Editing Two-party system (section)

==History==
===British parties===
{{Main|Tories (British political party)|Whigs (British political party)}}
[[File:William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688.jpg|thumb|Equestrian portrait of William III by [[Jan Wyck]], commemorating the landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688]]
The two-party system, in the sense of the looser definition, where two parties dominate politics but in which third parties can elect members and gain some representation in the legislature, can be traced to the development of political parties in the [[United Kingdom]]. There was a division in [[Politics of England|English politics]] at the time of the [[English Civil War|Civil War]] and [[Glorious Revolution]] in the late 17th century.<ref>J. R. Jones, ''The First Whigs. The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis. 1678–1683'' (Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 4.</ref> The [[Whigs (British political party)|Whigs]] supported [[Protestant]] [[constitutional monarchy]] against [[Absolute Monarchy|absolute rule]] and the [[Tory (British political party)|Tories]], originating in the [[Royalist]] (or "[[Cavalier]]") faction of the [[English Civil War]], were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the [[Republicanism in the United Kingdom|republican]] tendencies of [[Parliament]].<ref>Harris, Tim ''Restoration:Charles II and His Kingdoms 1660–1685'' Allen Lane (2005) p. 241</ref> In the following century, the Whig party's support base widened to include emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants.

The basic matters of principle that defined the struggle between the two factions, were concerning the nature of [[constitutional monarchy]], the desirability of a Catholic king, the extension of [[religious toleration]] to [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|nonconformist]] Protestants, and other issues that had been put on the liberal agenda through the political concepts propounded by [[John Locke]],<ref>Richard Ashcraft and M. M. Goldsmith, "Locke, Revolution Principles, and the Formation of Whig Ideology", ''Historical Journal'', Dec 1983, Vol. 26 Issue 4, pp. 773–800</ref> [[Algernon Sidney]] and others.<ref>Melinda S. Zook, "The Restoration Remembered: The First Whigs and the Making of their History", ''Seventeenth Century'', Autumn 2002, Vol. 17 Issue 2, pp. 213–34</ref>

Vigorous struggle between the two factions characterised the period from the [[Glorious Revolution]] to the 1715 [[Hanoverian succession]], over the legacy of the overthrow of the [[Stuart dynasty]] and the nature of the new constitutional state. This proto two-party system fell into relative abeyance after the accession to the throne of [[George I of Great Britain|George I]] and the consequent period of [[Whig supremacy]] under [[Robert Walpole]], during which the Tories were systematically purged from high positions in government. Although the Tories were dismissed from office for 50 years, they retained a measure of party cohesion under [[Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet|William Wyndham]] and acted as a united, though unavailing, opposition to Whig corruption and scandals. At times they cooperated with the "Opposition Whigs", Whigs who were in opposition to the Whig government. The ideological gap between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs prevented them from coalescing as a single party.

