ABSTRACT
In 1950, believing that American political parties had become so ineffectual as to render them all but meaningless, a group of political scientists penned a document entitled “Toward a More Responsible Two Party System.” They argued that policymakers needed to take steps to strengthen American parties, so they could do what parties do well, namely play a central role in structuring political conflict in government and, in turn, provide ordinary Americans with meaningful choices. American parties only grew weaker in the succeeding decades. Newspaper columnist David Broder even suggested in the early 1970s that American parties had died.1
