When did political parties emerge

We usually think that today to have a democratic state there needs to be political parties. While that is largely true for most democracies today, this was not the case earlier in history when elections and democratic systems developed. Political parties likely developed in England in the 17th century as the country began to transition into a country led by a prime minister. In the United States, political parties were not envisioned when the Constitution was developed, but they soon emerged once controversies on the nature and development of government became evident.

Origins of Political Parties

In his writings, Thucydides from ancient Athens suggests that there may have been political factions or groups allied and associated in the way they operated within the Athenian political system. They were never called political parties, where politics was often seen more about the individual than larger platforms held in common as a party system would. Nevertheless, alliances and factions would emerge within an assembly which could create something akin to a temporary party where groups of people would work together at least on some issues.

In the late Roman Republic, two political parties existed, which were the Populares and Optimates, which have been seen as representing of the interests of the plebeians and Optimates were representatives of the Senate. The Senate held the interests of the upper classes, including the patricians, while the Populares championed the causes of the common classes through the plebeian tribune. Although these can be considered perhaps the first political parties to have emerged, it is unclear if they are comparable to our political parties in the modern sense, as they may have lacked clear political platforms and the parties in ancient Rome usually held control of one part of the governing bodies of the Republic (i.e., the Optimates in the Senate and the Populares in the plebeian tribune). Furthermore, these parties emerged strictly defined by class, although clearly class often defined what position one party supported.

Something more similar to our modern political parties then began to emerge in the late 17th century in England. The emergence linked back to the English Civil War and the turbulent time that followed with the temporary dissolution of the monarchy. Feelings of having a monarch split English society in the 17th century. After the restoration of the monarch, and then the later Glorious Revolution in 1688, political factions within parliament began to emerge into more coherent ideals. Namely, this revolved around the idea of how much power the monarch should have, where eventually a constitutional monarch with more limited authority emerged. The Whigs and the Tories were the first two factions that emerged that we can call true parties as they had fairly developed platforms, where the Whigs supported a more limited monarch and the Tories supported a stronger monarch. Initially, these were limited areas where the parties focused their energies but this soon changed as the parties began to develop more coherent political ideals on different issues ranging from economic policies to foreign adventures. Both parties depended on relatively wealthy and aristocratic classes at first, but in the 18th century the Whigs began to depend also on emerging merchant classes. For the first 50 years of the two-party system that emerged in parliament, the Whigs were in power.