===British emergence===
The old Whig leadership dissolved in the 1760s into a decade of factional chaos with distinct "[[Grenvillite]]", "[[Bedfordite]]", "[[Rockingham Whigs|Rockinghamite]]", and "[[William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham|Chathamite]]" factions successively in power, and all referring to themselves as "Whigs". Out of this chaos, the first distinctive parties emerged. The first such party was the [[Rockingham Whigs]]<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UH0HNqRBsmMC|title=The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone|author=Robert Lloyd Kelley|year=1990|publisher=Transaction Publishers|page=83|isbn=978-1412840293|access-date=2020-08-29|archive-date=2020-08-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819235807/https://books.google.com/books?id=UH0HNqRBsmMC|url-status=live}}</ref> under the leadership of [[Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham|Charles Watson-Wentworth]] and the intellectual guidance of the [[political philosophy|political philosopher]] [[Edmund Burke]]. Burke laid out a philosophy that described the basic framework of the political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed". As opposed to the instability of the earlier factions, which were often tied to a particular leader and could disintegrate if removed from power, the two party system was centred on a set of core principles held by both sides and that allowed the party out of power to remain as the [[Loyal Opposition]] to the governing party.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jessenorman.com/2013/09/conhome-op-ed-the-usa-radical-conservatism-and-edmund-burke.html|title=ConHome op-ed: the USA, Radical Conservatism and Edmund Burke|access-date=2013-10-19|archive-date=2013-10-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020123727/http://www.jessenorman.com/2013/09/conhome-op-ed-the-usa-radical-conservatism-and-edmund-burke.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:A-Block-for-the-Wigs-Gillray.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.35|In ''A Block for the Wigs'' (1783), [[James Gillray]] caricatured [[Charles James Fox|Fox]]'s return to power in a [[Fox–North coalition|coalition]] with [[Frederick North, Lord North|North]]. George III is the blockhead in the center.]]
A genuine two-party system began to emerge,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0841958270|title=The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, 1760–1832|author=Frank O'Gorman|year=1982|publisher=Holmes & Meier Publishers, Incorporated}}</ref> with the accession to power of [[William Pitt the Younger]] in 1783 leading the new Tories, against a reconstituted "Whig" party led by the [[radicalism (politics)|radical politician]] [[Charles James Fox]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0809/minho/gangster1.html|title=The History of Political Parties in England (1678–1914)|access-date=2013-10-19|archive-date=2013-10-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020144152/http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0809/minho/gangster1.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Parliamentary History, xxiv, 213, 222, cited in Foord, ''His Majesty's Opposition'', 1714–1830, p. 441</ref><ref>Ellen Wilson and Peter Reill, ''Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment'' (2004) p. 298</ref>

The two-party system matured in the early 19th century [[Reform Act 1832|era of political reform]], when the franchise was widened and politics entered into the basic divide between conservatism and liberalism that has fundamentally endured up to the present. The modern [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]] was created out of the [[British Tory Party#Pittites|"Pittite" Tories]] by [[Robert Peel]], who issued the [[Tamworth Manifesto]] in 1834 which set out the basic principles of [[Conservatism]] – the necessity in specific cases of reform in order to survive, but an opposition to unnecessary change, that could lead to "a perpetual vortex of agitation". Meanwhile, the Whigs, along with [[free trade]] Tory followers of [[Robert Peel]], and independent [[Radicals (UK)|Radicals]], formed the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] under [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]] in 1859, and transformed into a party of the growing urban middle-class, under the long leadership of [[William Ewart Gladstone]]. The two party system had come of age at the time of Gladstone and his Conservative rival [[Benjamin Disraeli]] after the [[Reform Act 1867]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UiNAZmRaYrcC|title=Gladstone and Disraeli|author=Stephen J. Lee|year=2005|publisher=Routledge|page=146|isbn=978-1134349272|access-date=2020-08-29|archive-date=2020-10-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201002181318/https://books.google.com/books?id=UiNAZmRaYrcC|url-status=live}}</ref>

===American===
Although the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]] did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan,<ref>{{citation |title=Washington's Farewell Address |title-link=s:Washington's Farewell Address |url=}}</ref> early political controversies in the 1790s saw the emergence of a two-party political system, the [[Federalist Party (United States)|Federalist Party]] and the [[Democratic-Republican Party (United States)|Democratic-Republican Party]], centred on the differing views on federal government powers of [[United States Secretary of the Treasury|Secretary of the Treasury]] [[Alexander Hamilton]] and [[James Madison]].<ref>Richard Hofstadter, ''The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840'' (1970)</ref><ref>William Nisbet Chambers, ed. ''The First Party System'' (1972)</ref> A consensus on these issues ended party politics in 1816 for a decade, a period commonly known as the [[Era of Good Feelings]].<ref>Stephen Minicucci, "[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=275165&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0898588X04000094 Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860]", ''Studies in American Political Development'' (2004), 18: pp. 160–85, (2004), Cambridge University Press, {{doi|10.1017/S0898588X04000094}}. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822070745/http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=275165&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0898588X04000094 |date=2016-08-22 }}.</ref>

Partisan politics revived in 1829 with the split of the Democratic-Republican Party into the [[Jacksonian Democracy|Jacksonian Democrats]] led by [[Andrew Jackson]], and the [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]], led by [[Henry Clay]]. The former evolved into the modern [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] and the latter was replaced with the [[History of United States Republican Party|Republican Party]] as one of the two main parties in the 1850s.