While people love to criticize political parties, the reality is that the modern political system could not exist without them.
Collective action problems are very common in societies, as groups and entire societies try to solve problems or distribute scarce resources. There are many groups, all with opinions about what should be done and a desire to influence policy. But at some point, a society must find a way of taking all these opinions and turning them into solutions to real problems. That is where political parties come in.
Political parties are organized groups of people with similar ideas or ideology about the function and scope of government, with shared policy goals that work together to elect individuals to political office, to create and implement policies, to further an agenda, and to gain control of the government and the policy-making process. Parties gain control over the government by winning elections with candidates they officially sponsor or nominate for positions in government. Political parties nominate candidates to run many levels of government including the national level, Congress, and the presidency; but, they nominate for state and local levels as well. They also coordinate political campaigns and mobilize voters.
In Federalist No. 10, written in the late eighteenth century, James Madison noted that the formation of self-interested groups, which he called factions, was both natural and inevitable in any society. Interest groups and political parties are two of the most easily identified forms of faction in the United States.
