An analysis of American minor political parties: the Libertarian party as a case study

In analyzing the American political party system, minor parties are usually ignored. The few works that do concern minor parties tend to focus on a single party's history in a cursory and descriptive manner. Although many political scientists have called for the syn thesis of explanations, hypotheses, and generalizations about political parties found in the literature into propositional inventories or models of analysis, their concern has been the two major parties. Explanations about the various aspects of minor parties are scattered throughout the literature. No effort has been made to develop a succinct model of analysis for researching American minor political parties.

In this study, the literature is extensively reviewed for the classification of the numerous explanations concerning minor parties. From this, a three-part framework is developed for the systematic analysis of these parties. Each part of the framework corresponds with a phase of a minor party's history; (1) its formation; (2) its active life and functions in the political system; and (3) the causes for the decline of a minor party. Each part consists of many generalizations that are interrelated and cumulative in their explanatory power.

The framework is then elucidated by the systematic comparison and description of a contemporary minor party. The party selected was the Libertarian Party. This party was chosen due to its unique doctrine, its serious efforts in electoral politics, and that it is still in existence, permitting ready analysis of many of the framework's explanations. Examined in the course of the case study is the party's philosophy, platforms, electoral efforts and achievements, the party's structure and organization, and the party's outlook, in the future.

Through the case study analysis, the initial three-part framework is modified because it is determined that many of the explanations are not supported, or are simply not applicable to the history and dynamics of the Libertarian Party. Although the framework is limited in scope and reliability until multiple case studies can be done, it does provide a useful tool of analysis in which to guide further research on the phenomena of American minor political parties.