Folks , I haven ' t seen this many people confused over a Herman ' s plans since Herman Cain dropped his 999 tax reform plan in the 2012 primaries <| sep |> Political Ideologies and Political Parties in A m e r i c a I d e o l o g i e s P a r t i e s CambridgePsychologydprrnX is a good book . In summary he looks at the history of partisan politics and the roots of current political ideology in America and points out that traditionally parties were not ideologically based but typically determined by your social network and community simply a coalition to elect candidates . He shows that contemporary political ideology started to solidify in the 50 s and 60 s , which later shifted parties as people began to sort themselves into the two major parties based on ideology . In the 50 s American political scientists were actually complaining that the party platforms were too similar . Anthony Downs Economic Theory of D e m o c r a c y T h e o r y D emocracyAnthonyDownsdptel stated that twoparty systems would lead to nearly identical party platforms in their attempts to appeal to the largest number of voters . This thesis also tended to assume that the effect would skew the platforms to be more centrist , which national elections tend to do . Also in Anthony Down ' s analysis though was a costbenefit equation for voting . He argued the impact and thus benefit of voting was exceptionally low and the cost of votinginforming yourself about candidate ' s platforms and physically going to vote was high . Ideologically distinct parties help to address this paradox of voting by reducing the cost of voting as you have a pretty good idea of general policy stance based on party affiliation alone . Also , individual candidates then have more of an opportunity to point out the flawsrisks of their opponents , as well as highlighting the benefits of their own policieshelping the other side of the equation as well . Also , while I ' m not very knowledgeable about the UK government , your parliament is many times the size of our legislative branch while simultaneously representing a smaller populace . This could allow for more distinct parties and platforms to form and get enough backing to impact government .