milkis paper

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. While the reforms had the desired effect of lessening the administrative power of the president it did so by making political institutions more bureaucratic. There it failed to nurture civic culture and lead to an increase in the public’s disenchantment with parties and the party system.

While the initial development of political parties began with the efforts of Jefferson and Madison it was under the leadership of Andrew Jackson that party politics developed into a formal institution. Dedicated to the tradition of self-government Jacksonian Democrats defended political parties as “indispensable allies of local democracy” because of the connection that they were able to foster between he people and the fundamental laws of the country. Under his leadership there was an increase in the attacks against national institutions and programs in an attempt to constrain national power and promote local self-government. This philosophy was followed by Jackson’s decision to strip away many powers of the federal government as exemplified by the dismantling of the Bank of the United States (26). This assault on the national government was carried out to protect the power of local communities.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies differed from Wilson’s in which he did not believe in working through existing “partisan channels.” The New Deal was a more radical movement than Wilson’s progressivism. Roosevelt’s administration made the decisive break with the tradition of limited government. Instead Roosevelt hoped to transform his party into a programmatic responsible organization. Understanding the limits of his party Roosevelt tried to do something about them through the ill fated Roosevelt purge in 1938, in which New Deal liberals were enc

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