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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After students have read and studied this chapter they should be able to:
 Distinguish between a political party, an interest group, and a faction.
 Identify some of the functions of a political party (recruiting candidates, organizing
elections, presenting a platform, and either running the government or acting as the loyal
opposition).
 Identify the two major-party face-offs that developed in the years before the Civil War crisis
(Federalists v. Jeffersonian Republicans and Whigs v. Democrats).
 Distinguish between the various parties or tendencies that have adopted the name
Republican (revolutionary era decentralists, the party of Jefferson, and finally the party of
Lincoln).
 Explain the transformation of the Democratic Party from a party of limited government,
states’ rights, and racism to a party of strong government, national authority, and support
for civil rights.
 Describe the core constituents and economic beliefs of the Republican and Democratic
parties.
 Explain how economic politics and cultural politics often pull in different directions
(economic liberals/cultural conservatives and economic conservatives/cultural liberals).
 Describe the three faces of a political party, including the party organization, the party-inelectorate, and the party-in-government.
 Explain how the winner-take-all elections system militates against third parties.
 Distinguish between ideological third parties and splinter parties, and give examples of
each.
 Explain what realignment is and identify the four most important realignments in
American history (creation of the modern Republicans in the 1850s, Republican Party
dominance based on economic issues beginning in 1896, Republican collapse after the
Great Depression in 1932, and the Democratic Party’s loss of its conservative wing during
the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s).
 Briefly describe the rise of independent voters and split-ticket voting.
 Define the concept of demographically-based political tipping.