milkis paper

            
             The Constitution of the United States makes no mention of political parties, yet parties began to form shortly after its ratification. Today American democracy would not work without them. In Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy, Sidney Milkis explores the uneasy relationship between the Constitution and the party system to put forth the argument that political parties arose as part of a deliberate program of constitutional reform. He argues that the two-party system has been the bridge between the separated institutions of constitutional government that has allowed the branches of government to cooperate sufficiently to perform its necessary task and responsibilities. In addition, political parties have provided citizens with a place in politics and have made it possible for individuals to "become citizens who honor their obligations even as they jealously defend their rights" (2). However he also contends that the advance of progressive democracy, which worked to create democracy on a grand scale and a more purposeful national government, resulted in the weakening of the party system. .
             Milkis also argues that the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the constitutional balance that existed and supported by political parties since the time of Madison and Jackson after it created a federal government powerful and independent enough to run a welfare state. Although a stronger efficient and more responsible national government required the freedom from the "constrictive grip of localized democracy" (7) it had the effect of alienating the public from politics by weakening the party system that citizens depended on as their effective agent in democratic participation. In the wake of the New Deal era reformers in the 1960s and 1970s attempted to curtail the administrative state and revitalize local and self-government in the country.