What are the characteristics of the American political system? Why are you doing this?

The United States is a multi-ethnic and multi-racial country. Before Europeans came to the North American continent, Native American Indians lived there, but Indians were not the ancestors of Americans today. Today's Americans immigrated to North America from the Old World. So the United States is a country made up of immigrants from all over the world. All nationalities and races "immigrated" to the United States, and the United States naturally brought together all the nationalities and races in the world and the culture they brought. The name of the United States of America also shows the road of American political development and national reunification.

1, strict decentralization

The basic principles of the American political system are embodied in the Declaration of Independence announced by 1776, the Constitution formulated by the Philadelphia Conference, and the Bill of Rights formulated by the First Outcome Conference. Later, the political system continued to develop in practice. The founding fathers of the United States explicitly denied direct democracy at the Constitutional Convention and adopted representative democracy, aiming at safeguarding people's democracy, limiting the power of the government and making different government departments check and balance each other. In order to achieve this restriction, the United States has implemented a "strict separation of powers", that is, the legislative power, executive power and judicial power of the United States not only belong to Congress, the President, the Supreme Court and the federal lower courts respectively, but also have a parallel constitutional status, and the Constitution does not stipulate a supreme authority. Moreover, the principle of checks and balances in the United States emphasizes that every organ needs the assistance of other organs when exercising its power; Every organ has legal means to prevent other organs from infringing its power.

In this way, there is a great difference between the decentralization system in the United States and the parliamentary supremacy system in Britain. The basic characteristics are also remarkable: the power sources of the three departments are different and parallel to each other; They are politically independent and have no political responsibility for each other; These three departments depend on each other in performing their functions; All three organs have the means to restrict and defend each other.

2. Persistent two-party system

The United States is a typical two-party system. For a long time, the Party and the Democratic Party have been in power alternately. The persistence of the two-party system is one of the most important characteristics of American politics. Compared with the political party system in other countries, the two-party system in the United States has many remarkable characteristics.

(1) strive for the position of president as the main goal.

The United States has a presidential system, which is obviously different from the responsibility cabinet system in Britain and other western countries in many aspects. The main goal of the American two-party system is to compete for the presidency, unlike the British responsibility cabinet system. If a person wants to be in power, he must win a majority in parliament. The US congressional elections and presidential elections are held separately. Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are elected by the voters of each state, and the president is elected by the presidential electors elected by each state. Therefore, whether the president is elected depends on whether he gets a majority of electoral votes, regardless of how many seats he gets in Congress. The change of government depends not on the parliamentary election, but on the presidential election. The president and his cabinet are not responsible to Congress, but to the Constitution and voters. In the United States, the separation of powers centered on the president is the most fundamental feature of the American political system. Under this system, if a political party wins the presidency, it means that it has mastered the state power.

(2) There is no strict distinction between the ruling party and the opposition party.

It is precisely because the number of seats of the two parties in Congress has nothing to do with the status of the ruling party and the opposition party that the legislative proposals of the ruling party and the president are often not greatly restricted and hindered by the opposition party's manipulation of Congress. In fact, in order to carry out his program and policies smoothly, the President of the United States often holds joint meetings with the leaders of the two houses of Congress and some famous members of the Senate and House of Representatives. Most of the bills passed by the U.S. Congress became law without dispute between the two parties.

(3) the ideological color is weak

After the formation of the modern two-party system in the United States, the essential difference between * * * and the obligations of the Party and the Democratic Party is that they all represent the fundamental interests of the dominant bourgeoisie. Ideologically, both major political parties believe in capitalism. Both maintain the capitalist system; Adhere to the principle of inviolability of private property; They all publicize bourgeois political economy theory and freedom and equality theory; They are all obsessed with bourgeois values and human rights with individualism as the core. Therefore, the two major political parties adhere to and believe in bourgeois ideology.

(4) The power and role of party leaders are weak.

(5) The inner-party organization is loose, the power is scattered, and the cohesion is poor.

3. Federal bicameral system

The bicameral system in the United States was influenced to some extent by the bicameral system of the British Parliament, which was also true during the colonial period. However, compared with the first two, the bicameral system in the United States has undergone great changes in organizational composition and power division. Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives are all elected, and senators are directly elected by voters. In the election of members of the House of Representatives, from the perspective of representative system, in both houses of the US Congress, senators represent the voters of each state and representatives represent the voters of each constituency. The Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress have the same status and power, and the legislative power is formulated by their peers. Bills passed by the two houses must be sent to the other house for approval, and either house has absolute veto power over bills passed by the other house. Moreover, the House of Representatives is big and the Senate is small. In American history, the Senate is often more conservative than the House of Representatives.

Judging from the composition of the members of the two houses of Congress, the two houses coordinated the conflicts of interests among the states and restricted each other by different election methods.