 1991, not only they, but also the CPSU itself, were promptly rejected.
Democratic Party
The US Democratic Party’s origins are as an opposition to the dominant
Federalistparty in the early days after the adoption of the US Constitution.
Confusingly, at that time it was called the Republican Party, later the Demo-
cratic-Republican Party, before taking its present name under Andrew Jackson
in 1828. Jackson represented a populistpolitical force opposed to the
centralizing e ́litist views of the followers of Thomas Jefferson, who favoured
much stronger federal control at the expense of the autonomy of the individual
states. To this day the Democratic Party stresses states’rights more strongly than
theRepublican Party. This, and factors such as it still being more populist
and less influenced by the intellectual and financial e ́lites of the East Coast,
explains why it is so hard to characterize in the political language of Europe.
On most issues, and in a very broad sense, the Democrats are to theleftof the
Republicans, or, in the American usage, are more ‘liberal’. At least since the
Second World War, it has been the party of blacks, of organized labour, and has
usually attracted the votes of thecivil libertiesoriented and more egalitarian
members of the upper middle class as well. However in the past, and still at
times today, the anti-federalist stance has forced them to take up distinctly
reactionarypolicies. The classic historical example of this was in the Civil
War, where the bulk of the Democrats opposed the use of force to bring the
seceding Southern states back into the Union, a policy, which later became an
outright war against slavery, which was advocated by the Republican Party. A
long-term consequence of this was that the Southern wing of the Democratic
Party was often more conservative in Congress than most Republicans,
especially oncivil rightsissues. Even today this tendency is still present,
and Republican presidents often owe their legislative successes toad hoc
coalitions of Southern Democrats with members of their own party. At the
same time the more liberal wing of the Democrats, mainly elected from
Northern cities, tends to combine with Republicans from the north and west
to put their own legislation through. The Democrats had a majority in the
House of Representatives for nearly the whole of the second half of the 20th
century, because their populism andwelfarismmade them more naturally the
party of the less-affluent majority of the population. They often controlled the
Senate as well, but usually only with a very small majority. However, the rise of
the Republicans in previously ‘safe’ Democratic states in the south in the 1990s
enabled the Republicans to hold majorities in both chambers of Congress
Democratic Party