ABSTRACT
Modern democracy would be unthinkable without political parties. Political parties are very important to a democratic system because they form the principal link between the citizenry and government through the mechanism of elections. Political parties as we know them today developed in the United States approximately 200 years ago. The American party system is a two-party system. The two-party system contrasts with the systems of many other nations, of both democratic and nondemocratic persuasion. In most other nations, in fact, either one party or a multitude of parties exist. People justify the two-party system in the United States by assuming that most Americans agree on essential matters of domestic policy. Voting is acting on a political opinion. Both voting and expressing an opinion are guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The mass media are also important to opinion formation.
