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PAR T I '5 A N REV lEW
on the loyal acceptance of the Constitution as the document repre–
senting faithfully America's basic ends. While in many other coun–
tries the parties represent different basic positions on social and
political problems, the parties in the United States operate within
the framework of basic agreements which in the order of time (we
cannot speak of history) precede tqe actual political and social life
of the country.
Thus the American parties are little concerned with ideological
problems; rising on a common ideological foundation, their func–
tion is pre-eminently practical; instead of being instruments with
which to conquer the State or organizations in which the finality
of political and social life is closely related to the proposed solutions
of specific problems up for decision, they are instruments by which
the Constitution is being applied to the changing problems of the
society. Political principles are part and parcel of the Constitution
and are thus withdrawn from the actual political struggle-(a first
example of what we spoke of as a certain cleavage
in
American
society between transcendent ideality and the positive reality of
practical life); the programs of American parties are generally
lim–
ited to practical issues. This de-emphasis of the ideological element
is probably responsible for the facts that there are only two major
parties in America and that party discipline is very weak.
The full significance of the different nature and position of
parties in the traditional and the contractual societies respectively
becomes evident only as we consider it in the light of the relation–
ship of State and government. In most of the traditional countries
the government seems to have the primary function of administering
the State; in America the function of government is simply that of
administering the interests of its citizens. In fact, in many of the
older countries the government is considered practically identical
with the State: it seems to participate in its glory and enjoy its
privileges. The employee of the State is its prime defender- and
in a sense its principal beneficiary. The machinery of the State
is an instrument of annoyance to be used against the helpless citizen
who is forced to consider the underpaid functionary as an unas–
sailable enemy who for mysterious reasons survives all changes of
government and will continue, without redress, to take advantage
of his privileged position. In the United States, on the other hand,
