Anyone want to help me with Politics homework?

John101

John101

John101

Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2010
Posts
259
Please...

The question given is What is meant by describing the two main American political parties as 'internal coalitions'?

Cant for the life of me understand the question, espeically the meaning of 'internal coalitions :confused:

Textbook and Google not much help either!
 
I don't know the answer but I would guess it is to do with the idea that The Republican and Democratic Parties don't have one strict political leaning, but are a mix of factions within the group with widely varying political ideologies, but with enough in common to be under the same "umbrella"
 
Internal coalition effectively means that the party is not a homogenous group, but a more loose grouping of people who's interests overlap.

So, for example, in the Republican party, you've got a variety of groups from the religious right, through gun freedom people through to full libertarians, and the people then 'negotiate' around what the public policies of the party will finally be.

A similar UK based example would be the liberal democrats, who are an internal coalition of former members of the Liberal party (centre right economic, social freedom) with members of the SDP (centre left economic, social freedom), again where they have enough similarities to generate a single platform, although they don't agree on every issue.
 
Dolph wins!

Think how the Democratic party on the one hand wants to support a Palestinian state but on the other hand half its funding comes from a large jewish community...
 
Thanks for the detailed explanation Freakbro and Dolph! Question is much clearer now after you've explained the different ideological leanings within the parties but how they still come under one umbrella, heard that term being used a lot thanks...

So in an attempt to differentiate between these different factions within parties, ideological labels are used such as conservative Democrats or liberal Democrats?
 
Last edited:
John101 said:
So in an attempt to differentiate between these different factions within parties, ideological labels are used such as conservative Democrats or liberal Democrats?
Click to expand...

More or less, the idea is that you create groupings to describe the spectrum of opinion and viewpoints much more simply than to count each party member individually. Depending on the starting point it's either grouping them together or dividing them up slightly further e.g. you can group them all as democrats or divide them into particular groups of democrats or at any other point on the scale.

It's a coalition because not all members of the grouping will want precisely the same things but overall they see the particular subset as providing a close enough approximation of their views to live with. It makes sense to group together as you tend to have more power in a group than you do as an individual - you lose some autonomy naturally and occasionally viewpoints will be put forward you don't entirely agree with but in the main you would see the benefits as outweighing the other considerations.
 
John101 said:
So in an attempt to differentiate between these different factions within parties, ideological labels are used such as conservative Democrats or liberal Democrats?
Click to expand...

For the sake of speed - Wikipedia articles for the Democrats and Republicans will provide you with a breakdown of the specific "labels" for the internal factions within each party.
 
Right that makes much more sense, just re-read the question and I get it...

So the question is referring to both parties individually (something I got confused on for some reason) and what is meant by describing the two main American political parties as 'internal coalitions

So the answer should be something along the lines of firstly describing the individual factions within the party like Dolph kindly did, then go on to explain how it makes sense to group together and how that way you will have more influence and power. This leads to the verity of labels and ultimately coalitions

Would it make sense to explain the reason as to why these different factions are so prevalent in American parties, no party whips to ensure discipline etc

Thanks Floogie, ill look into it, get so confused with the labels sometimes :-(
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom