Explain Why Does The United States Have A Two Party System

Why does the United States have a two-party system? American politics is set up around five main principles. The first is that individual behavior is driven by that individual’s goal. This is very self explanatory. If an individual has a particular political preference, they will act on their opinion to try and accomplish their goal. Political preferences are measured on two basic issues: economics and civil rights. A political preference is simply the amount of personal freedom someone is willing to give up in exchange for security on both of these issues. The second principle is collective action problems. These are problems that arise in society that are agreed on by the majority that (1) are problems and (2) need to be fixed. Collective action

In general, parties are split by the amount of freedom they support on the issues of economics and civil liberties. On this two-dimensional plane parties can be clearly seen to have different stances on these issues. The Democratic Party sits in the bottom left. This means that a Democrat would support strong individual civil liberties and high regulation on economics. For example, a Democrat would support enacting trade regulations and a “level playing field” (New Deal Policy) while supporting higher freedoms for individual rights and liberties such as eliminating privacy-intruding body scans at airport terminals. The Republican party sits in the top right quadrant. This means that a Republican would support an economy mostly, if not entirely, free of economic regulations. This also means that Republicans support higher restrictions on civil liberties. In general terms, Republicans want a more “hands off” or laissez-faire stance to economics and stricter stance when it comes to the restriction of personal rights to ensure public