Doctrine of responsible party government: its origins and present state

This study was first presented as a doctoral dissertation to the Graduate Faculty of Yale University in 1948. At that time the only major recent discussions of the doctrine of responsible party government available were E. Pendleton Herring's The Politics of Democracy (1940) and E. E. Schattschneider's Party Government (1942). Since 1948, however, this point of view has emerged from relative obscurity to occupy the center of the stage for those political scientists who are concerned with the proper organization and function of political parties in the American system. Perhaps the most important single cause for the party-government doctrine's current prominence was the publica tion, in 1950, of the report of the Committee on Political Parties of the Ameri can Political Science Association-an event which has evoked a considerable and ever-growing volume of literature on these important and difficult problems.

The present study has therefore been considerably revised in order to take into account this new literature on American political parties; and it is the author's hope that his analysis of the original advocates and critics of the doctrine of responsible party government will not only make clear the sources and origins of that doctrine, but will also make a useful contribution to the current debate about its validity.