Các thời kỳ chính trị Hoa Kỳ

Hệ thống Đảng thứ nhất (1792 - 1824)

Giai đoạn đầu tiên có hai đảng phái chính trị lớn tranh giành chức tổng thống Hoa Kỳ và các ghế trong quốc hội và tiểu bang: Đảng Liên hiệp (do Alexander Hamilton sáng lập) và Đảng Dân chủ - Cộng Hòa (do Thomas Jefferson và James Madison sáng lập).
Đến khoảng năm 1816 - 1824, Đảng Liên hiệp suy yếu. Đảng Dân chủ - Cộng Hòa cũng chia rẽ, tách làm hai đảng Đảng Dân chủ (do Andrew Jackson sáng lập) và Đảng Whig (do Henry Clay sáng lập).

Hệ thống Đảng thứ nhì (1828 - 1854)

Bắt đầu từ năm 1828, dân Hoa Kỳ hăng hái đi bầu hơn. Đặc điểm của thời kỳ này là sự tăng vọt của số cử tri, các cuộc diễn thuyết kêu gọi, tuyên truyền trên báo chí và các thành viên trung thành với đảng chính trị của mình.
The Second Party System is a term of periodization used by historians and political scientists to name the political system existing in the United States from about 1828 to 1854. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by election day turnout, rallies, partisan newspapers, and a high degree of personal loyalty to party.
The major parties were the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, assembled by Henry Clay from the National Republicans, and other opponents of Jackson. Minor parties included the Anti-Masonic Party, which was an important innovator from 1827–34; the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840; and the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852. The Second Party System reflected and shaped the political, social, economic and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era, until succeeded by the Third Party System.

Hệ thống Đảng thứ ba (1854 - giữa thập niên 1890)

The Third Party System is a term of periodization used by some historians and political scientists to describe a period in American political history from about 1854 to the mid-1890s that featured profound developments in issues of nationalism, modernization, and race. This period is defined by its contrast with the eras of the Second Party System and the Fourth Party System.
It was dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whiggish modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads and aid to land grant colleges. While most elections from 1874 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1856, 1884 and 1892 presidential elections, though from 1874 to 1892 the party often controlled the United States House of Representatives. The northern and western states were largely Republican, save for closely balanced New York and Indiana. After 1874, the Democrats took control of the "Solid South."

Hệ thống Đảng thứ tư (1896 - 1932)

The Fourth Party System is the term used in political science and history for the period in American political history from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican party, excepting the 1912 split in which Democrats seized power for eight years. History texts usually call it the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name, "System of 1896" by E.E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid 1960s.[1]
The period featured a transformation from the issues of the Third Party System, which had focused on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, race and monetary issues. The era began in the severe depression of 1893 and the extraordinarily intense election of 1896. It included the Progressive Era, World War I, and the start of the Great Depression. The Great Depression caused a realignment that produced the Fifth Party System, dominated by the Democratic New Deal Coalition until the 1960s.
The central domestic issues concerned government regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government, women's suffrage, and control of immigration. Foreign policy centered on the 1898 Spanish-American War, imperialism (and Banana Wars), Dollar Diplomacy, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the creation of the League of Nations. Dominant personalities included presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

Hệ thống Đảng thứ năm (1933 - hiện nay)

The New Deal Coalition, also known as the Fifth Party System, refers to the era of Hoa Kỳ national politics that began with the New Deal in 1933. It followed the Fourth Party System, usually called the Progressive Era. Experts debate whether it ended in the mid-1960s (as the New Deal coalition did) or the mid-1990s, or continues to the present. The System was heavily Democratic through 1964 and mostly Republican at the presidential level since 1968, with the Senate switching back and forth after 1980. The Democrats usually controlled the House except that the Republicans won in 1946, 1952, and 1994 through 2004 elections. Both chambers went Democratic in 2006. Of the twenty presidential elections since 1932, the Democrats won 7 of the first 9 (through 1964), with Democratic control of Congress as the norm; while the Republicans won 7 of the 11 since 1968, with divided government as the norm.
With Republicans losing favor because of the Great Depression, the four consecutive elections, 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, of Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the Democrats dominance, though in domestic issues the conservative coalition generally controlled Congress from 1938 to 1964. The activist New Deal promoted American liberalism, anchored in a New Deal Coalition of specific liberal groups—especially ethno-religious constituencies (Catholics, Jews, African Americans)—white Southerners, well-organized labor unions, urban machines, progressive intellectuals, and populist farm groups. Opposition Republicans were split between a conservative wing, led by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, and a more successful moderate wing exemplified by the politics of Northeastern elites such as Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and Henry Cabot Lodge.
The Democratic coalition divided in 1948 and 1968, in the latter election allowing the Republican candidate Richard Nixon to take the White House. Republicans gained support from the formation of the Reagan coalition in the 1980s. Democrats kept control of the House of Representatives until the 1994 election. For the next twelve years the Republican Party was in control with small majorities, until the Democrats recaptured the chamber with the 2006 election and the 110th Congress. The Democrats held the Senate until 1980; since then the two parties have traded control of the Senate back and forth with small majorities, until the Democrats consolidated a supermajority in 2009.