The two-party system 69as American society itself. The structure of federalism makes for an added
complication, in that effective collaboration between federal, state and local
governments is difficult to achieve, as the failure to cope with Hurricane Kat-
rina demonstrates. This makes for the application of governmental power in
a spasmodic and uncoordinated fashion. In one sense this is what the Found-
ing Fathers wished to achieve in 1787, but they could hardly have foreseen
the sort of problems that would face America in the twenty-first century.
Faced with this situation, many observers have proposed reforms that,
they hope, would lead to a political party system more like that to be found
in Britain. Such proposals are, however, filled with danger for the American
political system. How far would a realignment of the parties into a more
‘European’ left–right division help the situation? The assumption behind this
argument is that the Republican Party could absorb the right-wing elements
across the nation, that the Democratic Party would offer a more attractive
haven for the dissident left, and that a more ‘responsible’ political system
would emerge, oriented towards the solution of particular issues by advocat-
ing and carrying through clear policy mandates. The major objections to this
line of argument are: first, that it would require a considerable change of
public opinion and of congressional attitudes to bring it about; and, second,
that it might result not so much in healthy competition between the parties
as in a desperate and potentially disastrous fight for existence. The moder-
ating influence of the traditional parties would be lost, and the attempt to
define two political camps more clearly could lead to intense political bitter-
ness and frustration.
The pivotal role of the South
The Southern states, particularly the eleven states that seceded and formed
the Confederacy during the Civil War, have always had a distinctive politi-
cal style and culture that set them off from the rest of the United States. In
recent decades, however, they have come to play a vitally important role in
the outcome of presidential elections, and have transformed the working of
the political system by the influence they exercise in the Republican Party
in Congress.
The economy of the South was, until 1865, built upon the ‘peculiar institu-
tion’ – slavery – and this penetrated the whole society and its politics. The
abolition of slavery in 1865 was followed by the passage of the Fourteenth
Amendment in 1868, which guaranteed citizenship to the emancipated
slaves, and by the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which asserted that the
right to vote ‘shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’. The former
slaveholders, and indeed the whole of the white population of the Southern
states, faced a political dilemma; would the newly freed slaves, who formed a
large part of the population in a number of states, be allowed to exercise po-
litical power through the franchise and therefore be able to change the whole