The two-party system developed practically immediately after the formation of the country. Even the parties in Congress under Washington were beginning to form into two parties before the second President was elected.
There’s a reason for this, and it’s primarily because the constitution, while certainly a step forward in many respects from shitty ass monarchy, was written by fallible, flawed people who could not anticipate the consequences of some of the decisions they were making with regards to governmental structure. Other countries, using founding documents written after the late 1700s and governments formulated afterwards, were likely able to put the US’s example to good use and able to analyze what should have been done differently.
We could hypothetically pull the country out of the “two-party system” rut, but it requires a large degree of change to how we conduct elections, and may even require constitutional amendments. A more pragmatic approach is likely to build a movement in local politics with a third party, and then slowly use the accumulated power upwards to change things via state governments, and then finally change the federal system.
The two-party system developed practically immediately after the formation of the country. Even the parties in Congress under Washington were beginning to form into two parties before the second President was elected.
There’s a reason for this, and it’s primarily because the constitution, while certainly a step forward in many respects from shitty ass monarchy, was written by fallible, flawed people who could not anticipate the consequences of some of the decisions they were making with regards to governmental structure. Other countries, using founding documents written after the late 1700s and governments formulated afterwards, were likely able to put the US’s example to good use and able to analyze what should have been done differently.
We could hypothetically pull the country out of the “two-party system” rut, but it requires a large degree of change to how we conduct elections, and may even require constitutional amendments. A more pragmatic approach is likely to build a movement in local politics with a third party, and then slowly use the accumulated power upwards to change things via state governments, and then finally change the federal system.
EDIT: Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States (1st US Congress was in 1789, first two major political parties began to form in…wait for it…1789).