American party systems

POLITICAL PARTIES have played, and play today, a variety of roles in the American political drama. Yet many aspects of their history and activity have remained obscure. Meanwhile an increasingly convergent interest in party development and behavior has emerged in the last dozen years among historians and political scientists, a convergence that may help to penetrate the obscurity. It is not too much to say that substantial numb of political scientists have come to share the late V. O. Key's belief that. parties and party systems can be fully understood only in their "dimen sion of time." Similarly, many historians have come to believe that party history can in turn be informed by the conceptual and theoretical tools that have been developed by the social sciences, including political sci ence. A growing if often disparate body of research and analysis in both disciplines illustrates the point.

For the first time, the present volume joins the two disciplines in a sys tematic effort to illuminate problems of American political party develop ment and action in a comprehensive way.

Of the ten chapters in this book, five are by historians and five by po litical scientists. One of the editors is an historian and the other a political scientist. Yet the contributions of the adherents of each discipline draw greater depth and breadth from the other, and all of the contributors are concerned with conceptualization and with analysis which involves the dimension of time. As a result of this virtually unique collaboration, the book is bound together by a shared interest in analysis of the development of the American party systems on the one hand, and the impact and be havior of parties in the contemporary American political scene on the other. The two disciplines are not only engaged in a dialogue, but their dialogue is given direction by common concerns.