Political Parties and Interest Groups

United States of America has a two-party system. They are democratic party and a republican's party. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were the one to give birth to the countries first political parties in the United States. Hamilton led the federalist party and Jefferson led the democratic -republican party which was later shorten to democratic party. The federalist party did not last long and just disappeared. In order to challenge the democrats party, Whigs party came and later it faded away. Finally, a republican party were formed to challenge the democrats party. Since, then these two parties have managed to rule challenging each other in a different way.

Political parties are the group of organization where their member is elected to hold the power in the government. Each of the candidate is chosen from their own political parties for the presidential election and whoever has the highest number of votes wins the election and runs for the president. Democratic and the Republican party are the only parties two win the presidential election from long time. They have lasted so long because of their remarkable abilities to change in the different periods of time. Particularly, during the crisis, both parties come along with reinventing new sources of support, new politics and new ideologies. These periods of party changes are described as party realignments. It is long lasting and produces fundamental changes in the parties affecting for years to come, their coalition, their governing philosophies and their chances of electoral success. In general, the aim of the political party is to elect their representative and carry out their party's policies in the long run.

Interest groups are also known as pressure groups or lobbying groups. These are the groups where the members share a same goal and try to influence the government policy and their decision. The interest groups use various methods to achieve their desired common goal. One of the most important type is lobbying where different people, organization, private corporation, government officials and individuals engage themselves in influencing the government's plans and policies by sharing their interest as one. The interest groups also can support the candidates in an election by giving money, but it has to go through the PAC which stands for Political Action Committee. The maximum amount the PAC's can contribute is $10,000 directly to the candidate. Resources and the incentives are the most important factors in creating an interest group. In general, there are two types of interest groups. They are Economic Group and a Noneconomic Group. Economic groups have built in resources and have greater access to the financial resources whereas Non-economic group are less organized and has a money problem.

The United States has the greatest number of interest groups in the American politics. It is due to main structure of the United States political system. The largest type of interest groups represents the business firms like U.S. Chamber of Commerce which spends billions of dollars when it comes to lobbying. According to study.com, The interest's groups do not want to operate the government and they do not put forward political candidates even though they support candidates who will promote their interest if elected or reelected. Interest groups are not like political parties who want to run and operate the government rather they want to influence the government by promoting a position on a specific area chosen by those individuals, organization, associations, officials. The area could be regarding the agriculture, gun control, business interest, environmental interest and so on. These interest groups have mainly two characteristics. They are pursuit of policy and the organized membership.

In my point of view, political party has a greater influence on government policy. The main goal of the political party is to win the election and gain the control over the government by winning the election. They always have a duty to represent the people by providing different services health care, education, benefits and so on. The political parties in the United States are effectively well-organized. They fight for the benefit of the nation as a whole in a different way. These are the people who understand the issue of the nation and try to make the societies better and better every day by overcoming the problem that arises. These parties do not discriminate the citizens based on their religion, class, ages and so on. In fact, every individuals of the nation are united together and given equal opportunities to make the better government by electing the right candidate for the country through casting a vote.

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