Did international politics drive the creation of American political parties?
Upvote:1
The "great divide" in early America was between Federalists and anti-Federalists. That is between people who favored a strong central federal government and weak state governments (basically what we have); and those who favored a weak central government that managed only defense, foreign policy and the legal system, while strong state governments managed everything else, a model practiced by Switzerland. Much as they hated political parties, anti-Federalists like Jefferson and Monroe formed the Republican party (later retroactively called the Democratic Republicans to oppose the Federalists.
There were links to international affairs, insofar as most Federalists were pro-British and anti-French, while most anti-Federalists were pro-French and anti-British.
Upvote:4
Political parties inevitably appear for one simple mathematical reason: Shapley value is superadditive. IOW, the power of a coalition is more than the sum of powers of its members.
Example: suppose we have a parliament of 3 members. Each has power (Shapley value) of 1/3 (because of symmetry). If two of them form a "party" (i.e., always vote as a block), then they always win and the power of the party is 1 while the power of the third MP is 0. Thus, by joining forces, each of the two party MPs increased their power by 50% (from 1/3 to 1/2).
This means that whenever a parliament is formed, its members will start aligning into political parties to increase their personal power.
Upvote:6
Looking at what happened, it does not appear that international issues were the primary driver.
When the Constitution was first being debated and voted on, there was a group of Anti-Federalists who were very suspicious of it, and in particular the way it concentrated power in the Federal government. This feeling had enough support in the country that a revision was required addressing their concerns (the Bill of Rights), before the document could placate enough of those people to get ratified.
Then, in the very first administration, Washington's treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton introduced a sweeping economic program involving creating a powerful national bank, assuming the previous government's debt, and imposing tariffs to both pay that debt and promote local industry. That may not seem radical to modern eyes, but to the people who were still very wary of a strong central government, that government immediately assuming all that power was alarming.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson started holding meetings with like-minded people to help organize the opposition to this program in Congress. Hamilton reacted by starting to organize his own supporters under the "Federalist" banner, which caused Madison and Jefferson to need to further organize nationally to compete, and it sort of snowballed from there.
Now to be sure there was a foreign policy dispute between the new parties. For various reasons, after the French Republic was declared the Federalists tended to be much more supportive of the English side in the subsequent wars, while the Democratic-Republicans tended to be more sympathetic to the French. However, that was not what induced the founding of the two parties.
More post
- 📝 What was the relative social status of a "grazier" in Victorian England?
- 📝 Why is there hostility between Russia and the Baltic states?
- 📝 What does 'des' mean in ancient Egyptian?
- 📝 Underground Tunnels in New York City and Boston
- 📝 How far could an English war bow shoot?
- 📝 A question about an inscription inside the Jefferson memorial
- 📝 Which of these quotes are actually Einstein's (if any)?
- 📝 How did the existence of the Alps impact the development of Switzerland?
- 📝 What colors were used as paint in the construction of the ziggurats in early Sumer?
- 📝 Did Johann Tetzel really claim to be able to give indulgences even for the sin of violating the Mother of God?
- 📝 Cultural understanding of Penelope's suitors
- 📝 How many Old Bolsheviks outlived Stalin?
- 📝 Who turned the (originally) "anti-slavery" GOP into the "pro-business" party?
- 📝 Did the Soviet leadership ever address the American people on American TV?
- 📝 How exactly did most nobles gain wealth?
- 📝 Was there any distinction between the 13 Colonies and the Canadian provinces prior to the American Revolution?
- 📝 Changing troops in first line during battle?
- 📝 What is the single longest Presidential Campaign run in the United States?
- 📝 Former French PM Blum was in Buchenwald -- what is known about his life there?
- 📝 Was Swedish king Charles X Gustav's horse killed during Siege of Kraków (1655)?
- 📝 What is the Thalassic Age?
- 📝 Where were the Mormons going?
- 📝 How much of a role did Sakamoto Ryoma play in overthrowing the Shogunate?
- 📝 How did Larry Wu-tai Chin's leak in Oct. 1970 — of a classified document — allow China "to alter [...] volume of anti-U.S. rhetoric in the press"?
- 📝 Why didn't the British attack the Continental Congress?
- 📝 In a medieval city how large a market was needed relative to population?
- 📝 How could a skilled battle commander like Napoleon Bonaparte lose to Prussians at Waterloo (Belgium) as such?
- 📝 How popular, or not, was the Mexican Goverment in the Cristero War (1927 - 1929)?
- 📝 what city was unix invented in?
- 📝 Is there any evidence that Jesus' Mother lived in Ephesus?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did international politics drive the creation of American political parties?
- 📝 Why did the political parties in the US give up power to run primary elections to some states?
- 📝 What evidence is there that English Political divisions from the 1600s are replicated in American politics today?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why did Canada not join the American Revolution?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?
- 📝 Did the Soviet Union or its satellite states have any broadcast propaganda media for an international audience?
- 📝 Why do minor political parties in the US receive so few votes?
- 📝 Did American policymakers seriously consider scaling down Lend Lease Aid to the Soviet Union after the battle of Kursk?
- 📝 What effect did the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir have on Great Britain's international relations during WW2?
- 📝 Why did other German political parties disband so fast when Hitler was appointed chancellor?
- 📝 Did the Soviet leadership ever address the American people on American TV?
- 📝 Why did the Native American city of Cahokia die out?
- 📝 When did the American War of 1812 actually end?
- 📝 Why did people in some countries start to drive on the right?
- 📝 What did the sympathies lie of the US Navy around the time of the American Civil War?
- 📝 Did American forces specifically target officers during the revolutionary war?
- 📝 Why did the Metall und Lackierwarenfabrik company get asked to bid on the creation of the MG42?
- 📝 Why did the Union army favor a "western" route to approaching Richmond during the American Civil War
- 📝 How did the European and international left react to the Cafe War?
- 📝 What documented criteria (if any) did the CIA use to determine targets for political assassination during the Cold War?
- 📝 Did Frederick Douglass affect British policy during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Did the Romans "copy" their political system from the Greeks?
- 📝 Did the US government officially apologize for Indian Removal Act and Native American Indian genocide?
- 📝 What impact did the Seven Years War have on the American Revolution?
- 📝 How did the English Civil War affect the American Colonies policy-wise?
- 📝 Why did the Nazis guillotine criminals but mostly hang political enemies, and why were the White Rose group an exception?
- 📝 Why did Loyalists go to Canada during the American Revolution
- 📝 How did American colonial rights and conditions compare to those within the British Isles?
