The Jacksonian Integration of Parties into the Constitutional System
The United States has bequeathed two enduring political creations to the world: written constitutions and mass political parties. Students of American politics agree that mass political parties originated and gained acceptance and respectability in antebellum America and that the Jacksonian Democrats were primarily responsible for that innovation. ' In creating their political organization, Jacksonian Democrats and especially Martin Van Buren and his New York State party known as the Albany Regency eschewed the old revolutionary model of a temporary political movement organized to respond to a particular crisis. Instead, under their aegis, political parties and regularized partisan competition were transformed into permanent constitutional establishments. A daunting challenge confronted these political innovators. Not only were they engaged in the novel experiment of creating new political institutions, but also the Constitution's and the political culture's general antipartyism threatened to abort any attempt to legitimate political parties. Relying on the large territory and population of the United States and auxiliary institutional arrangements to prevent any one faction or party from controlling all branches of the government, the founders had created a Constitution against political parties.2 A mass